If you are reading this story on Friday, September 18^th, I am wishing you a Good and Sweet New Year. According to the Jewish calendar, it is the eve of the two day holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which according to Torah, commemorates the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first humans, 5781 years ago. Though the Torah is the Jewish Bible, the first humans were the parents of all of humanity, and the celebration of their birthday can be shared with everyone. Rosh Hashanah is translated as Head of the Year; however, it is the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. The first one is in the spring month and is called Nissan. It is considered the New Year from counting the years of kings in ancient Israel. Nissan is the month of the celebration of the festival of Passover. While Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of the world, Nissan celebrates the founding of the Jewish people after their exodus from Egypt.

So the question is, how can we have a Good Year if no one knows when the vaccine will be available? When I called my brother, who lives in Toronto, and cannot go to work because of the lockdown, he made a comment, which put everything into proper prospective. “It does not matter how long the coronavirus will last; sooner or later, life will be as it used to be, meanwhile enjoy today!”

Let’s enjoy every day regardless of how many years passed since Adam and Eve appeared in this world. Have a Good and Sweet Year!

Recently our daughter Alona’s boyfriend Jeff shared a recent of his experience with us. He took his car in for an oil change. However, when he tried to turn on the ignition, the engine was dead. Fortunately, he was in the right place. The culprit was the battery, which had survived 260,000 miles.

Many car owners have had similar experiences, when for various reasons, their car battery died. While, the solutions are relatively simple – to carry charging cables and ask friendly drivers to help you, or to call AAA, or another road side assistance service; sooner or later, charging does not work anymore, and you have no choice, but to replace the battery. This relates not only to cars, but to our bodies as well.

We were reminded that the coronavirus is still around only by the masks some had on their faces. All of the restaurants were open and served very good food at the outdoor terraces. With the local population of about twenty-three thousand, there is an estimated six million tourists who visit the community, annually.

As a boy, Jeff used to skateboard down the hills and catch waves on his surfboard. He told us about his childhood experiences and how the area had changed since. In the morning, we went for a walk on the beach, and in the afternoon we drove to other surrounding towns, and then returned to the beach to watch the sunset. We could easily stay there for longer, but we missed Max, and he missed us. Perhaps next year we will drive down there together with him and stay longer.

Have you ever had invasion of ants on your kitchen counter or in the bathroom? I tried different methods to get rid of them, however every winter, when it rains, they are back. I decided to write about ants after coming across an article in the July 25, 2020 publication of Popular Science, “Ants could help us beat future pandemics”, written by Michael Schulson. What surprised me was that scientists have been studying how deadly pathogens affect ant colonies, even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The article is based on the research done by many scientists. One of them is Natalie Stroeymeyt from the University of Bristol in the UK. According to her, “Human public health departments are only a couple of centuries old, while ant societies have been evolving for millions of years”. “It’s very rare to find a colony collapsing under the weight of a pathogen,” Stroeymeyt writes. “We know that their mechanisms are extremely effective.” Can we learn from ants or stubbornly try on our own?

We recently spent a weekend relaxing at home. While I was reading a newspaper, my wife Elfa was checking emails on her iPad. Suddenly she exclaimed a few times, “I do not believe it!” In this case it was a video of a cat who fell into a pool. Seeing the cat, a dog jumped in and carried the cat to safety on his (or her) back. There are many other circumstances or events in our lives which can lead to these expressions. I thought about it when a friend sent an email titled, “Fascinating Errors of Judgement”. After reading it, I decided to share some of the quotes with you, with my title “I Do Not Believe It”.

6. ”Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

7. ”I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943.

8. ”Reagan doesn’t have that presidential look.”
United Artists executive after rejecting Reagan as lead in the 1964 film “The Best Man”.

9. ”We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
Deca Recording Company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962.

10. ”The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.”
The President of Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyers not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

On Sunday afternoon, our friend Jazz and his son Danny came for a visit. I wrote about Danny a few weeks ago. On the previous visit, Danny asked me a question, “Do plants think?” I told him that I would write about this subject in my weekly “Encounters”. His immediate response was – “You can make your next book, answering my questions”. Danny is eight. We became friends with his father about five years ago through a chance meeting and share a love of photography. Jazz is divorced, lives in Palo Alto and shares custody of his son. In the past, he would come on the weekends when Danny was with his mother, and we went for walks, having conversations like father and son (Jazz is forty).

On the way home, I was using my small camera to bring Danny’s attention to the trees and flowers. We talked about intricate designs on the tree trunks; how the annual flowers after fading, away drop seeds in the ground to return the following year; how bees collect pollen, and the only way to show all of this to others was to use a photo camera. How a powerful microscope can see deeper than seeds and to capture this we need special cameras. During these discussions Danny’s interest for photography grew. He was right – every child needs a “boss”, a teacher who will guide a child’s natural interests.