Wow, was this trip to Israel slightly different than in years past. I recall saying something along the lines of "well, Israel will be slightly calmer than this trip" while driving through the chaos that is Managua a few weeks back. Oh, Fate~ you are a fickle beast and you take my flip comments far too seriously.

That said, it was a truly wonderful trip, as always. I am exceedingly lucky to be a part of this dig, this circle of people. I am not sure how I fell into it, but it really is a community of creative and dynamic people, intelligent and quizzical. Borderline obsessive but possessing a child-like awe. I feel more at home on the dig then I do right now, sitting in my bedroom. Sounds cheesy but there it is.

This year, I met my friend Christina in Philly and we flew together to Tel Aviv, making the 12 hour flight far more bearable. It was in Philly that I first met Joel, a somewhat bland 29 year old, who will factor into this vacation story far more prominently soon. Joel lives in Omaha and had come to the dig before. He had decided on a whim to come back this year, latching on to us. He would chip in on the rental car and 'figure out lodging' when we got to the kibbutz because he is a 'fly by the seat of my pants kinda guy'. If someone ever, ever, says that particular term to me again, I will either fly into a homicidal rage or fall onto the floor, a quivering fetal like mass of nerves. But, I am speeding up. At this point, he was still just "Joel", sort of nice in a tapioca pudding kind of way. When we arrived in Tel Aviv, I sort of sped through customs, got my backpack from the carousel and was sitting with a cup of Arabic coffee for about half an hour by the time Christina and Joel emerged from the immigration area. Joel, it seems, was traveling with a severely water stained passport- wouldn't scan, picture was barely visible. The Israelis don't like that kind of thing and spent quite a bit of time questioning him about his grandfather’s occupation and his childhood pets and such things. Bags collected, we got the rental car I had secured and hit Route 6 in our Hyundai Getz. Israeli radio stations like to screw with your psyche, playing a full two minutes of some classic 80's song so I get all worked up, singing aloud, turning it up and then some smooth Hebrew voice interrupts, advertising some holiday destination or beverage.

We managed to miss all of the Shabbat traffic heading the other way and made it to Tiberias by 6pm and pulled into Kibbutz Ginosar shortly thereafter. Greeted by a gleaming Kinnaret, we checked into our room and headed to dinner. Joel had decided that he would crash on our floor that evening and figure out what his plans were on Sunday. Dinner on the Kibbutz is one of the things I look forward to most on these trips. Long tables piled with curried potatoes, beet salads, taboulis, fresh fish, hummus, Israeli salads and mounds and mounds of beautiful, wonderful, plump, kibbutz grown olives.

At dinner, we greeted some familiar beloved faces; Dr. Elizabeth McNamer from Rocky Mountain college, Dr. Carl Savage from Drew, Hanan Shafir, professional photographer and resident BMW Motorcycle riding jokester. Celso, a Brazilian businessman who has come to the dig as king as I have.

Ouch.
Snowboarding adventure done. 5 hours and 15 minutes of falling on my ass every 2 minutes (sometimes a lot less) and FINALLY at the end, I started to GET it! The board really does go where you want it to go when you move your head and look in that direction. You really DO stop when you dig your heels in simultaneously, but gently or of you're backwards (which is not the right term, but that's just how it feels) by pressing down on your toes. Thankfully I had zero fear of falling because I, along with many others, spent the entire time doing just that. Once I started having a few of those 'aha!' moments, it was so much fun! I mean, a shit-ton of work and pain, but fun! Near the end I just didn't want to fall because it was so much work just to get up. Especially if I fell forward. Then you have to execute this awesomely ridiculous flipping maneuver whereupon you pull your right leg close to your stomach and flip yourself and the board around so your butt is sticking up in the air and then figure out how to push up and stand without wiping out yet again and smashing your face into the snow. It's a good thing my self-confidence isn't at its height because there was definitely nothing genteel about my technique. Anyway, it was a whole lot of fun though... I spent most of my time laughing at myself, my friend and the sky. When I actually mastered getting down a whole half of the hill without falling or slamming into the foam padding around the ski-lift poles, I instantly wanted to coem back and try it again. Because things just start to click and make sense! Of course snowboarding (and skiing I suppose) when you don't own your own equipment is ridiculously expensive and I just can't justify the expense in my head were I to do it often.

