It was on this day, 26 years ago, that I landed in Israel with the definite intention of staying, a young college graduate with little other experience, lots of good intentions and (most probably impossible) dreams - a suitcase with very little clothes in one hand, my father's U.S. Army issue portable typewriter in the other.

So much has changed since then, but this isn't the place for a report on those changes. Still, one small memento from the past can be permitted here. Last summer, my first room on the kibbutz (I must have moved into it the day after I arrived) was torn/taken down. I doubt that I realized then that it was barely liveable. All the more so today. Still, seeing it torn down it caused more than a bit of reflection: something along the lines of burning bridges and not being able to return.

This page and the photograph on it are my cyber-memorial to that room - to my first foothold in Israel.