TUESDAY EVENING POETRY, PROSE, TELEVISION AND...SECOND LIFE!

By Debbie Bulloch



Since its inception on June 23, 2003, Second Life has become deeply entrenched (or is that embedded) into our popular culture. Several television shows have featured elements from Second Life. On October 24, 2007, Second Life was featured prominently, and used as a tool to locate a suspect, in the CSI:NY episode "Down the Rabbit Hole." Second Life was also featured in the CSI:NY episode "DOA for a Day" (air date: April 2, 2008).

In an instance of virtual reality being stranger than television fiction, the show featured an interactive component. The CSI:NY Virtual Experience encouraged viewers to continue the hunt for the killer avatar. A separate Second Life region was created by The Electric Sheep Company (those of you who have read the book on which the movie “Blade Runner” is based will understand the reference to “electric sheep”) to act as a gateway for the episode viewers. The Electric Sheep Company created its own Second Life viewer called OnRez.



Other television programs have featured Second Life in the show’s plotline. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit parodied Second Life in its episode "Avatar.” Dwight Schrute from the television series The Office is an avid Second Life resident; this was featured prominently in the October 25, 2007 episode "Local Ad." In that episode, Dwight has an avatar named 'Dwight Shelford' who is able to fly, and Dwight creates a virtual world within Second Life named Second Second Life. And in an episode of the CBS drama Ghost Whisperer, Melinda Gordon experiences a similar online world, at one point pulling an avatar out of her computer at the shop as the user's ghost.

Second Life has also been featured in popular literature. The Darkest Evening of the Year is a novel by Dean Koontz (one of my favorite mystery writers) released on November 27, 2007. In the novel, one of the characters is a private detective by the name of Vern Lesley; Vern lives vicariously through his Second Life avatar, Von Longwood. Koontz himself has “attended” several Second Life writers’ forums. His portrayal of Vern and his fixation with Second Life is less than flattering, however. Perhaps as expected, Koontz reserves his best treatment for the novel’s principal protagonists - Amy Redwing, her boyfriend Brian McCarthy and a rescued Golden Retriever named “Nickie.” In the novel, Koontz shows the reader how Amy takes great personal risks on behalf of abandoned Golden Retrievers; he also learn how Brian must overcome his past in order to become a better person; and, finally, we see how “Nickie” touches the lives of every human (and animal) she meets.

In the novel, we learn that Amy is being pursued by those who wish to harm her, Brian, and her dogs. As the novel rushes headlong towards its exciting conclusion, Amy and Brian work past their respective dark pasts in order to save each other, their dogs and the lives of other innocents caught in the mess.



Incidentally, the novel’s title is a reference to a poem by one of our past featured poets, Robert Frost and his poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. In Chapter 13 of the novel, Amy goes back to a recurrent dream (no, I am not going to give away the novel's plot here) where she is walking through the woods. In remembering her dark dreams, Amy also remembers how Frost's poem had sustained her during those earlier days. Koontz also refers to Frost’s poem at the beginning of Parts One, Two and Three of the book.

Even though Koontz’s portrayal of a Second Life resident is less than flattering, The Darkest Evening of the Year is one of Koontz’s best recent novels. If you love a good mystery novel, if you believe that good will eventually trump evil and if you have a keen appreciation for the innate nobility and kind heart of all dogs, you will enjoy reading this novel.

For those of you who are counting, this is our blog's post #99. Stay tuned for post #100 and learn a thing or two, that you may not already know, about Between Homes. Coincidentally, we are also coming up on BH’s one-year anniversary; this is indeed a very exciting time for all of us.

Enjoy!

NOTE: The artwork for the cover of the two books referred on this post is copyrighted and it is the property of its respective owners. All rights reserved.

MONDAY FRENCH ACTOR

Hello my dear friends ,

First we have to congratulate Debbie for the very high quality of her articles and her posts. It is so interesting and each article very different from the others. What you offer us Debbie every day is very nice, sweet ! Thank you so much ! You are a great author and writer.

