Maggie's Farm

To my left are the Naphtali Mountains, my namesake, that tribe whose
symbol is the peaceful ayellet, a gazelle I believe.  One half to
two-thirds up these "mountains" (foothills in any other decent
geological area) are boulder-studded, a barren beauty, topped with
evergreens.  In most places of the world, Kiryat Shemona would be a
tourist magnet, with spas, hikes, porches with rocking chairs lined up
filled with nursing mothers or pensioners facing the mountains;
something like the resort run by the Smiley family in the Shawagunk
mountains over the Hudson, neighboring the better known T.    But
from over these mountains of Naphtali, from behind, from hidden
valleys, death arises.  Katyushas, I am told are quickly set-up on
tripods; easily launched from place to place. Yesterday, the IDF
showed air coverage of multiple rocket launcher placed behind  a
Lebanese hospital, or between buildings.  But Katyushas are moving
targets. They are also, notooriously, supposedly inaccurate.  Kind of,
sort of aim, shoot, then look.
At the end of the day, Thursday, I will tell you later, I go to one
of hte poorest streets in Kiryat Shemona, known as Eilat Street,
although the street sign says otherwise.  If you ask neighbors, where
is the street using the street sign name, they shrug. If you ask Eilat
street, they point.
This faces the valley, towards the Huleh, from which, behind a row of
straight tall evergreeens, perhaps arbor vitae, first booms followed
by puffs of grey, then black smoke reveal the Israeli artillery
positions. They fired most of the night. Even sleepin in the secure
room on the mattress on the floor, I heard them.  Perhaps a half
kilometer away from the down-at-the heels apartments and inhabitants
of
Eilat Street.  I think to myself -- after passing incinerated car
carcasses, doors blown off their hinges, blown-out windows on Eilat
Street -- after firing so many Katyushot repeatedly hitting the cars
and apartments of Eilat Street, one would think that a slight upward
correction the Hizbollah would try for the Israeli artillery.  Then, i
wonder if perhaps the aim is not to hit artillery, but to hit, well,
poor peoples' cars and apartments.   Couple days back, a Hizbollah
Katyusha wiped out a bicyclist on his kibbutz; certainly eliminating a
major military threat to Hizbollah and Lebanon.
Channa, by phone, guides me to her house, near a green-tiled rambler;
her backyard is filled with cascading bougenvilla bushes.  She is
slight, rail thin, her hunched shoulders giving her a
pectus-excavatum look. Her hair shows disarry in the back, as if she
has abandoned awarness of this side of her.  She speaks mostly with
her lips sliding over slightly stained, somwhat irregular teeth,  a
Northern British accent.  She is of the dedicated generation of
psychologists; nothing too demanding for her; no request a way too
far. She is of better mettle than I, I feel.
We head to the triage center,with  a brief detour to see the Katyusha
hits in the last couple days. the city tries to move the burnt car
carcasses quickly, but what remains is the scorched outline of the
body, scattered shattered glass, somewhat like how a body outline is
chalked on the street after a murder, to aid the investigators, or to
remind the neighbors. Two remain; one is smashed, front-up against a
light pole. The windows are so shattered out, so many shards remainig
pointing accusingly at each other, that one becomes almost accustomed.
It looks more like the burnt-out South Bronx in the 70's and 80's
before Ed Koch had the clever idea of boarding up the abandoned
buildings and painting trompe-l'oiel quotidian scenes on the plywood:
women hanging out the sills, calling to their kids; gerania-rimmed
windows; a scene into the kitchen.  It worked, oddly enough, not only
in improving teh look from the highway, but also in decreasing further
vandalism.
But, this isn't the South Bronx. This is northern Israel. And the
thugs here aren't teens with billy clubs, brass knuckles,
switchblades. Rather, thugs with Iran-supplied rockets; thugs
masquerading as some sort of freedom fighters, or deeply religious
figures, or something of the sort.  But, an ass done up in a silk
cummerbund, tuxedo and tophat, is still an ass, particularly when the
ears pop through the holes in the brim.
