Two Items on the Election

Hi everyone:

The Quiz

This is a link to a very interesting and non-partisan "quiz" from ABC News that is really interesting.  It gives you good quotes (not sound-bites) from McCain and Obama on a variety of issues.  On each issue you pick the statement that most agrees with your personal opinion.  At the end it matches your picks with each author.  I found it interesting to see where my sentiments matched what the candidates were saying.  Give it a try!

The Facts

Here's a link to a fact-checking summary from the Washington Post on the first Presidential debate.  It's interesting.

A Few Days in Tel Aviv & Jerusalem

Most of you know that one of my best friends is Kate.  Kate and I worked together in New York at the Jerusalem Foundation.  She and her husband, Ash, live in London with their three kids - Alon, Ben and Tali.

Ben just turned 13 so the time for his bar mitzvah arrived.  Alon had his a few years ago in London; Ben wanted to have his in Israel.  So, off we went.

Here's a shot of part of Tel Aviv - it's a massive city with "downtown" sections all over.  I stayed with some friends in a town called Modi'in that's halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  I took the train into Tel Aviv and walked around one day.  It was MASSIVELY hot.  I found the Art Museum, but only about 20 minutes before it closed.  But I also found this view of the Azrieli Center and I like it.

I have two friends in Israel besides people I know through Kate.  I got together with them one night.  

Here they are - Liron (on the left below) and Chen (on the right.)

Me and Chen

Me and Liron

It was great to see these two again.  A few days later (on Friday) I had an afternoon free, so I went with Chen up to Haifa and the Druze villages on Mount Carmel.  I took the train back to Tel Aviv from Haifa that day - it was really beautiful.

Anyway, on the Thursday we went up to Jerusalem for the bar mitzvah.  Bar mitzvahs are really cool - they mark the movement of young boys from childhood into manhood.  Bat mitzvahs do the same for girls.  This is a photo of Ben reading from the Torah (it's inside the thing Ben's holding.)  He read and spoke in Hebrew.  He also had some really good thoughts on the ideas of freedom of choice and responsibility.  His parents were really proud of him.

After the service a few of us walked down to the Wailing Wall.  Here are a few pictures:

Messages put into the cracks of the Wall

Men Praying at the Wall (the women have a separate section)

Up above the Wall is the Temple Mount (the Wall is the western part of the retaining Wall Herod built for his temple.  It's become sacred to Jews because for centuries it was the closest they could get to the Temple Mount - and even today most Jews wont' go onto the Temple Mount because the rabbis have said that since no one really knows where the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple was and since walking accidentally onto the location of the Holy of Holies would be a terrible thing to do the entire place is just avoided.

Anyway, there are two holy mosques up on the Mount.  Here are pictures:

The Al Aqsa Mosque - its the silver dome on the left.

The Dome of the Rock


This was a great trip.  It was great to see Ben go through this great event.  We followed up all the spiritual events with a great party at the beach in the evening north of Tel Aviv.  

I stopped in Istanbul on the way back to the UK for a few hours.  I went into the city and met a friend (Nuran) at a tea shop.  We ran into another friend and he joined us.  I hung out for a while and then went back to the airport and now I'm back in the UK.  

I'll be home in just under 2 weeks!  I can't wait to see what's happening in SF these days!

Trip to Rhodes

Well, one of the last things I did while I was in Bodrum was take a day-trip to Rhodes.  See the big white ship in this photo?  Well, that wasn't our boat.  We traveled for 2.5 hours along the coast of Turkey and then across the straight between Turkey and Rhodes in the little teeny tiny boat in front of the big one!  YIKES!

The cool thing about this little trip is that the boat left from the harbor in Bodrum and dropped us in the main harbor of Rhodes just in front of the old medieval walled part of Rhodes.  Here are a few pictures of the walls from the harbor:

Looking Across the Harbor to the Sea Walls

The Harbor Gate

Looking Back at the Sea Walls & Harbor Gate

Looking from inside the Sea Wall to the Commercial Harbor.

Rhodes is a very cool place because it has a history that goes back the Greek pre-history period.  It has a few Geek ruins still, but not many in the city of Rhodes (more around the island of Rhodes.)  It was famous in the Roman period, too - it was a rich free port.  But there aren't many ruins from this period, either.  Too much has happened in Rhodes since those days!

Most of the fantastic ruins and sites are from the period when Rhodes was owned by the Knights of St John, also called the Hospitallers.  It was a great power in the region - the castle at Bodrum was actually fortified and expanded to its current size by the Hospitallers.  

This is from one of the land gates up toward the castle of the Grand Master of the Order.

The Plaza & Entrance Gate in front of the Grand Master's Palace

Rhodes was captured from the Hospitallers in about 1520 by the Ottoman Turks - I think under Suleyiman the Magnificent.  So there are quite a few mosques in the city.  One is still actively used - I sat outside and listened to the prayer calls because I just happened to be walking by. Some are in ruins.  A few are restored and used by different archaeological organizations.   

The Mosque of Suleyiman.

Here's one of the main shopping streets in Rhodes.  Most of the streets in Rhodes inside the old walls seem to be pedestrian only. 

Here's another small plaza just inside the Sea Wall.

The old Hospital of the Hospitallers (hence the name!) was very cool.  I like this view from the ground floor looking up at the stairs that go to the first floor.

This is the arcade on the ground floor of the Hospital.  I like this because it really reminds me of a similar arcade at the church in the Garden of Gethsemane.  I should scan that photo and post it - I'd forgotten about it until I took this one!

Here's a view of a side street in Rhodes.

I liked this picture - I'm using it as a desktop photo.  It was just a view down a side street, too.

I definitely suggest a trip to Rhodes!  Maybe Mom and Dad will add a few thoughts from their trip there.  I seem to remember that they really enjoyed it!  I would like to go back and do some trips around the island to see other sites - some of the old Greek cities as well as the medieval sites (and sights...)

After this trip I went back to Bodrum (of course.)  I ended up being the only person at my hotel for the last 5 days, so I had the pool and the terrace all to myself.  I laid out by the pool, I slept in, I wandered around Bodrum.  I even rented a scooter and went out to see the building site where Kelly and Paul's Bodrum house is being built.  That was an adventure because for a while I was thinking, "I hope I can stop this thing!  I hope I can turn this thing!  I hope those big tour buses see me!"  It was cool.

That's it!  I'm back in the UK now.  After this trip I went to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for a bar mitzvah.  It was very fun.  I'll put some pictures up from that trip next.