Wow! This has been an eventful summer for someone who rarely goes anywhere. I am still amazed at having my art in an online gallery belonging to a legitimate store front gallery in Arizona. In September I was able to get started on my own business domain, for Capirani Photography and it is connected to the online gallery site as well. This was truly exciting for me because I have always wanted my own domain and a professional website. Although I have not yet sold anything, I was contacted last week by another photographer in the online gallery. He does abstract work also, but his work is done with a program he actually designed himself. His work is really one of a kind. I hope you will take a look at it. His name is Allen Hirsh and if you read his bio on the page, you will see what I mean when I say that his work is unique. You can also visit his business website from that link as well. Tell him I sent you.
Whew! What else? Oh yes. I'm teaching myself Hebrew! Yes you read that correctly. This is something I have been wanting to do for many years but thought maybe it was too hard for me. And until the availability of the internet, how would I hope to be able to learn? Who would teach me? But over this summer I have become interested in Messianic Jewish praise and worship music, which is often sung in Hebrew. I wanted to be able to sing along, so I started trying to find the lyrics online. I even wrote to the church in Jerusalem that puts out the YouTube videos of the music I am learning. The church is called King of Kings Community Church of Jerusalem and I really enjoy the music as well as the preaching. It is a combination Christian/Messianic Jewish community church located in Jerusalem, Israel. The playlist link I gave you above lists the first few songs I am learning, but I only have the words for three of the songs so far and parts of the others. I will probably end up emailing them again for the words to the rest of these songs. But in the meantime, teaching myself Hebrew makes me feel like I belong to their church and that I am doing something to draw myself closer to God.
Okay, so where and how am I teaching myself Hebrew? Well, I started out looking for different websites on the subject and found a couple that seemed to be easy enough to get started with. And I then went to YouTube again to find videos so I could actually hear the words pronounced as I learned. I ended up narrowing it down to two sites so far, plus the YouTube. The YouTube site is actually connected to one of the regular websites so I don't even have to use YouTube now. The first site I chose was Israel Hebrew: Learn Hebrew and Stay Updated With Israel News. Through that site I went on to download a pdf file they suggested that was supposedly used by the US government for learning Hebrew. You can find that on the link above. They give some good options including some books you can buy if you want to pay for instruction. The pdf file is free, however. After that I went to Hebrew Pod 101 and that is where I went after finding their videos on YouTube. YouTube only has a few of their videos so to get the most out of the lessons using the website is better. In all honesty, other than the different form of writing, and alphabet, it is a lot like learning Spanish, which I took in high school and college. Doing this by myself is not so fun, but I am really motivated to learn. It fills some of my time as well as exercises my mind. There is really no downside to this.
The last thing I wanted to talk about here tonight is the idea of making a possible change to this blog. This is still in the brainstorming phase and since I am brainstorming with myself, who knows where I will end up. The thing is, I want to do something to be an influence to others in some way. Although I post a lot of things on Facebook, it isn't what I really want to do with Facebook. I want to work with Facebook more to promote my photography and just hang out with friends. Plus if I do this right, I can reach more people with a blog than I can a private Facebook account. The question is, in what way do I want to do this? There are a lot of thoughts going through my head at any given time on this topic. Sometimes I want to talk about how I wonder what happened to everything? I mean, America...people...values...morality...and so much more. So I think it will probably end up being more in that line. But I also want to help people who are searching to find the Lord and be saved before it is too late. I want to leave something online that could maybe be found after the Rapture to help guide people to the truth so that during the Tribulation, they can read and learn and find truth. But right now, as I said, it is still in the thinking phase. I don't really know how to start.
It's colder outside. Autumn is much cooler this year than usual. It makes me wonder if winter is going to be like last year. I hope not. It makes things really difficult for me when there is so much snow and ice that I end up really locked inside. Odd though, because this spring, and summer, I did not spend much time outside at all. It was mild enough to enjoy too. Aside from the photography, I'm dealing with some personal issues that keep me occupied and it just seems to make things harder for me to want to do. Well, it's almost 4 a.m. here and I really should start winding down to try to get some sleep. Please do take a look at the websites I've posted for you. Especially if you are also interested in learning Hebrew.