Well, enough of that. Let's get to some reporting.
I write this from the triage center, booms in the background. i will
break shortly to go to a six-year old's home, evaluate him for trauma
symptoms after he had been at Safed hospital and it was bombed.
-------------
230 pm leaving delayed by Katyusha attacks.  Siren gave two warnings;
the hits do not sound too diffrerent to me than outgoings. But I can
see the smoke rising from two or three locations perhaps 500 meters to
the east  and closer to the west, in the foothills of Naphtali.  Rumor
that one killed in Kiryat Shemona just now in the center of town; not
true. Later, becomes true.  A the tzomet south, was an attach earlier
today; some injuries.  Have tried to leave couple times, then parents
aske dme to return. In the secure room.  In general, Hizbollah shoots
in the p.m. as they believe it is harder to spot the incoming; perhaps
the afternooon sun over the mediterranean is too bright

The 6 year old I have just seen gave me several gifts, including
shrapnel from a katyusha that fell near his house, hitting his
kindergarten across the yard.  He also showed me that if you run
perfumed soap between the hands, it smells nice. He shows this to me,
asks me to show to his father.  Gave me his picture and also all the
pasteries his mother put out.
His picture is elegantly telling, as he draws it. Starts with blue
sky, then decides it needs red to make it nightfall. Then grass and a
wide space separating the two.  Then at opposite ends of the paper,
two flowers, one gold the other copper; the first is man, the second a
woman, but he uses masculine for both pronouns. He starts an
intriguiging rainbow: each color starts neaer the copper flower, then
ends near the copper, but begins to get closer and closer to the
first. He points out that the wide space beween them gets smaller. He
draws a scribble closer to the copper flower. His story is that the
flowers want to marry, but the bush is between. The bush gets smaller,
the  copper flower hops over and marries the gold flower. Later, he
tells us that when his father was young, he had golden curls and his
mother said she married him because of this.
I recite this continuously, but it was "clinicus interruptus," due to
Katyushas. Later, I learn that this is one of the heaviest bombings on
Kiryat Shemona; some three dead.  We step out, the father, teen
brother and I, to spot where the Katyushots hit; we are flanked by
smoke to the east and west.  Ashen smoke will begin to blanket the
city before I leave at three. Before I go, the six year old gives me
one last gift: two pieces of shrapnel he collected from the
kindergarten hit behind his house a few days back.  He shows me how
sharp they are, can pierce his picture.   I try to leave thrice and
the third time, with Nasrullah's permission, I get to the car. Now, to
the emergency center quickly before this American oleh in a Korean
Yugo meets a Russian Katyusha, a potentially lethal international
event.
Yesterday, saw several people with shock; will describe these later.
Now, I wait at the ER to give a ride to a young man, just discharged
from artillery, whose brother just spent 72 hours on the ground with
Golani in Lebanon.  Oren is late. I wait in the front triage room,
filled with various frightened people and a frail fellow, whose
elderly daughter expects that all efforts will be made to help him
reach Moshe Rabenu's age.   We are shuttled here, because theree are
injured in the ER.  I see the body of one man on the gurney after
stabilization, being wheeled out to the ambulance for Rambam hospital
in Haifa.  I briefly glance his face, now as if coated wth the dull,
grey ashes of the smoke from the forest fires outside. Death is
breathing upon him.  A tube in his mouth. A woman bags him for shallow
breaths. Blood streams from his chest and a  lake of bloood remains
behind, later squeegied off the stone floor.
I have seen dying and the dead before.  But this was when I was
doing, acting, fending off death.  Today, I only watch through a
half-open swining door, while I am shoved aside by some half-dozen
photographers, like vultures, waiting for such opportunities.