Oh, and I thought I would be terrified by the ski lift, having never been on one before, much less with a four foot board strapped to one foot and having to get off, slip down the little decline and get the hell out of the way of the other fools behind you. I only fell once and that was actually slipping on ice off to the right while panicking that I was in everyone's way, when in actuality I wasn't in anyone's way. The hill (bunny slope folks, let's be real) was actually pretty slick because there were 5 billion people there due to the gorgeous weather and the end of Feb. vacation.

Man, I am feeling it today though. I was sitting in a 3 hour budget meeting this morning and I had to physically lift my legs to cross them. Covertly. Though I am sure everyone saw me wincing. Actually I was going to start this post by saying that I can't cross my legs without help but thought that might send the wrong message. My wrists, my thighs, my back... woo. I didn't believe my friend when she said it would be much worse today but whoa, she was right. I feel like crap right now. Sorta good crap, but still crap.

Also, a few things:
Hartford Wolfpack game= awesome, though I can't believe how empty it was for a Saturday night! Kinda sad. I remember when there was no way two people could get a seat together on a Saturday game. The good thing is that I didn't have to pay to park, even though I was in a parking garage but the bad thing is that that means Hartford isn't even charging people to park anymore and it's STILL empty.

Hey! Guess what I haven't done in forever?! You've got it... updated this thing!
Probably because I really haven't had that much going on, maybe because I am lazy and most assuredly because my laptop is dying a slow and painful death and I try not to tax her with too many windows open. She starts to wheeze and whirl. The First Fan of Death begins and I know I have a mere 8 minutes time left before the second, all powerful Fan Of Impending Death comes on and then everything freezes, usually right in the middle of a killer Facebook Scrabble Move so I am left with a frozen screen and a word that is worth 5 points instead of 63.

Such is life.

Why am I deciding to post this morning, you may ask? There are a few reasons quite frankly.
1) The slow morph into the Ghost of My Grandmother is nearly complete. Last nights actions nearly solidified the transformation. While in the basement doing laundry I wandered by the oil tank (which we had just fed 100 gallons of oil week before last!), noticed the needle was hovering slightly above a quarter of a tank and promptly marched upstairs and turned it down to 64. I usually keep it hovering between 64 and 66 (3rd floor folks, it's not that bad!) and trot around telling my roommates to put on some layers godamnit, we're not made of money but it had been a chilly week and I allowed it to crawl up to 68 at one point or another. No more. This tank of oil was going to 'last us the rest of the winter' (allow for maximum Caroline Ingall's voice here) and now we're down to a 1/4 of a tank and it's mid-February. So pull out those hoodies guys because I'm enforcing a lockdown on the thermostat. Of course, this means when I awoke this morning and went to leisurely roll out of bed on this lovely day off, I could almost smell the cold in the air. My windows were slightly frosted. On the inside. I have a hoodie and fingerless mittens on, typing this. There is already a sheet draped over the new couch to keep off the cat fur... the transformation is nearly complete.

2) If there's one thing I hate more than NPR Pledge Drives it's Bahamas commercials. I KNOWit's better in the Bahamas where animated Mai Tai's frolic with Sesame Street Characters getting massages on the beach but do I need to see four commercials by 8am telling me so? I just want to watch the morning news and drink my coffee with my fingerless mittens and not be constantly reminded that there's warmth and happiness out there somewhere below the Mason Dixon line.

3) It's President's day weekend and since I am not buying a new car or acquiring new furniture (I like my sheet covered IKEA Klippan thank you very much) it means I merely have the day off like the respectable public servant that I am. And like any good American that means drinking copious amounts of coffee this morning, turning the oven on to heat the house for a few minutes, not lighting a match and watching the rest of Season One of Weeds.

Perfect.

This weekend was, in turns, kickass and asskicking.
Saturday was the Boston Book Festival and the turnout was in the thousands, even though it was raining and was one of the windiest days I have ever encountered in Boston. I saw a tribute to Chris Van Allsburg and then booked it over to Richard Russo. Waited in line for 20 minutes to see John Hodgman and then made it to the hallway meet and greet with Cornel West who is every bit as larger than life as I imagined he would be.
Then I wandered through all of the booths, fell in love with the Paris Review representative, proposed, we were married right there and... oh wait... maybe not all true. But he was a pretty cool dude and we waxed nostalgic about old Paris Review haps.

