These are some pictures of the rain on its way to eastwards yesterday, taken from the other side of the hill we live on, looking down on Oslo and the Oslofjord, the water that leads out to Skagerrak and the North Sea.
And some rosehips I passed:
Below, that’s the outskirts of Oslo in the distance, the rich western suburbs that are well-known throughout Norway for petty snobbery, selfishness and competitiveness (all carried out in a very moderate and reasonable Norwegian way).
This is looking lower down the fjord as the clouds are sucked across to Sweden:
The fjøs below is where most of the dairy cows next to our house used to spend the winter. The farm owner sold all his 120 cows over the summer; they went for about 15-20,000 kroner each (kr15,000 is $US 2,500 or 10 093.7025 Argentine pesos). He inherited this place, he isn’t interested in farming, and the real farmer, the farm manager who loved the cows, is retiring. The cows have gone to other farms in the neighbourhood. My daughter says it’s a good thing, the cows will have a better life, she thought they were living in far too cramped conditions. I thought they seemed happy. Anyway, I’ll really miss them.
A Bad Guide 
With or without caws, I’d love to be there drinking a cup of tea…
What’s he going to do with his land, then?
Goats are the future of urban agriculture. He’ll have to switch houses with Crown. The one with most animals get the farm.
Probably not. My educated guess: Rent out the land to his neighbours, eventually (in a decade or two) sell most of it with clauses against future property development, maybe (but this may be difficult) establish a charity project for youths or something that might use the farm buildings and the central fields.
That’s a shame, Arthur, even if your daughter, generous soul that she undoubtedly is, is right.
Here you are the promised translation http://melioralatent.blogspot.com/2010/10/measure-of-world.html
>Julia
“Había leído hace unos días su texto sobre Covarrubias y hoy he visto su traducción. Si me permite, quiero hacerle una pequeña matización sobre la traducción de la palabra “crisol” a pesar de mi evidente desconocimiento del inglés. Aunque dicha palabra tiene también un sentido metafórico en español -como cuando se emplea en una frase como, por ejemplo, “Toledo fue un crisol de culturas”, donde sería traducido por “melting pot”- creo que en el texto citado es “crucible”, el recipiente o cavidad para la fusión del oro. A mi entender, el autor compara, de manera concreta, este recipiente y su empleo con el oro con “el caso adverso” que nos puede revelar la certeza de “la amistad verdadera”.
Le ruego, de todas formas, que no tome este comentario como una crítica de un buscapleitos a su magnífico texto.
¡Muchas gracias, Jesús! Claro que no tomo a mal su comentario dicho de manera tan respetuosa y atenta. Me gusta más “crucible”, es cierto, porque es más específico y cercano etimológicamente a “crisol”, así que ahora voy a considerar su sugerencia. Pero, de todas formas, entiendo que “melting pot” y “crucible” son sinónimos. Me pregunto si en inglés “crucible” llevará tan rápidamente a pensar en el sentido metafórico de mezcla, como lo hace melting pot. Supongo que sí.
(Sorry, AJP, for so much Spanish here…)
>Julia
“Según Wiki, que no es siempre de fiar, “melting pot” se usa para ese sentido metafórico mientras que “crucible” es para el recipiente químico. Aunque por mi formación he empleado crisoles en varias ocasiones, ha sido gracias a usted que he conocido que esa palabra es de origen catalán. Curiosamente, el DRAE no reconoce la acepción tan empleada de crisol en sentido figurado.”
A. J. P. Crown
I’m sorry too. “So much Spanish here”, as Julia says, but I expect nobody can be upset.
> Jesús, gracias otra vez. Le cuento lo que hice (y no molestamos más por aquí en español:-), usé “crucible” para el poema y dejé “melting pot” en las otras apariciones. Una decisión salomónica que, al menos a mí, me deja contenta.
That’s it, AJP. Let’s go back to “your” caws…
What the new owner is going to do with this land? He can build a little “Bad Guide’s Resort” so we can all go there and visit you.
Julia, I always love to read what you write in English*, and I don’t want to make you apologize for your “bad” English** when I tell you what I’m about to tell you, but I just have to point out that there is a difference between caws and cows. The cow is a vaca, while “caw” is what a cuervo says.