Oren arrives.  We enter the Hyundai Getz/nee Yugo.  He is typical
Israeli: topping 5'11'', close-cropped  hair, kippah flat atop. His
white t-shirt is covered by his tzitzit.  He has been volunteering,
delivering food. He falls asleep quickly. We head south. I note when
we pass landmarks: the Golen junction where the Katyushas injured some
today; another 45 minutes to Afula, the furthest reach of rockets
thusfar. I see no smoke arising from the fields.  In another hour,
Hadera, which Nasrallah has threatened to hit.
Ra'anana after almost three hours.  Ahuza has a Alameda of palms down
the center.  Oren, who has stated that he hopes to be called  up soon,
"It is required," whispers, "No artillery here."
I leave a part of me behind in Kiryat Shemona. Literally, left some
clothes.  A real parapraxis.  On the news, I see what I saw in Kiryat
Shemona; it looks the same, but feels more dangerous.  Over 220
Katyushas hit today.
Will write more about visiting Eliaz near Jenin.

Shabbat Shalom
The Home Front.
Arriving in Kiryat Shemona with my Hyundai Getz, a reformulated Yugo,
I both feel the car shudder and hear the dull thud; I think briefly
that I have hit a small animal I did not see -- a horse perhaps, or a
gazelle. By the third boom, I recognize rockets.
    Within the hour, I learn the difference in sounds between incoming
(bad) and outgoing (better, maybe even good).  Incoming, first the
whoosh, then the boom as it hits; Outgoing, boom, and maybe a whoosh.
Later, I realize that I really don't hear whooshes before. Also, with
incoming we are supposed to get a warning twenty seconds before, to
get into shelter.  The warning sounds have been debated in Kiryat
Shemona (It's a Jewish town after all; how could they just agree on
one warning?).  The standard viuuu-viuuu  is loud, discrete,
recognizable; some argue that it causes more panic than needed.
Therefore this morning, we hear the alternative, a kind of
bling-blong, followed by a polite, announcer-like baritone requesting
that we descend to shelter.  I finished my coffee.  Such a polite
voice, does not raise urgency in me; more like an announcement before
the symphony to please turn off your cellphones (which some still
ignore).
    All street lights blink yellow, streets are abandoned by pedestrians,
save for the building for soldiers called up: joyfully painted tour
buses await them. Inside, the windows are hung with drying towels,
shirts on hangers, like guys off for a college trip.  Out of uniform,
most wear flip-flops, shorts, T's.  Only the M16 slung diagonally over
shoulder, rifle usually on the back, occassionally pointing downwards
off the left hip,identifies that they are not off to camp.  How they
all top 5 foot 11 inches still amazes me, these Jewish soldiers.
    Chana Mann, the chief psychologist for Safed Hospital lives in Kiryat
Shemona, the largest, most northern town in Israel. (Metulla, abutting
Lebanon, is the village futher north.) She's invited me to help out
with trauma cases.
    To my left are the Naphtali Mountains, my namesake, that tribe whose
symbol is the peaceful ayellet, gazelle, I believe.  One half to
two-thirds up these "mountains" (foothills in any other decent
geological area) are boulder-studded, a barren beauty, topped with
evergreens.  In most places of the world, Kiryat Shemona would be a
tourist magnet, with spas, hikes, porches with rocking chairs lined up
filled with nursing mothers or pensioners facing the mountains;
something like the resort run by the Smiley family in the Shawagunk
mountains over the Hudson, neighboring the better known T.    But
from over these mountains of Naphtali, from behind, from hidden
valleys, death arises.  Katyushas, I am told are quickly set-up on
tripods; easily launched from place to place. Yesterday, the IDF
showed air coverage of multiple rocket launcher placed behind  a
Lebanese hospital, or between buildings.  But Katyushas are moving
targets. They are also, notooriously, supposedly inaccurate.  Kind of,
sort of aim, shoot, then look.
