PhotoDude.com

Sometimes when you scheme to get everything, you end up with nothing.

I dare say that Arafat’s not been the worst possible leader that the Palestinians could have had – but it’d be hard to imagine one worse for them.

J.

From 1982-85, I made a number of extended business trips to Israel, staying mostly in Tel Aviv and a smaller city out in the Negev, called Beersheeva (City of the 7 Wells, and burial site of Abraham). The complexity of the situation in Israel is so great, and so fluid, that it just begs for “simplification” as a means of understanding even the basics. But that does a huge disservice to both the Israelis and the Palestenians, not to mention the Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians, all of whose fates are intimately intertwined with Israel’s situation.

Let me tell a personal story that illustrates the situation. I was in Bethlehem one Sunday afternoon, touring with a business friend, on the way up to Jerusalem for dinner with other friends. We stopped for tea, as it was time to drink something, in an Arab coffee shop not far from the main square. As we sat in the relative dark of the shop’s front room, I was making some comment about Bethlehem being a good example of side-by-side coexistence of Israelis and Arabs, and I asked my Israeli friend if he didn’t think, eventually, some similar accomodations could be made across the whole of Israel. He smiled and shook his head, and said, as our Arab waiter came to check our coffee, “Ask him.” nodding at our Arab waiter. So I put the question to him.

The old wrinkled man looked at me directly, cocked his head, and pointed out the door, towards a couple of olive trees across the street.

“Scarab shit,” he said, in thickly accented English “is what makes olive trees grow.”

“Please?” I said, thinking I’d missed something in the accent. My freind exchanged some quick words in Arabic, and repeated the old man’s comment to me in English, along with an explanation of what a scarab beetle was. They are pretty common around there, kind of like Japanese beetles are around Atlanta. Then, the old man nodded and continued.

“For thousands of years, people have come here, and killed one another. Scarab beetles turn the blood and the corpses into scarab shit. All around us, olive trees are growing, thanks to all the scarab shit.” he said slowly, and there wasn’t a hint of a twinkle in his old black eyes. “There are no olive trees in the desert, only because there is no scarab shit.”

I don’t know about that.

But I take his point. I wouldn’t bet on “peace” in the Middle East in our lifetime, unless one side or the other wipes out life in the region, including scarab beetles and olives trees, in some kind of WMD attack. Otherwise, it’s either just a slow devolution back into desert, or lots more olive trees. The beetles don’t much care I imagine, being willing to follow the trail of dead meat wherever it leads.

I know what’s happened in Bethlehem since I last stopped there for coffee, and it is a ghost town, even at Christmas….

First step towards returning to being a desert, I guess.

If you’ve read this site for very long, you may recall my fondness for a long gone newsgroup known as mindspring.discussion. The above comment is a tiny example of “the way it used to be.”

Paul, I think you’ll find weblogs are somewhat similar, or at least, have the potential to be. Little communities with intense … sometimes bizarre … conversations among the denizens. Just distributed (and linked) all over the web. At any rate, your comments are always welcome here.

Always happy to impersonate a bizarre denizen, on your dime, Reid :-) Glad you liked the story…

Oh, I just realized, you’re not even using your URL in your comment signature.

Go read Paul

Yes, Paul, that is a long URL to type in a comment box. Have you considered one of those nifty new things called “domains”?

Thanks for the plug to my new cyber-experiment, Reid. I guess it just seemed to me to be bad manners to appear to be trolling for traffic on somebody else’s site. I mean I don’t go to my friend’s houses, and try to sell my house to their neighbors and other friends I may meet there, because it’s my friend’s home, not a real estate fair. I wouldn’t do the equivalent here in your cyberhome, just as a matter of principle.

As for the domain thing, well, I’m serving phatt/fire/sizzle from a personal Web directory I’ve had for a long time for a number of reasons. First, because it is the kind of idiosyncratic compendium of crap unlikely to matter to many, and so I doubt I’ll ever have any bandwidth issues. But it is out there at least for freinds and family who may be regularly interested, and we’ll see how it goes.

Second, because I stand in awe of what you have accomplished here, Reid, but I know what running this site, and learning all you have learned has cost you in time and money. You’ve done such an amazing thing here with Photodude.com over these years, from where you started, that it maybe hard for you to appreciate that some of us have more modest ambitions. phatt/fire/sizzle may someday deserve a server of it’s own, along with a bigger feature set, but right now, it’s just an experiment in what RageBoy calls “voice.”

Finally, while I do own a bunch of those “domain” thingies you mention, they aren’t much use without servers. Oh, wait, I’ve got a bunch of those, too. Well, servers aren’t any use without IP addresses and bandwidth. Um, yeah, I got that stuff, too. But let’s see, here in “Successful Web Sites for Dummies,” it says that “the key ingredients for successful Web site creation are time and fresh content.”

Now I remember. I’m a little short on time, and at the moment, I only have a little bit to say. So, cut me some slack, and I’ll come here and say some of it. You need the traffic worse than I do.

Regarding “bad manners” and “trolling for traffic,” your principles are admirable, but opposed to the way the blogosphere (an ugly word we’re stuck with) operates. We’re all link whores, Paul. Everybody’s signature has their blog URL. We have no decency at all. Please try to fit in.

As for “more modest ambitions,” OK, so I’m an Web Evangelist. I can’t be stopped. In fact, since Blogger has redesigned and simplified, I’m thinking about setting one up on Blogspot for my Dad, just to see what happens.

All God’s Children Need Blog. But since you’re a recent convert, I’ll try not to drown you in the baptismal pool.