This nearly-snowless winter picture of a barn by the road near my house was taken last Wednesday. Since then it’s been snowing very hard, and today the snow blower has broken. We’re snowed-in, trapped until Monday. To take my mind off it I’ve been reading about Rudolph C. Slatin Pasha and the Fuzzy Wuzzies.
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,
Wuzz ‘e?
I don’t know the origin of that little rhyme or its relation to Britain’s colonial wars in Sudan. I’m pretty sure there is one, though.
I grew up with Fire and Sword in the Sudan – well, in the same house, at least – it was written by Colonel Rudolph C. Slatin Pasha. Here he is: short and British on the left, upright and Austrian on the right:
Slatin was appointed pasha by the Khedive, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt (pashas ranked above Beys and Aghas, but below Khedives and Viziers). Several years after the book’s publication he was promoted to Major-General Sir Rudolph Slatin GCVO, KCMG, CB, by Queen Victoria and made Freiherr von Slatin, in 1906, by Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria.
He had grown up near Vienna with (like Ludwig Wittgenstein a few years later) a Jewish merchant father who had converted to Roman Catholicism. As a young man he had gone to Cairo to work in a bookshop; from there he had traveled up the Nile where he got to know General Gordon, the next governor-general of Sudan, and his career took off. By the age of twenty-four, he himself was governor of the province of Dafur, with the Ottoman rank of Bey. Highly recommended by everyone, Fire and Sword in the Sudan is a thrilling account of the wars of 1883-98, eleven years of which Slatin spent imprisoned by the Mahdi, until on the eve of the battle of Omdurman and with the help of his friend Major Wingate of Egyptian intelligence, he escaped. My family’s copy of the book probably belonged first to my great-grandfather, a Victorian teabroker who lived for some time in Kenya. When I was a child it was one of the fatter and more prominent books in our living room; and although I never read it, I was always mildly curious at least to see the fire and sword (I remember looking for pictures). I recently came across it again when I read about the battle of Omdurman in Winston Churchill’s My Early Life. Omdurman, you may recall, was British revenge for the killing of General Gordon at Khartoum (Gordon had been another pasha who as governor-general of the country had abolished the Sudanese slave trade). In his
memoir Churchill recommended Slatin’s book and now, after fifty-odd years, I’m finally considering reading it (it’s in London at my mother’s house). One final thing about Slatin, from Wikipedia:
While administering Dara, […] Slatin gallantly defended his province and though he fought many successful battles, he gradually lost ground. At Om Waragat he lost 8,000 of his men in the first 20 minutes of the battle and was himself wounded three times but he managed to fight his way back to Dara. Believing his troops attributed their failure in battle to the fact that he was a Christian, Slatin publicly adopted Islam in 1883 and took the Islamic name Abd al Qadir.
So, much as his father’s conversion to Roman Catholicism from Judaism must have been, this was a politically-motivated expedient rather than the result of a Damascene moment. I read elsewhere that Sir Rudolph later received absolution from the pope for having become a temporary Muslim.
Who were the Fuzzy-Wuzzies? 
They were Hadendoa nomads, who were called Fuzzy-Wuzzies by British troops because of their (for the time) elaborate dos.
Partly from Wikipedia: According to E.M. Roper (Tu Beḍawie: an elementary handbook for the use of Sudan government officials, 1928), the name Haɖanɖiwa is made up of haɖa ‘lion’ and (n)ɖiwa ‘clan’. They were a pastoral people ruled by a hereditary chief, called a Ma’ahes. Osman Digna, one of the leaders of the Mahdiyyah rebellion, was a Hadendoa. The tribe contributed some of the fiercest of the Dervish warriors in the wars of 1883–98. So determined were they that the name Hadendoa grew to be nearly synonymous with rebel. They rebelled because of misgovernment rather than for religious reasons; the Hadendoa were true Beja, Muslims only in name, and not unlike Sir Rudolph or his father in that respect.
