The late spring-early summer months seem to be prime time for turnover and regrouping among the city's eateries.

Although its Talpiot location is still going strong, the unnecessary satellite downtown version of Mifgash Hashech recently closed its doors.

On lower Agrippas St., where it seems that paintings of short-order restaurant proprietors are obligatory, landmark Middle Eastern steak haunt Sami has recently shut down operations for a few weeks of remodeling, an endeavor that includes replacing windows with plaster panels perfect for a mural depicting none other than Sami himself, presumably.

Two or so blocks towards town, Osaka's Agrippas takeout stall, which had been closed for months, has recently completed a remodeling of its own and is now equipped to not only sell Far Eastern takeout dishes but to prepare them too.

And in the row of storefronts running eastward on Jaffa Rd. directly from Zion Square, many eateries that closed down for Passover have simply never reopened, thanks to plans to completely refurbish that block. While Holy Bagel had already opened another branch just down Jaffa Rd. and Big Apple has always been open just a few steps away, Coffee Time's replacement location is still to me announced.

Will throngs of earth-loving Jerusalemites some day rival those of England?

Environmental activism seems to be reaching a fever pitch here in Jerusalem. Nearly a year after Live Earth woke up the rest of the world, a movie of that festival's performances screens tonight at the Jerusalem Cinematheque's promising EcoCinema series. The week-long festival features loads of green flicks and other encounters, with a handy short list of highlights available at the Green Prophet blog.

Meanwhile, a few minutes away, the International Convention Center (Binyanei Hauma) hosts the first-ever Environment and Nature Conference, taking place this coming Sunday and Monday.

Keynote speaker and Israeli President Shimon Peres is set to open the conference, hopefully after a long nap that undoubtedly followed the intense few days he has spent hosting the leaders of the free and not-so-free world.

And about a kilometer away from there, The Botanical Gardens offers a weekly instructional course on gardening, while gearing up for a June 15 event that provides a glimpse of the big picture of Jerusalem's relationship with nature.

Photo of the Live Earth concert in London courtesy of Lancey from flickr under a creative commons license.

No, not the workers' union that occasionally goes on strike, allowing children to roam the streets and garbage to pile up, but rather the street named after said federation. Sure, former Histadrut figurehead Amir Peretz could use some tightening of the crow's feet, not to mention a shave, but this facelift is far more useful for residents of and visitors to Jerusalem.

As part of the city center's ongoing process of becoming decreasingly friendly towards those traveling on motor vehicles and increasingly friendly towards those traveling on foot, the length of Histadrut St. between the corners of Shamai and King George is the latest central block to be closed off to traffic. And employing a design similar to that seen on the widened sidewalks opened on Hillel St. on Purim 2007, the block of Ben Yehuda St. that runs between Histadrut and King George is now flanked with trees and benches.

After what felt like endless months of construction that had us negotiating annoying and maze-like detours, the limestone tiles are down, freeing pedestrians to look both ways only for baby carriages and elbows.

Say what you will about the guiding principle behind making downtown less friendly towards standard modes of transportation - this is clearly a case of lending the neighborhood a feeling that's just plain more open and inviting.

Maybe Olmert hid the money under the lion

Most Jerusalemites spent last week being clobbered by plastic hammers and cholesterol in honor of Independence Day, but one city resident - Prime Minister Olmert - spent it being clobbered by justice. Olmert is, once again, accused of all manner of financial wrongdoing, centering this time around an American businessman who sent the Prime Minister an awful lot of off-the-record money during Olmert's tenure as the mayor of this fair city. And yesterday, in a development sure to spark spasms of schadenfreude among the oft-bamboozled residents of Jerusalem, the Municipality was raided by the police, who were searching for documents related to Olmert's manifold financial improprieties.

Israeli police said on Monday they searched Jerusalem's city hall and confiscated documents as part of a bribery investigation that could force out Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Olmert admitted last week that he took cash from an American businessman at the centre of the investigation but he has denied any wrongdoing. Olmert said he would resign if indicted.