I would like to introduce you tonight to a french actor : Jean Reno

Jean Reno was born in Casablanca, Morocco.
He came to France in 1960 and attended an acting study at the school of René Simon in 1970. After that he made his first experiences with theater group before he made his film debut in 1979 with "L'hypothèse du tableau volé".

Here is a gift for a friend who really loves and appreciates french actors especially when they are almost nude (hehehehe)

Please have a look to that video :

http://www.actualite-de-stars.com/video/jean-reno/yakk75rTeCF1W2xuA.html

First it followed smaller roles for the two-meter man like "Voulez-vous un bébé Nobel?", "L'avant dernier" and "La passante du Sans-Souci - , than he had that fateful meeting which became important for his future career.

He shot his first movie under the direction of Luc Besson called "Le dernier combat, finally it followed the international breakthrough in 1985 with Besson's "Subway" and with "Le grand bleu in 1988.

He also worked together with Luc Besson for the movies "Nikita" and "Léon" , which paved the way for the USA.

Other well-known movies of the 80s are "Et demain viendra le jour" , "I Love You" and "Monsieur Benjamin" .

Oh with Luc and these different movies, Jean Reno managed to become a very great and famous actor. Oh I loved these movies Subway and Nikita and Leon very hard movies ! so rude but there was a part of humanity ! I advise you to watch these movies. And the big blue is so special to me ! i would like to go in the deepest ocean in the hugest oceans like jean marc barr did ! would like to do that ! sometimes i dream that i go in the water and stay hours and hours under the sea in the water and think ! being here under the water doing nothing just exploring around, looking around and there is the dark ! it is a strange sensation very weird sensation ! did you ever feel that ?

and the music of the big blue ?

I really love it ! it is so deep so strong !

This music is like a call, a call of the deep ocen ! i would like to go into this deep ocean and go down and down and never stop ! oh it is so "particular"

http://www.toutlecine.com/film/videos/0001/00013206/00007239-bande-annonce-1-le-grand-bleu.html

Jean Reno is regularly engaged in France as well as in the USA since the 90's. He obtained huge popularity with movies like Les visiteurs, "French Kiss" , "Mission: Impossible" , "Le jaguar", "Godzilla", "Ronin", "Les rivières pourpres, "Wasabi" as well as the repeat performance of "The Pink Panther" with Steve Martin.

So my friends I recommend you to watch movies with Jean Reno especially movies of Luc Besson to begin and please tell me what is your opinion.

Byeee

see you soon

arc

SUNDAY PHOTO HISTORY CORNER

By Debbie Bulloch



The December 7, 1941, attack by Japan on America’s Pearl Harbor threw the entire country into a war frenzy and it led to the U.S. declaring war on Japan and Germany. The effects of the Japanese attack were especially felt on the West Coast, from Washington to California. Reports of sighting of Japanese vessels became as commonplace as reports of UFO sightings.

On February 1942, Californian’s worst fears were realized when the Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine I-17, under the command of Commander Nishino Kozo, surfaced and shelled the ellwood oil refinery near Santa Barbara. Before the war, as skipper of an oil tanker, Nishino had refueled there. The shelling did only minor damage to a pier and to an oil well derrick. The attack, however, managed to fuel "invasion" fears along the West Coast.

Contemporary newspaper accounts reported the attack on the Ellwood oil fields, approximately 12 miles north of Santa Barbara. The papers reported that 16 shells fired, beginning at 7:15 p.m. on February 23, 1942. Three shells struck near the Bankline Co. oil refinery - the apparent target of the shelling. Rigging and pumping equipment at a well about 1,000 yards inland were destroyed but otherwise no damage was caused. One shell overshot the target by three miles and landed on the Tecolote ranch, where it exploded. Another landed on the nearby Staniff ranch, dug a hole five feet deep, but failed to explode. Eleven other shells fell short and dropped into the sea.

The first report of the attack was called in to police by Mrs. George Heaney of San Marcos Pass, who observed the submarine through binoculars and reported it was about a mile offshore. Oil refinery worker Bob Miller also called in a report during the attack. According to the official report of the 11th Naval District, the I-17 surfaced at 7:10 pm, Pacific War Time (2 hours ahead of standard time, so about a half hour after sunset), shortly after President Roosevelt's weekly fireside "chat" began. At 7:15 pm, the submarine began firing from its deck gun at the oil refinery and ceased firing at 7:35 p.m. At 8:30 p.m. it was observed, still on the surface, exiting the south end of the Santa Barbara Channel.

