Family Saturday

Congratulations to us.  I am a happy new uncle of one Arhesa Hope.  The word αρεσα means "liked" in Greek, but I don't think this sort of self fulfilling fortune is what the parents were going for.  It's a new name, as far as I can see, has no exact anagrams in the English language, and it means the new 9 pound (+) bundle of joy and a happy addition to our cousins and nieces:

Unfortunately, Bonnie is sick.  And when the queen bee is sick, the whole hive is restless.  I learned a lot of bee tidbits in the last book I read The Secret Life of Bees which joins Uncle Tom's Cabin in well told stories by white women about racial issues and more.  Did you know the Episcopalians have a feast day for Harriet Beecher Stowe?

Let me report on the tots.  Orry is eating up homeschooling.  Isaac likes to get in on it too when he can.  Isaac was a little sick lately too, so he did spend some more time at home instead of at his day school where he usually goes Tuesday through Thursday.  They like to work on math concepts, reading, writing, science, presidents and other social studies.  Bonnie's doing a great job with that.   Lately they are incorporating more quiet time into the day.  Orry is 4 inches short of 4 ft tall and is about to switch into kid sized shoes instead of preschool sizes.  His favorite animal today is a honeybadger and his favorite president is Barack Obama.  He wants to live in Alaska where the northern lights are.  Alaska is his favorite state.

Isaac is developing splendidly.  He is spelling out his name and drawing dinosaurs and counting things and he still likes puzzles and likes the The Land Before Time movies.  His favorite animal today is a tree frog.  We planted some seeds in our garden yesterday and Isaac was a big help.  We saw lots of grubs, some ants and some worms, and we got hot and sweaty.  Today we had planned to go to the beach this evening, but with Bonnie out of sorts, we might have to postpone.

Annie likes to sing and dance and compete with Isaac about letters and numbers.  She has been a splendid two-year-old so far and is developing quite well.  She likes to call things by name and likes the OK GO Rube Goldberg video, which she calls for by what she calls it: "Mess".

And, as you may have heard, I trimmed the beard and mustache, going from this to this:

Now, back to the hive...  

Orry:  What does the teacher bee say to the little naughty bee?

To Edith Grossman

Dear Edith Grossman,

After giving it much thought, you are my favorite woman of literature.

I find it startling that my favorite authors are men, but to broaden my list, ha ha, specifically to include women--I find such a thing offensive to the desire that women ought to be on the list in the first place.  My favorite list of poets is more of a snapshot of humanity, genderwise, though clearly I have a bias toward the work of men, or the culture of our literature world has set it up for me to have such a bias.

But let's back it up, because some of my favorite--my very favorite--authors/works are provided by you and your fidelity to the original work in its original language.  Thank you for bridging that gap.  While laughing in the pages of Don Quixote and also delighting in the works of Gabriel García Márquez, I am not blind to my current inability to enjoy them as they were originally penned by the author.  Thanks to your scholarship, I enjoy those words available to me in my language.

Your work and having brought these literary jewels to non-hispanophones like me has another effect, because it inspires me (and others I am sure) to study language if for no other purposes than to further enjoy the literature you have translated.  Your work is so delightful, even as a translation, that I cannot help but be greedy for more.  And your work, rich and pure as it seems to be, will be one of my go-to resources in comparing and understanding the translation of ideas between Spanish and English.

In today's world, not enough attention and gratitude goes to the intermediary.  Individual ordinary readers like me present no significance in critiquing the work of translators or even much in the demand for translated works, except, I suppose, that we ordinary readers add up and in some way create the aggregate demand of economics.  But let's be serious, the measure of literary treasures doesn't have much to do with supply and demand.  Anyway, thank you for your delivery of the goods across the cultural barriers that otherwise exist.  And thank you to your enhancement of literature.

Sincerely,

Troy Becker

Random List Thursday

The olm, a European salamander, is a little 12 inch troglobite monster that can live without food sources for 10 years.

click the pic to learn more

The pineal gland, a third eye of sorts, is a part of our brain without a twin counterpart that has to do with our circadian rhythm, our sexual development, and God knows what else.

Christopher Guest, or should I say, the Right Honorable Christopher Guest, or should I say, the Right Honourable Christopher Guest, is a baron, and is, yes, married to Jamie Lee Curtis.  Best of Show Christopher Guest.  The six-fingered man Chirstopher Guest.  A Mighty Wind Christopher Guest.