The investigation could overshadow a visit this week by U.S. President George W. Bush to mark Israel's 60th birthday and to promote peacemaking with the Palestinians.

"Today the National Fraud unit carried out a search in the offices of the Jerusalem municipality and confiscated documents and other materials as part of its ongoing investigation involving the prime minister," a police spokesman said.

Legal sources say police suspect that Olmert took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the businessman, New York Jewish financier Morris Talansky, over a decade in coded payments.

What the article doesn't tell you, of course, is that the coppers tried to raid the Municipality on Sunday, but after taking a number and waiting in line for several hours, they were forced to postpone the raid when all the Municipality workers punched out at 3:15.

He's baaaaaaack. And this time, his visit is a very special 60th birthday present to the people of Israel, which makes one wonder if he couldn't have just sent money.

So what do you, Jerusalem resident or visitor, need to know about today through Friday? How badly will you, personally, be inconvenienced? Jerusalemite knows!

Parking will be prohibited in many areas. On Wednesday, don't plan on finding a space on or near:

Museum Row, Shmuel Weiss, Rupin, Ramban, Paris Square, Agron, Hameches Square, King David, Amoni, Plumer Square, Jabotinsky, Wingate Square, Hanassi, Smolanskin, Keren Hayesod, Ben Zvi, Shazar, or Binyanei Hauma (a man of the president's grandeur can be in many places at once.)

On Thursday:

Museum Row, Shmuel Weiss, Rupin, Ramban, Paris Square, Agron, Meches Square, King David, Admoni, Plumer Square, Jabotinsky, Wingate Square, Hanassi, Smolanskin, Keren Hayesod, Israel Museum Parking lot, Kaplan (between Rothschild and Rupin), Arlozorov.

On Friday:

Admoni, King David, Meches Square, Agron, Paris Square, Ramban, Rupin, Shmuel Weiss, Museum Row, Israel Museum Parking lot.

Violators will have their cars, and thumbs, forcibly removed.

Drivers will also be dismayed to learn that King David Street between the Keren Hayesod and Agron intersections (that is, the area of the King David Hotel) will be closed for the duration of the president's visit, and depending on his daily schedule, temporary closures will affect dozens of streets, including Ben Zvi, Keren Hayesod, King David, Ramban, Agron, Rupin and more. For the president's complete schedule and a list of all the resulting street closings, check the Municipality's English website.

Photo of the Israel Museum's showering Hershey's Kiss courtesy of reuvenim from flickr under a creative commons license.

For those of us who grew up in North America in the 80s, strolling through downtown Jerusalem yesterday might have conjured up a few Red Dawn nightmares. Men in uniform proudly waving red flags emblazoned with hammers and sickles were marching down Jaffa Rd., probably seeking to do unthinkable things with the precious bodily fluids of young capitalists.

Being the good tolerant pluralist that I am, I asked what was going on. The first gentleman I spoke to, an older man adorned in medals of Red honor, seemed to only speak Russian and Yiddish, which didn't help. The second did the same. Could they really have won? The third, a younger man with the two, reassured my Commie-paranoia and responded in Hebrew. "It's a parade to honor the veterans of the Second World War," he told me.

"The guys who fought the Germans?" I asked. With the mention of the Germans they all nodded yes. Usually celebrated on May 9, (ah yes...VE Day!), the Jerusalem parade was rescheduled for yesterday so as to be on a local weekday.

Walking amongst the old vets meant joining in on the pride they exhibited as they stood up straight in different colored uniforms, wearing countless medals and even singing old war songs in Russian.

The official statement released by City Hall claimed that some 800 vets participated in the march – accompanied by the Police Band, youth group delegations, Members of Knesset, flowers and refreshments – but from the sidewalk, it certainly didn't feel like it was such a big production.

With the war is so far behind us, it takes increasingly greater efforts to rile up the aging fighters. But we owe them all a great debt of gratitude, so hopefully more celebrations of their accomplishments are in the works.

