April 2019

Day after elections. The elections were interesting. Not. The results could be interesting. Or not.
This is one of those days when I feel so absolutely rotten I refuse to do anything at all. Just sit in sun on balcony.
A man walks buy--black hat, jacket, black briefcase, carrying a pizza.
There goes a long gray pickup truck, short bed with topper. A taxi. Another. A woman wearing long-sleeved black top and black slacks. It's rather hot for that. A silver station wagon with Learner sign on top. More cars, white and silver. A bus. Two black cars. A white van. More cars. A motorcycle.
It's too bright out. I need sunglasses. I've got my eyes shaded by pulling my scarf down to my nose.
Birds are chirping but I don't see them.
Truck, car. They never stop. The earth never stops either. Whether I live or die, everything just keeps going on. Without me. Do I exist? I'd like to do more than exist. Like be effective somehow.
 A man carrying a big box and pulling a little white dog on a long leash. Sometimes the dog pulls him.
A car with color! - neutralish metallic red. Most vehicles are white, black, or silver, so when there is a colored one, I notice. Now a brown one. Now a neutral greenish one.
There goes a woman wearing a long flannel shirt. Too hot for that. There goes a car with a sunroof. What are sunroofs for, anyway? And there's a young woman in a turqoise T-shirt and a white back pack. She has black frizzy hair like I have wished I had. Mine is too flat. But it is a bit fuller now after not combing it for five days. Maybe I should try dredlocks. Have you ever seen a 65-year-old red-haired woman with dredlocks?
Dad is in the kitchen eating munchies. I bought a bag for him and one for me. I'm saving mine for a special occasion.
There goes a delivery motorcycle. And another.
Lots of orange flowers across the way in containers. Down the street a Judas tree (redbud) in full bloom. Three more people wearing black. It's too hot for black, don't they know? Yet I've done it myself. Black is such a conveninent color for clothes.
For cats too. Speaking of which, my favorite street cat is back. She is black with specks of orange. She is a very sensible cat--always knows exactly what she is doing. She is a bit more relaxed now that she is not nursing kittens.
Okay, thirty minutes in the sun is more than enough.
But there goes an Amigo tour bus, turquoise, orange and white. And finally a very RED car.
Bye now.
Hey, I actually feel better now. Was it the sun or the RED car?

Chaos

I never knew rehearsals could be such chaos. Everybody talking at once, and the conductor changing her mind several times about everything. Then the last-minute rehearsal, right before the concert, was even more crazy. Most of the singers were forty minutes late, the conductor was angry, and the pitch was about the worst it could get. I couldn’t figure out what key we were in—well, actually, it wasn’t a key at all. So I tried to fit my note with the tenor, who I thought was probably pretty close to being right, but that didn’t work either. I thought, if this happens during the concert, I will cry.

And then I lost my music, and had to read off someone else’s, which just barely succeeded because it was the wrong distance for my bifocals.

Because we never got around to working out just where we should stand, we ended up way too spread out, and we couldn’t hear each other well. Or maybe that was just as well.

But somehow, by some sort of miracle, we carried it off, though I suspect it wasn’t very accurate. The last piece, a lively and complicated one, was well received. And the rest of the concert, for the most part, was very good—the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, some Klezmer music, Tomas Tulacek and others.

There were tables full of snacks to be eaten at intermission, but most of it was gone before we even started.

And now it’s 1:30 a.m. and I’m still wound up. I’m in the mood for some chocolate cake or something. Maybe I’ll settle for cinnamon toast.

Concert

A concert is today. I'm in a small choir, singing first alto. The rehearsals have been so chaotic, it's hard to know how well it will turn out. We don't have enough really dedicated singers. It's all volunteers.

After the choir is a lot of other music, including a solo violinist from Slovenia. It should be good. I just hope my energy holds out.

February 2018

It rained today. Flood warnings. I guess there are places in Israel where an inch of rain can cause major flooding. But I've never seen a flood here.