The attack threw the entire West Coast into a state of heightened alert. After the attack American coastal defenses were improved. The mainland suffered only one more submarine attack by the Japanese during the war, at Fort Stevens in Oregon.

I ride my bike along the trails around Emma Wood Beach, in Ventura County. On a recent ride I got off the trail and walked my bike on the sand across the mouth of the Ventura River. It was low tide and the mouth was passable on foot. While heading North (technically West at that point) I came across what looked like some strange, round rock structures. The structures were too round to have been the work of Nature. I did not have my camera with me (a rare event because I almost always have my camera with me when I go bike riding) so I was not able to photographs these unusual structures.

When I returned home, I did a little research and this is what I found:

Immediately after the Japanese attack on the Ellwood oil fields, the 2nd Battalion of the 144th Field Artillery (California National Guard) was rushed from Fort McArthur near Los Angeles to set up artillery batteries along the Santa Barbara coast. One such battery was established near the mouth of the Ventura River where two 155 mm cannons were hastily set up on the beach. Fearing another attack on oil production targets, the National Guard chose this location because Ventura’s rich oil fields were located just up the Ventura River. In what had been a nearby city park, soldiers set up a small tent camp in the camouflage and shelter of a grove of cypress trees. They positioned a mobile searchlight to illuminate targets at sea, and prepared for the worst.

These two photographs, which I took in an earlier outing, show what is left of the road leading to the gun battery's location. Due to the constant pounding of the surf, the road is almost gone now. Portions of the seawall, however, can still be seen.





Here is a map of the area. The gun batteries are to the West of the Ventura River. (Click on the image for a full-sized map.



These are photographs of the railroad bridge that crosses the Ventura River. The bridge can be seen on the map above. The line marked "levee" is where part of the bike trail runs. The gun battery is located near the surf, to the right of the first photograph.





I plan to return and take photographs of this historical site. In the meantime here are some photographs of the location taken by Ventura photographer Don. You can see Don’s entire photo gallery at Don’s Guns of Ventura Gallery

As a footnote, the Japanese attack on the Ellwood Oil Fields was immortalized (or lampooned) in Steven Spielberg’s ”1941” a comedy featuring comic talents Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, as well as Japanese super star Toshiro Mifune. In the movie, panic grips California following the attack on Pearl Harbor and people are suffering from war nerves. An Army Air Corps Captain, a civilian with a deranged sense of nationalism, civilian defenders, and a motor pool crew all end up on the trail of a lost Japanese submarine that has picked Hollywood as its own target.

In one of the movie’s funniest exchange, two Japanese submariners have stolen a large radio from an American beach home. As they both struggle to get the large radio down the submarine’s hatch, one of the Japanese sailors, named Mr. Sony, looks at the other sailor and exclaims:

“When we get back to Japan, I must find a way to make these (the radio) smaller!”

Ventura's beaches are not just a place for abandoned gun batteries. Our beaches are also a place for weddings, for lady bugs and even for squirrels.







Enjoy!

SUNDAY MORNING COMICS

Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy Canada's funniest export since Bill Shatner and Jim Carey....(left click on image to get the full strip).



Pig Latin and Monkey Dutch....

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER - YOU SHOULD BE DANCING!!!

By Debbie Bulloch



It’s Saturday night, circa 1977, you are a single guy (or girl) and you are looking to go out with your friends, have some fun, and maybe, if you are lucky, dance with the best looking girl (or guy) on the dance floor while the spotlights highlight your best moves.

If you are old enough to identify with the scenario above, then you experienced disco-induced “Saturday Night Fever.” (No, I am not referring to the Travolta film, though I will touch on it below).