Kipling celebrated the Fuzzy Wuzzies in Barrack Room Ballads, shortly after the end of the war. For the British army, the Hadendoa were notable because they had managed to ‘break’ the square of troops. The square consisted of two lines of soldiers: the front line kneeled, with their bayonets facing upwards, and reloaded while the back line stood and fired. The British carried Martinis – not drinks, but the latest breech-loading rifles. An Impi is an isiZulu word for an armed body of men. These Kipling poems ought to be recited in Cockney, but probably any accent that’s not British middle- or upper-class would do almost as well.
Fuzzy-Wuzzy.
We’ve fought with many men acrost the seas,
An’ some of ’em was brave an’ some was not:
The Paythan an’ the Zulu an’ Burmese;
But the Fuzzy was the finest o’ the lot.
We never got a ha’porth’s change of ‘im:
‘E squatted in the scrub an’ ‘ocked our ‘orses,
‘E cut our sentries up at Sua~kim~,
An’ ‘e played the cat an’ banjo with our forces.
So ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
We gives you your certificate, an’ if you want it signed
We’ll come an’ ‘ave a romp with you whenever you’re inclined.
We took our chanst among the Khyber ‘ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu ~impi~ dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ‘eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ‘oller.
Then ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ the missis and the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an’ of course we went an’ did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ‘ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin’ you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square.
‘E ‘asn’t got no papers of ‘is own,
‘E ‘asn’t got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill ‘e’s shown
In usin’ of ‘is long two-‘anded swords:
When ‘e’s ‘oppin’ in an’ out among the bush
With ‘is coffin-‘eaded shield an’ shovel-spear,
An ‘appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
Will last an ‘ealthy Tommy for a year.
So ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ your friends which are no more,
If we ‘adn’t lost some messmates we would ‘elp you to deplore;
But give an’ take’s the gospel, an’ we’ll call the bargain fair,
For if you ‘ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square!
‘E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,
An’, before we know, ‘e’s ‘ackin’ at our ‘ead;
‘E’s all ‘ot sand an’ ginger when alive,
An’ ‘e’s generally shammin’ when ‘e’s dead.
‘E’s a daisy, ‘e’s a ducky, ‘e’s a lamb!
‘E’s a injia-rubber idiot on the spree,
‘E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t give a damn
For a Regiment o’ British Infantree!
So ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
An’ ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ‘ayrick ‘ead of ‘air —
You big black boundin’ beggar — for you broke a British square!
From Barrack Room Ballads, Rudyard Kipling, 1892.
A hayrick, Devon:
A Bad Guide 
Two hair-related posts in a row? Is your own in retreat?
I just marked this otherwise excellent post, and sadly had to deduct two points. You explained everything but what a “true Beja” is, and what an “impi”.
Of course if the post was provided as an examination for me to sit, then I must deduct points from my own score because of the two unanswered questions.
Dearie, don’t forget the very good hair-hare-related pun I made on the Italian-Rarebit post at Language Hat. I have had no hair loss so far, but I sometimes dream I’m getting a bald patch.
Thanks, Stu. I’ve added a link to Beja and I’m working on ‘impi’.
Did those hair-dos sometimes include hairpieces ? The WiPe on dreadlocks says: “Dreadlocks are associated most closely with the Rastafari movement, but people from many groups in history before them have worn dreadlocks, including early Scottish clans”. I wonder what dearie has to say about that …
Dearie’s never mentioned having dreadlocks, but you never know. I’ve noticed that some scientists have extreme ideas about their own appearance.
I don’t think that do in the picture is accomplished with a hairpiece, I think it’s all real and properly stuck-on.
About 20 years ago I said to a chum “…now that I’m balding…”.
He replied “ing?”
It’s never too late for dreads.
Never too late to become a dreaded warrior.
When we went to our favourite market on Saturday, the girl who runs the Italian cheese stall said that she sold two cheeses that you can freeze. I didn’t know that. One is a goat’s cheese.
I’d never thought of freezing cheese. I must try it.
>Dearieme
I’ve frozen several times some soft cheeses and its organoleptic properties didn’t change; you can eat a cheese made of spring milk all year round. However, I read that though cheese can crumble after that.
organoleptic |ˈɔːg(ə)nə(ʊ)ˈlɛptɪk|
adjective
acting on or involving the use of the sense organs.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from French organoleptique, from Greek organon ‘organ’ + lēptikos ‘disposed to take’ (from lambanein ‘take’ ).
