On a voyage across the Atlantic Le Corbusier had an affair with Josephine Baker. Adolf Loos was in love with Josephine Baker, in fact he designed a famous house for her that was going to have Lego-like black & white marble stripes:
Except Lego hadn’t been invented. Loos’s father had been a stonemason and Loos liked marble. Sadly for Adolf, I don’t think Josephine cared for him at all. Actually I don’t think anyone did, poor old Adsche.
So, in March the sun is my friend. Here it peeks through – I don’t know, is it clouds or fog? I suppose it depends where you’re standing.
Behind my back when I turn round the sky is blue and there’s no cloud at all:
Further down on the lake it can’t decide. The sun flickers on and off like a malfunctioning fluorescent light fixture.
Here, by the way, is that little island I showed last week. There’s another person skiing past it. Or perhaps it’s the same person.
The sun can’t quite reach our house, below. That’s probably good; sunshine will turn our driveway into a bobsled run.
The diving-board raft is still icebound, like the ship in the Casper David Friedrich painting:
This will be a dog rose in a couple of months. It’s hard to see how that’s going to happen, but it always does.
On the whole, it’s still winter.
A Bad Guide 
What a beautiful place! Snow in the city is so out of its element.
Huh. Good point, m-l.
On a voyage across the Atlantic Le Corbusier had an affair with Josephine Baker.
You just can’t do that anymore.
(With that and the men’s 50 km in Holmenkollen on the same day, I had to give you a YouTube link to Odd Børretzen‘s song/monologue Fortere (“Faster”). Or so I thought — I can’t find an accessible version on the whole wide web. Well, leave it to M…)
After our Christmas lunch today four pheasants stood about silently in our back garden. Later in the afternoon they chattered. All of which we thought quite suitable, given how often game birds appear on Christmas cards.
Bit late for Christmas lunch?
I’m not sure everyone realises we’re hosting the world championships in skiing. There’s a very funny Norwegian man called Northug who wins all the events; he reminds me of a young Mohammed Ali.
“On the whole, it’s still winter.”
Yes, it really look winter to me. Very beautiful, but nobody would say otherwise.
¿Christmas lunch? Please explain, dearieme.
I don’t know if everyone realises… but I had no idea you were hosting this championship. Look, there’s no Argentinian news nor links that talk about Northug
http://www.google.com.ar/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Northug
He looks like Owen Wilson…
http://www.google.com.ar/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=owen+wilson
(look winter = “looks winter”
Among other mistakes, I’m sure)
Not everyone in the family could meet on December 25th, so we arranged a Spring fallback – if one is driving about with ancients in the car, Spring weather is appealing. And so yesterday we had a natterfest, a distribution of presents and a lunch. There being no goose available, we had paella. Having no Cava to hand, we washed it down with a delicious Gamay – a light, Spring sort of a wine, and absurdly good value. A jolly time was had by all. Even the pheasants.
P.S. My favourite present was a bottle of a 10 year old Sercial from Madeira, which will be a lovely Spring aperitif I’m sure. And today the sun’s out again. Yippee.
So everyone knows about Northug! I’d no idea, I thought it was just Norwegians who watched this.
I think it’s a great idea to celebrate Christmas twice, like the queen’s birthday, or even three times. I’ll have to research Sercial from Madeira.
A perfect arrangement, dearieme. I’d like to have a Christmas just for our family… in winter perhaps, so we can eat all the European traditional dishes without melting in our hot December.
Sorry AJP, I’m only vaguely aware of skiers doing their stuff, the only winter sport I like to watch is figure skating.
That’s one more than me, Bruessel.
I’ve just realised what that top building reminds me of – liquorice allsorts.
I confess that I had never heard about Northug. And I don’t watch sports or anything on the TV that I don’t have.
It was only Nordicking in the Oosh, wasn’t it? I vaguely remember the alpinistes were in the alps for their championship; Garmish-Pattencaken, wasn’t it?
