My World is a meme played by people all over the planet. For more information and to see other places and wonders, visit My World.
There are railroad tracks on the edge of Highland Park; one could travel these tracks all the way up to Boston or down to Washington DC. Most of the trains, though, just travel between New York City and Philadelphia. You can see the train bridge in my post on the Raritan River. There’s a station in New Brunswick, on the other side of the Raritan, and one in Edison, but none in Highland Park.
You might able to tell why I bothered to head over to the tracks with my camera from the above photo. The land bordering the tracks is all nature: trees, shrubs, plants, dirt.
A path runs through the trees near the tracks, used by hikers and joggers.
This little evergreen bush was the only greenery I could find.
Ah! One tree with pretty fall foliage.
It’s cold and gray and *not* snowing (we got just a sprinkle) in New Jersey (I like snow, it makes me happy), so I am reaching into the archives and bringing you this tall, pretty flower (agapanthaceae or agapanthus, thank you to my brilliant European blogger friends, Ilana-Davita and Jientje) that I photographed last July in the City of David outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely and fun meme.
Anyone know who Timna is? And why am I talking about presents (which could go with a prayer book and a bow and arrow)? I plan to write more on this for a post to appear on Wednesday.
The Mumbai Massacres: still digesting this horrible tragedy (would love to regurgitate all over the perpetrators). I keep adding more links to this post called Modulate.
Photography memes I did this week:
Sky Watch
Sepia Scenes
Watery Wednesday
Ruby Tuesday
Today’s Flowers
To view my parsha posts, click https://www.leoraw.com/blog/category/jewish/parsha/.
Food posts:
Stuffed Squash Revisited
Ginger
One technical help post: Google Reader
My neighbor’s tall maple tree left an avalanche of leaves in our driveway a month ago.
This pretty bare tree with red berries is around the corner from my home. I’ve seen others like it here in Highland Park. (Ideas were: crab apple or American Ash; no, it’s been identified as a hawthorn! More pics coming soon.)
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
וְעֵינֵי לֵאָה, רַכּוֹת
And Leah's eyes were weak (Genesis 29:17)
Poor Leah. She cried, because she thought she would get stuck with Esav (Rashi says weak eyes meant they were weak from tears). Instead, she married Yaakov, but she knew that he really loved her sister, Rachel, best.
On Wednesday I asked how Rachel helped out Leah, and how Leah helped out Rachel. Here’s Rashi’s explanation:
Rachel had signs from Yaakov to show that it was she and not someone else when they got married. However, Rachel taught the signs to Leah, so Leah would not be embarrassed.
Leah helped Rachel out by praying for a girl when she was pregnant with her 7th child. She knew that Yaakov would only have 12 sons, and Bilhah and Zilpah already had 2 each. She wanted Rachel to have at least two sons.
As Lion of Zion pointed out, there are also interpretations that say Leah and Rachel were not so nice to each other. But that’s a subject for another post. Maybe next year.
(One more thought: as I tend to prefer a commentary that is sympathetic to the matriarchs, especially to their sadness, as opposed to one that might highlight cattiness, I’m not sure I’m gonna like these other views).
More on this week’s parsha of Vayetze:
Ilana-Davita writes about how human the personalities of this parsha are; strong emotions are part of our lives.
Special thanks to Winslow Homer for his help with the watercolor painting.
Inspired by some emails from Robin, I decided to play with a photo of my daughter. I selected the background of the original with the magic wand in Photoshop (I also used clone stamp, which mimics one part of the image in another section). Then I duplicated the layer, so I wouldn’t be changing the original. I desaturated the background and slid the color scale, increasing the magenta and yellow, same as I usually do to create sepia. I also decided to add a slight gradient to the background.
In this version I duplicated the above layer. I then desaturated that layer and changed its opacity to 55%. That way, one could still see some of layer below and the color still appears, but it is not as vivid as in the original.
I decided the previous version was too gray. I slid the magenta and yellow color sliders, increasing those two colors, especially the yellow.
Here’s the original photo, minus something on the bottom that I cropped out of the photo. As you can see, the original background was the siding of our house, which I didn’t really care to be a focus of the photo.
For more sepia photos, visit Sepia Scenes.
Do you have a sister? I don’t. I’ve always been a bit jealous of sisters. Someone to whom one could connect in a close way.
Rachel and Leah were extra special sisters. Do you know how they helped each other out? Rashi has the answer, and I’ll post the answer on the blog, soon.
Here’s the stuffed squash I made last week. Using Klara‘s idea of using shitake mushrooms, I sauteed some onions and mushrooms to stuff my squash. I also mixed in some chopped celery and sage from my garden, as well as bits of cooked buttercup squash. I didn’t use any animal products, but I must say I might have found it just a tad tastier if it had either a bit of cheese or some chopped meat. We humans do crave fat. On the other hand, my body felt much better eating it this way, a lighter food.
See my Stuffed Squash Workshop.
There is a creek or brook a block away from my home, so I went down there to take some photos for Watery Wednesday.
The creek wiggles its way through the edge of Highland Park and Edison, in between private houses. I do hope people aren’t putting too much pesticides on their lawns that will leach down into the brook, but I’m sure I hope in vain.
For more watery photos, visit Watery Wednesday.