>A.J.P. Crown
Yes, for that I used this word related with taste, smell, color and even texture, appearance…
Not sound? I like a noisy cheese.
Here’s a cat making very strange noises while eating cheese.
That cat noise made Topsy bark, wag her tail like mad and give me a long stare.
Do you suppose animals have a secret language with which they pass messages to each other ?? A kind of interpet ?
>A. J. P. Crown
Well, if you put a microphone with a good amplifier next to a cheese like this one you’ll listen to some noise.
That one looks good, but I’ve never heard a really musical cheese.
Do you suppose animals have a secret language with which they pass messages to each other ?? A kind of interpet ?
Yes, not so secret, they do it by smell. It’s a language we are incapable of understanding.
I’ve never heard a really musical cheese
What about Handkäse mit Musik ? Or musique fromage (cheesy music) ?
No. Mit Musik is ‘with farting’. Eine kleine Nachtmusik, that’s ‘A Little Night Farting’. You can’t fool me, I know a few things about German.
Did you know that Rundfahrt refers to the music of the rind of a cheese (German is so concise, don’t you find?).
And, on a more serious note, have you ever thought that the holes in Swiss cheese play much the same role as the rests in a musical work?
Is the Tour de France a musical-farting competition, then? If I were John Cage I would have drawn stave lines on slices of Swiss cheese and played the holes as semibreves (whole notes), on the piano.
What gas is contained in the holes of Swiss cheese before they’re sliced open? I recently learnt on a Norwegian quiz programme that the bubbles in boiling water aren’t oxygen, they’re water vapour.
Carbon dioxide, it says here.
I considered a pun on breve and chèvre yesterday, but it never came together.
If you have oxygen bubbling out of your water, then you probably have hydrogen, too.
Two evenings ago, our house was full of people, including the governor of Massachusetts. A slightly surreal experience.
Wow. Did they just drop round, or had you invited them?
I considered a pun on breve and chèvre yesterday
You and Trond are out of my class with your puns. It could be an ability that’s related to understanding maths. Or not.
At the gov’s request, our town’s local committee of the Democratic party was trying to organize an opportunity for him to talk with a bunch of activists about some of his current thinking about this and that, like how to beat the Republicans. Somebody said “Hey, I know where we should have it: I know these people who have a beautiful big front room in their house …” So they asked us and we said yes.
On Wednesday night I got the folding chairs and the coat rack out of the basement and Tesi got out the good tablecloths, and on Thursday I went to Providence and had a busy day teaching, first day of a new term, while she had a busy day of her own, and then we came home to all this hubbub and eventually the spectacle of this dignitary standing in our living room and doing the charming politician thing in front of a packed house.
I guess you had food & drink. It sounds as if you live in a nice old house. Have you guys ever thought of running for office?
Yes, the organizers brought food and drink. I felt quite detached from the whole thing, but curious to see the great man up close.
The house is not particularly old (exactly 100 years, I believe), but it’s big and it does have a kind of spaciousness that we have try to put to good use from time to time, including the occasional folk music performance.
Have I told this story? One day a man came by and said that he lives in Denmark now but was born in this house, as were quite a few other people, back in the late 50s/early 60s, when his father the doctor practiced there. We had been unaware of the fact that the place had once housed a doctor’s office, let alone that this doctor and his wife had run a rather well-known coffeehouse in Boston during those folk music revival years, and that out-of-town musicians often stayed in the house. It seems that there were some famous parties here. The Chris Smither Song “Love Me Like a Man”, recorded by Bonnie Raitt, was inspired by a bit of conversation overheard in this house, he said.
We never knew this history when we started having concerts here..
I don’t think I’ve ever been ti the kind of party where anyone might have said “Love me like a man”, it sounds pretty cool, and especially the bit about doctors running a coffeehouse. Those were the days.
The engineer who designed our house also designed Knut Hamsun’s. That’s our claim to fame.
It may not have been exactly that kind of party. I suspect that it was the kind of party where you can hear a woman complaining to a friend of hers about these wimpy men she keeps meeting who “keep their balls up on a shelf”.