Personally, I only watch the skihopping, and I don’t actually ever watch that in practice since the rest of the family aren’t keen. So I mostly keep up to date with a German RSS feed (since the vg.no feed only covers the ‘Wegians and they mostly do not win).
I take no interest at all (or slightly less) in Langweilen (“cross-country skiing”): between the (long-track) speed skating (the Dutch winter sport) and the cycling (Paris-Nice started last Sunday; which event marks the start of Belgian Spring) I currently lack vacancies for endless endurance sports.
I hadn’t heard of Northug.
I like the speedskaters for about 35 seconds. They look like art deco comic characters, the name Spiderman comes to mind. And I like the perversity of the hopping, like you’d ever catch me jumping off the top of something higher than a chest-of-drawers, but they need to photograph it so you can see how far they’ve jumped and then I’ll watch the highlights: the best three, maybe (3 minutes max.).
There’s a bicyclist who passes us in the morning when I drive my daughter to school. He’s only a schoolboy on an ordinary bike, and I can still overtake him on the uphill bit at the end, but if he survives the snow, ice, lorries etc I think he ought to turn pro. Sadly he probably just wants to go to business school like the rest of them.
Now you all know about Northug I’ll introduce you to Bjørn Dæhlie, who was so nice to the Kenyan skier that he named his son Dæhlie.
So do you ever watch the Norwegian talk show mentioned in the article, Skavlan?
Yes, my wife & daughter watch it. Sometimes I watch a bit, though I’m not a big tv viewer. They often have Swedish and Anglo-US people on it, so because of the guests different parts of the show are in the different languages (with subtitles). Fredrik Skavlan himself is quite likable. He’s very tall, though you wouldn’t guess that from the telly, where he is of course only about 10 cm high.
I found this terribly funny.
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/fundmastery/2011/03/08/is-the-cia-pension-plan-broke/?mod=WSJBlog
If any of you is a rock star and wants to record a live concert, you should be aware of this “truth”.
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1355818-argentina-el-mejor-publico-del-mundo
(They argue that Argentinian public is the best of the world. Can I smell chauvinism around here? Oh how we love to be recognized by the rest of the world as if we’re IMPORTANT! ¡jajajaja!)
But, Julia, you are not alone in that.
No, dearie, you are right: I have more than 40 million Argentines that keep me company
(Was that a correct phrasing? I doubt it)
We’re actually renown for be so self-centred.
There’s a joke I love:
How does an Argentine commits suicide?
…
He climbs on top of his ego and jumps.
(¿Cómo se suicida un argentino?
Sube hasta su ego y salta)
Was that a correct phrasing? I doubt it.
Yes, it was fine (I’d say “who keep me company”). But I agree with dearie every city, every country, is self-centred. My experience has been that it only becomes irritating when you live in a city and read its newspapers every day.
But Julia & Bruessel, today was my daughter’s birthday and we went to see The King’s Speech, which we both liked a lot (Geoffrey Rush was very good, I thought). Then we watched a Bridget Jones video, starring a younger Colin Firth. He is a good actor, but maybe he’s a bit old for my daughter, I don’t know. Then we watched another film, called Wild Target, with Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt. We all liked that one too. I’m surprised you two don’t talk about Bill Nighy. I suppose you can’t be in love with everyone at the same time, but if I were a girl I’d want to marry Bill Nighy, he’s brilliant, why isn’t he “Sir Bill”? Or “Sir Colin”, come to that?
¡Feliz cumpleaños, Alma!
I love Bill Nighy, really. But more like a cousin or a young uncle (he’s much older than me!).
On the contrary, I wouldn’t like to have any blood relationship with Colin Firth.
Wild Target haven’t come here yet. I hope they bring it. The first time I noticed Bill Nighy was in “Love Actually” (needless to say how I love this film!)
Muchas gracias en nombre de Alma.
Bill Nighy’s ancient. But Colin Firth is no spring chicken. I must have been thinking about marriage because of the Bridget Jones film which is all about that, a sort of updated Pride & Prejudice.