I'm about burnt out with sitting at the computer. But over the last several months, and especially the last three weeks, I got all my music notes in order. About 1500 pages' worth. Each page has a few scribbles on it, sometimes the first line of a tune, sometimes the whole thing. But most of them are worthless, and some unreadable. Eventually I narrowed it down to about 300 that are worth looking at again, and most of those I have put on MuseScore. Of those, about 80 are looking promising. Occasionally we try singing one, and the moment we do, I find errors. In spite of all my careful proof-reading, there are still errors. A "ka" instead of a "ke" in the transliteration. A "ba" instead of a "va." Too many beats in the last measure. Wrong chords. Sometimes wrong words. Wrong verse numbers. Wrong formattting. Formatting is what takes the most time. And it's addicting.

I haven't yet found the perfect font. Some fonts are good in the lower case letters, but the capital letters and numbers look funny. I finally decided on Cambria for my English lyrics, only to find that the "f" always looks funny. Before that I used Free Serif, which looks nice, but on MuseScore it has some difficulties.

Something has happened to my taste buds. I now drink my de-caf double strength. Sometimes I even add milk and sugar. My eggs now taste best with garlic and black pepper. But I still eat the same old bread, something like Borozinski. It makes great toast. And it's habit-forming.

Apartment life is a drag. But we have a nice apartment for getting work done in. Annoying, though, is the variety of weird smells. This morning I smelled a very strong chlorine smell in the bedroom. Car exhaust, cigarette smoke, sewer smells and cooking make their way into my apartment. The cooking smells can be really good--sometimes brownies, garlic chicken, almost-burnt toast, and barbecue. But freezer-burn chicken is not so nice.

Ecclesiastes

Barnes sums up a passage from Ecclesiastes well: "Unforeseen events come from God; and the man who is always gazing on the uncertain future will neither begin nor complete any useful work: but do thou bear in mind that times and circumstances, the powers of nature and the results to which they minister, are in the hand of God; and be both diligent and trustful."

Refreshed 2017

After spending 3 weeks in the U.S., I have come back refreshed and with a little different view of things. I have a regular home-making type thing to do (finishing a quilt). I am following a more or less regular sleep pattern, and have somewhat less stress than the last few years. EXCEPT for one horrible evening of restless leg-arm-everything, which was caused by taking a nap too late in the day, so the evening was messed up. If you look up RLS on the internet, you don't find good explanations, but I can tell you it is something horrible.

And EXCEPT for Independence Day, when just below my window several men were all talking at once loudly for several hours--until 2:20 in the morning!

Then they went inside, and we had our last (I presume) rain of the season, which lasted for 30 seconds. Now it isn't going to rain anymore, so that means it's summer. Or it's summer now, so that means it isn't going to rain for several months.

All is quiet now, except for a loud boom I heard yesterday right outside my window. It wasn't a gunshot, such as when they blow up a suspicious object, and it was a clean boom, not a ragged one, so it wasn't a bomb. As it turned out, a bus blew a tire.

The only other notable noise is a large dog that barks occasionally, which to me is a sad sound, because the poor dog is probably a bit bored, and because dogs go with homes and families and they remind me of the good days that are past.

Beginning of 2017

Long time since I posted. Does that mean nothing happened? Does anyone care? What a small speck my whole life is. Yet at any particular moment, it seems like it's very important.

Looking back at my diary, which I write in only sporadically, I remember from January that a chiropracter solved a problem with my left hand cramping. A five-year problem solved in 2 minutes! After that appointment I went home and started playing the piano and I couldn't stop. I've had about 3 adjustments since then, and I think I'm about due for another one, though it's not as bad as it was before January. I probably ruined my neck from several years of playing violin with in ill-fitting shoulder pad.

I have found quite a few good sermons on sermon audio. Often I pick them at random, or because of their interesting titles, or something I am curious about. Other times by the speaker. Sometimes I think I will recommend to someone a particular preacher, but not every sermon of that man is good. As soon as I recommend Adam Adams, or whoever, Adam Adams will have a sermon that is just not that good. And if you happen to listen to that one, you will go away thinking Adam Adams is not a very good preacher, and I am not too swift for recommending him. But really Adams'es's's' sermons are mostly very good.