Not being familiar with female conversation and its interpretation, I will be forgiven for having to ask: does wimpy/”keep their balls up on a shelf” mean “don’t want to screw me immediately”, or “indecisive, don’t want to tell me what to think”, or both or something else ? I can’t figure it out – perhaps the meaning lies precisely in the ambiguity, i.e. keep ’em guessing what is meant ? That would accord with my general experience – but, as I said, I am not an expert on this matter.
My last comment contains no deliberate sarcasm/irony/antiPCism etc, although with a little ingenuity such things could be imagined to be there. There is an element of exasperation in it, though, because I feel that “this should not be happening”. Classical equality-of-the-sexes theory, with which I grew up, does not permit the existence of such mutual incomprehensibility between the sexes.
I do not believe that this phrase refers to an unwillingness to engage in the physical act of sex. In the best-known recorded version it is bowdlerized to “their soul up on the shelf”. The next words are “You know they could never love me, when they can’t even love themselves”.
For my money the best lines in the song are
I come home sad and lonely
Feel like I wanna cry
I need someone to hold me
Not some fool to ask me why.
Thanks for the explanation ! I didn’t recognize the connection with the song, which I don’t know. “Just do what I say, and don’t ask questions”: a perennial favorite that men use too. My faith in mutual intelligibility has been restored.
on a more serious note, have you ever thought that the holes in Swiss cheese play much the same role as the rests in a musical work?
That leads to an interesting conundrum. If you eat the cheese in accordance with the intentions of its composer, it should take longer to consume (because of the rests) than an equivalent volume of some other, unwholey cheese. However, because of the holes, there is less to eat than with an equivalent volume of other cheese, so the total consumption time may be the same.
Cheese consumption time is one of those physical constants on which the shape of things (the universe, good manners) depends, but that cannot be measured with the requisite accuracy. One never knows for sure whether one is gobbling or properly enjoying.
My faith in mutual intelligibility has been restored.
I swear, Stu, on the first couple of readings I saw this as “My faith in mutual unintelligibility has been restored.”
WiPe seems to say the following three things about the holes in cheese that Americans call “Swiss”:
In bygone days the makers sought to avoid producing those holes.
They no longer seek to avoid producing them, because people have come to expect the holes.
Currently a grade A rating demands that the holes must not be too big.
I don’t want uniform holes, but I don’t want holes that are too big either. And if I do want big holes I can just imagine them extending out into the room (using the third dimension).
Fair enough. How do you like your musical rests: uniform? big? small? Personally I can’t stand it when people pay insufficient attention to them.
That’s maybe because you’re interested in emptiness. I like surprising or rhythmical (but not uniform) rests.
Is it only me who see your blog as a basic non-layout page these days? The comment window is so small that I have to constrain my usual eloquence.
+——————–+
| Limit of eloquence |
*——————–+
What class of puns? Sometimes I have to stay away for days just to be able to drop a rhyme or a pun in no time at all. And then, more often than not, it just falls flat. Effortless wit is a lone and thankless pursuit.
Witless effort equally so.
And then, more often than not, it just falls flat.
This is a superior audience, Trond. Wit is not greeted with backslapping and LOLs, but secretly savored. At best you will imagine to have seen a beauty spot quiver briefly behind a Chinese fan.
Is it only me who see your blog as a basic non-layout page these days?
Only today I was wondering how to broach the subject with Crown. Almost half of the entire width is just empty space beneath “Recent comments”, “Blogroll” etc in the right margin. The left margin is much wider than it need be.
a beauty spot quiver briefly behind a Chinese fan.
Sounds like a blurred photo of the Great Wall. Do we have any Chinese fans, do you think? But Stu’s right, we really appreciate all attempts at humour. Your jokes, first class as they are, are much valued. The silence is only on the surface. If you’re lucky you’ll see jajajajaja when Julia’s around. I take that as an endorsement of what’s been written, though she may not always mean it that way.
I see it the same as Stu does. I think the rectangle gets bigger and bigger the more you write. Something like that.
I suppose I could change the layout. I always use a giant-screened iMac so for me it’s not a problem, but I remember Trond said he sometimes looks at the internet on his mobile telephone.
