Cedars of Lebanon

The lady who came to tune the piano today knew very little of what is going on in the world. Blissful ignorance.

Cedars of Lebanon. I don't remember seeing many trees in the photos of blown-up buildings.

Here is a very interesting article on the Cedars of Lebanon.

The Cedar of Lebanon: Culture, History, and Ecology by Rania Masri

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In college I bought a lovely cedar chest at an estate sale. It was heavy, warm reddish-brown and the pink wood inside is naturally perfumed. Earlier this year my mother said that she would be shipping the chest to me across the continent. I was excited as I could use this sturdy, fragrant chest. One day it arrived at my front door in an enormous dilapidated box secured with packing tape and dented on all sides. It arrived on its side, ridiculously vertical and arousing alarm once I realized what it was supposed to be. It turned out to be another chest entirely, a much older and more brittle pine one which my maternal great-aunt had used on her trips to Sweden. The cedar chest must be somewhere else.

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Beirut is supposed to be a very glamorous partying town. I think of the neighborhoods in New York City. The gangs of Lebanon are probably better armed than the gangs of New York. Yeah, I haven't heard of any Katyusha rocket wars among the gangs and goons of New York.

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Here is a picture of the Beirut skyline at night with a bridge in the background, a bridge probably no longer there. (You can see the detail of the bridge above right.) The psychology of this whole mess is tribal and religious - ugh. It's appalling nothing more has been done on all sides to offer better options for the Palestinians. I wonder how many emigrated where. I remember hearing something about Arab nations not being willing to accept them as full citizens. I certainly hope that's not true. I know much more about the Holocaust than I do about Palestinians. In any case, both warring factions seem to think they have God on their side. God, maybe, but Good? Funny how zealots so exemplify moral relativism when slaughtering in the name of Good. Blood feuders.