Actually, I suppose I could recommend Voddie Bauchman, Alister Begg, Konrad Mbewe, and Spurgeon. There are many others. You can tell from the different sermons that each is preaching to a different kind of audience, who have different backgrounds. Something of the flavor of each location comes through, though the basic truths are applicable everywhere.

fall/winter, birds, plants, starving, r's

When to blog?

When you have something interesting to say or show.

When you are bored and have nothing else to do.

When you are making a transition.

That's what today is. It's a transition from summer into fall/winter. No, it's actually too late to get ready for winter. It's here and I'm not ready. I knew this would happen, and I kept trying to put it out of my mind. But today I have to go downtown in the cold and it will probably rain and I don't know where my winter sweater is. And I'm not in the mood for tackling cold weather.

I feel rather like cleaning house. The kind of house cleaning where it gets worse before it gets better. The first day you take everything that's not in the right place and put it in the middle of the room. Then you clean everything that you have room to clean, and gradually you start sorting and putting things back, but that usually takes another day or two. As time goes on, your enthusiasm starts to wane, but you excuse yourself by saying, "It's x% better than it was. And that leaves only x% to do, which isn't much." Although actually the last 15% is harder than the first 85%, and at least half of that will never get done.

Fall/winter shows itself in not-terribly-obvious ways. The sycamore trees are shades of yellow, green and brown. Lots of other trees are their usual dull-green color. The neighbors' pomegranate tree is gold. The other neighbors' bougainvillea continues to bloom, as it almost always does, without any regard for other plants around it that would like to grow if given the chance. Bougainvilleas are like large furry dogs. They're quite lovable if kept in line. But if they aren't, they can be annoying. Licking you in the face, smacking you with their wagging tail. Doghair is nice on the dog, but not on the furniture. Magenta-colored bougainvillea blossoms aren't so nice when they're swallowing up apple trees and other useful plants.

In between the colorful or not-so-colorful trees are all the nice or not-so-nice apartment buildings. How can you get excited about an apartment building? The apartment buildings around here are well-designed and, for apartment buildings, nice to look at. The buildings are all similar enough to go well together, but there is some variety in shape, windows, balconies, and trim color. But still, a building is a building, and an apartment building gives you no indication as to the character or personality of the people that live in it. Maybe that's just as well, who knows.

Watching birds. A dozen or so birds fly to the sidewalk from the low branches of a sycamore tree. One second later a dozen fly from the sidewalk to the tree. This happens over and over again. I wish I could get close enough to see what they're doing.

A white-spectacled, yellow-vented Bulbul comes to my balcony now and then. He pecks the leaves off my Solanum. So far it hasn't hurt the Solanum too much. I need to plant more so as to maybe get more birds.

I have three different types of Haworthia. One for a long time was dark, nearly black and hardly growing. I brought it in from the sun for a day or two, as I often have to do with the other Haworthias, but it didn't recover. Finally I brought it in for about two weeks, and now it's starting to turn a little bit green.

There is no Thanksgiving-Christmas here. Which means there are no family gatherings. This seems wrong somehow. I was tempted to buy some toothpicks and some styrofoam balls and make a little Christmas tree, just for old times' sake. Really old, like more than 50 years. Yet I am not really interested in Christmas or Christmas trees. It's just the association of this particular craft with family and good times. When I was a little girl my father bought me some toothpicks and styrofoam and I made my first tree. The next year I/we did the same thing, with some improvements. Each year my tree got better. Toothpicks and styrofoam balls don't interest me now, but I remember doing crafts often, and it was fun to have my father interested in my crafts.

