Field near Bethlehem

The shepherds could have been tending their sheep in a field like this. (The olive trees are a later addition.) See how stoney the ground is. Every part of Israel we saw was stoney like this. In most areas the stones had been gathered up into walls or to terrace the hilly lands.

Finally, a photo

I have been resisting posting my photo, but here is one. Taken at the Mediterrean shore of Israel at the Roman ruins of Caesarea Maritima, an upper-class city built by Herod the Great.

Thought inspired by Lincoln's birthday

Becoming older has provided me with interesting ties with the past. On Lincoln's birthday, I remembered that D's great-grandmother Whippple, whom I first met when she was 100 (and alert enough to place me in her family), said that when she was a child she saw Lincoln's funeral train as it came through Illinois. I wasn't born until 70 years after that event, but it is real to me thru a person I knew.