BR-1138: Ice Breaks, Songs by the Campfire

A Chronicle of touring Israel with a Taglit-Birthright group: The first night

As joyful as this first day of my trip  had been so far, it seems our faithful tour guides were reserving the best for last.

After we were done with our dinner at the Beduim-styled tourist camp, we all gathered at our group tent in order to participate in the “Ice Break” group activity meant allow the American and Israeli group members to get to know each other better, the Americans were divide into eight small groups and each group was assigned one Israeli member and tasked with preparing a certain kind of act to introduce their Israeli to the rest of the group.

Starship Sofa – Spaceships, Quantum Physics and Jazz!

This week’s Starship Sofa story Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons by  Gord Sellar is absolutely mind-blowing, it has everything, spaceships, aliens, music and thick deep African-American accented voice. I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone even if you’re not into Jazz music (Which I am certainly not) or Science-Fiction stories.

About the only point of criticism I have about the show, is that it seems to me that some kind of a jazz music track should have been played after the story concluded rather then Gord Sellar`s outro, then again the Starship Sofa never played music before and there are copyright issues, so its probably too much to ask.

Starship sofa had been going from strength to strength recently, with the serialization of  Kim Newman`s “The Serial Murders“, an amazingly entertaining story including a myriad of charmingly British characters played with extremely talented voice acting by Gareth Stack, concluded last week, and a new web site that provides much needed technical improvements over the old site such as the ability to link to an individual show.

Also worth mentioning is Tony C. Smith`s, Starship Sofa’s esteemed host, guest appearance on another favorite podcast of mine, Escape Pod. A few things can put a big smile on my face like this humorous cross-over. Now, if only Escape Pod’s Steve Eley would do a guest appearance of his own on the Starship…

BR-1138: Desert, Camels and Polygamy

A Chronicle of touring Israel with a Taglit-Birthright group: The first Evening

Leaving the Dead Sea resort we made our way south along the shore eventually leaving the Dead Sea and the Judas desert behind and going into the Negev desert.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at our destination, a tourist camp styled after the Beduim (Desert nomadic dwellers) tent camps. We were instructed to quickly gather the cloths and other personal belongings we would need for the night stay and place them in our group’s designated tent. Following that we were led through the camp, to the place where we were to embark on a short camel riding trip.