Disco was a popular dance movement that had its musical roots in the late 1960s. The early "disco" sound was largely an urban American phenomenon with such legendary producers and labels such as SalSoul Records (Ken, Joe and Stanley Cayre), Westend Records (Mel Cheren), Casablanca (Neil Bogart), and Prelude (Marvin Schlachter) to name a few. They inspired and influenced such prolific European dance-track producers as Giorgio Moroder and Jean-Marc Cerrone. Moroder was the Italian producer, keyboardist, and composer who produced many songs of the singer Donna Summer. These included the 1975 hit "Love to Love You Baby", a 17-minute-long song with “shimmering” sounds and a definitely sensual attitude.

The "disco sound,” was unique and it defied a unified description. Jazz, classical, calypso, rock, Latin, soul, funk, and new technologies — just to name a few of the obvious — were all mingled to create the “disco sound.” Vocals could be frivolous or serious love intrigues — all the way to extremely serious socially-conscious commentary.

By the late 1970s many major US cities had thriving disco club scenes which were centered around discotheques (or discos), nightclubs, and private loft parties where DJs would play disco hits through powerful PA systems for the dancers. Some cities even had disco dance instructors or dance schools which taught people how to do popular disco dances such as "touch dancing", "the hustle" and "the cha cha." The pioneer of disco dance instruction was Karen Lustgarten, her book The “Complete Guide to Disco Dancing” (Warner Books, 1978) was the first to name and break down popular disco dances and distinguish between disco freestyle, partner and line dances. The book hit the New York Times Best Seller List for 13 weeks and was translated into Chinese, German and French.

There were also disco fashions that discotheque-goers wore for nights out at their local disco, such as sheer, flowing Halston dresses for women and shiny polyester Qiana shirts for men with pointy collars, preferably open at the chest, often worn with double-knit (yikes!!!) suit jackets.

The popularity of disco spawned a number of films, such as Fame (1980), Flashdance (1983), and the musical A Chorus Line (1975). None, however, achieved the notoriety and star-creating power of Saturday Night Fever (1977).



The movie focuses on Tony Manero (played by John Travolta), a troubled Brooklyn youth whose weekend activities are dominated by visits to a local discothèque. While in the disco, Tony is the king, and the visits help him to temporarily forget the reality of his life: a dead-end job, clashes with his unsupportive and squabbling parents, racial tensions in the local community, and his associations with a gang of dead-beat friends. The movie became a huge commercial success; its success helped to popularize disco music around the world and made Travolta a household name. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring disco songs by the Bee Gees, is among the best selling soundtracks of all time. The film is also notable for being one of the first instances of cross-media marketing, with the tie-in soundtrack's single being used to help promote the film before its release and the film popularizing the entire soundtrack after its release.

The Bee Gees, a trio of English-born brothers, were successful for most of its forty years of recording music. They were successful in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a harmonic "soft rock" act. The Bee Gees really skyrocketed into mega-fame as the foremost stars of the disco music era in the late 1970s.

The disco movement was short-lived, however. Eventually disco music and dancing fads began to be depicted by rock music fans as silly and effeminate. Some listeners objected to the perceived sexual promiscuity and illegal drug use that had become associated with disco music. Others objected to the obvious connections to the gay community. Finally, rock fans objected to the idea of centering music around an electronic drum beat and synthesizers instead of live performers.

It should be noted that, unlike in the U.S., there was never a focused backlash against disco in Europe, and discotheques and the Disco culture continued past 1980 in Europe.

Nowadays Disco is making a comeback of sorts. Dance clubs in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco are featuring “disco nights.” And disco dancing lessons are becoming popular once again. One trend I would not like to see, however, is a return to double-knit polyester clothing. More petro-chemicals were probably used in the 1970s creating fabrics for the disco crowd than were used at any other time in history. Well, I may be exaggerating a tad. Still if disco ever makes a full blown return, it better say NO to polyester and double-knit fabrics!

It’s Saturday Night … grab your best girl (or guy) and let the music move you - you should be dancing!!!

FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER

FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER
By Debbie bulloch



The fifth poet in our FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER series is Wallace Stevens. I discovered Wallace Stevens while I was still in high school. I was attracted to Stevens’ view of the role of man’s creative imagination in bringing order to a chaotic world. Stevens’ poetry offered me a safe haven during a very troubled time in my life. After reading “The Idea of Order at Key West” I was hooked for life!