There is a little craft store near where I am going today, and I like to look at the little kits that are fun to do when you are a kid. I really crave something like that now, but I haven't seen anything I really want, and it seems kind of a waste of time. Painting something would be nice, but I don't know how to paint pictures, just walls. And I don't think I'm up to painting walls, especially since our ceilings are a bit high and I don't care to stand on a ladder. Using a long-handled roller would be a bit strenuous for me now, and you still have to get on a ladder to do a neat edge.

I think I am about starved for something creative. Do I dare start laying out scraps for a quilt? I have five quilts back in the U.S. I would like to bring over and finish. But meanwhile I am Starved. Starved. Starved. And Starved.

I guess I'll have to console myself by rolling my r's. This is my latest accomplishment. You never get too old to learn something new. The ability to roll r's is NOT HEREDITARY. I looked at a number of You-Tube videos and tried all kinds of things, and finally I found something that works. Brrrr is a bit difficult, but Drrrr works pretty well. I can even roll my r's while doing my do-mi-so exercise!!! So there!

Song of the Grasses

As usual, I can't decide which I like best, so here are two versions. This is not a New Year song, it's just a nice song. I can appreciate grass and shepherds, since we once raised sheep. There is no grass where we live now. We live in an apartment in a city in a very stony country. Will I ever find anything as nice as grass in this hard country?

The first, tenor voice, Hezy Levy, slow, with good guitar accompaniment.

The second, deeper voice, with piano and other instruments, nice grass pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ycmxzrHoooE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-6m6CKOdC4

"The Song of the Grasses" by Naomi Shemer

Know that each and every shepherd has his own tune.
Know that each and every grass has its own song.
And from the song of the grasses the tune of the shepherd is made.

How beautiful, how beautiful and pleasant to hear their song.
It's very good to pray among them and to serve Hashem in joy
And from the song of the grasses the heart is filled and yearns.

And when the the heart is filled by the song and yearns for the Land of Israel
A great light is drawn forth and goes from the Land's holiness unto it.
And from the song of the grasses the tune of the heart is made.

We Are Your People - Ki Anu Amecha

Another song for the upcoming season.
Translation is included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K05npNxa8lg

I love maps

You can search images online for "Peters map projection"and find a map of the world with countries sized according to land area. Even this map is a little misleading, though, because Russia and Canada are stretched out into narrow shapes that make them appear smaller than they are.

Another cool map is one that shows countries sized according to their population. Over a third of the word's people live in China and India. This one is from businessinsider.com

Another kind of map I can imagine making is a map of the world that preserved both shapes and sizes of countries by dividing up the oceans. You could make it out of some sort of cloth with pile, with higher or denser pile for the denser population areas. You could provide a blank globe and you could practice putting the pieces on in the right place (would need some way to make them stick).

Some old maps were not meant to be accurate, but were works of art. Like this one with Jerusalem as the center of the world.

 

 

And while we're on the subject of making maps to play with, how about a flat map with countries the right size, and some kind of tokens to put on each one to show population. The most densely populated country would have to have just enough space for the tokens.



 

Ben Adam Ma Lecha Nirdam

Another song for the season.

group singing, no instruments

http://web.nli.org.il/sites/nlis/he/Song/Pages/song.aspx?songid=296#1,13,480,11

Rough translation:

Son of man, why do you slumber? Come and present words of petition.
Pour out conversation, seek forgiveness, from the Lord of lords.
Wash and purify yourself, do not tarry, for the days will soon pass
And quickly run for help, before the One who dwells on high.
And from sin and evil flee, and fear those who may ensnare you.
Please listen to those who know Your name, Israel, your faithful.
For thine, O God, is the justice, and ours is shame of face.

Stand like a man, be valiant to confess your sins.
Seek the Lord God, with a bowed head, to atone for transgressions
Since forever, wonders will not cease from before our eyes-
And any word which may be uttered, before Him will be read
The Merciful one will have mercy, as a father has mercy on his children.
For thine, O God, is the justice, and ours is shame of face.

Adon haSelichot

Another song sung at this time of year.

This is an anacrostic piyut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GfsXUt-3Ns
With pictures and translation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0C8fb8eFDc
Simple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4wg1xFUopg
Interesting music style.