* I can’t really read Spanish
** My Spanish is infinitely worse than your English. I had to double check just now because I wasn’t sure how to spell “vaca”.
Ohhh, LOL!
I hesitated on “caws” but as it was not pointed out by the spell checker , I left it… Thank you, empty!
In English, crucible probably retains more occult connotations than melting-pot and is consequently less commonly used by politicians than the latter, which became a standard cliche on the left in the form of ‘cultural melting-pot’ (the opposing cliche being ‘powder-keg’…)
Due to the occult connotations, we have the group names “a crucible of politicians”, and “a summit of simpering solons”.
“crucible probably retains more occult connotations … and is consequently less commonly used by politicians”: that just shows that not enough politicians spent hours in the chem lab.
I like “crucible” better than “melting pot” partly because the latter is only used metaphorically, as far as I know. Also The Crucible is a famous play by Arthur Miller about the trial of witches in the 17th century (and by extension the trial of suspected communists in the U.S. in the 1950s).
I’m glad you explained that, Ø. I was wondering how the crows cawing had got into into this post. Don’t apologise for using Spanish, Julia. I’m inspired to start learning it.
As for the farm: yes, it looks like he’ll rent out the land for the time being to local farmers. Since he’s a well-known person in this country it does raise the question of how he can be expected to take care of anything else if he can’t even handle the running of one family farm. Everyone around here says he’s been getting bad advice. Luckily the land can’t be built on, I think. He already tried to sell off all the surrounding farm workers’ houses, but the local council said no to most of the sales.
Though it’s much smaller, I prefer my own house to his. The only things we’re missing are a tractor, a very small cowshed and a stable, but we just don’t have the space on our land.
Melting pot -> hot pot -> cultural stew…
I always thought a cultural stew sounds terrible.
(Also stew pot, an arcane term for a brothel…)
“stewing in their own [multi]cultural juice…”
crockpot (a briefly fashionable sort of automatic slow-cooker — makes stew at home all day while you slave away in the office)
crackpot
grumbly stew
“Crucible” I always associate with crucifixion, though the etymology appears uncertain.
(Also stew pot, an arcane term for a brothel…)
I didn’t know that.
The joys of Smollett, or some such, AJ.
“Stewpot” Stewart and Crack[pot]erjack… it’s all coming togther…
Duh, Crack[pot]erjack[pot]
I never liked Leslie Crowther. I later saw him in The Black & White (Mostly White) Minstrel Show.
I didn’t know that.
I did. Also called “stews”. (And I get it a little muddled with “mews”=stable. Or maybe seagull. No, cats say that. In German Möwe vs Löwe. Reminds me of the Python lion-tamer bit. But I digress. )
But I didn’t know it was the same word. Apparently this is the story of some senses of “stew”:
cooking vessel –> food cooked in a certain way
cooking vessel –> heated room –> public bath –> brothel
So Mövenpick (funny Ö in their logo), as in ice cream, originally meant “seagull’s penis” (pikk)? “Seagull’s quill”, more likely. Interesting. But what were the seagulls doing in Switzerland, when there’s no sea?
>A. J. P. Crown
A country without sea but
http://www.swiss-ships.ch/berichte-buecher/berichte/artikel_h-walser.htm
scouse
1840, short for lobscouse “a sailor’s stew made of meat, vegetables, and hardtack,” … “native or inhabitant of Liverpool”
Labskaus is still in use in Norwegian as a kind of stew.
Jésus, the Swiss navy came up a few months ago when we discovered König Willhelm II of Württemberg, a ship enthusiast & last king of landlocked Swabia, who tried to form a navy on the Bodensee (Lake Constance) during World War 1. I can’t remember the post, unfortunately.
>A. J. P. Crown
The case of Bolivia is worse than the Switzerland. It’s the country where there are most outboard motors; however there isn’t sea, as you know. The cocaine work wonders.
My father continues to lament the cultural winds that blew The Black & White Minstrel Show from our screens. He then ‘does’ Al Jolson.
My father lives in the Midlands, I live 6000 miles away.
Ø
Are you also familiar with the use of ‘drab’ for prostitute? And drabbing, to consort with such persons. (Goes back at least as far as Hamlet)
Jésus, I recently heard that Bolivia has bought a couple of hundred metres of coastline from Peru so that they can have a navy and a beach.