I then ate a bagel. Outside. In the wind. Which was so strong that it literally BLEW tufts of cream cheese off the bagel and into the air. Covered in cream cheese I stood in line for half an hour to get into the David Gergan, Jack Beatty, Michael Porter debate on the Obama Year, moderated by Tom Ashbrook. It was about 750 degrees in the lecture hall but the debate was well worth it and the audience was not nearly as solid lefty as you might imagine for a political debate at a public library during a book festival in Boston. David Gergan is, I think, one of the busiest people on the planet. I don't think he sleeps. He was also a fierce debater and solidly astute. Jack Beatty and Michael Porter were kind of all over the place (focusing mainly on big business and capitalism) and the one woman guest (I canNOT remember her name) was kind of Eh... but Tom Ashbrook was as entertaining as you would imagine though I always think it's a little weird seeing radio personalities in the flesh- they never look like what you would think and it sort of colors how I hear their voice afterwards.

Anyhow, I left that lecture and booked it across the street just in time to slid into the Keynote Talk by Orhan Pamuk. It was held in a large church, interestingly enough, and the place was literally packed to the rafters. I sidled into a crevice on the stairs, quite close to the stage. I have been reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and just last weekend and there was a chapter where he was in Istanbul and met Pamuk at a dinner party. His description of the writer was spot.on. A little fidgety, a little cantankerous but full of life and eager to talk, peppering his reading with little bursts of sarcasm and wit. Turned questions decidedly away from politics and was totally enthused to present readings fro his newest tome "The Museum of Innocence", which I haven't had the chance to read but is a massive love story, as only Pamuk can create. It was awesome.

Yesterday, high on the wind of authors and whimsy, it all came crashing down when I awoke at 6am to get the Uhaul which my roommate was scared to drive. Since the rain on Saturday cancelled the friends we had lined up to help us, it was just the two of us moving all of the furniture- dressers, beds, couches, 7 bookcases, living room crap- oh man. It sucked. 3 flights of stairs - living on the 3rd floor is going to be great but moving things up to the 3rd floor is not so great. Thighs, arms, shoulders and head (I like to balance things on my head when I move, distribute the weight) are all shot. And my roommate and I are totally insane because after we made two Uhaul trips and at the very least over 56 trips up the stairs each (Pat was annoyingly keeping count) we went BACK over last night to have a couple of beers and put together some of the bookcases. You know the ones, the "Expedit" from Ikea?! Pretty to look at but a nightmare to put together. Pat and I certainly do not resemble The Happy Swedes armed with their allen wrenches and wooden pegs that the instructions show when we are putting these things together- though we are almost experts at them now, having assembled and disassembled mine over 6 times now. I am thinking of putting an ad on craigslist showcasing this particular talent that we have perfected... it can be something like couchswapping... we'll go and put the maddening thing together for someone and they can come, oh, I don't know, light our pilot light for us, since it's something we both hate to do.

Anyway, we're nearly moved in and we officially get to stay there next weekend, so things are starting to look up

I was slugging down a fine bottle of Oktoberfest (love September) and it occurred to me that I hadn’t written about the day to day ridiculousness I often encounter in quite a long time. Specifically, I haven’t updated my blog, which sounds intrinsically self-absorbed but I swear, it’s not.

Here goes!

First thing? This morning? I definitely drove over the sodden carcass of a dictionary in the middle of the road over by Suffolk Downs. Now I’m not sure which was weirder: me recognizing from somewhat of a distance that it was, in fact, a discarded dictionary, and consequently I felt the distinct urge to save it, or that it had been either chucked out of some cars window or over the fence of the horse track, perhaps by some charmingly Lilliputian jockey lost in a fit of despair over a filly.

In any case, it gave me pause on my morning commute and made the day into something different.

Now I have managed to drive over/by/past many things on my commute to the greater Chelsea area in the year plus I have worked there, including a shoe, many chicken wings and lots of glass but a dictionary? Never. A new day! Possibly an omen to a day flush with illuminated thought and grandiose diatribe!