>A. J. P. Crown
Yes, the bubbles in boiling water are, above all, water vapor. There is a bit of oxygen (and nitrogen) dissolved in water that bubbles out as temperature increases. You can see in this good a graph on the subject. Anyway there are, in general, a small concentration (only several ppm) so you can’t see how this gas leaks until totally disappear at 100 º C.
As Empty says, if you could see a lot of bubbles of oxygen also you would see hydrogen (a gas that burns as an explosion*!) but this event would mean that water is decomposed in its elements and that is impossible through a physical change; you need a chemical reaction (electrolysis) to do that.
As carbon dioxide, most of fermentation reactions (cheese, wine, bread) produce this gas.
I hope my Spanglish explanation is clear.
*By the way, that would do us water again and, at least, a real fright.
I’m sorry:
“in this good text”
I have nothing but good things to say about Crown’s layout. I wondered if something had happened with the blog software, since that layout is no longer visible on my screen. It’s been like that for a couple of weeks when I update the page, but now it turned out layoutless even at first view. I haven’t checked my phone; I use that when I’m waiting for the bus and it’s too dark to read the paperback in my pocket, or if I left my laptop at work, or if I have no place to put it because I’m too lazy to clean the kitchen table.
Thanks, Jesús. I didn’t know that about the dissolved oxygen.
Your English is pretty much perfect. I hope your Turkish student appreciates the value he’s getting. Two subjects for the price of one.
Heh. My comment healed it. And they say nobody listens to sulking.
That’s odd, Trond. I’ll have to look into why it’s not appearing.
If it’s only me, it’s probably something happening on my side of the web. Although — I was at the WordPress homepage yesterday (for some completely unrelated business), and it had exactly the same layoutless look.
… but now it’s as layed-out as the any page..
>A. J. P. Crown
Thanks!
As for my Turkish student, unfortunately I have a feeling she’s wasting her time. She enrolled for four subjects but only passed one; I gave her a terrible mark: 1 (the top is 10). Her problem is not only the language; she doesn’t have a sound grounding in science besides.
Anyway, she wants to enroll for eight subjects the next four-month period! I can’t believe it. If she doesn’t pass the 70% she has to give back the Erasmus grant (450 €/month). Poor parents!
Trond: I wondered if something had happened with the blog software, since that layout is no longer visible on my screen. It’s been like that for a couple of weeks when I update the page, but now it turned out layoutless even at first view. I haven’t checked my phone …
I know almost nothing about these formatting matters, but here are some random thoughts.
1. Sometimes in the past – but it’s been a while – I have received almost pure “bare text” from the languagehat site. That may have been caused by Hat’s server, or a bad intermediate version of Firefox. Most browsers (I have read) download the entire html thread and render the text in one thread, while in other threads they start downloading the images with timeouts. If the image server is overworked during that time, those threads may time out and some or none of the images will be downloaded.
2. For a few months now, I have suddenly gotten a completely blank page in my browser when updating with F5, after not updating or doing anything with the brower for 15-20 minutes. I formed the suspicion that my wireless LTE provider apparently thinks I have gone to sleep, so it puts my TCP connection in a kind of slumber mode – I get no content, but am still connected. After disconnecting and reconnecting, I get content again. In other words, my provider is playing the strumpet with me.
To fix this, I wrote a beavering-away-simulation program that cycles through a configurable list of URLs, pausing for a configurable time between URLs. It connects to each one and reads a few bytes. Since I have had this program running continuously while I am connected to the internet, the problem has vanished.
3. Another possibility is that your browser has an identity crisis from time to time, and thinks it is a mobile app.
I decided to change from as layed-out as any page to as layed-out as the next page, but couldn’t carry it through.. What I really wanted to say, but couldn’t get my head around last night, was something like as neatly layed-out as the emperor’s own page.
Thanks, Stu. I wondered if it might be a Firefox problem, and at first it hit only wfen I hit F5, so I think this may be the same thing. Though I can’t remember having it at Hat’s or for that long, only here for a couple of weeks and at wordpress.com this Saturday.