So what is a baron?  Well, in his case he is the son of a diplomat assigned a baronage.  And a baron is the lowest level of peerage, as it is called in the UK: Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and then Baron.  And titles of nobility like these, when accompanied with the proper papers, pass through heridity in the way you might suspect, so that a legacy follows one's bloodline in the way that has historically assuaged the human biological need to reproduce one's own DNA.

Polydactyly occurs more often than you probably realize: 1 in 500 live births.

Barony occurs in only 1 in 50000 live births in the UK, which means 1 in 5 million, worldwide.

Olms are magical creatures that hatch, breed, and grow in their larval stages.  When they grow into adults they are known as dragons.

A & Q Friday

Cosmonaut Gagarin, the first human in space, was born this day 78 years ago. He died when he was my age, in a training accident. The write-up I read stated that he was famous for his having been in space, so that the soviet space program didn't want to risk his life and tried to keep him away from flying, but he persisted, and died at the end of one flight one day.




It is also the birthday of two rappers from little big cities in America. One was Chingy, who we all have to thank for the "Helerr" pronunciation of "hello" in a roundabout way because he got his music fans saying "thurr" for "there". And Bow Wow, who used to be known as Li'l Bow Wow. They are 32 and 25.






There are snow scenes of mountains and wilderness that would probably top my list for being able to paint and painting such scenes to share with others. Although, there have been plenty idyllic scenes of beaches and of course when it comes to Hawaii it seems like every scene could be a painting. I love clouds so I'd like to be able to paint all those, and I've seen some real winners of photos of landscapes in the nights sky. If one could catch, say, the glory of the shadow of Mt Fuji while one climbs into a full moon, that would be a winner. I am limiting myself, for the moment in the scope of landscapes and scenery. I also love trees and would like to feature my fall favorite the maple, in something like the golden old days of the Gonzaga campus in autumn.

But let us suppose in a painting that we could catch the overall experience somehow of all the senses. There are some great experiences, like snorkeling, swimming in all sizes of bodies of water, camping in the desert, running down mountains. But I think the topper goes to skiing or snowboarding, and in particular, in my life, I can reminisce about one amazing day at Silver Mountain in Kellogg, Idaho, where it was like snowboarding on pillows. It is a beautiful scenic area. On the day of my reckoning, ha ha, the snow had frosted everything and boarding in that snow was otherwordly. It would be a real challenge to paint.

Many of you might have read my Asher Lev post earlier, and now I am reading the second Asher Lev book. Asher Lev in those books is an artist. I wonder how he might paint snowboarding on pillows if he could experience it.

These were some snowboarding shots I found that start to impart on you what I mean.

If you could paint a picture of any scenery you've seen before, what would you paint?

A and Q Thursday

I remember when my favorite food as a child was barbecue spare ribs and rice.  I also remember eating rice and A-1 sauce.  The first preference was from when I was 6 or less and the later preference of A-1 sauce was when I was more than 7.  It wasn't that A-1 sauce and rice was my favorite, but I did like the taste.  My whole life I haven't much been one for favorites--or rather I have tended to always have lots of favorites.  Some other favorites I remember from my childhood were my Granny's pickles, her green beans, and the fourth of July favorite of creamy baby potatoes and green peas.  Favorite desserts come to mind to like her buttermilk cake with carmel frosting.  I liked steak (and A-1), and also spaghetti.  I also like homemade breads.  My other grandmother Thora Becker was a baker of pies and cinnamon bowknots that had no equal.  I also liked her dinner rolls (with jam) and tarts.  She also had some dishes that I think about now and again, like a shredded carrot salad, a celery something salad, and her hashbrowns are hard to replicate as well. I wonder where certain family recipes came from.  Like goulash, for we have not even hints of Hungarian anything else in our blood or customs.

There are lots of favorites from my mother's kitchen.  Various soups, casseroles, desserts, and lots of little memories like eating dough, rolling dough in flour, cutting cookies, softening butter.

My father's traditional dish is the T Daniel Becker Surprise.  In it you might find anything.  It will taste fine, and fuel your body for just as long or longer than any other meal.  It is also generally different from the last Special you sampled.  It is a traditional dish that instantly brings to mind this chapter of one of my favorite books:

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin
6. Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex.

Another book that immediately joined my favorite books list is Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.  This book perfectly relates the drama of human existence, exploring both the sublime and the sexual, the reflective and the experiential aspects of living life, and introduces us to characters the sum of which relate to any and all of us.

What was your favorite food when you were a child?