(the kibbutz- [Thank you Tony K])

So every morning I awoke at 4am. I thought this would be a difficult thing to adjust to, but really it may have been the easiest. My eyes popped wide open before the alarm even went off and –wham- there I was. Still in Israel. Still going to work my ass off that day. Still overwhelmingly content.

Christina (my friend, roommate, constant companion) makes fun of me because like an idiot I would feel the need to shower every morning. This is entirely ridiculous because in an hour and a half I would be covered head to toe with filth, but still, it woke me up, becamse part of my routine and I couldn’t not. The Kibbutz folk have this amazing contraption, which I wish I had taken a photo of (but is that weird? Too much? Taking pictures of the bathroom?) which was this 3 paneled shower thing that essentially folded in on itself when you were through with the shower, like an envelope. The drain and shower nozzle were normal but when you were through you could simply fold in the doors almost flat and essentially double the size of the bathroom. You use a squeegee to get any excess water from the floor (the drain/shower/bathroom is all one flat floor) but it works amazingly well and I cannot believe I have not seen the design before, especially in small lofts/apt’s in America, I’m thinking especially in NYC.

SO, I would take a shower and then put on the kettle and sit on the small porch, as the sky would tinge pinkish and the 5 gajillion birds would begin to awaken. Nescafe, a few pieces of fruit…. I would pack my backpack with a huge bottle of frozen water, peanut butter crackers (essential and golden I could have sold those suckers to people who were not as prepared), sunblock spf 560, bug spray etc. Christina would go through the rather harrowing process of waking up Finnigan, her six year old son- a real trooper on the dig but somewhat, shall we say, less than happy to wake up at 5am. From 4:30-5:20 I would watch the last few innings of whatever baseball game happened to be playing on ESPN International. How psyched was I to watch the Sox/Yankees games?! It’s a little disconcerting to watch the games, knowing their live and be drinking coffee in the wee hours, meaning I felt like I should have a beer in one hand and a hot pretzel in the other like normal, but eh- at least I got to watch them.



The bus was there promptly at 5:30 am and after we loaded on the bins of breakfast provided by the kibbutz, we made our way down Route 90 and onwards down Route 87, which frames the Sea of Galilee, passing Capernaum, the Mount of Beatitudes. A few moments later we pull into the site of Bethsaida. Home. The Pope visited here, many, many pilgrims come during the day and film us and thank us. It’s a little surreal. I still don’t know how to imbed stuff behind cuts because I am lame like that, so I won’t go into it in crazy detail until I do so I won’t bore those of you who have no interest (and clog up your screens) but suffice to say, the site is amazing. I feel so fully invested in the discovery of the city, it crawls under my skin and hangs out, waiting for me to revisit. I just want to know, to find, to unearth and discover… the city lies waiting. So much left to dig. It’s like a stupid Librarian Turned Archaeologist afterschool special only without Noah Wyle and ridiculous hijinks*.




So do you want to know what happens on a typical day on a dig? If so read on…

You disembark the bus. You dash madly for the toolsheds and grab anything you can find. Digs are notoriously under funded so the basic tools for doing the job right are ridiculously scarce. You grab gross, cracked, filthy kneepads and thank the Knee Gods because you got some; you covet buckets like they were tickets to a David Bowie concert, you grab pickaxes and shovels, handpicks and brushes. Scavengers… that’s what you become first thing in the morning. You load up your arms with whatever you can carry and scurry to your area, triumphant or (more often) not. Then it’s down to business. Glamour. Fame. Indiana Jones style. Um… no. You spend your hours picking and brushing and filling endless (and I mean ENDLESS) buckets of dirt that then get hauled up the sifters, sifted in the 98 degree blazing sun, dump and repeat. Some things you find down in the sites, most are found during sifting. I’ll go into a few more particulars later (when I learn to imbed, help>! Can someone answer my call? I have never learned to do this properly) but there comes from sifting: agonizing backaches, numerous bruised foreheads and egos (me) and pottery; lots and lots and lots of pottery. Sherds galore. Mounds of pottery. Some of which is cool and most of which Rami takes one look at and chucks to the side. Most of the discarded pottery becomes the floor on which we eat breakfast at the site.

