Winding Down

Passover is in its last stretch...Tomorrow eve it's over and out until next year.

I've had a really nice vacation albeit clouded by yesterday's bombing. I think about our mini-jaunts around the country and then for a few seconds turn my thoughts to the families mourning today. It's too painful to think about them for more than that brief moment but my thoughts return to them repeatedly.

Raph & I journeyed, yet again, to Jerusalem today with cousins to visit the Bloomfield Science Museum. Actually a lot more state-of-the-art than my snobbish, former member of the Bay Area Discovery Museum self expected. A scientific hands-on extravaganza for kids with displays aimed at multi-level intellects and ages, we could've spent hours roaming each floor and trying out experiments. We loved the bubbles, the bubble magician, the light particle diffusion display and electricity and spark demos.

We left the museum and headed to Salah A Din Street in East Jerusalem across from the Old City's Damascus Gate for shwarma, falafel and hummus lunch. I couldn't get over the fact that we were actually hanging out there. When I left HLC years ago the East side of town was a precarious place to be if you were a native Hebrew speaker, which today's lunch companions happen to be. Incidentally, the other cousins - the Palestinian ones - can spot the Hebrew-ites a mile off.

I marveled over sitting there & eating so cordially and all and was then dosed with reality when a pair of twenty-ish hippy types in dark glasses and baggy clothing with long greasy hair and rucksacks on their backs passed us en route to Damascus Gate. Had I not heard the blaring Hebrew coming from walky talky devices connected to their front pack straps, I'd have never noticed they were wired. I guess they turn down the volume when they close in on whatever it is they plan to close in on.

My cousin and I did double takes and in unison declared: Undercover!

Sorta reminded me of the undercover units operating in major cities; Most of the gang members know exactly who they are and sometimes greet them by name. *sigh* Same game, similar playahs, different setting.