the economic thing

This topic has been touched upon for several years. Everyone knows close ones who either work in the center of the country, or even in the regional center of the North, realizing that local jobs go less far in covering personal skill sets, or failing that, basic family monthly expenditures - if, that is, you can find one.

The graph image appeared in the "Israeli" July 25, 2006 on page 12 with no documentation.

In general. there has been a scarcity of useful documented local economic information and indicators or ideas relevant for initiatives in the so-called peripheries. But I am convinced this is an inhouse matter and among those of us who are concerned, there is sufficient talent and intelligence to suggest strategy over a barbeque, maybe.

I would like to share some sources that may flesh out thinking about these ideas. The first three touch on or relate to the North; the fourth relates to similar problems in the UK but which provide food for thought. Maybe you, the reader, do not need these. Anyway, they are not required reading, just represent my 2 cents worth. Check out the zip file and other links, if interested.

http://www.i-biz.co.il/innovation.asp
http://israel.planetfinancegroup.org/EN/download.php
http://www.tzafona.org.il/tzafona/open.aspx

http://www.ideopolis.info/publications.htm

The bottom line is that our specific catchment area and population - even total population - is only a very small part of even the North of the country meaning we can expect to receive only token attention from central government planning committees even after, nevermind . I personally find this lack of attention to inhibit my own sense of confidence, but that's a good reason I am me and you are you.

If you who happen to be reading this would like to invest in charcoal or other components or expenses or aims of this venture, please let us know.

pesach tiyul

I know this is a bit late to be writing about our Pesach tiyulim, but I know everyone has been waiting for them. I just handed in a new support application that I've been working on for a couple months and I actually have a couple minutes to breathe.

Sunday morning, Chol Hamoed, we met my brother and his family near Yokneam to nachal Hashofet. My brother-in-law and family and littlest sister were with us for shabbos and they came with us too. I downloaded the directions from the Internet, and we found the park and a nice place to have a picnic lunch. We did deli sandwiches and they did some kind of cheesy somethings. Of course, there was also chocolate spread for the matzas.

After lunch we tried to figure out which way the nachal was, but the signs were all very confusing and the Internet directions did not help very much. There were a number of other cars trying to figure out where it was as well and so we guessed and continued upwards. We continued driving and the signs were not very clear and we finally got to a place where a number of cars were parked. We stopped there and asked someone if they knew where we were in relation to the map. They guessed that we were on the map and must be somewhere in the middle of the trail we were looking for.

We decided to start from that point and hope to find the red trail to get us to the water springs. We started walking through the cornfields, there were signs that said that we should not enter the cornfields, but the children didn't think that applied to them and they walked part of the time through the corn. It was similar to the movies, where you the corn is higher then the people walking, so we couldn't see them, but fortunately no one got lost.

At some point my BIL turned around and left because it was too much for his kids (they're much younger). And we continued onwards. After about an hour, we found the springs and had a great time playing in them. There were tons of people there, and it was good to have had a nice long hike before getting to the water. I've found that water after a strenuous hike is much better then water that you park next to, but that is debatable. My little sister fell into the water a number of times and she blamed me, in part, for her inability to stay on her feet.

After we finished playing in the water, we continued on the circular trail till we exited into the parking lot. The problem was that we didn't know where we were in relation to the trail to take us back to our car. It took us some time and the kids all got popsicles, but we found our way back to the trail and after a good hike back, we found our car.

We returned to our village for a nice BBQ. One of my little brothers came up with his family from Sunday eve through the last day. We did kabobs, not israeli hamburgers, meat and vegetables on a stick (They say that if there is both meat and vegetables on the stick, then your grill has not been disgraced as it would be if there was only vegetables), hot dogs and hamburgers. We decided that kabobs are bad to cook, because the meat and vegetables don't get ready at the same time and also the meat doesn't all get ready at the same time because there are different levels of heat on the grill. In any case, the food was all et and a good time was had by all.