#101 ::: Chris Quinones
Chris -- As Ned would say, with delight -- "Another satisfied customer. Thank you!"
I will pass your words on.
Love, C.
#93 ::: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Additionally -- Thank you! for speaking so well of da Ned. Your words are highly appreciated, and will be passed on.
Love, C.
#96 ::: John A Arkansawyer
John's living and creating art in Europe, where he moved many years ago.
Ned's also the author of the brilliant, instant classic, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo and the only history of New Orleans, published in January, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.
The NO party's already happened, but the NY book party's May 8th, at
the Brecht Forum. He's also going to perform -- yes, Ned's still
performing and making music too. (And doing photography).
You can see all his parts working together in an article coming up
in the forthcoming issue #52 of the British world music, magazine,
"Songlines," with an article + photos about bachata in rural Dominican
Republic. The magazine's also running a long review of the New Orleans
book in the same issue.
Love, C.
Lee Atwater considered himself a mean blues guitarist. Clinton is another who put on blackface when it suited him.
'Slumming' by the ruling class -- patronage and patriarchy live on
on to refresh their hollow souls -- and blackface have a centuries'
long tradition in the entertainment business, dating back at least to
the 17th C. Nor is it yet finished with.
Besides witnessing it in all kinds of forms, having lived my life in
the professional music world due to marriage, I have read some
brilliant studies, not the least of which is my brilliant New Orleanian
born and bred academic friend, Felipe Smith's American Body Politics.
There's Eric Lott's brilliant Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
from which, not coincidently, Dylan took the title for his 2001 album,
released in August .... (Like Felipe, Eric's also a friend.)
Love, C.
#106 ::: Fragano Ledgister :::
Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) #105 wrote "Slight tangent: am I right in surmising that the singles scene is one of the reasons why the standard of beauty in the US is becoming the porn star?"
When did this happen? (That's a serious question.
When cosmetic surgery got to be so normal that even 12 year olds have it -- nose jobs along with braces, in small town America, and escalated from there. Web cams and the sex-positive 'feminist' 4th wavers helped greatly by buying into the silly idea that being a stripper or a prostitute was empowering, and giving blowjobs upon request was totally cool -- and empowering.
This got started in the 1st Reagan term, of course.
Love, C.
#95 ::: A.R.Yngve :::
Creationists haven't spent enough time observing nature. (Unlike Charles Darwin.
In anticipation of "two Darwin anniversaries next year — his 200th birthday and the 150th of his world-changing book, “The Origin of Species.â€" the New York Botanical Gardens have done a 33 stop tour replicating as many of Darwin's botanical researches as they could fit into the 250 acre place. It looks splendid, and we shall surely attend.
Visitors who enter the exhibition through the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory will encounter a replica of a room in Darwin’s house, designed so they can look through the window, as he did, to a profusion of plants and bright flowers: hollyhocks, flax and of course primroses, what Todd Forrest, the garden’s vice president for horticulture, calls “a typical British garden.†On a table stands a tray holding quills, brushes, sealing wax and tweezers, the kinds of simple tools Darwin used to conduct his world-shaking research.
Darwin grew the flowers not just for their own sake, Mr. Forrest said, but as subjects for observation and experiment, work he carried out in his home laboratory and greenhouses, on workbenches like those in the exhibition. The work displayed on the benches is typical of studies Darwin made of pollination, how plants grow, even what happens when a carnivorous plant devours an insect. Orchids on display remind visitors of the varieties Darwin studied, and how his observations and dissections of their blooms led him to conclude that particular species were pollinated by particular species of insects, a conclusion later research confirmed.
The whole story and dates, etc. are here.
Love, C.
He's evil and he's for real.
But -- God bringth good out of evil.
Coz now ai haz Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs.
Depressed most of day, this helped change the emotional landscape considerably. Thanks!
Love, C.
#493 ::: Peter Erwin
That's true: Sevilla was reconquered in the 13th C.
The Portuguese Reconquista earlier, 'finishing' in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve -- which is certainly southwest, and also fits into MZB's earlier vision.
Though it is hilly rather than mountainous -- and hot and arid.
The entire Iberian Peninsula is a understable inspiration for a Fantasy geography, or so it always felt to me. Not to mention the history. The Algarve, for instance, dates back in the written historical record to the Phoenicians and the Carthegenians. This just took my breath away. Like Sintra Castle, first built by the Moors, on the foundations of what had to have been a Phoenician lighthouse, from where Byron looked over the mountain plain vistas at the time he embarked writing "Childe Harold".
What's not to be inspired by?
