Do You Haiku?

I was pretty young when I first heard about haikus, that very limited/strict Japanese poetry genre. I loved the challenge then, but soon after forgot about it until pretty recently. Now I haiku almost every morning on facebook.

Some Characteristics of Haiku

• An English-language haiku sometimes contains of 17 total syllables
• English-language format is sometimes composed of 3 lines of 5-7-5 (syllables)
• 2 simple subjects are often placed in juxtaposition
• These 2 subjects are often separated by punctuation
• A keen or unusual observation is made by comparing the two subjects
• Haiku often contains a seasonal reference
• Poems are traditionally about nature or the natural world

My morning haikus are more about coffee than nature. Being a CPA's daughter my strictness is concentrated on the syllable count. When, on rare occasions I'm off, people quickly tell me that I need to fix it.

Here are a few of my morning coffee haikus:

strong dark coffee now
clouds outside look like sandstorm
not a laundry day

shoot first then to drink
even water and coffee
are less important

Yes, I'm a crazy photographer this week...

waiting for coffee
still hasn't perked, need it now
no patience to wait

Good morning...coffee
hits the spot and lifts me up
new coffee haiku

Good morning coffee
perking happily on stove
aroma calls me

If you "friend me" on facebook, you'll see more, of course. I've even written them totally in rhyme. Do you haiku?

Pre-Passover: Eaks!!! It's Inventory Time!!!! #4

I can't believe I have just over a week to get my house in Passover mode. The freezer is emptying if you're keeping track with me. 

When I first started this year's series in Eaks!!! It's Inventory Time!!!! my freezer looked like this:

Now, this is how it looks:

I have made some progress in emptying things out and cleaning. But I must be honest, pre-Pesach cleaning just isn't "my thing." Actually cleaning isn't my specialty. But there are things we must do, and I will just do my best. There isn't anything else I can say.

Why isn't there some simple abracadabra we can say/do to get it all done?

Call it A Crewcut!!

Earlier in the week I posted The Forest Primeval... here on this blog illustrated with some very unabashed and uncensored photos of the worst kept garden in all of Shiloh. I suggest you take a look to see the "before," because now there's an "after."

Yes, it's after I had a gardener clean up my garden.

Now I have to have a fence put up to keep people from walking by the bedroom window!!

PS What do you think?
PPS His name is Zohar, and he lives in Shiloh!

So, I'm Not Perfect: MISOPHONIA!

Last year, when I was in the states, one of my cousins greeted me with:

"Do you go bezerk when people are making tapping sounds and things like that?"

I immediately said "yes," and then she told me that she does, too, and so did an aunt of ours, and it is genetic and has a name:

Misophonia 

I was so excited to discover that contrary to what people have been telling me for ages, I'm not just some nasty antisocial, intolerant creep.

Do you get unfathomably angry at the sound of people doing the following: Drinking, chewing, crunching, gulping, nail biting, slurping, swallowing, clicking, breathing, sniffling, wheezing, whistling, finger tapping…the list goes on.
For some people reading this, those words alone are enough to get their blood boiling. If like me, you are one of these unfortunate souls, I have news; you’re suffering from a condition called Misophonia.

Also, it's not something I chose or choose. It's a physical "disability."

I also think that my intolerance I show for certain types of music, which grate on my brain and my absolute vehemence at the sound of electric "drums" may be related to my Misophonia, not my dance background. Or maybe my innate kinesthetic propensity for dance and movement may also be from my Misophonia. I react so physically to sounds and music. If any of you reading this also have Misophonia, I'd like your opinion on the matter.

Damaged Screen

I hope this photo is clear enough on your screen to see. The other day when I got a ride to the "gas station" on the way to Tel Zion/Psagot/Kochav Yaakov I looked up to see when a bus was expected. All I needed was to go just over a kilometer to Sha'ar Binyamin, but since there's no sidewalk along the road, it's not very safe to walk. I wouldn't want to tempt a terrorist to run into me or be the victim of a driver paying more attention to his phone or whatever, so I needed a bus or a ride.

The cracked screen looked like it had been hit by some rocks; its pole seemed undamaged. These screens give, or are supposed to give, information about which bus is coming when, but that's in theory.  Not all the buses get listed. In Shiloh we have two bus lines, but only one line is shown on our screens. And frequently the only message is:

Out of Order

Even at stops like the one in Sha'ar Binyamin, which do show lots of bus lines, I've found that not all the buses show up on the screen. Actually, that is sometimes very good news. Quite a few times when waiting for a bus to Jerusalem, I see that none is expected for at least twenty minutes, and then "surprise," there's a bus.