De nada. =)
No, no spring chicken, but works for me. (I loved the expression “spring chicken”)
Yes, totally a reloaded Pride & Prejudice. Colin Firth’s role was not named “Mark Darcy”, for nothing.
(Can’t find the thread where it belongs but the BBC is apparently launching a legit, legal and above-board international version of iPlayer, in exchange for money, later this year:
http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/03/dwn030311080512-international-iplayer.html
Sorry for the interruption.)
Don’t be sorry. Thank you very much, Des. That’s probably going to be useful so long as I can afford to use it, and that’ll depend on how much under $10 a month it is.
I’m not sure why we say spring chicken. Don’t chickens hatch all through the warmer part of the year?
Oi, Crown, if you get a chance watch the first and third episodes of last autumn’s “Sherlock” – tremendous elan, spirit, aplomb and whatnot.
Thank you, I will. But why not the second?
It was a silly thriller: highly missable, save that you need to know that Doc Watson acquired a girlfriend who would otherwise be unexplained in episode three.
That’s ok, I know several people who have acquired a girlfriend who was unexplained in episode 3.
Happy birthday to Alma!
Great news, Des, thanks for passing it on.
I’m sorry, but I don’t find Bill Nighy attractive at all. I tell you who I thought was cute in “Love Actually” – Andrew Lincoln.
Alma says thanks.
Andrew Lincoln’s real name is the much more interesting Andrew Clutterbuck, it’s too bad he gave it up. His wife, Mrs Clutterbuck, is the daughter of Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.
I didn’t know his name, but now that I googled him, I add myself again to bruessel’s likings. But unfortunately I must admit that there are too little cute guys that I don’t like in that film…
Let’s see if we can get “Sherlock” from down here.
2 little cute guys, and you don’t like them? Like Dudley Moore and Joel Gray? Or too few cute guys, and you don’t like it?
¡jajajaja!
You’re right, one or two FEW guys (quise decir “unos pocos tipos que no me gustan”) like the manager and best friend of Bill Nighy… And… I can’t remember wich other, while I do remember the ones I like. What an awful reputation am I acquiring here! I could never be a Jane Auten’s heroine like this.
But that’s exactly what JA’s heroines were like.
No, sir, the heroines were more modest and devoted always to one gentleman.
Elizabeth Bennett takes an interest in Mr Bingley, Mr Wickham and even Parson Collins before becoming devoted to Mr Darcy, and until then she despises him.
AJP, of course Elizabeth notices any potential husbands, but she definitely does NOT take an interest in Mr Collins, it’s the opposite. And he is not really interested in her, but he thinks he will be doing a favour to the family (and to himself) by marrying one of the daughters, and he chooses Elizabeth because her older sister looks like she is already spoken for.
That’s right. She’s pretty interested in the others, though. Also Colonel Fitzwilliam.
There’d be no story if she wasn’t interested in anyone but Darcy. She’s making choices.
She is interested in Mr Bingley on her sister Jane’s behalf, not on her own.
Oh, thanks, I saw AJP’s reply when I was about to leave, but just thought I’d say ask empty! Now I came back and found that m-l also helped.
Lizzy is also aware, from her father’s example, that it’s unwise to marry a nitwit.
That’s an important distinction in the book, but only a nitwit would knowingly marry a nitwit.
Julia, you’re much better educated than me in literature and if you insist I won’t argue.
“Julia, you’re much better educated than me in literature”
I don’t think so… but it’s a secret
(now my academic reputation is in danger ;-)
Well you’re doing a Ph.D that involves Cervantes. That’s good enough for me.
“only a nitwit would knowingly marry a nitwit”: knowingly? But love is blind.
P.S. my dentist is called “Cervantes” though he’s anglicised his christian name to “Bob”.
Nitwit is blinder, that’s for sure.
So, dearieme, your dentist name is “Roberto Cervantes”?
“Well you’re doing a Ph.D that involves Cervantes. That’s good enough for me.”
Just titles (not yet acquired) full of sound and fury signifying nothing
“So, dearieme, your dentist name is “Roberto Cervantes”?”