Love, C.
#473 ::: Lori Coulson
I'd always assumed MZB was using a Portuguese model there, since the honorifics follow the Portuguese manner. She employs the Portuguese 'dom' rather than the Spanish 'don' -- and all those mountains isolating one great family from another. Traveling around Portugal I spent a lot of 'dream' time attempting to imagine myself back into medieval times there -- and just how isolated every part was from every other part, how long it would take to get from one place to another. Fascinating place, Portugal. (As is Spain, of course! -- though I do pefer Spanish cuisine to the typical Portuguese menu.)
Southwestern Spain was the earliest region conquered by Islam and whose Caliphates were the last of the reconquista. In 'our' history, I mean! :)
Love, C.
#401 ::: Ginger Re Tea:
I've found the same in our China Town -- even the lower quality teas are excellent.
The really fine ones are for a style and ceremony that I don't pretend to approach, or need to.
Though there is this about tea, and liking it very much -- you can easily find yourself becoming more elaborate and epicurian, with ever greater aspiration. There are such arrays of implements and ware for making and serving tea, just for instance.
Lately I've developed a craving for one of those ubiquitous Victorian era sterling silver tea strainers, for instance, as if my small all-purpose kitchen strainer with handle isn't good enough for the likes of me!
Love, C,
I buy all my teas these days in the shops in China Town, and am very pleased.
Higher quality, greater quantity, prices far lower than in the boutiques outside China Town.
If you go to the right shops you can find all kinds of teas from India and Ceylon and Indonesia as well.
Love, C.
I've had more than one friend have breast reduction surgery. It was needful.
The change in life for those women when they no longer had to wear harnesses to hold their breasts, the breasts that got in the way of doing many of the most mundane of daily tasks, the relief from the misery of their back pain, not to mention the relief from the misery of the incredibly ugly stupid things that men would shout at them wherever they went -- that wasn't elective. It made their lives healthy lives.
Love, C.
#122 ::: Mary Aileen re the Otori books:
That's where we had put the first two volumes in our library system here as well -- adult general fiction, not in the adult sf/f section.
Our public system also shelves adult and and YA sf/f separately in the circulating branches (we also have 4 research, non-circulating libraries in the system, and some of those have had separate, unique cataloging systems going back from before Dewey -- it gets complicated!).
Love, C.
#303 ::: Dena Shunra:
I am so sorry for your personal loss, the loss of a friend. None of us have so many friends that the loss of any one of them doesn't leave a huge gaping hole in our lives forever.
I also am so sorry that what truly does appear to be a hate crime is being categorized for easy filing by the authorities as a 'suicide.'
This did make the news in certain circles, though not NPR, for instance; however, Rachel Maddow on her program 6 - 8 p.m. on Air America, discussed this last night.
Love, C.
More accurately, instead of 'most' I should have typed, "...many U.S. homes have more bandwidth than the whole island of Cuba."
Certainly a typical office building in Manhattan does.
Love, C.
#206 -- Been following closely the changes implemented by Raúl Castro Rus.
Not that any of these changes mean anything for the United States, which is not allowing Cubans to come here, or us to go there.
Last weekend at the annual Experience Music Project pop music conference in Seattle, the Cuban guest could appear only via webcam - satellite hookup.
The biggest change, and the one that may be the most significant for the Cuban people as a whole, though, isn't part of this group of loosening protocols. It is that Venezuela is planning to assist Cuba into the digital world by paying for the installation of all that fiber optic cable, that Cuba never got because the U.S. demanded Cuba be left out of that globe spanning connection project. This would give the island enough band width to connect everyone.
As it presently stands, most U.S. homes have more band width than the entire island of Cuba.
Love, C.
The Otori books are marketed in the ads for them as YA.
I'm not sure that was the case with the first two, but it is certainly the case with the latest volume, and now the earlier associated titles.
Love, C.
Hindi, is probably what Lawrence (#183) was groping for.
This is a typical second, third, etc. language default. Spanish is our second language. Dealing with French, when stumped, the words and phrases and sentences come out in Spanish.
Love, C.
As for what happened in Vietnam, I could re-tell tales told me by
some of Our Soldiers, of what they saw and what they did. -- some told
with sorrow and regret, and others boasted of what they did, including
rounding up local women for their own private brothels.
I could tell you what one of those soldiers who served in Vietnam
learned to do there and how, when he came home, he wouldn't stop doing
it. One of the consequences of this is my baby sister is dead.
Love, C.
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|---|---|
| 2008 | 35 |
| 2007 | 80 |
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