• This is being written in Barcelona, Spain, where Doreen and I are spending a fabulous 4 day vacation. This trip is also a celebration trip - 6 months to the day after my heart operation celebrating that I'm feeling well and fit. Pictures and Doreen's comments will  be posted next week - too busy enjoying ourselves at the moment! See the above This Week's Picture for the time being.
  
• Daughter Vered Ron is in Japan on a business trip.

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July 21, 2012

• We continued looking after our grandchildren Itamar, Amit and Ilai while Aviv and Limor were in Greece. Doreen's activity schedule  included a visit to the Electricity Company, the Children's Museum in Holon and the Tel Aviv Museum. (See pictures of this week's activities here.). Except for a few incidents the kids were well behaved and we enjoyed looking after them.
  
• Aviv and Limor returned on Wednesday from a week's holiday to Greece and reclaimed their children from two tired grandparents.
• Nest week we will go on a vacation - this time a holiday with no work involved. We will spend 4 days in Barcelona. This trip is also a celebration trip - 6 months to the day after my heart operation celebrating that I'm feeling well and fit.

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July 14, 2012

The Magic Pepper plant

Doreen and I enjoy gardening, especially growing vegetables like lettuces and other greens, tomatoes and  peppers. We make our own compost and don't use insecticides. Our salads often consist solely of vegetables from our garden. In Hofit we had a relatively large area in which to plant, and enjoyed fruit such as oranges, grapefruit, custard apples, loquats, avocado, mangoes,  litches and others. One of our concerns in leaving Hofit was gardening, which is why we chose a garden ground floor apartment. The gardening here is on a much more modest scale, but we still enjoy lemons, mangoes, avocadoes and pomegranates as well as lettuces, chicories, ruccola, beans and peppers. Especially peppers. I like hot peppers and enjoy pickling them and we have 4 different kinds of peppers growing. Doreen calls me the Mad Pickler.
About 12 years ago, the late Ilan Paperna brought me some particularly hot peppers from the Far East and I planted the seeds. The result was disappointing but 2 plants gave good yields of peppers. Unfortunately while we were away on one of our trips these two plants died from lack of water. I threw one away  but left the other in the pot until I needed the pot. This pepper got a little spray from the watering of the lawn and I noticed some green spots so I watered the plant which recovered and produced peppers galore. Later I unsuccessfully transferred the plant from the pot to the ground but it died again. Remembering the previous rebirth I tried again and even more peppers were produced.  When we left Hofit I said goodbye to my pepper plant when I cut off the water supply. On a later visit to our old Hofit house I saw the poor dead pepper plant, and on a whim dug it up and planted it in a pot in our new apartment. The results can be seen in the picture above. - taken after 6 jars of peppers already picked and pickled. They are delicious and even hotter than before.

THIS WEEK'S NEWS

The staff at the European Bridge Junior Pairs Championships

The Championships took place in Vejle, Denmark this last week. Young players from 26 countries took part and the big winner was Poland. Medals also went to Netherlands, France,Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Israel won the consolation event in the Under 21 category (see picture).
A lot of effort goes into the organization and running of such an event. This calls for the coordination and cooperation of  registration officials, secretarial staff, venue and on-site organizers, computer and internet technology experts and operators, scorers, daily bulletin staff, duplication of hands, hospitality personnel, secretarial staff, appeal committee members and of course the Tournament Directors (who run and judge the actual bridge playing events). See picture. Most of the staff are pictured above (photo taken by Doreen!).  The cameradie among the staff is impressive - people from different countries all working together and helping each other when the only thing in common is a love of the game.
During the years many of us meet again and again and become friends, regardless of nationality, belief or religion. Last Wednesday evening ten
of us went to a restaurant for dinner. The waiter asked where we were from. The reply? France, Italy, Israel, Wales, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Turkey!

Long-time friends Aura and Hilton Greenberg are visiting Israel and stayed with us for a couple of days. Aura and Doreen have been close friends since high school days, (and Aura's mother was my first Hebrew teacher over 60 years ago!),  and I have known Hilton since our university days. Although they live in Canada we have maintained regular contact. (for examples, click here, and here). We thoroughly enjoyed seeing them again. Maureen (also a high school classmate) and Dick Fain joined us for dinner on Monday evening.  Maureen and Dick live in Jerusalem so we see them often (for example, click here and here and here. )
After dinner, we phoned another classmate, Eleanor (Gamsy) Pines in South Africa and found out that she'll be in London at the same time as us, so we'll meet her there.