Very rough translation:
א Lord of forgiveness,
ב Examiner of hearts,  
ג Who unveils the depths,
ד Speaker of justice,
We have sinned before you, have mercy on us.
ה Glorious in wonders,
ו Great in consolations,
ז Remembering the covenant made with the forefathers,
ח Searching the reins,
We have sinned before you, have mercy on us.
ט Good and kind to all the created,
י Knower of all that is hidden,
כ Conquering iniquity,
ל Clothed in righteousness,
We have sinned before you, have mercy on us.
מ Full of merit,
נ Fearful in praises,
ס Forgiving iniquity,
ע Hearing in the time of trouble,
We have sinned before you, have mercy on us.
פ Working out salvations,
צ Seeing into the future,
ק Calling the generations,
ר Riding on the clouds,
ש Hearing prayers,
ת Perfect in knowledge,
We have sinned before you, have mercy on us.

Avinu Malkeinu

There are two songs by this name. This is the short and simple one. It is often sung around Rosh HaShana, which is Oct 3 and 4 this year. I couldn't decide which version I like best, so I'm listing all three.

One with organ and choir.

One as sung in a synagogue.

A lighter version, with the Hebrew words, Spanish transliteration, and Spanish translation, with accordion accompaniment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8y3jPuzV8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqNJgL3fle0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMzYJMEiEE

Avinu Malkenu
Chanenu va'anenu
Avinu malkenu
Chanenu va'anenu
Ki ein banu ma'asim
Asseh imanu tsedaka vechesed
Asseh imanu tsedaka vechesed vehoshienu

Our father our king
Be gracious unto us and answer us
Our father our king
Be gracious unto us and answer us
For we have no good deeds of our own
Deal with us in justice and in kindness
Deal with us in justice and in kindness
And save us.

TODAY

Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.

German Feminine Nouns

Learning the gender of nouns is still annoying me. It annoys me because it's not terribly complex, like adjective cases and relative pronouns and dependent clauses, but it's still too hard.

My method is to start with the assumption that every noun is masculine unless there is some indication otherwise. If it ends in an "e" or an -in or a -heit or an -ung or a -shaft, it is probably feminine. But if it doesn't, you need some way of knowing.

I start with the assumption it's masculine till I find out it's not, and the minute I found out it's feminine, it immediately starts to stretch, spread, extend, or repeat. If you start with schlacht, a battle, it's surely masculine, is it not? But then I find out it's feminine and it spreads out into a field with many bodies falling, and many puffs of smoke in the air.

Botschaft, a message, ought to be masculine, brought by swift runner. But when I find out it's feminine, it turns into a multitude of dots and dashes as if being sent by Morse code.

Frist, a period of time or a deadline, as a masculine word looks like a single solid object or a definite boundary. But as soon as I learn it's feminine, it reminds me of the broken line at the center of the road whizzing by. Many, many stripes, many, many deadlines have flown by.

Die Luft, the air, spreads over the whole earth. Ader, vein, as feminine stretches out long. Schrift, writing, stretches across the page and contains multiple characters.

A city as a big, ugly polluted thing could be masculine, but as soon as it becomes feminine, it is a collection of rooftops. Auswahl, selection, involves several items to choose from. So you could say feminine is the closest thing to plural without being plural. Uhr, a clock, is feminine with that plural aspect because it wouldn't be a clock without more than one number on it. Ankunft, arrival, is when Aunt Mary appears on your doorstep for a visit. But wait, she came on a plane, where there are arrivals every minute. Again, a concept of pluralness.

This only works if you start with the idea of masculine, and not if you approach a word with the idea it could be either one. That way, the moment you find that it's feminine, your mind makes this shift into a different concept of the word, and that helps you remember.

Furcht, fear. Dark and dangerous, like a bad man. But no, it's not just a particular fear, but magor-misaviv, fear all around. See, it's spreading again, so it's feminine. Die Trommel, drum. A drum wouldn't be necessary for just a single thump. It's a multiplicity of beats.

