My Little Vacation in the Galil

Rachel organized a small vacation for us in the Galil this weekend. We stayed at the tzimmer (B&B) Ohr Hashachar in Moshav Goren, which is in the Western Galil very close to the Lebanon border. This place costs a bit more than your typical SPNI field school, but it comes with wine and cookies, a jacuzzi for two, free cable TV, privacy, and quiet.

What it did not come with is breakfast or any other meal. We brought our own food for the weekend.

Salient events:

Stopped at Caesarea beach on the way up. I already knew, but let me tell you so that you know: the beach at 12:30 pm on a hot August day in Israel is no fun for sane people. While Rachel frolicked, I found an umbrella at a nearby wedding hall and sat there until security kicked me out.

I needed a minyan to say kaddish, and there is one at Goren. It is Sepharadic, however, which means a siddur with the prayers ordered very differently than how I am used to, as well as continuous chanting in an accented slur, so that I couldn't figure out what prayer they were saying, anyway. Somehow I managed to say kaddish at about the right times, but my kaddish is missing a number of words and phrases that their kaddish has, so I had to keep readjusting my timing to match the other kaddish-sayers. I was tenth man for the minyan on Sunday morning.

Saturday we walked around the forested Park Goren, with a view of Montfort Castle. The experience was occasionally interrupted by people riding dune buggies (they make the engines loud on those things on purpose), but otherwise pleasant. And all while managing to stay within 2000 amot of Goren.

Sunday we visited Kibbutz Hanita, which was Rachel's first home in Israel 24 years ago. She learned Hebrew there for six months and then moved to Jerusalem, and she hadn't been back since she left it. Hanita is right on the border with Lebanon. Hanita, like many other kibbutzim is on the verge of losing its identity as a kibbutz: members now own their own homes and cars, and pretty soon they'll simply be stockholders in the kibbutz industries (contact lenses and plastic coatings, as well as some agriculture).

Hanita's main interest to outsiders is its tower and stockade museum. It holds stories and artifacts about the founding of Hanita and other kibbutzim like it, as well as movies with astoundingly well-preserved video from the time (pre-state). Most impressive is a) how egalitarian we Israelis are and were, with women and men pitching in to do the hard labor, b) how much work so many people put in to the founding of this country, while today we (well, at least me) are a bunch of whiners, and c) how violent and unaccepting the Arabs were then and still are today about this new country that formed in their midst - all the land upon which Hanita was founded was legally purchased, but that didn't seem to matter.

Oops. Forgot to warn you about politics.

Poetry and the Road

We just hosted our initial "Word of the Week", a weekday evening meeting over poetry and wine, something I would like to do regularly far into the future. This week's word of the week was "transition", and all the poems had to be about the word. I read from an Emerson essay (paragraph 29). Next week's word (actually, it will be in a month from now) is "temptation".

Rachel and I will be away for the weekend, only to be heard from again Sunday afternoon when I drop by my work to clarify a few issues; we'll be passing by the office as we return, anyway.

Shabbat Shalom.

Yehuda

Session Report, in which I somehow lose Dominion twice

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside, Antike.

Earlier in the week, Rachel and I played Scrabble. She started off ahead, but I caught up and beat her some 340 to 310.

Board Game Blog World Roundup

New blogs, etc since my last posting ...

Board Game Dialog - Michael Schroeder, Niagara Falls, NY. Board game reviews and other posts.

Fun Board Games - Gary Sonnenberg, Waukesha, WI. Intro to board games posts. He also blogs at Googols of Games.

G*M*S Magazine - Paco Jean, Peacehaven, UK. Various articles about gaming, actively seeking other writers.

GameSalute - A number of people, including Dan Yarrington of Myriad Games. There is no information about them on the site, so I can't tell you more. They do video interviews and other news items. They also want to be an online destination, referral service, and networking hub for customers of brick-and-mortar game stores.

Games Champ - John Rowlinson, Manor Park, UK. A look at mostly mainstream board games.

GamingRetailer - Mark Cracco, South Bend, IN. A podcast about and for game retailers.

Giant Fire Breathing Robot - Andrew, Dylan, and co, San Francisco, CA. Games, podacst, and other geek stuff. Originally Tabletop Quality.

Guilt Free Games - Josh, David, JM, Jeff, Junelle, originally from NH. Board gaming.

Meepletown - Christian Wilson, Alabama. Board gaming.

Musings, Ramblings, and Things Left Unsaid - Alfred. Actually, I dropped this blog a few years ago when it went dormant, but it has picked up again. You have to ask for an invite to see it, however.

Nerdaphernalia - Matt Sall, San Antonio, TX. Board gaming.

The Games of Rob Bartel - Rob Bartel, Edmonton, Canada. Blog and board game design discussion.

Wizard of Odds - Posts about calculating odds in games, mostly for poker.

Review: Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation (2003, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanssen, directed by Sophia Copola) is one of the few movies that I can and will watch again and again.

With a deft few words and interactions, all adult and all so painfully realistic, Sophia manages to create that rare movie that appears to have taken almost no effort to create at all. People walk around, they experience, they feel, and they emote. Nothing much happens. And yet, the ground beneath the two protagonists shifts just enough to make you feel that something very special indeed happens.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a celebrity who is in Japan for a week to endorse a whiskey and endure what he has to endure to make the millions of dollars that he makes. Between the shoots where he doesn't understand a word of what is said, he wanders around in a hotel that has robes and showers not designed for his size. He is unable to sleep.

Scarlett Johanssen plays Charlotte, wife to a celebrity photographer and also in Japan for a week. Her husband is away most of the time, and she also can't sleep. Having just graduated from college with a relatively useless philosophy degree, she is lost as to what she wants to do with her life.

Naturally, the two meet. They commiserate and reflect. They don't have an affair, but they cling to each other with a desperate need to have someone who understands them in this alien cultural landscape.

This could be a Bergman film, except it is more accessible, and perhaps less wide-ranging in scope. Everything, from the camera shots to the choice of music, just works.

A big bonus is that you can find the shooting script for the film online. The story and characters in the script are similar to those of the finished movie, but some major parts of the dialog in the script are different in the movie, and some of the scenes are reordered (the movie erroneously places one scene near the beginning that should have been placed later on, but it's not a big deal and you won't notice it unless you really look for it). Watching the film and reading the script is a double pleasure, since they are effectively two works of art revolving around the same theme, but sufficiently different so that each can be enjoyed on its own.

Condolence Phrase Frequency

The most popular condolence phrases was:

I'm sorry for your loss, or
I'm sorry to hear about your father

This came from most everyone, but more from Israelis and the religious.

The next most popular condolences were the traditional Jewish ones:

May God comfort you (among the mourners of Jerusalem and Zion) / may you be comforted,
May his memory be a blessing, or
Blessed be the true judge

One non-Jewish friend offered the first one of these to me.

In third place was the phrase:

Please accept my condolences / sympathies / commiserations

Strangely, only Jews offered this version. The last one was offered by one weird friend.

The least popular was:

My thoughts / prayers are with you

I thought this was going to be in second place, but I was wrong. This phrase was offered only by Americans: non-religious Jews or other friends (the "prayers" variant by religious Christians).


Oddly, no one offered this (apparently deprecated) form of condolence:

Our hearts go out to you during your time of sorrow

Nor any other form of heart, e.g. "you are in our hearts". Hearts appear to be passe.

Session Report, in which we play Age of Empries III for 3.5 hours

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Age of Empires III.

I think most other game groups have faster players than we do.

Earlier in the week I played a game of Gin Rummy with Tal, which I won.