Prepare to insert all the puns you want about planting seeds for the future, because Jerusalemite is going to resist the impulse: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's agricultural school, which is in, um, Rehovot (probably because there's little decent farm land in the scrubby, rock-strewn hills of Jerusalem), has just received a $15 million grant from an American foundation. The Staten Island Advance, a newspaper with the enticing slogan "Everything Staten Island," has the scoop:

The Robert H. Smith Family Foundation pledged a $15 million challenge grant to transform the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences in Rehovot, Israel.

The gift will be the cornerstone of the university's and American Friends of Hebrew University's "Feeding the Future through Sustainable Agriculture" campaign, a $51 million reorganization and expansion plan that will broaden and accelerate the University's cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in plant and animal sciences, biochemistry, nutrition and environmental studies.

In recognition of the Foundation's generosity the Faculty will be renamed "The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences." American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) is launching a $15 million fund-raising campaign, seeking support from other American philanthropists and foundations.

This can't be anything but a positive development; the kibbutzim, the breadbaskets of Israel, are flagging as the founding generation passes away and their best and brightest leave home to make a grab for the shiny gold ring of capitalism (leaving an increasing amount of agricultural labor to foreign workers), meaning that a reassessment and rearrangement of Israel's agricultural system may be inevitable. Meanwhile, there still remains a whole lot of desert that nobody has bothered to get a-bloomin'. Hopefully the revitalized Hebrew U agricultural program will inspire more Israelis to tap into the vein of affection and respect for working the land that runs through the Zionist narrative.

Photo of Negev moonscape courtesy of Or Hiltch from flickr under a creative commons license.

For a nation of people who celebrate their independence by hitting each other with hammers and grilling kebabs on roadway medians, Israelis are surprisingly voracious readers. Israeli writers are world-class and widely read. No mall or bus station is complete without a Steimatzky. Prominent novels from abroad - from highbrow literature on down to Harry Potter ve-Hanasikh Hatzui Dam - are promptly translated and well-marketed. The yearly Book Week sparks rushes on discounted tomes. You can't even spend a cold fifty without contending with S.Y. Agnon in all his watermarked violet glory.

So it's only fitting that Jerusalem should play host to the International Writers Festival, a multidisciplinary literary extravaganza starting this Sunday, brought to you by the sober intellectuals at Mishkenot Sha'ananim and - proving once again how little sense Israel makes - the national lottery. Next your friendly neighborhood numbers racket will start a book club. The luminaries showing up for the festival's dozens of conferences include Hebrew heavyweights David Grossman, Amos Oz, Yehudit Katzir, Etgar Keret and Zeruya Shalev, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Andrei Makine from France, and from America, the much-vaunted first couple of kinda-Jewy literature: Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss.

Most of the festival's events are lectures presided over by one or more authors, or meetings between foreign authors and their Israeli translators (thrilling!), but if an intimate discussion of the finer points of Hebrew-Spanish translation doesn't appeal to you, there are screenings of films selected by visiting authors, tours of local sites of literary significance, and even a play or two. A significant portion of events are in English.

The festival runs from this Sunday, May 11, until the 15th. View the English program here.

The smell of grilled meat permeated the air throughout the day as Jerusalemites celebrating Israel's 60th Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut) descended upon Sacher Park to partake is one of Israel's national pastimes: roasting animal flesh for hours on end on rapidly fanned charcoal fires in crowded places.

Photos of Sacher Park by Maoz Golomb (second from top) and Ben Jacobson.

The thousands of Jerusalemites and Jerusalem visitors who packed into Zion Quare (Kikar Tzion) last night were treated to a high-budget sound, light and fire show and to a parade of top-name performances on a main stage.

Today the festivities continue, with a cornucopia of offerings to meet all tastes. You can celebrate 60 years of Israel's statehood by visiting a Hasmonean aqueduct, by watching young men jump out of airplanes, or by fanning coals.

Happy Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut) from Jerusalemite.