Oh, Breakfast! I forgot to mention this…
Breakfast is at 9am. This is about 3 hours after you have been digging, hence my-could-have-sold-for-50-shekels-peanut-butter-crackers. It is set up under simple tarps near the pottery washing station. Generally it consisted of two categories:
ALWAYS: tomatoes and cucumbers, hard boiled eggs, cereal and weird kinda thick fresh unpasteurized milk from the kibbutz cows, unflavored Greek yogurt (in which you dumped a variety of condiments [I was known to throw in coffee to give it flavor]) bread.
REVOLVING: fruit (usually fresh watermelon or cantaloupe), mystery meat slices (generally made from whatever was leftover from a variety of dished served at dinner), cheese (no meat and cheese on the same day, keeping Kosher y’all!), Nutella (WOO!!!) and a few times; jam. The kibbutz fed us very well, considering we were 50-72 starving fiends who were completely blinded by hunger when it came time to eat. I don’t think I have ever, EVER, craved hard-boiled eggs as much as I did there. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I ate one at home but at Bethsaida, I was known to sometimes creep down to the breakfast shed (also the office, also the storage of special finds) and have an egg or so in somewhat secret. I sorta have access and special privilege since I am a returning digger, higher on the gravy train.
The of course Rami makes his one kettle of Turkish coffee steeped with savory cardamom and we descend upon it like locusts, those of us coffee starved and oblivious to the fact that it is 98 degrees out.



The Sifters look vaguely menacing. Someone eventually tied red and white ribbons on the sides to stop us crazed, dehydrated, exhausted, stupid sifters from whacking their heads aginst them seventy times a day- it didn't really help)

You then trudge back to the work areas, sated and somewhat content. People say the productivity drops about 50% after breakfast but I would wager it’s more like 75%. As the sun rises higher in the sky and your full belly begins to get in the way of picking and digging and sifting. You begin to wane. Your thoughts are consumed with the Coming of the Popsicles, scheduled at 11am. You begin to hallucinate the Popsicle Messenger running up the lane. Someone (usually Christina though I went once to indulge in a little AC) drives down to Benny’s, a small Arabic restaurant and picks up 50-60 popsicles and then hauls ass back to the site before they melt. They then have to run, scamper, climb, slip and fall to all of the sites as weary, hot and crazed diggers yell out “Popsicles, Over here, Now, Me, I’m DYING”. You can only imagine in your mind all of the inward insults they hurl your way and it really is one of the most stressful jobs of the dig.



After popsicles, people are toast. They dig half-heartedly, trowels barely make it into the buckets, people stop to listen to the Israeli fighters zooming overhead, look at the view of the Galilee. Anything but buckets and finds. At 12:22 pm promptly, the tarps are lowered and the Finds are brought to the pottery washing area and the filthy, bedraggled and dazed diggers make their way to the bus where David, the horrified TourBus operator tries to blow the filth off of them before they board.

Back to the kibbutz for lunch and…

Flights overseas don’t bother me… flights wedged, cramped and annoyed next to two men Obama-bashing loudly next to me for hours overseas, do. Also non-vegetarian putty-like pasta slathered in salted red sauce. Also, my Happy Sack (slippers, sweater, toothbrush, toothpaste, lotion and headband)- banished to the very deep recesses of the overhead bin, not to be found until landing. I thought I was brilliant to pack it until it was buried during the hustle of boarding.

Meeting Christina and her son Finn in Atlanta was pretty awesome though; reunited friends. That and seeing a few trickles of would-be Bethsaida bound folks on board. Landing in Tel-Aviv was typically a little nutty; the passport control officer thought I said I was coming to Israel on a Date, not a Dig, and was appropriately bewildered. We then chuckled as to who would merit such a journey, she stamped my passport and I was off to meet the group. Some poor souls headed to Bethsaida had already spent over eight hours in the airport. I paid 16 shekels for a crappy diet coke, my last soda of the trip.