How can anyone lament the passing of the Black & White Minstrel Show? It was worse live than on the telly. You couldn’t switch it off.
I remember going to the beach in Tapachula and a group rolled up, turned out they were doing some kind of muscleman/musclewoman photo-shoot so there was an enormous man, oiled, in tiny blue trunks and an Amazon in a bikini. A bit later, a bus pulled in and out got three nuns. Half an hour later, a huge truck rolled in and out jumped a unit of the Mexican navy. I thought I was about to watch some sort of weird tribute to The Benny Hill Show (now, come on AJ, it is a crying shame that his show was chased off-air).
Benny Hill was one weird guy. When I was at art school, a very pretty girl told me I looked a lot like Benny Hill.
>A. J. P. Crown
Yes I read that too; it’s an agreement during a century. Bolivia had coast until 19th century.
Anyway I told you about the outboard motors used like stirring rods in barrels, their narco-crucibles.
Julia: caws / cows
The reason that the spellchecker did not object to “caws” is that it is an actual English word, a form of “to caw” (which rhymes with “law”, not with “cow”): a cat meows, a crow caws (but a cow says moo).
AJP: I have always wondered about the title of the play The Crucible. I first heard about the play when it came out as the French film Les sorcières de Salem, “the Salem witches”, when I was very young. I didn’t know that its inspiration was the anti-communist hysteris at the time. Could it be that the gradual escalation of the anti-witch hysteria is compared to the increasing heat in a crucible?
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Maybe he should have called it The Cauldron.
>Marie-lucie
I don’t know but, as you know, the witches were burned at the stake. Crucible is also related with “purification”. For us, the anti-communist hysteria is “caza de brujas”.
I was out all day and just spent a fantastic time reading all these comments together! (I especially thank the ones that were directed to me)
I couldn’t agree more with Language Hat’s statement that heads this blog :-)
Macbeth is definitely my favourite Shakespeare play. Do you have one?
Jesús: For us, the anti-communist hysteria is “caza de brujas”.
In English, “witchhunt”, in French, “la chasse aux sorcières”. All those corresponding phrases are not just for the anti-communist hysteria, they could be for persecuting people for various reasons (mostly imaginary, or at least exaggerated).
dearieme:
The Cauldron would suggest the witches in Macbeth, but perhaps the Crucible is better at suggesting transformation? (and also at preventing a link with Macbeth, since no one in the play is an actual witch). In an alchemists’s crucible, matter is supposed to be “purified” into gold, but in the play the good people become victims, and the survivors are the guilty ones.
‘drab’ for prostitute
Right. Which is apparently not related to drab in the sense of not brightly colored.
Then there’s drabble-tail, or draggle-tail, meaning slattern. Not quite the same as slut.
It turns out that “mew” also means spignel. What’s spignel? Same as spicknel. What’s spicknel? Same as baldmoney, also called bearwort (an umbelliferous herb)
m-l: According to my pathetic little online dictionary, a crucible, as well as being the pot for heating metal is:
• a place or occasion of severe test or trial : the crucible of combat.
• a place or situation in which different elements interact to produce something new : the crucible of the new Romantic movement.
That describes the play. I expect Arthur Miller also liked the metaphorical heat.
Julia, I like quite a lot of Shakespeare’s plays, but my favourite piece of Shakespeare is this not very profound piece of verse that I learnt at school. I recite it to myself during the winter:
WHEN icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-whoo!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-whoo!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(I’ve always wondered about Greasy Joan and Marian.)
And thank you very much for your comment!
Wonderful, AJP, thank you! ( I never read Love’s Labours Lost)
Marions red nose … because of the cold weather or the spirituous drinks?
Also thanks for your comment at my blog, your questions are very challenging, I love them. I just answered although I have no answer (good answer, right answer).
Fortuitous. Not sure how many times the word makes the lead headline.
crows caw
doves coo
cocks crow
cows moo (and chew)
What about the Taiwan stuff? Hell of a coincidence, or do you only get that if you live in Taiwan?
Do bulls moo? You never hear about it. Only snorting.
> pinhut, ha!
We summon that word.
That’s the Three Sisters’ power.