    At the end of the day, Thursday, I will tell you later, I go to one
of hte poorest streets in Kiryat Shemona, known as Eilat Street,
although the street sign says otherwise.  If you ask neighbors, where
is the street using the street sign name, they shrug. If you ask Eilat
street, they point.
    This faces the valley, towards the Huleh, from which, behind a row of
straight tall evergreeens, perhaps arbor vitae, first booms followed
by puffs of grey, then black smoke reveal the Israeli artillery
positions. They fired most of the night. Even sleepin in the secure
room on the mattress on the floor, I heard them.  Perhaps a half
kilometer away from the down-at-the heels apartments and inhabitants
of
Eilat Street.  I think to myself -- after passing incinerated car
carcasses, doors blown off their hinges, blown-out windows on Eilat
Street -- after firing so many Katyushot repeatedly hitting the cars
and apartments of Eilat Street, one would think that a slight upward
correction the Hizbollah would try for the Israeli artillery.  Then, i
wonder if perhaps the aim is not to hit artillery, but to hit, well,
poor peoples' cars and apartments.   Couple days back, a Hizbollah
Katyusha wiped out a bicyclist on his kibbutz; certainly eliminating a
major military threat to Hizbollah and Lebanon.
    Channa, by phone, guides me to her house, near a green-tiled rambler;
her backyard is filled with cascading bougenvilla bushes.  She is
slight, rail thin, her hunched shoulders giving her a
pectus-excavatum look. Her hair shows disarry in the back, as if she
has abandoned awarness of this side of her.  She speaks mostly with
her lips sliding over slightly stained, somwhat irregular teeth,  a
Northern British accent.  She is of the dedicated generation of
psychologists; nothing too demanding for her; no request a way too
far. She is of better mettle than I, I feel.
    We head to the triage center,with  a brief detour to see the Katyusha
hits in the last couple days. the city tries to move the burnt car
carcasses quickly, but what remains is the scorched outline of the
body, scattered shattered glass, somewhat like how a body outline is
chalked on the street after a murder, to aid the investigators, or to
remind the neighbors. Two remain; one is smashed, front-up against a
light pole. The windows are so shattered out, so many shards remainig
pointing accusingly at each other, that one becomes almost accustomed.
It looks more like the burnt-out South Bronx in the 70's and 80's
before Ed Koch had the clever idea of boarding up the abandoned
buildings and painting trompe-l'oiel quotidian scenes on the plywood:
women hanging out the sills, calling to their kids; gerania-rimmed
windows; a scene into the kitchen.  It worked, oddly enough, not only
in improving teh look from the highway, but also in decreasing further
vandalism.
    But, this isn't the South Bronx. This is northern Israel. And the
thugs here aren't teens with billy clubs, brass knuckles,
switchblades. Rather, thugs with Iran-supplied rockets; thugs
masquerading as some sort of freedom fighters, or deeply religious
figures, or something of the sort.  But, an ass done up in a silk
cummerbund, tuxedo and tophat, is still an ass, particularly when the
ears pop through the holes in the brim.
    Well, enough of that. Let's get to some reporting.
I write this from the triage center, booms in the background. i will
break shortly to go to a six-year old's home, evaluate him for trauma
symptoms after he had been at Safed hospital and it was bombed.
-------------
    230 pm leaving delayed by Katyusha attacks.  Siren gave two warnings;
the hits do not sound too diffrerent to me than outgoings. But I can
see the smoke rising from two or three locations perhaps 500 meters to
the east  and closer to the west, in the foothills of Naphtali.  Rumor
that one killed in Kiryat Shemona just now in the center of town; not
true. Later, becomes true.  A the tzomet south, was an attach earlier
today; some injuries.  Have tried to leave couple times, then parents
aske dme to return. In the secure room.  In general, Hizbollah shoots
in the p.m. as they believe it is harder to spot the incoming; perhaps
the afternooon sun over the mediterranean is too bright

    The 6 year old I have just seen gave me several gifts, including
shrapnel from a katyusha that fell near his house, hitting his
kindergarten across the yard.  He also showed me that if you run
perfumed soap between the hands, it smells nice. He shows this to me,
asks me to show to his father.  Gave me his picture and also all the
pasteries his mother put out.