I assume so; he’s a courteous and painstaking young man, and it seems rude to demand suddenly “Is your name really Roberto?” His predecessor was Maltese and hers Hungarian and hers was from one of the Old Dominions. Where the British dentists go I don’t know.
Dearie is telling the truth, it’s not a Monty Python joke. I have a school friend who became a dentist. He’s in Newbury. A disproportionate number of British dentists are, or were when I lived there, Australian; I don’t know why.
¡jajajaja!
You found him!
It’s curious to me that they put “female” and “male” next to every name. Well no all, just the dentists: for the nurses and receptionist either this is not important or it’s obvious that they are all females.
The funny thing is that with Spanish names you would never confuse a male name with a female’s one. But in English and other languages I always do (with strange names, of course, not the usual ones)
I imagine they tell you their sex, Julia, for the convenience of those patients who care terribly about it. “Where in the world do they tend to come from?”, you might wonder. But not for long.
P.S. one of our number really should become an NHS patient at the practice, because “•Band 3 – £198.00 Covers Crown”. But that would probably require him to become a student – or student’s spouse. Old beggars like me get stung for the private patients’ fees.
Yes, dearie, I understand that, but it’s funny that you can’t figure out their gender just by their names. It seems to me that as they have so many alien names they need to made it clear, but of course it would be political incorrect if they only made it clear next to foreign names… So they put “male” and “female” next to Bobs an Marys too.
Also there are men called Mary, in Ireland.
Yes?
But just Mary or Mary with another name?
In Spanish we have “José María” that’s a male name; and “María José” that’s a female name.
But no man is only called María.
It must be a similar construction in Ireland. I’m pretty sure there are men there who are known simply as “Mary”.
There are plenty of Anglo names like Eliot, Meredith, Leslie, Hillary, Bobbie, Billie, Nicky, that can be used by either sex.
I like “Covers Crown” of course, and £198 is very cheap for getting a dental crown.
Does this ever happen in Ireland?
I mean, this. Scroll down to the September 28 post Little Women.
I don’t think so. Are René and Rainer the same name? I like the gorilla joke underneath.
¡jajaja! the things that mothers used to do before Freud came to all the families!
If in our days we do something like this, they’d probably take our children away from us and send them to live within a “normal” environment.
Which is the gorilla joke underneath?
I can only think of that adage about the she-monkey… Converted as a saying in Spanish “Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona queda”
Boys dressed as girls: Until the 1920’s or so, little boys and girls in Europe were dressed identically, had long hair, etc, until they were about 5 years old. My father was born in 1914. At home there was a picture of him as a small child, with a dress and long dark curls. I looked a lot like him, and I thought the picture was of me. I think that all children wore dresses because it was easier to handle a dress than pants over diapers (although the dress period lasted longer than the need for diapers).
My mother taught nursery school for a number of years (schools or public daycare for 2- to 6-year-olds, a part of the public school system in France, although not compulsory) and although by that time boys and girls wore different clothes, there were many boys whose mothers could not bear to cut their gorgeous long blond curls (relatively rare in France), which made them look like girls. My mother said that it did not matter until the children were 3 years old, when they became conscious of being boys or girls. Time and again, a boy would ask to sit next to a little blond “girl”, only to be told that the girl was actually a boy, and then he no longer wanted to sit next to “her”. This caused problems for the girlish-looking long-haired boys, who kept being rejected by their peers.
In his memoirs of childhood, Jean-Paul Sartre recalls the day that he was taken to the barber for the first time, to have his blond locks shorn, When he came back, his mother went to her room to cry, realizing how ugly her cross-eyed, myopic “wonder child” actually was (at least this was Sartre’s own interpretation).
“Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona queda”
This must be the equivalent of “Even though you put lipstick on a pig …”
René and Rainer are not the same name – the first is from Latin renatus “reborn”, and the second is a Germanic name (Rainier in French, like the late Prince of Monaco), but they are close in pronunciation.