I'm sure you're itching to tell me to download the "bus app" which will let me know what buses are coming when. Yes, I did have it, but as I've written before, Craving a New, Better and Smarter Smartphone my phone doesn't have enough memory, so I'm down to bare minimum when it comes to apps. And since many of the bus stops do have the screen with that information, it was an unnecessary app for me.

I wonder how long it will take for the screen to get fixed....

Photography- Negative Space- 52Frames

This week's challenge,  Negative Space, was hard, not because I didn't have any decent photos, but because it was hard to choose from a few I did like an awful lot.

Here's the one I chose and following are those ones I also like a lot. I hope I made the right choice.

"Late Winter Sky"
Here in Israel, most of the year the sky is a rather boring blue, but this time of the year as winter blows its final blasts, there are gorgeous sights like this one.

Location: Shiloh, Israel

What do you think?

The Forest Primeval...

When I was a kid in New York State (and City) public schools we didn't have to memorize all that many poems, but there's an opening few words that are etched in my brain:

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic...

Evangeline
A Tale of Arcadie
 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

from the 1893 Cambridge Edition(Originally published in 1847)

That's how I describe my garden, "The Forest Primeval," which has grown wild.

Gd willing, at some time soon, I will be able to have a garden of some beauty and control. Decades ago I did spend time and invest in my garden, but somehow, especially once my sons left home I just couldn't handle it, and this past winter I decided that enough was enough.

Jewish Kosher Food Bloggers, Foodies etc: Announcement

I'm planning a pre-Passover Kosher Cooking Carnival here on this blog and want links to your favorite Passover food posts, or your recipes, tips etc. which I'll post giving you credit (as per your requested way of identifying yourself, including nom de plume of your choice.) Please email me to shilohmuse@gmail.com with KCC as subject, thanks.

Recipes can have short stories/background pieces about the foods and experiences. So, let's get started before we're too busy cooking, and our kitchens look like this!

Please share this request around, thanks.

Too Many Strange People Trying To FB Friend Me

A few weeks ago, I decided that to promote my blogs I'd friend more people on facebook. And I began to offer friendship  to those with lots of mutual friends. it seemed pretty harmless in the beginning, but now it seems to be backfiring on me, since some of these people seem a bit weird and try to "chat" rather than just write about coffee and politics and family, the way I do.

Since then I've suddenly gotten a tsunami of "be my friend"requests. Those are harder to sort through. Now I do have more "friends," and I hope I'm not making mistakes.

Some also post things I don't want, so I've unfriended them. But some seem nice. When I can I try to check them out first, but since not everything is available to "non-friends" it's hard to check them out.

I guess it could be worse.

Eaks!!! It's Inventory Time!!!! #3

I must admit that I cheated a bit with this series of photos, because I already began buying chicken and beef for Passover. And if I had a way of getting more home, I would have bought lots more last night at Rami Levy, since he had a great sale on poultry in Sha'ar Binyamin.

Before putting in the new stuff, this is how the freezer looked:

I still have some cooked meat, a meatloaf/moussaka and some beef in tomato sauce, in the freezer and half a pack of chicken breasts that must be finished before we go Kosher for Passover. I'm almost finished with the salmon I had bought months ago. But the big problem is that there's wholewheat flour and a cake up there, too. A lot of the rolls are eaten, but there's more to go.

There's plenty to get ready/done before Passover. This year, for the first time in four years, if my memory is correct, we'll be making a seder. It will be small, but still, we're hosting. I'm glad it's a Friday night seder, since that gives a full week from Shabbat to finish the kitchen and start cooking early.

One of the empty bedrooms has had a quasi-thorough cleaning. It's not a room that has seen food at all, but it must be made clean enough.

Weather reports have been springlike, perfect for opening the windows and hanging laundry.

Sing Along... "The Wheels on the Bus"

This week's 52Frames asked us to photograph the, and for some peculiar reason I kept hearing in my head.  So I snuck round some buses at Sha'ar Binyamin and came up with this one.

"Wheels on the Bus" 

Yes, these are wheels on t h e bus. Sing along:

Of course afterwards I had much better ideas. I had also thought of using boots for "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."

But I decided that they looked pretty lame, too. So I went with the wheels which weren't going round and round... And I didn't skip a week!!

