That's "memories".
Sigh.
A co-worker, one of my best friends, escaped from East Germany with her family, before the Wall went up. Their mother used to help people escaping to the West, and she'd taught her kids what to do if any Authorities ever came knocking on the door during the day and asking for her -- they had go bags all ready, and one night the mother and her four children had to use them.
My friend has been here since '63, but her sibs still live in Germany, and one of her sisters is here on a visit. Yesterday the sister was busy collecting various NYC newspaper stories about the fall of the Wall.
I'm 57 and the Wall had always been Weekly Reader-current events stuff to me -- that and the Cold War fears that others have written of above -- but knowing these older German friends, and hearing them speak, more often in recent years, about their early lives, has made it all Real in a way that I think such things still aren't, for many many Americans.
May such as the events of 20 years ago become increasingly Real worldwide, and those of 51 years ago become, more and more, just distant memorie.
Wesley @ 277
[invisibility discussion, and Mieville's The City and the City]
This in turn reminds me of Cherryh's Wave Without a Shore, and the aliens and others who are right there in the midst of the city, in their blue robes, but invisible to the human culture because they are unacceptable or outcast to the humans. [apologies if I've got some of that wrong - it's been a couple of decades since I read it]
Harriet @ 255
On further reflection, and googling, and converting date to grade in school, I'm pretty it was the original Sputnik, not one of the launches with monkeys, about which I remember reading in the Times, puzzling out the big words with help from dad. What amazing times those were!
Obs sf ref: One of the first things I can recall reading, though I must have been making some sense of my kiddie lit books before that, was sitting with my dad as he showed me the article in the New York Times about -- which of the early space shots was it that sent up the monkey? I must have been in kindergarten. Disappointingly late, but I made up for it my keeping my nose in one book or another for the next fifty years and more. (Off to Google now)
Terry @ 245
I discovered Sherlock Holmes at eight, too, IIRC -- we'd just moved to a new house and the previous owner, an elderly doctor's widow who was moving back to Germany, had left a number of her son's books and other junk down in the basement in a sort of finished room (this was 1960 and I can barely remember the basement layout any more, though now it's coming back to me as I write).
Anyway, there was an old copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes amongst the other stuff.
For the longest time, I hid it from my parents because I imagined it was the sort of book that they might have taken away from me as "too advanced" for my tender years. So I got all the thrills of The Empty House and Silver Blaze--I think it was the double life of the dead trainer in Silver Blaze that made me think TMoSH was a naughty book, in fact--all those thrills plus the pleasure of doing something a bit edgy, wrapped up into one grey binding. :-)
#129 ::: Xopher
(And forgive me if this has already been answered)
When you asked theophylact 101: Hmm, I took that for a typo. Is there a joke there that I don't get?, I think folks were struck by the possible use of "Avenge" in the new portmanteau word "Avengelical". Or, of course, not. (I liked it, too.)
Would it be too derailing to mention how interesting I find the full and frank discussion of woo in the most recent section of this thread?
Thanks, Xopher -- I remembered how that was done, but as Kelly Wegeng says, I wasn't sure that was what we were doing here. Especially since one of the "seeds" is a-- (claps hands over mouth, er, sits on fingers so as not to "speak" too soon)
[...Eventually, I mean, not now when it's fun to try guessing, but...later?]
[Will there be a crib sheet, possibly in ROT-13, for those of us who left our brains back on Earth? she asked plaintively]
What a blessing that you weren't all off at VP this time last year!
Until PNH gets a chance to fix the problem, there is a working Donate button over at
http://www.deselbybowen.com/parlando/
Jenny Islander @ 67 -
Even without context, the new find will be of great value to SCAdians and others who want to copy old pieces or create new ones in the same style. The more authentic examples, the better.
On my first cursory viewing of the artifact slideshow, I had the most awful thought: What if, after they finish their careful archaeological cleaning and cataloging, they find the piece with the WETA logo on it?
Happy belated birthdays to Jon and D. (if a total stranger may add greetings to D!)
In emulation of Pat Kight, and in honor of Jon Singer, I'm sipping my morning Assam from the Singer bowl hand-sold to me by Jo Walton in Elise Matthesen's booth at -- I always forget which, Noreascon or Boskone. :-)
Here's a Food Question for the Fluorosphere: for those of you who are into fancy feasts (for humans), how do you juggle your supplies of specialty oils such as walnut oil, macademia nut oil, avocado oil, sesame oil, etc.? As a single diner who does not cook with various oils all the time, it's all I can do to keep up with a bottle of EVOO before it gets old, let alone two or three more oils -- since the shops here do not seem to stock them in teensy trial sizes. How long do they keep, in your experience? And which ones are most indispensable?
(I was reading the LJ of someone who frequently posts delectable and intriguing menus and/or recipes of the day, and it jogged my memory.)
I've often wondered about the longevity of some of the pricier oils, herbs and spices, and asked myself if there is some secret source of such ingredients that sells them by the minim, or clubs that divide the bottles amongst themselves. I suspect that amongst all the Fluorospherians there are some who hold this esoteric knowledge and might be willing to divulge :-)
#356 ::: Jon Meltzer Re: future cops - hey, me too! The guy who dropped my schoolbooks - and one somewhat fragile library book - out the second story window during senior class homeroom period also became a cop when he, er, grew up.
As I read over the thread thus far, I'm reminded of a problem I had when I was 20 years old, a sophomore in college and thus, sadly immature, nay sophomoric, at times.
I was over in England, doing a summer program in medieval English history sponsored by UC Berkley, and my fellow students were Americans from all over, of a wide range of ages but mostly "older" post-collegiate types having a nice summer with continuing-ed credits as a bonus (or the reason they were able to be there). I became friendly with a couple of women in their 20's or 30's, teachers on their summer vacation, who seemed intelligent and interested in the same Anglophile's touchstones as I was. And I wanted to be seen as mature and grown up, to fit in.
Unfortunately, as a foolish fannish individual to whom books were the measure of all that was good and to be emulated, I tried to engage my friends in what I thought was a mutually agreeable bout of "witty repartee" after the model of --well at the time I suppose my models would have been Dorothy Sayers and perhaps TS Eliot a la The Cocktail Party or something of that sort. And I made one of my friends cry, because she was feeling attacked.
I can't now recall the details of that discussion, but I still feel the shame that came over me when our other friend called me out about it, and told me what I'd done.
And yet I still feel the urge to play with words as a competitive sport when I come across a group of bright, witty, verbally adept people, even when (as with ML habituees) I can see that I'd be outclassed from the start.
But I wonder whether some cases of internet bullying, or at least inadvertent ML bullying, might stem from the combination of that stereotypical fan's inability to read social signals clearly, coupled with the wish to play with others who seem to be able to wield words deftly, and model memory banks full of decades worth of books where dialog does what the author wants it to, without remembering that rapiers, witty or otherwise, are sharp and pointy and hurt people unless you're very carefully matched and wearing protective fencing gear.
May I add my good wishes to the celebration of Xopher's demicentenary (have I got that right? I'm not a math person and will not be playing with fibs or penroses). Likewise, yet more belated birthday greetings to Serge.
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