We leave for the US tomorrow. I haven’t posted much while I’ve been here, but I may make up for it today. This morning I took a long walk to the Promenade, painted a little there, and then walked back. It took most of the morning, and it was enjoyable. I took a lot of pictures on the way but, fortunately for you, I’ll only share a few. Which reminds me of a rather funny thing that happened last week. I met up with some friends from Tallahassee who were visiting Jerusalem for a few days. We shared a taxi out to Kibbutz Tzuba for a wonderful hike on the hills and down into a couple of Arab villages in the valley and back up to Tzuba for dinner. On the way there, my friend was showing me pictures of the three days of hiking they’d just done in the desert. Every time she switched to a new photo, I’d say, “Cool!” Finally, the taxi driver asked if he needed to turn down the air conditioning. I guess I should have been saying, “Yofi!” instead. Hmmm. Maybe you had to be there …
Anyway, here’s a sign I’ve been passing every day — walking or on the bus — and meaning to photograph. It took a few times of looking at it before I realized it looks funny. And then it took a few more times before I realized why it looks funny to me. Maybe only a calligrapher would notice, and maybe only a Latin calligrapher who’s been concentrating on holding a 60-degree pen angle for making Hebrew letters. Hint: it’s the “d”. The top of it has been trimmed to a 60-degree angle. Looks funny to us romance-language folks, who are used to seeing letters generally begin and end at somewhere between 0 and 45 degrees. Or 90 degrees, now that I think about it. But 60 degrees looks odd. (I mentioned this to my husband, and he just looked at me blankly. If you too are now looking at your computer screen blankly, at least I can’t see it. That’s the beauty of blogging.)