2020 was longer than the usual year. In this stretched time, I began what I called the Pentecost project. It was much harder to bring to a conclusion than I anticipated, but resulted in the first video recording just published last week. (Psalms 145:8-14).
Besides this project, I organized two Biblical Studies Carnivals in 2020 (July, and February). These turned out to be popular posts but not extravagantly so. Nowhere near as popular as my first carnival in 2012. A post I did from the Oxford conference 10 years ago continues to gather hits. A post a year later is the second most popular, part of my early translation of Qohelet in the style of Dr Seuss. The third most popular is my Christmas letter of 2016. I am baffled by its popularity. Perhaps it is the GBS that hit us that year, a debilitating autoimmune disease that can be a consequence of the common cold. The most traffic on my blog was between 4 and 5 years ago, in the height of my translation efforts. But today is my high point as rated by Alexa. Below 240k for the first time.
in 2020, I had two focal points: Music and SimHebrew.
SimHebrew is a tool for representing Hebrew in Latin letters. It makes learning the letters easier. It is good for ease of searching, especially with software, and for applications like URL coding. SimHebrew was a very slight translation for me from a technique I had used in my own software, but its strength lies in using lower rather than upper case and reflecting the shapes of the letters through mirroring. So kaf, traditionally K, is C since this is the mirror of כ. So many right to left cursives reflect the Latin left to right letters.
(See this lovely poster here by Jonathan Orr-Stav for some real insight into Hebrew cursive forms. As a special promotion, the poster will be free for the first 10 people who specify meafar in the discount code. Jonathan's book Aleph Through the Looking-Glass is also a delight. Disclosure: the author lives a few bays away in Victoria and is my friend and Hebrew coach.)
Posts in this focus that were popular include one from the middle of my experimental programming to produce the Bible in SimHebrew (accomplished now but not yet final). Every jot and tittle - Sisyphus strikes again, and the first post on Psalm 119 in SimHebrew, since reposted with some commentary.
What is my own favorite? It's not for me to name one post out of almost 300, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my reporting of the technical problems analysing the differences between the pointed and unpointed texts of the Hebrew Bible. Exploring the malé versus the 'defective' fully pointed text was a very difficult programming exercise. It was harder than creating the program that allowed me to produce all the music of the accents at the touch of a button.
I have also enjoyed composing and arranging when I get past my self-imposed barriers (all those lessons I failed to learn in my teens!). I am still exploring the relationships between the archaic music with its gentle cadences to the supertonic and the subdominant, and modern harmonic structures based on movement to and from the dominant.
The composition that needs funding is to mount a performance of my setting of the melodies in the book of Jonah. I think this story is an operatic message for our generation. But I know that I can't mount it for $1000. I suspect it is more like 20 to 40 times the effort to workshop this piece and make an effective video of this 20 minute miniature. Jonah, of course has a direct link to Psalms 145:8-14. If you haven't heard the presentation, please take the 7 minutes it requires to listen. And thank-you for sharing the exploratory journeys in Hebrew and it music these past dozen years.
The pentecost project continues. Is there any end to the brooding of the Spirit?
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