    His picture is elegantly telling, as he draws it. Starts with blue
sky, then decides it needs red to make it nightfall. Then grass and a
wide space separating the two.  Then at opposite ends of the paper,
two flowers, one gold the other copper; the first is man, the second a
woman, but he uses masculine for both pronouns. He starts an
intriguiging rainbow: each color starts neaer the copper flower, then
ends near the copper, but begins to get closer and closer to the
first. He points out that the wide space beween them gets smaller. He
draws a scribble closer to the copper flower. His story is that the
flowers want to marry, but the bush is between. The bush gets smaller,
the  copper flower hops over and marries the gold flower. Later, he
tells us that when his father was young, he had golden curls and his
mother said she married him because of this.
    I recite this continuously, but it was "clinicus interruptus," due to
Katyushas. Later, I learn that this is one of the heaviest bombings on
Kiryat Shemona; some three dead.  We step out, the father, teen
brother and I, to spot where the Katyushots hit; we are flanked by
smoke to the east and west.  Ashen smoke will begin to blanket the
city before I leave at three. Before I go, the six year old gives me
one last gift: two pieces of shrapnel he collected from the
kindergarten hit behind his house a few days back.  He shows me how
sharp they are, can pierce his picture.   I try to leave thrice and
the third time, with Nasrullah's permission, I get to the car. Now, to
the emergency center quickly before this American oleh in a Korean
Yugo meets a Russian Katyusha, a potentially lethal international
event.
    Yesterday, saw several people with shock; will describe these later.
    Now, I wait at the ER to give a ride to a young man, just discharged
from artillery, whose brother just spent 72 hours on the ground with
Golani in Lebanon.  Oren is late. I wait in the front triage room,
filled with various frightened people and a frail fellow, whose
elderly daughter expects that all efforts will be made to help him
reach Moshe Rabenu's age.   We are shuttled here, because theree are
injured in the ER.  I see the body of one man on the gurney after
stabilization, being wheeled out to the ambulance for Rambam hospital
in Haifa.  I briefly glance his face, now as if coated wth the dull,
grey ashes of the smoke from the forest fires outside. Death is
breathing upon him.  A tube in his mouth. A woman bags him for shallow
breaths. Blood streams from his chest and a  lake of bloood remains
behind, later squeegied off the stone floor.
    I have seen dying and the dead before.  But this was when I was
doing, acting, fending off death.  Today, I only watch through a
half-open swining door, while I am shoved aside by some half-dozen
photographers, like vultures, waiting for such opportunities.
    Oren arrives.  We enter the Hyundai Getz/nee Yugo.  He is typical
Israeli: topping 5'11'', close-cropped  hair, kippah flat atop. His
white t-shirt is covered by his tzitzit.  He has been volunteering,
delivering food. He falls asleep quickly. We head south. I note when
we pass landmarks: the Golen junction where the Katyushas injured some
today; another 45 minutes to Afula, the furthest reach of rockets
thusfar. I see no smoke arising from the fields.  In another hour,
Hadera, which Nasrallah has threatened to hit.
    Ra'anana after almost three hours.  Ahuza has a Alameda of palms down
the center.  Oren, who has stated that he hopes to be called  up soon,
"It is required," whispers, "No artillery here."
    I leave a part of me behind in Kiryat Shemona. Literally, left some
clothes.  A real parapraxis.  On the news, I see what I saw in Kiryat
Shemona; it looks the same, but feels more dangerous.  Over 220
Katyushas hit today.
    Will write more about visiting Eliaz near Jenin.

Shabbat Shalom