October

It is officially not-summer in Israel. It has rained a couple times, and more rain is expected. Sycamore trees are starting to lose their leaves. When I walk down the sidewalk, I deliberately crunch all the fallen leaves.

Which reminds me of a sheep we once had named May. She got really sick and I found her in the woods by herself, too weak to stand. As she started to get better I brought her things to eat. But she wouldn't eat much hay, and she wouldn't even touch red clover. She liked white clover, but I couldn't find enough of it. Then I brought her some dry, brown sycamore leaves and she loved them!

The internet is useful for all kinds of things. It is good for answering questions like, "What is the difference between..." Or "Can dogs, wolves, and coyotes interbreed?" (Yes.) What about jackals and hyenas? (Jackals are related to dogs, but hyenas are related to mongooses.) What is the plural of mongoose? (Mongooses) And changing dollars to shekels, or finding an on-line guitar tuner, or automatic chord-naming, how to respond to rude comments, and more. Twice I saved myself a trip to the doctor by finding simple explanations of odd health issues. And of course it's good for finding recipes, how to unclog your sink, origins of words, language study --Duolingo is really good, the weather, e-mail, etc. etc.

Recently I have read quite a bit of the news, but I decided I won't do it any more. It is impossible to find a sensible news source. Most are extremely biased one way or another, and international situations are so complicated that it takes a lot of research to find the truth, and when I do, it isn't relevant to what I have to do every day anyway.

Psalm 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Daniel: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
Isaiah: In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.

Old Electric

As it turned out, the "oil truck" was a fire truck parked nearby. The smell of heavy oil was actually due to a fire at a nearby grocery store. Odd though is the fact that the grocery store on the opposite corner had an electrical fire a couple years ago. Both of the fires were in old buildings. Not much wood is in these buildings, so they don't fall down. Steel and concrete withstand a fair amount of heat.

Old buildings here often stand empty for a long time. You can't tear them down because they are classified as buildings to be preserved, and renovating them is an expensive process. Sometimes they take the building down, block by block, with all the blocks numbered, and then they reassemble the blocks, adding mortar and more support from behind. This sounds like a fun thing to do. But I wonder if it would be easier, and not any more expensive, to just build a new building in the old style.

City Life

A big oil truck parked outside my window for several hours last night, with its motor rumbling. The smell was terrible. Well, actually, it was a nice, rich oil smell, which is not a bad smell in itself, but not nice when it's filling your bedroom. I kept dreaming about old, leaky oil heaters.

And then the cleaning crew left their mark in the hallway--not a nice clean, fresh smell, but one that smells exactly like a cat litter box. I'll have to live with it for a couple days till it subsides. They rotate their air fresheners, so some weeks it's a decent smell, and other weeks it's catbox odor. I keep my door shut tight, but I can still smell it. There's no way to get rid of it and I can't think of any way to cover it up except by cooking cabbage, which would be only a slight improvement.

Maybe some berry pie? But I don't have any berries. Boil some Kool-aid? Don't have Kool-aid. Burn candles? Don't have any.  Sprinkle laundry detergent on the floor? Put a bag over my head? Go for a long, long walk? Buy a disposable barbecue and burn it in my living room?

September Holiday

Most of September is a holiday or observance of some kind. Rosh HaShana, Gedaliah's Fast, Yom Kippur, Succot.

Today, October 5, was Simchat Torah. That is all the holidays till December 7, which is Hanukkah.

Psalm 98:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4H79WfGAWY