That’s a great Sartre story. This custom makes you realise, many things to the contrary, how greatly conventions have changed in the last 100 years.
Seen in this morning’s paper: “Lutefisk is a dish that gives off a vapour that would gag a goat”.
Of course it’s true, it’s caustic soda. It smells like a blueprinting shop, if they still exist. What on earth paper do you read, dearie?
The gorilla joke made me laugh, but I still don’t see the connection… Sorry, I’m dumb!
Yes, m-l, the meaning is the same, lipstick on a pig is funnier!
But I think the she-monkey saying has a classical origin: Erasmus uses it in his MORIA and I’m sure he includes it in his ADAGIA.
Julia, “lipstick on a pig” was popularized by Sarah Palin, I don’t remember in what context.
The only connection to Ø’s “little women” link is that the gorilla joke had been posted a few items earlier on the same site.
Why are MORIA and ADAGIA capitalised?
Ahhh!
Capitalised because I don’t know how to put italics in a comment….
Sarah Palin… I like the phrase, but certainly I don’t like her.
To make italics:
“<" i “>”
the word or phrase to italicise
the same as the top line, but with “/” before the i
(except you don’t write ” “, you don’t leave any spaces, and you do it all on one line)
uf, I still don’t get it right!
But don’t worry I’m just a girl, let’s eat some ice-cream…
Julia,
Look at the grey writing below the box where you write your comments.
In the third line there is an i. It has brackets around it.
Put the i and the brackets before and after the word you want to write in italics.
Put a / before the second i.
Or look here. Half way down “Elementos” you can see how to write itálica and negrita.
Julia, just try. It took me a while to learn it too!
Thank you very much.
I’ll try, but to be honest I have the same feeling as when someone tries to teach something with numbers. ¡I’m sorry!
When, if ever, have utility poles shown such aesthetic utility?
Oh, well said! Thank you for noticing. I’m very fond of that picture, but I can’t really explain why, so I’m glad you like it too.
Late to the part as usual…I thought Sarah Palin said “lipstick on a pit bull”? I know one should cite evidence for such claims, but all I have at the moment is this website a friend sent me four or so years ago. Apparently almost everything in the image is clickable (some with different results the second or third time) but the left (viewers’ left) deskfront does seem to produce a pitbull with lipstick…. Try it: http://www.palinaspresident.us
That’s strange – I only typed www dot palinaspresient dot us and I guess wp made it into a link for me!
I saw the pit bull with lipstick!
Open the door: many different things in there.
I think the original phrasing has “lipstick on a pig” but with her habit of comparing herself to ferocious animals the lipstick-wearer became a “pitbull”.
(According to recent news, her star is rapidly fading).
I enjoyed the Sarah Palin game, at least she’s good for something. The reason she’s not popular, m-l, is because nowadays she doesn’t make public appearances without charging a fee. It’s a new concept that no presidential candidate has used before, and I’m all for her trying it if she runs.
Yes, that is a new concept for a presidential candidate! And a good (although perhaps unforeseen) way to measure the extant and fluctuation of her popularity. As the novelty factor has worn off, fewer and fewer people are happy with the prospect of a mama grizzly or pitbull with lipstick leading the country.
Boys dressed as girls: [Damn, just copying doesn’t keep the italics] – Owing to having found a not-too-distant cousin who is a very serious genealogical researcher, and vaguely (y’all know I am vague) pursuing associated web pages, I have read of a convention which suggests that “antique” photos (especially American, but I believe English, and possibly continental) may distinguish, in the representation of infants and very young children garbed in flowing dresses and tresses, in that the girls’ hair is parted in the middle and boys’ is parted on the side. Please check your family photos and let us all know whether this is correct.
It could be very useful, if confirmed.
Oooooh! Look! I put some italics up there. What spectacular tutors y’all are! Merci!
[Pathetically gleeful person hitting “Post Comment”]
That convention (which I had not heard of) could only apply once the children had enough hair to part it. On pictures of babies in christening dresses (not too long after their birth) most of them are still practically bald.