Or perhaps as neatly laid, out of sight, as the emperor’s own page. Sounds like something from Firbank. I quoted the relevant passage two years ago @H@, 03:45 AM.
It’s snowing here, and it’s lying. Damn cheek!
“Lying”? Is that how you say that it is actually forming a white layer on the ground? Here we might say that it is sticking. Or accumulating, if we were overly influenced by long-winded meteorologists. I wish it were snowing here.
“Lying”? Is that how you say that it is actually forming a white layer on the ground?
Yup.
I like it.
I lyke it.
I’m sorry to hear that, dearie. Though I think of Cambridgeshire in the winter as having a whitish layer of frost, at least. It’s not the Caribbean down there.
I wish it were snowing here.
I’m surprised it isn’t. We have about a foot or more. They have laid some lovely cross-country skiing tracks; when we go for a walk, Topsy & I take one that leads past the barn in the picture at the top. There’s a terrible wind that blows across the open fields there. For most people it’s just too cold to ski, it’s -17c. (1F.) today. Beat that, you softies. The children still ski to school, though, despite the cold.
Ski? Sissies! God meant us to plod in our (hill-)walking boots.
Actually it turns out it’s 12C. today, and there are millions and millions of people out there cross-country skiing. I wish I could do it as well as them. They move rhythmically, as if on ice skates. They go really fast and it seems to be no effort at all. Some say it’s just a question of choosing the correct ski wax, but I think Norwegians have different muscles from me.
Is this where I should boast that I spent last night in a tent?
I hope you were sensible enough to pitch it indoors.
Using five-inch nails for pegs? Smart. But my wife won’t let me.
Indoors you just need a staple gun. Actually, tent-erection technology has improved a lot since I was a boy scout and the tents all leaked and took hours to put up. God, what a nightmare that was in the rain (England).
>A. J. P. Crown
“I think Norwegians have different muscles from me.” In my case I should add my children. Actually I understand that Norwegians are good; even the word “ski”, used all over the world, came from Norwegian. My children, only with a short class (sorry, nearly a chat) that a friend taught them, can ski. However, I had one class (one hour) last year and other one last weekend and I don’t dare ski alone yet. It’s true that once a year isn’t a recommended rhythm.
Where do you ski? Can you ski in Spain? That’s not fair.
There are ski resorts in the mountains. The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plains.
Jajaja! I wish I’d said that. I’m chortling behind my Chinese fan here.
Well said, Trond. The snow in Norway drifts mainly in my doorway.
Ø, I’ve been meaning to ask you, did you hear about Alain de Botton and his proposal to build an atheist temple? What do you think? I quite liked his enthusiastic TED talk.
>A. J. P. Crown
Here there are more than 30 ski resorts. I try to ski in Sierra de Béjar (Salamanca), a mountain at 200 km from Badajoz.
>Trond Engen
¡Ja, ja, ja! What a coincidence! I didn’t know this sentence but I remembered other one: “La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla”, that is said in Spanish in the version of “My fair lady”. I looked for its translation, I taped “the rain in Sevilla” and I found that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rain_in_Spain
>A. J. P. Crown
Here there are more than 30 ski resorts. I try to ski in Sierra de Béjar (Salamanca), a mountain at 200 km from Badajoz.
>Trond Engen
¡Ja, ja, ja! What a coincidence! I didn’t know this sentence but I remembered other one: “La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla”, that is said in Spanish in the version of “My fair lady”. I looked for its translation, I taped “the rain in Seville” and I found that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rain_in_Spain
>A. J. P. Crown
And their pope will be Dotcom, won’t he? Moreover, he weighs some @ according to our word for that: “arroba” (11,5 kg) so he already seems a bishop.
I’ve just remembered that: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/ateos/hacen/fuertes/elpepisoc/20081124elpepisoc_1/Tes
Crown, I like that TED talk, too. My point of view is a little different from his, in that I don’t call myself an atheist. I don’t disbelieve in God, although any specific idea about the nature of God strikes me as silly. And the idea of praying doesn’t strike me as silly.
I once saw something in the Sunday paper about a pair of people who in the course of writing a book had interviewed lots of Christian clergy. They claimed to have discovered that, pretty much universally, those who study at seminary lose their faith, or at least stop believing that the Bible is the word of God. Or something like that.