We boarded and Finn (who is six) insisted on sitting in the back of the enormous tour bus so immediately we looked antisocial. He, of course, conked out ¾ of the way through the 2+ hour drive to the kibbutz while we attempted to keep him awake by saying things like “Look, Israeli cows, Look Checkpoints and snaking lines of traffic we get to sail through because we are on a tourbus, Look Kosher McDonald’s!”
Arrival at Kibbutz Ginosar was worth it. 85 degrees, slight breeze, buffet dinner. I had curried potatoes, beet coleslaw, hummus with homemade crusty bread, mound sof green and black olives, a dill cucumber salad, fresh tomatoes, thick Arabic coffee.

After dinner Christina and I checked into our triple room at the Inn and wandered down to the nighttime view of the Sea of Galilee. Grace, beauty, calm rippling black waters, the shimmer of Tiberias on the opposite side… and the bugs. My WinterWuss skin was not prepared for mosquitos so we hoofed it back to the hotel bar for a couple of tall goldstars. We met Gerry from Kansas City, a fellow digger, and introduced him to the Sam Adams of Israel, chatted for an hour or so and then ambled back to the room where we proceeded to watch a Made for Television movie on Ted Bundy and Anne Rule showing on the hallmark channel, one of the few channels we got.

An early breakfast (challah French toast, fresh melon, olives and feta and coffee strong enough that I thought the spoon would stand) and people converged to board the bus to Bethsaida, about a fifteen minute drive from the Kibbutz. Rami (Arav, P.h.d.- Archaeologist in charge of the dig) introduced the site to those unfamiliar with it and went over basic protocol (no flipflops, drink lots of water, don’t walk through the landmine field adjacent to the site.) It was a marathon of sorts- I have never seen him talk that long. Everyone introduced themselves and then immediately forgot everyone’s names, I pitched off the rock I had wedged myself on earning Gash #1. I wandered down to the road to the ancient city, the area in which I toiled endlessly two years ago. Archaeological dig sites are a contrary force. So much left to do, yet so much changes. They had widened the road by another five feet in the two years since I had seen it. Right as we were finishing up the last time I was there, Rami was musing that the road may be wider so in a heat fueled last-day frenzy we dug an 8”x 8” by 9” scope and found paving stones at the bottom, proving Rami’s assertation that Bethsaida was, in fact, a city of considerable importance, having a road nearly twice as wide as the average size for the time.

They had also dug up the Syrian bunker where I used to hide my tools and had excavated an entire paved plaza up near the city gates, a space presumably used as a marketplace. Cranes and moved the bunker and the winter restoration crew had restored huge expanses of the outer and inner city walls.

Usually the first day comes with the decidedly unglamorous job of pulling mounds of weeds, clearing the sites to be opened but Rami talked so long we got to mostly wander and leave. Early day back to the kibbutz, which was probably a good thing for most who hadn’t adjusted to the time change. I was feeling pretty proud of myself- all Time Change Proof. Usually I merely tell myself over and over that it is the time it is when I arrive somewhere and I am able to trick myself into immediately adjusting. This lends a small swagger to my step when others were dragging. The trip home toppled me from this ridiculous throne of smugness as I spent over four days in a sleep deprived wonky state when I returned home and stupidly went right back to work.

Christina and I found our way back to the small market, tucked way back in the depths of the kibbutz, stocked up on Nescafe, treats and beer and had an impromptu gathering in front of our room for the few people we had met so far. Gerry and his mother, a powerhouse named Wilda, Gloria. We were reunited with Celso, a retired Brazilian banker living in Houston who so fell in love with digging that he has now gone on five digs and would be following this trip by immediately working on one at Mount Zion in Jerusalem.




It’s impossible to accurately describe the peacefulness of Kibbutz Ginosar; not just around the hotel that is housed on the grounds, but also walking around the community itself. Tucked on the Sea of Galilee, this place is tranquil but pulses with real work, unexpected art and palpable contentment. There is a large (expensive) hotel in one area, the smaller (and vastly cheaper) set of inn rooms (where we were housed) and the actual Kibbutz homes and farms. Ginosar also houses the Yigal Allon Museum, home to the so-called Jesus Boat. The museum also contains the primary labs and workrooms holding most the finds from Bethsaida that have not been passed on to the Israeli Antiquities Authority or that are ‘on tour’ overseas. It would have been called home had I gotten to do the pottery reconstruction work I was hoping to do last year, until the grant fell through.