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds



If Robert Frost is the modern poet most admired by the general public and William Carlos Williams the favorite of younger poets, the Stevens was the darling of the academic world. Stevens was preoccupied with “ideas of order” and was convinced that the imagination can discover “the opposite of chaos in chaos.”

Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a American Modernist poet. He was born of German-Dutch ancestry in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for an insurance company in Connecticut.

Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel;, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie. A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. The marriage reputedly became increasingly distant, but the Stevenses never divorced.

After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, Stevens was hired on January 13, 1908, as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company/ By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain the rest of his life. By 1934, he had been named vice-president of the company. After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford.

Stevens’ business associates were apparently not aware of his status as a major literary figure – he just went about his work without making a fuss about his work as a poet. The most remarkable thing about Stevens, apart from his large body, was that there was nothing really remarkable about him outside of his immense talent as a writer. Like William Carlos Williams (who was a successful physician as well as a renown poet) Stevens was a successful lawyer who “just happened” to write great poetry.

Stevens was the rare American artist of his time who never traveled to Europe. Stevens chose to experience the “heaven of Europe” second-hand, through letters, post cards, art catalogs, wines and other “authentic food for a starved imagination.” Stevens enjoyed trips to Key West, where he allegedly broke a hand in a fistfight with Ernest Hemingway (I would have loved to see them fighting), rare beefs, strong martinis, risqué jokes and the occasional Greta Garbo (in other words, he was a man’s man).



For Stevens, poetry is “the supreme fiction,” the single essence that can replace a lost belief in God as a source of life’s redemption. Stevens was very much a poet of ideas. “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully,” wrote Stevens. He was obsessed with the relationship between reality and imagination; he insisted that we must turn to art – shaped by the imagination – for a “freshening of life.”

Concerning the relation between consciousness and the world, in Stevens’ words "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness nor is "reality" equivalent to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination.

Further on the subject of “imagination” Stevens wrote, “The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them.” The imagination is the mechanism by which we unconsciously conceptualize the normal patterns of life, while reason is the way we consciously conceptualize these patterns.

According to Stevens, the imagination can only conceive of a world for a moment--a particular time, place and culture--and so must continually revise its conception to align with the changing world. For this reason, the best we can hope for is a well-conceived fiction, satisfying for the moment, but sure to lapse into obsolescence as new imaginings wash over the world.

Modern poetry, Stevens wrote, is “the poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice.”

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one.

His poem An Ordinary Evening in New Haven is a self-conscious digression about the creation of poetry.

We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns
That fall upon it out of the wind. We seek
The poem of pure reality, untouched
By trope or deviation, straight to the word,
Straight to the transfixing object, to the object
At the exactest point at which it is itself,
Transfixing by being purely what it is
A view of New Haven, say, through the certain eye,
The eye made clear of uncertainty, with the sight
Of simple seeing, without reflection. We seek
Nothing beyond reality.

Here then, for your reading pleasure this Friday morning, are some of my favorite Stevens’ poems.

NOT IDEAS ABOUT THE THING, BUT THE THING ITSELF

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

POETRY IS A DESTRUCTIVE FORCE

That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.

Corazon, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.

He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast.
Its muscles are his own . . .

The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.

THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

And, finally, THIRTEEN WAYS TO LOOK AT A BLACKBIRD.

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.



Take Stevens with you this weekend and journey with him in magical, mystery tour of the imagination.

Enjoy!

Before I go, here are images of the French 1938 Peugeot 402BL Eclipse Decapotable. The retractable hardtop in this Peugeot predates the retractable hardtops now common in many models of Mercedes, Volvo, VW and Audi, by almost six decades. This Peugeot was designed and built at a time when car designers were allowed to use their power of imagination to create cars that were not only highly functional but also beautiful to behold. Compare this Peugeot to the current crop of cookie-cutter cars (my beloved Benzes included) and you will see how truly beautiful and magnificent the cars from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s truly were.

(For a full image, please click on the photos, thanks.)















Happy motoring!