And of course, there's still the method of connecting things. I learned night, die Nacht, which, like Luft, spreads calmly over everything. But Finsternis, darkness, surely is neuter, like a lot of -nis words. But since it turns out to be feminine, I connect it with die Nacht, and they are always together.

Rambling

There must be a large Ethiopian community in Jerusalem. And it seems they're always getting married. What size population would be necessary to have one wedding per month? Or so it seems. They do it big, with a professional cameraman and sometimes a big limousine.

But what really impresses me is how they dress. The men all look very smart in white shirts and black jeans. Or to really dress up, they wear all white, with a shiny colored vest and a matching colored strip on their trousers. The women, likewise, wear very nice clothes. Frequently they wear dresses of lightweight crinkled off-white muslin with strips of very colorful embroidery, with a shawl/head covering of the same light material.

I'm not clear on the differences between their Shabbat clothing, or wedding clothing, or everyday clothing, because I only see them on Shabbat, and there are a lot of weddings.

Elsewhere, anything goes. Well, not quite anything. In general women in Jerusalem are probably more modest than in the U.S. Especially in the more religious communities. Among the men, the word is "casual." Even in kehilot, men can be seen wearing shorts and T-shirts with writing on them. And of course, it's hot, and in hot weather you have to wear less. ?? Not me--I don't feel any cooler having the sun beat on my bear skin. Whoops, I mean bare skin. In some circles, they say we should honor the Sabbath by wearing nicer clothes than we wear during the week. In other places, they continually quote "God looks on the heart," so you are pre-emptively barred from saying anything about their shoddy appearance.

So, I try to be more concerned about what's really on people's hearts than what they look like. It's really important to do this, because Jerusalem is a very mixed environment. You can get into lively conversations about the Bible and religion. You find that people's experiences are so different from your own. It is a good exercise to not be around people who agree with you on everything. It makes you value what you have received, but also ready to examine everything in a new light. The body of Christ is one, and each member is necessary.

But really, black is black, and white is white, right? Not necessarily. Now I am going to ramble on about colors. What we consider pure white in America is not necessarily considered pure white somewhere else. Our "pure" is sort of cold, theirs is warm.

And they say that the colors you wear reflect your personality. If you wear bold, bright colors, you are outgoing, or positive, or confident, or something like that (and they imply also that you're supposed to be outgoing and postive and exuding confidence). If you like gray and brown, you are, well, not very interesting.

Disagree. Flat disagree. When I see someone dressed very plainly, which is not very often, I look twice. Because you have to look twice to determine what color you are seeing.

What I especially like are light neutrals. So light and so neutral that you can't quite define what the colors are. So I have a colorless personality. Don't think so. But if you want to pass colorless me by, that's okay, I appreciated your flash of blue or your red and orange stripes while you were here.

Let's  see, where was I going with this? Oh, I guess I didn't have any particular aim. Just wandering. That's a nice word. It means you aren't on a straight, pre-determined path, and don't particular care where you end up. However, after wandering aimlessly for a while, sometimes it's nice to go back home. Which reminds me, I need to hang my Andrew Wyeth.

Music is Magic

I looked and looked for the version that I originally listened to of Psalm 91 in Romanian, but it seems to have been taken down. There are other versions with the same words and different tunes, but they're not as good.

So here's the next best. Good words, good tune, acapella.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj84AKnaXhA
versificare: Traian DORZ
muzica: Nicolae Moldoveanu

It is odd how this song affects me, and I know only the tiniest bit of Romanian. Especially when they sing "Dumnezeul meu în care mă încred şi voi scăpa."

Quite amazing that there are so many of the Psalms in Romanian in verse form.

German oven racks

I thought all the case endings in German would be the hardest part. As it turns out, they're not that crucial. Because even if you make lots of mistakes with cases, you can still get the main meaning.

Another problem is all the rules for word order. But that's fairly logical, once you get used to it.

