writer, editor
I once asked my father, who was deaf, which faculty he would rather lose, and he said sight. Shocked by the notion of not seeing, I asked why. He said that not hearing is isolating, that he couldn't join in conversations, that he was left out. Maybe he didn't use the word isolating. About a… Continue reading Voices
Well, you wouldn't read it if I called it Resistance and the Industry Codes. First, the resistance. By this I don't mean anything worthwhile, like resisting oil pipelines or industrial water extraction. I am, or so I say, working on a difficult story, and I would do anything other than write it. The word for… Continue reading Resistance and the Bunny
You might be wondering about the cave that the Nassar family once made home. Let me explain. The underground dwelling is warm and dry in the rainy winter, and cool in the scorching summer. Caves are not unusual in this land of hills carved by dry winds. Unlike European caves, these caves don't drip moisture… Continue reading Caves
I am presenting some photos from a recent outing to a hilltop near Bethlehem, the Nassar farm near the Palestinian village of Nahalin in Area C (Israel controlled) of the West Bank. While I talked to the farm family about their Tent of Nations project and the threats to their land and livelihood since 1991,… Continue reading Montage: Tent of Nations
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity sits above the Bow River and the town of Banff. Started in the 1930s as a project to give people in the arts some paid work, it is now a lively institution that houses retreats, workshops, concerts, a library, theatres and art galleries. I am here for the… Continue reading Banff Centre
The summer in East Jerusalem is hot and dry. Windows left open, surfaces in the apartment are coated in dust. Yet as I slowly go about daily activities, I see these little beauties blooming. For me they are like bits of joy caught in one's peripheral vision. And just as I am illiterate in this… Continue reading Improbable
This Is Not an Ulpan, based in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, offers Hebrew and Arabic lessons of a different sort than I've experienced. The classroom lessons are thematic and sometimes take place as excursions -- you go to a cafe to speak the language of cafes. They are committed to engaging with our surroundings. For example,… Continue reading Hebrew Words for Gaza
An easy one. I’m giving you ten random titles chosen from various random generators about ye olde internet — pick one, let that be the title of your new story. Any genre will do, list at the bottom of the post. Length: ~1000 words Due by: Friday, March 2nd, 2018 Post at your online space, link…… Continue reading Story Fun from Terrible Minds
Ticho House gets a full page in the beginner's Hebrew textbook, a text dense with such vocabulary as paintings, books, gardens, and mountains. The first time I "read" the text, I understood that Mark Twain and Claude Monet had both lived in this amazing 19th century house, and that it was at one point owned… Continue reading Translating Ticho House
For the month of July, I hit my head against the hard wall of the Hebrew alphabet and language, in an intensive course at the Polis Institute. This is the first time that I’ve learned an alphabet to learn a language, but not the first time I tried to learn Hebrew. I should say two… Continue reading Shock
When I was clearing off my father’s desk after his death this summer, I found a round cardboard disk with the words “to it” printed on it. I recognized immediately this gift from his second wife some 30 years ago, a joke gift. At his puzzled look on opening it, she said, “Now you’ve got… Continue reading To It
Sometimes when I look at the view from the various hilltops where I live, I feel disbelief. (Disbelief in the most religious city in the world!) How can this be the view when only weeks ago it was lush gardens, clean parks, red buses, brollies and rain? The most sunny day in London could… Continue reading Expat Mobile
How could I resist an exhibition called “In the Valley of David and Goliath”? The exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem displays artifacts excavated from 2007 to 2013 at a 3,000 year-old site today known as Khirbet Qeiyafa, in the Elah Valley. But maybe, just maybe, it was the city of Sha'arayim, mentioned… Continue reading Look at the King the King the King
Yes, there's dust, but hey, the dust is old. When I try to read about exactly how old this place is, it's as if I ate an ice cream bar too fast: brain freeze. During our five years in England we explored its history backwards, starting with Victorian, then heading out to medieval cathedral towns,… Continue reading Dust
First impression, as someone at the handle end of a taut dog leash: walls, fences, and broken glass. The beige stones of the low walls have holes in them, look old, but they still block us from that apparent field of wasteland, from the hidden courtyards, from everything except this glass strewn uneven sidewalk. Once… Continue reading Jerusalem
At the park, the muddy ground is finally bare of leaves. The high grey tendons of leafless trees scratch at the tenebrous morning sky. Frost has given a hat-hair limpness to the hellebores and has edged with brown the early rhododendron blooms. Chill, close, an air of expectancy.
Such doom and gloom to be found on the internet about the future of reading, of fiction, of books. And yet. The window washer tells me he likes to read non-fiction, and rattles off a list of recent reads. Biographies of sports celebs, politicians, people's experience of war. Nothing unusual in this except that he… Continue reading Readers
There's a pay and display stand in the park parking lot. And it seems to suit the height of nobody. The more elegant man stands with one foot forward, knee slightly bent, arm extended as if he were holding a sword, fingertip stretching for the buttons. More typical is the boxer, who stands with legs… Continue reading The Fencer and The Boxer
Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what’s weird, different, other, but to… Continue reading Spiders and Art
From England to Canada, from the land of brick and gardens to the land of concrete. A cheap hotel near the airport for one night shocks me back into Canadian life. Carpet on concrete floors -- that smell. Plastic cutlery at the breakfast buffet, styrofoam cups, plastic plates, plastic glasses in the room. Zap zap… Continue reading Plastic land
DEBRA MARTENS 