Wow! Three out of Six, So People Agree With Me

As you must know by now,  I post my Shiloh Musings blog posts on Arutz 7. And Arutz 7 always lists their six most popular blog posts. I'm usually on that exalted list. Sometimes Frequently I have two out of the six, and sometimes I find three of my posts among the six. And today is one of those days!!

Popular Posts

A Tale of Alternate Reality at AIPAC

17

This freedom thing will be the death of us

7

Much Support for Soldier Who Shot Terrorist

1

Trump Got a Real Speechwriter, And a Teleprompter, Too

12

The Trump Card

5

Today's Persia, Purim in Our Time

0

Why don't you read them and tell me what you think? Thanks.

Not All Phone Pedometers Count The Same

Most probably this can be said about pedometers in general. It's up to the user to program in the length of our stride, but recently I've discovered a discrepancy even as to the distance different phones claim people walk.

As you know, if you're a reader of this blog, I have a Galaxy II and use the WalkLogger app. Twice I've been walking with people who have iphones, which has its own pedometer app, and each time we discovered that the iphone credits the walker with lots more steps and distance than mine. A couple of weeks ago I was with my friend for dinner, and afterwards we both checked our phone pedometers and amazingly they both said 4,300. I had taken a couple of nice walks and she had been pretty sedentary that day, which did seem either strange or that we incorrectly perceived our exercise and walking.

We then walked around Cinema City, Jerusalem where the restaurant was. And then we compared numbers again. She had reached an impressive 5,000, while my app only gave me 4,500. We had been together and walked the exact same distance and have the same basic height and stride. I've held my phone while walking to check that it counts my paces correctly, which it does.

Have others noticed such discrepancies?

At least it's good to know that I take many more steps than are registered on the phone.

Enjoy: Flashmob in Zion Square, Jerusalem

Before Purim I was looking for something enjoyable to post, one of those funny youtubes, but I didn't see anything. Or I guess none of my facebook friends had posted anything I was tagged in nor did I see anything good by chance. But, since it's still the month of Adar, when we're still supposed to be cheerful, I finally found one. The Mekor Chaim Yeshiva ended a bicycle trip to Zion Square, downtown Jerusalem, with a large cheery well choreographed show in memory of  Eliav Gelman, Z"L.



Enjoy!

Published on Mar 22, 2016

לאחר מסע אופניים לזכר בוגרנו אליאב גלמן ז"ל, הגענו למרכז העיר בירושלים שם הפתענו את העוברים והשבים בפלאשמוב המסורתי, בהובלת השמיניסטים - מחזור כ"ח.

אדיר / מקהלת הישיבה בויס | Adir / The Yeshiva Boys Choir

עריכת וידאו: ינון ויסמן
צילום: חנניה שטראוס, בארי אייזן וינון ויסמן
סאונד: אלדד שוסהיים ויהודה כהן
כוריאוגרפיה: טל יוסף לנגזם, דוד סגל, שריה קרקובר, איתן אנגלרד, מרדכי עדי, שחר מורל ודביר גלסר
תמיכה נפשית: הרב אושר, הרב גילעד, אליסף נכטיילר ובניה קירשנבוים
א. שלט: אורי אברבוך
ארנב: אשי לואיס
פו הדב: נעם דביר

Nature Photography Challenge

Just over a week ago, on facebook, I discovered that I had been "nominated to do" a "Nature Photography Challenge." Here's a copy of the text from today my final day:

Day #7 the final photo of this meme/challengeI was nominated to do a Nature Photography Challenge by Karyn Stiefel Blass . I will post a nature photo each day for 7 days and nominate a new friend each day. Today is Day 7 for me, and today I nominate -! (And time can be taken off for things that mess up one's challenge response schedule, as I've already done. Just get the seven pictures and nominations in.)Just post a nature photo, past or present, for the next 7 days. You can copy and paste this text and tag me in your post (or not, whatever you choose). Just change the day and the person you are nominating.

The toughest part was finding people to nominate, seven, one for each day. At first I asked those active in photography, but then I discovered that this meme/challenge had been going on for ages, and they had done it or just didn't have time.  After that I tried nominating friends who may not consider themselves great photographers, but I was curious as to what they'd photograph.

And here are the photos I chose:

Day #1

Day #2

Day #3

Day #4

Day #5

Day #6

Day #7

If you'd like to continue this challenge please do! It was nice to do, but I'm glad I'm finished.

Which is your favorite photo?