28.5.07

Drought - Australia

Hi to all,

Firstly, I would like to thank all of you for reading my blog. I have noticed that several of you are living in Japan - The land of the Rising Sun - and I hope you are enjoying what you read. Please do not hesitate to comment, as I love you to participate.

Australia is at the moment experiencing its 6th drought year, and our farmers are having a hard time.The land is as dry as can be and water restrictions are everywhere. However, much of the difficulties come, from what I can see, from bad water management that goes back to the time white man first landed in this vast land.

White man has brought with it animals and agriculture foreign to this land, cleared the land of its trees, and instituted monoculture agriculture of annual crops.These inturn, produced vast areas of extended dessert, like the dustbowls of the USA, and in some salt levels rose to render the land unusable.

With much of the crops going to other lands, Australia has/is in fact, exporting much of its water and, there has been little attention given to harnessing water resources.In the area we living in, for example, there are quite often heavy dark clouds hanging overhead, but there is no cloud seeding; and in years where floods are abound, with farm animal up to their necks in water, there are no dams to collect that abundance.

Drought - Australia

In marginal land
no rain in site
the ground is cracked
like shattered glass

Salt has risen
no plant in sight
cattle and sheep
just wander about

They wonder perhaps
a blade of grass -
will stand up right
or semblance of wet
will denote a site

We uprooted the trees
lay waste the terrain
we destroyed all life
in this our land
© Renate 6.4.06

Renate
Artist, poet & the Author of
 From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country  
http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

17.5.07

Jerusalem today

As promised – Jerusalem of today.

Yesterday was ‘Jerusalem day’, an event celebrated each year not only in Israel but also by millions of people all over the world. The city, which has been for over 3,000 years the capital of the Jewish people, also celebrated yesterday its 40 years reunification into one city again.

During Israel’s war of Independence in 1948, the old city of Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Jordanians, and was annexed, together with what is termed ‘The west bank’, into the Heshemite kingdom.

40 years ago, in the 6 days war, Israel recaptured the old city, and reunified both part of Israel’s capital into one again.

Today, Jerusalem is a modern city. It houses the Kneset - Israel’s Parliament, the Hebrew University, Yad vaShem – the Shoah museum, and many others.

It is a city that sprawls over its seven hills, with all its buildings covered with sand stones.

When you take the bus from the central bus station to the train station, you see the city from its best aspect: You see buildings that glitter in the sun, built on beautiful shaped rounded hills that sit away from one another in the most design perfect distances which please the eyes no end.

Having said this, I am reminded of another good spot – the lookout from where the British mandate’s high commissioner used to live. It was not very far away from where my boarding school was when I was 13 years old. Today, it is a beautiful public park, overlooking the whole of the old city. By the way, you may be interested in the following statistics: Jerusalem appears in the Jewish Bible 669 times and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, sometimes the Land of Israel) 154 times, all in all - 823 The Christian Bible mentions Jerusalem 154 times and Zion 7 times. in the Koran - not at all.

Hope you enjoyed the above

Renate
Artist, poet & the Author of

From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country

http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

11.5.07

New - My Web site is in Cyberspace

Hi to all.

I know, I have promised to write about Jerusalem of today, but I was sitting 16 hours at my computer designing my Web Site. It has taken me much longer than I thought it would and I am sorry to have been ‘off the air’ so to speak, for so long time. BUT - I HAVE MADE IT!

At long last, my website is in cyberspace!!!. It was a long learning curve that has not finished yet, but one that gave me a lot of knowledge in a field I never thought I will even think of tackling…and who said life is boring?…

Well, why not go on to the site by clicking one of these links, and even give me some feedback. I’d love that. Here are those links:

http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

http://www.rinavardi.com/

Even though I am over the moon with that, there is still a lot of work to be done that is behind the scene. However, I can take it now little by little and tend to other things as well.

As promised, I will be writing about Jerusalem of today in my next posting

Hope all is well at your end and that your life is full with activities and interests

Renate

Artist, poet & the author of

'From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country'


Bicurim feast in the kibbutz highschool
Hi Walter and Annette, Thanks for the feedback. Pleased you enjoyed reading it. What happened to the boat, comes in a period after the book ends and maybe a part of the next book...