Kolbe feast

Car crash in England, bridge collapse in Italy ... that's what we hear today in the news. Floods, storms, fire, drought .... it's apocalyptic. Perhaps a sign of the end times?

Selling grapes and plums
in the street

Locally there were no violence. Things are quiet at the frontier as well. And it was surprisingly cool yesterday and today ... 28 degrees maximum with a cool wind all day. Always like Spring ... in fact the mornings are damp with rain clouds blowing over us. Very humid. This weird change of summer weather must be unbalancing everyone ... hence the strange quiet that we're experiencing. The only violence we're hearing is the Twitter meltdown by Trump last night ... 2 hours running down everyone. He's not very smart ... he's overplaying it. Now everyone things he's got skeletons and he's desperately trying to throw red herrings to lose the trail.

It's the memorial of Maximillian Kolbe today. Great martyr of modern times. Tomorrow it's the feast day of the Assumption. There will be solemn Vespers at the Tomb of the Virgin, then Mass in Gethsemani tomorrow morning. I guess I'll be working then ... there's no holiday for me.

Arts and Crafts festival seen from
the opposite hill

One of my summer must-do is to visit the Arts and Crafts Festival. I've been putting it off for the past 3 days as I felt very tired. The festival takes place down in the Gehenna Valley. Going down is no problem ... it's coming back up the valley that'll kill me. Anyway this evening I felt strong enough to go down and have a look. It was very very crowded. Security was everywhere. I found out that you have to buy a ticket to enter. I wasn't going to pay so I stayed on the opposite hill to listen to the concert. I couldn't quite see the concert as the usual place I go was full of people. I went up higher on the hill where I could only hear it. Unfortunately there was another concert nearby and the cacophony was beyond me. I went home to sleep.

I'll go see the music festival next week instead. That's free of charge and spread in several locations in the Old City.