The other thing that sticks in my mind from that piece is the statement of one of the writers to the effect that he liked Unitarians but couldn’t stand their music. Unitarians sing hymns, but they rarely sing the really powerful old hymns without first changing the words to something unobjectionable and therefore namby-pamby. This guy recommended putting an electric sign over the pulpit that flashes METAPHOR from time to time, to get people past their embarrassment about singing words that make it sound like they believe something nonsensical.
We haven’t gone to church for many months. Just fell out of the habit: it wasn’t doing anything for us, except for my involvement with children, which I didn’t feel I had time or energy for after my mother got sick.
Thanks. Even though their own position is unambiguous I’m glad Hitchens & Dawkins + co. have provoked or otherwise motivated people into inventing and describing more nuanced positions on religion. On his ‘church’, I think Alain de Botton would be better off reusing the old churches and chapels that are (currently in Britain, anyway) being turned into houses and discos. New or modernist churches are usually soulless places with fluorescent lighting and spongy white ceiling panels.
Probablemente no hay Dios, así que deja de preocuparte y disfruta de la vida
That’s what they ought to have written on the London buses. Help people learn a little Spanish. When I am king, all the advertising will be in foreign languages. There’s a lot of advertising in Spanish on the New York subway. I always felt that I was using my time well by reading it, though I’ve forgotten most of it by now.
>A. J. P. Crown
In the future I’ll read: Mr. Crown has been crown…
With regard to languages and subway, that’s right, I learnt some words in Catalan on the Barcelona subway.
Off-board (?).-
Here you can see a picture of the modern chapel that Sanchís, a footballer of Real Madrid, has in his farm near Almadén. I want to visit it but I haven’t gone yet.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/Revista/sabado/gusta/mandar/elppor/20111126elpepirsa_3/Tes
Yes, of course Jesús would know where to find a good chapel. That’s a marvelous building. It looks completely different from every angle. Here are a lot more pictures of it.
I like this winery they did too. Now I’m going to have to look at all their work.
Naked Capitalism certainly finds some crackers.
I love all the paw prints on the floor. There’s a bird’s footprint in there. I suppose they ate the bird.
>A. J. P. Crown
I’ve just known that there is a stamp with this chapel…that I have at home. Oh my god!
Ah! The winery is also near Almadén (92 km).
Speaking about the past, here you can see an incredible subterranean (50 m) structure, called “baritel”, a sort of huge “waterwheel” where there were several mules that were used to bring up mineral in the mine of Almadén: http://www.elpais.com/fotografia/revista/agosto/Baritel/minas/Almaden/elpdiardv/20100827elpepirdv_5/Ies/
They’re rather large bird footprints. The eating may have proceeded in the other direction – after all, there’s only one bear left out of all the bears of different sizes who left their prints.
It looks as if there’s a sort of fireplace. Perhaps it’s to keep the mules warm in winter.
That’s good thinking, G. I can see you have experience with bear eating.
Repurposing churches for residential use always makes me think of Alice’s Restaurant.
Do toes have toeprints?
Church recycled.-
I drank some beers in restaurant “La Ermita”, an ancient chapel (“ermita”) of Jerez de los Caballeros (Badajoz). http://www.buscorestaurantes.com/restaurante/Restaurante-Ermita-31314-0.html
I can’t remember anything about Alice’s Restaurant. I usually hate churches that have been converted into living spaces. This bookshop in
BelgiumNetherlands is all right, that’s as far as I’ll go (I like the contrast between the black steel book store and the stone church).Very nice, but who’s Doctor Benítez?
I’m not sure they really are toes. Maybe they’re claws. I don’t think there is such a thing as a clawprint.
>A. J. P. Crown
I don’t know but I could try to find out who was this man. I imagine he was a good doctor from this village that deserved to give a name at one street.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a clawprint.
They exist, but they’re not cheap.
I’m sure you’re right, Jesús. I don’t need to know for sure, I’m not going to sue him or anything like that.
Those clawprints look totally fake. I could make fake clawprints at half that price.
I could make fake clawprints for the same price, so my margin would be greater.