The best picture (click here), however, is of the five of us: me, Doreen, Aura, Maureen and Eleanor; taken about 1958, with a group of Habonim youth movement members.

Maureen is a well-known and successful artist - click here to access her site.

• I am in Dublin attending the General Assembly of the European Bridge League. It is terrific to meet old friends here and to make new ones. Unfortunately  my camera has stopped working, so there are no pictures. I hope that next week there will be some pictures that  will get from others.
• Doreen is in London, and on Monday I will join her there for a few days before we return to Israel.
• I received some updates to the Levy/Hershovitz family tree from Hazel Gurland and Cindy Berman, and the internet version of the tree has been updated accordingly. Many thanks to Hazel and Cindy. Congratulations to Hazel on her marriage to Jacob Pooler this coming Friday!

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June 9, 2012

This week Doreen, Louise (Doreen's sister) and I went to Rehovot to meet with Hasia Leshem, widow of Yaakov Leshem ז"ל who died last year. (see Gordon/Glasser Tree). We all thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Hasia, who is a delightful person. Yaakov, who changed his name from Julian Glasser, was Doreen and Louise's second cousin.   Lousise, Doreen and their late mother Gertie had visited Julian at Rehovot in 1954 when he was a student and there was no further contact.  Yaakov became a leading professor at Bar Ilan University and about 20 years ago he approached  Louise (a translator at Bar Ilan) to ask for some help in translating a paper. He recognized her South African accent  and on hearing that her family name was Glazer exclaimed "You must be Cookie!"

One of  Hesia's sons, Yori, is also studying at UC Davis like Moran and Mikhal, and is their  neighbour and good friend. They were unaware of the family relationship until about 2 years ago. (click to read how they "discovered" the relationship).
(Yaakov Leshem ז"ל published many papers, of which the one most interesting to the layman deals with the effect of viagra on plants. Click to read an article on this. )

• At the end of this week Doreen and I fly to London for a week's break. During that time I will also be attending the General Assembly of the European Bridge League in Dublin, Ireland. The next update to this site may be a day or two late.
  
• There are over 1000 postdoctoral scholars at University of California Davis so we were extremely proud that our son Moran was one of the 21 finalists nominated for the 2012 Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research.
  
• Granddaughter Lior Ron is in the dance program at her school. This week we attended an impressive end-of-year performance of the group. (Click for pictures.).
  
• Long-time friends Aura and Hilton Greenberg are visiting Israel and we will entertain them during the next week. Aura and Doreen have been close friends since high school days, (and Aura's mother was my first Hebrew teacher over 60 years ago!),  and I have known Hilton since our university days. Although they live in Canada we have maintained regular contact. (for example, click here)
  
• Moran has updated his Segoli Family site. You can read the updates in Hebrew and in English.
  
•  We're sure a lot has happened during the last year or so. We have certainly experienced many significant changes. Family members are invited to write a short summary of their activities and highlights, including but not limited to, celebrations, births, deaths, during the last year. We will publish these summaries as we receive them. See  Doreen's review of Eitan and Doreen's past year, Moran Segoli's summary of his family's year,Vered's summary of the Ron family, and click here  for Cindy Bermans review of the Berman family

This is a picture, taken by Jack Levy in about 1942, of a visit by my father Hayman, my mother Queenie and me to Cape Town with my father's cousin Jack and his wife Laura and children Hope and Seymour. Both Seymour and I were about two years old, and Hope about six. When I first contacted Cindy Berman (Seymour's sister) in 1998  (see Archives) she called her mother Laura, then 90 years old, who remembered this meeting and found this photo. Cindy remembers meeting my mother some years later. Hope passed away in 1958.
Seymour Levy lives in Massachussets with his wife Brenda and has 4 children and 4 grandchildren.  Although we have had some sporadic email contact, Seymour and I have not met since 1942! (see Levy/Hershowitz family tree.)