The hardest part is the verbs and all their separable and inseparable prefixes. I have a hard time seeing any connection between the base word and the resulting meanings you get after adding a prefix. It seems I will have to just memorize every single verb.

The next hurdle is learning the gender of nouns. This has turned out harder than I expected. There are several guidelines that give you a pretty good idea for many words, but there are many you just have to memorize. I memorize them by making pictures in my mind, and by associating similar words of the same gender.
If fluss, river, is masculine, then you know also that Bach, brook will also be masculine. Same with mountain and hill, Berg and Hügel. Many weather words are masculine. Thunder and lightning (der Donner, der Blitz) are both masculine, as well as rain, hail, snow, fog, wind and sunshine. (der Regen, der Hagel, der Schnee, der Nebel, der Wind and der Sonnenschein.

If Kuh, cow, is feminine, and she is, then you know that milch, milk, is, too. And also Ziege, goat, because she also gives milk. Die Kuh, die Milch, die Ziege.
Other things are feminine because they spread or reproduce or multiply or extend. Butter (die Butter) is feminine because it spreads. Die Fabrik, factory is feminine because it produces a million pencils. Die Bank -- Banks spread (they have branches). Die Flut, the flood, is when the water spreads.
Potatoes multiply. You plant one and in the fall after the leaves die down, you have no idea what is under the surface until you stick in your Shaufel, which is feminine, and you turn up all the Kartoffeln underneath. I hang a string of feminine glocken, bells, on my feminine shovel to celebrate the occasion.

Neuter nouns sometimes group together conveniently, such as house/Haus, window/Fenster, and table/Tisch. Glass and water, Glas und Wasser. The folk/das Volk in the village/das Dorf, plant grass/das Gras on the grave/das Grab.
Things that are unbearably cute, animals/Tieren, Babies/Babys, children/Kinder, and little girls/ Mädchen, are neuter, because their cuteness surpasses any idea of gender.
Basic shapes are neuter -- das Dreieck, das Viereck, and das Achteck.
Basic materials are neuter -- das Kupfer, das Gold, das Metall, das Holtz, das Papier, das Leder, das Garn, das Feuer, das Eis (copper, gold, metal, wood, paper, leather, yarn, fire, ice.)
Basic necessities are neuter -- egg, bread, book, bath, bed -- Ei, Brot, Buch, Bad, Bett. As well as life and light -- das Leben, das Licht. And if you like, auto, money and internet (Auto, Geld, Internet). For me, das Piano or das Klavier.

Parts of the body are all different, but it is not hard to group together eye, ear, and face, das Auge, das Ohr, and das Gesicht. For other neuters, think of sitting with your chin on your knee -- Kinn and Knie are both neuter. Also leg, das Bein.
For feminine it's hand, fist, and shoulder, die Hand, die Faust, and die Schulter. Put your fist on your nose to remember die Nase.
That leaves back, stomach, thumb, finger, head, which are masculine. Picture yourself pinching your belly with your thumb and finger (your Bauch with your Daumen and Finger), while you try to bend your head (der Kopf) to touch your back (der Rücken).
So you can see, if you know the gender of one word, with these pictures in your mind, you can remember the gender of several others.

You can associate masculine words to a man, feminine words to a woman. You have to do this with knife, fork and spoon because they are all different.
So you picture a huge knife (das Messer) on the wall of das Haus, which you already know is neuter.
Dad uses the spoon (der Löffel) to stir his coffee (der Kaffee). Mom holds the fork (die Gabel) because it's a tuning fork and she using it to tune her violin (die Geige).

By the way, did you know that oven racks are very musical?
Hang one on a string, ding the rack, and listen to the sound traveling from the string to your ear.
Amazing! I dare you to try it! Also set a ticking clock on the piano bench (or a wooden table) and put your ear to the table. Good for home-schooling moms to demonstrate how sound travels through a solid.

What's the Point

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, but I feel like posting it.

treptat - gradually (Romanian)
treppe - stairs (German)
trip - to step lightly (English)

And of course, Tripping up the Stairs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGin6mh6Rsg