It was a pleasant evening down by the puddle.

One of the things I’ve written about elsewhere is something from my childhood that wouldn’t happen today. Going to the movies when they would show a double feature with cartoons, newsreels, and coming attractions thrown in for good measure (no commercials) without any intermissions. You could buy a ticket and walk in any time, so invariably you’d come into the middle of a movie. Of course, the ‘middle’ might have been ten minutes after the movie started or ten minutes before it ended. Either way, you had to try and figure out what was going on, knowing that, if you sat there long enough, it would be shown again, and you would wind up back in the ‘middle’ where you came in, and then you’d know for sure what the movie was about. What I’m going to write about might be viewed as being in the actual middle, the beginning of the middle or near the end of the middle, but none of us are foolish enough to claim to know which it is. But, sooner or later, by combining my literary efforts with those of Natania, you’ll get the whole picture – starting here. But for now, we’re describing events in July 2020, not March when the saga actually started. Continue reading →

As with any trip you take or any endeavor you engage in (not trying to sound too morbid, but…), one day you start and before you know it it’s all over. We were told to leave our duffel bags (easier than suitcases to cram into a limited space) outside our rooms at the crack of dawn, and the staff would bring them to the reception area to be loaded into the Land Cruisers. The staff at the Oldeani Mountain Lodge gave us a final round of ‘jambo, jambo,’ and that was it, we were off for our final day in Tanzania. Continue reading →

Before I continue with my main train of thought, let me interrupt myself and share with you a pleasant memory of a half hour spent one evening on our trip – if for no other reason than to help me and, I hope,  you decompress, and don’t we all need a little of that in these trying times. Continue reading →

Once we had decided to ‘go on safari,’ and we had sent our money to Shai Bar Ilan Geographical Tours, I decided to look at an on-line map to find out exactly where we would be heading. Don’t ask me why, but looking at a map gives me a sense of security, as if I would learn something I didn’t know before.

It looked as if all the places we were scheduled to visit were in close proximity. Of course, there’s ‘close,’ and then there’s ‘close.’ I could mean ‘close,’ as in it takes us twenty minutes to walk to the mall, as opposed to the folks who live down the hill, who need a bus ride to get to the same destination. I wouldn’t consider ourselves ‘close’ to Tel Aviv, although it’s now only a half an hour train ride from Jerusalem. Continue reading →