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This time we were off to a good start. I crawled into bed right after clicking Send on last night's letter, and though I didn't fall asleep immediately I guess I did sleep, because about twenty minutes later, at 02:20 we had a preliminary warning on our phones. We stayed in bed, and ten minutes later we didn't get a siren, meaning that whatever was getting to Israel wasn't getting to us. But then forty minutes after that we again had a preliminary warning. I was asleep and wasn't really aware that this wasn't a continuation, so I even got out of bed and went to the safe room, only to learn that I hadn't had to. So, back to bed ... and then an alert again at 04:00. This time we did get a siren so we went into the safe room for about ten minutes until the all clear. For us, all of this was a nuisance. For others it was considerably more, though I don't know what the precise results were.
I think it was again a bit difficult to fall back to sleep, but I succeeded, waking at 08:45, at which time I decided to get out of bed and do some work for the archives on my desktop. I'm writing this at 11:30, and I've been working (if that's really what it is - I'm also reading and now writing this) since then. We had another preliminary alert around 10:30, but that also wasn't for us.
At noon I had a forty minute Zoom meeting with the administration of the college. About 110 of us attended, a substantial part of the campus bureaucracy. The objective was twofold - to maintain contact and offer the opportunity to voice feelings and concerns, and to give us information about what's supposed to happen this coming week. The second semester was supposed to start this week, and obviously that didn't happen, and it's still not clear whether it will start this coming Sunday via distance learning. The problem is that nobody really felt the need to voice their feelings, and the administration didn't have anything definitive to tell us beyond informing us that if the next couple of days will be relatively quiet we can return to work on campus if we want to, or continue to work from home if we feel more comfortable doing that. My job isn't really administrative, but there are a few tasks that I can best do from campus, and I can be more productive there than from home, but we'll see what develops.
For lunch today we drove to Gedera for falafel. The falafel in Gedera is considered among the best in the country, and it now has two stations - the stand that's been around for over fifty years, and a satellite stand that's in a brand new shopping mall - sort of a strip mall, but large and quite modern - about a kilometer from the original stand. The daughter of the proprietor of both shops was killed at the Nova festival and the new shop was opened in her memory (and in a location that's always busy). Having falafel there was on our list of things to do while Phil and Debbie are in Israel, so we're glad that this worked out. I phoned yesterday to both of the shops to find out if they were open, but there was no answer at either. Today I reached the shopping mall shop and they told me they were open, and that the other wasn't. The parking lot of the mall was full and lots of people, including families, were shopping. I doubt that someone viewing the scene would have thought a war was taking place. As we were finishing our falafels a preliminary alarm went off, and many of us congregated near the entrance to the public shelter. That ten minute pre-warning passed without a siren in our area, but perhaps five minutes later another preliminary alarm went off and this time after a few minutes we got a siren for entering the shelter. About sixty of us, including families crowded into the shelter which could have held at least twenty more, and waited about ten minutes until the all clear. While in the shelter people kept to themselves. I didn't sense any feeling of camaraderie. On the other hand, I also didn't sense fear. People seemed to accept the need to take shelter as a natural part of their lives. For me that's a major problem. When people seem to willingly accept the fact of an occasional war, the chances of actually working toward a real peace are quite small.
I'll probably go to sleep relatively early tonight - both because I've been writing this throughout much of the day meaning that I'll have less details to try and remember and fill out, and also because right now, 22:35, we've gotten a preliminary warning. Of course that doesn't really mean anything, but at least I can hope that this will be the extent of the alerts for tonight, with less to report after this particular alert. And yes, there's no actual reason to assume that that's the case. That preliminary alert didn't develop into anything in our area (apparently there was something in the north), but twenty minutes later there's another preliminary alert, and at least according to the news (which we haven't really been watching, but turned to when the alarm went off) this one may include our general area - which right now as I write materialized into a siren in our area.
So it's now fifteen minutes later and we have the all clear in our area and we're watching the report on damage - apparently no injuries, but damage to buildings - a still of a seriously hit house is being shown. BTW, among the injuries there are always a number of people who tripped and fell or something similar as they rushed to their safe rooms. The day before yesterday when Phil and I stopped in the shelter at the entrance to the kibbutz when an alert went off a woman from the kibbutz sped by us in her car on her way to her house. She was going much too fast for our kibbutz roads, many of which don't have sidewalks, and had there been someone walking on the road that could have been as dangerous a situation as the missiles themselves.
The television news just started broadcasting a live speech by Trump. The less said about it the better. We all know he's crazy, but it's hard not to be amazed with his ability to babble on about how great he is. When he moved on from talking about Iran to boasting about something else the news cut to a commercial.
And I've almost kept my word. I'm after my shower already and though there are a few other things I might do now, going to sleep a bit earlier than usual seems to be the best idea. So I'll end this here, hoping that tomorrow's letter won't report on an uneasy night.
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