THURSDAY AFTERNOON SPANISH PHRASES

By Debbie Bulloch



To continue with our occasional series SPANISH PHRASES OF THE WEEK here are ten phrases that may come in handy some day. Before we go to the phrases, however, here is a brief history of the Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian (Castellano) is a Romance language that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken most notably to the Americas, and also to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Spaniards tend to call this language Español (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages such as French and English, but call it Castellano (Castilian), that is, the language of the Castile region, when contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. This reasoning also holds true for the language's preferred name in some Latin American countries. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the other Spanish languages). However, to some in other linguistic regions, this is considered as demeaning to them and they will therefore use the term castellano exclusively.

The name Castellano (Castilian), which refers directly to the origins of the language and the sociopolitical context in which it was introduced in the Americas, is preferred in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Chile, instead of Español, which is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole in the rest of Latin America.

Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin, with influences from Arabic, from Basque and Celtiberian, as well as Germanic languages via the Visigoths. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año, and Latin anellum, Spanish anillo) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.

The first Latin-to-Spanish grammar (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492 (same year that Columbus landed in America), by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When it was presented to Isabel de Castilla, she asked, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which elio replied, "Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire."

From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization. In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and in areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as in Spanish Harlem, in New York City.

Today, about 400 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the world's second most spoken language. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers.

Spanish is growing increasingly popular as a second or third language in a number of countries due to logistical, economic, and touristic interest towards the many nations which chiefly use Spanish as the primary language. This phenomenon is most notable in Brazil, the United States, Italy, France, Portugal, and much of the Anglosphere in general.

I am fortunate to be able to speak, write and read Spanish fluently. I owe my fluency in Spanish to my mother’s side of the family and to the fact that you can’t take two steps in California without bumping into a Spanish speaker, coming across a business where Spanish is spoken or listening to the rhythms of Latin music.

Now, without further ado, is this week’s selection of Spanish Phrases. These phrases may come in handy if you find yourself traveling in a Spanish-speaking country and, all of the sudden, you find yourself a little under the weather:

No me siento bien.
I feel unwell or I don't feel well.

Me siento mal.
I feel ill.

Me duele la cabeza.
I have a headache

Me duele el estomago.
I have stomach ache.

¿Puede usted me da algo para el dolor?
Can you give me something for the pain?

Tengo fiebre.
I have a temperature

Me mareo.
I feel dizzy.

Una abeja me picó.
I've been stung by a bee.

Tiene alergia a los camarones.
She's (he’s) allergic to shrimp.

Tiene el pulgar hinchado.
His thumb is swollen.

Last night I was invited to dinner at SanPaul’s home. As usual, the food was great; white rice and black beans, fried plantain, yucca with mojo (mojo is a delicious marinate made with garlic – Italian penicillin) and carne asada. As it is also customary, there was lively and spirited dinner conversation which then spilled into the living room where we all had "cafe Cubano" (Cuban coffee is a strong coffee similar to espresso). Even for me it was sometimes hard to keep up with the Cubans in the room (try keeping up with a lawyer, especially when he lapses into the fastpaced “Cuban Spanish”). We discussed a wide range of subjects from the economy, to the Iraq war, to Obama’s recent overtures to the Castro regime and Fidel Castro’s response to Obama’s offer of friendship. On the subject of the current Cuban situation I have asked SanPaul to share his thoughts and comments; I hope that he will take me up on my offer.

There was also Cuban music, lots of it. Last night the focus was on Gloria Estefan, the well-known Miami-based Cuban singer. Gloria came to the United States when she was a little girl; she was part of the large influx of Cubans who, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, were forced to flee their country to escape Castro's oppression.

Here are two of Gloria's best known songs. The first, MI TIERRA (MY LAND) speaks of a people’s remembrance of their lost homeland and their desire to, someday, be able to return there.




The second song CONGA, well the title speaks for itself. This particular version was filmed live at a Conga Fesitval in Rotterdam (yucca, did you catch her?)



I don't know anyone who can resist the call of the drums to jump on the dance floor and dance to the beat of that wonderful music - I know I can't.

¡Disfruten mucho con esta rica musica!