Wouldn’t it depend on how much you sold them for? I’m like the queen, I get very confused by money.
Anyway Grumpy, you made the 100th comment and so you win the prize – which, this round, is one week in south Wales.
>A. J. P. Crown
Well, you calm me. I won’t need to lie down on the couch of Dr. Benítez, the best psychiatric of Spain according a woman.
Oh no, will I have to learn all those long village names ?! Can I just point to get directions on how to get to places ?
You can just stay in Cardiff, if you would prefer. Or Swansea.
I visited Swansea once. Rather nice. You could see why Cook named NSW as he did.
I once spent a day or so in Aberystwyth, but I doubt that I pronounced it right. That was right after the time that I carefully drove from Heathrow to King’s Cross in a rented/hired car in the wee/eerie/weird hours of the night/morning dreamily trying to cope with right-hand drive and left-side driving while severely sleep-deprived to meet my sort-of-soon-to-be-ex-wife for a why-are-we-doing-this-again little holiday before I went from Boston to Germany for the semester and she went back from Edinburgh to Boston after the summer. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but not the Welsh part. It was fun.
No, I must say I’d associated that part of your life with Edinburgh rather than Whales, but probably there’s much more to it.
Isn’t it “ABBA wrist with”?
Why would you take a rental car to King’s Cross? Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to take a cab if the underground had stopped running? I suppose it’s too late to be asking this now.
We spent half a year in Edinburgh, but she never fully returned. It’s a long story.
Concerning transportation, I think the idea was that I would fly into London and she would take the train down to London and we would meet up and immediately head west. I don’t even know that I started at Heathrow, but I know that the car was to head west in. I have no doubt that I was behaving irrationally; after all, I was between worlds in at least two senses and I was also jet-lagged and sleep-deprived. I have always (irrationally) associated that odd driving experience with the scene in a Douglas Adams book where the Norse Gods assemble in a St Pancras station that is also Valhalla. The streets nearly deserted except for the trailer trucks or heavy goods lorries roaring around me, the sinister grey sodium-light predawn industrial aura, the sense of unfamiliar geography as both a hard problem to solve and the easiest thing to hang on to in a moment of disorientation. Omigod, I’m really doing it: I’m finding my way, and I’m not going the wrong way around any of these roundabouts. One step at a time.
>A. J. P. Crown
Third attempt.-
Well, you calm me. I won’t need to lie down on the couch of other Dr. Benítez (http://foro.enfemenino.com/forum/f487/__f1510_f487-Jose-antonio-fernandez-benitez-el-mejor-psiquiatra-de-espana.html), the best psychiatric of Spain according the woman who wrote it.
That link implicitly gives a good lesson in the way Spanish speakers use se instead of le (the dative of el, ella, ello) in order to avoid the sequence *le lo – instead, they say se lo. I was fretting over this recently and couldn’t find a simple explanation anywhere. It’s something I’ve never really been sure about.
Take this for example:
In the second sentence, a building-block approach would suggest le lo llevé a Lopez-Ibor. But the correct expression is se lo llevé.
When you’re not used to this kind of thing, you might misunderstand se lo llevé for a moment, which looks like “I took itself it”. The reflexive llevarse, however, would be me llevé. I don’t think me lo llevé could mean anything, except maybe “I grabbed it for myself” – the me not being a reflexive whatever-you-call-it in the accusative, but the dative form. How embarrassingly tedious and unfamiliar these linguistic term are … :-(
Of course you could say se lo tomó a mal [he took it the wrong way], where the reflexive tomarse in fact is being used. Yet se lo dio a su amigo [he gave it to his friend] is not the reflexive darse. Essentially you have to hear the verb and immediately recognized fixed expressions, then you’re OK.
If this all sounds a bit complicated, it’s only the “place the building blocks and then change them” type of explanation that creates that effect. I myself now find the whole business to be clear in principle.
If I have misrepresented this matter, I hope Julia and Jesús will come down on me like a ton of bricks.
Here is the governor in our front room, by the way.
Crown, could you please separate the Spanish and English portions of my quote into two quotes ? WordPress doesn’t do things like languagehat’s server does, and you still don’t have a preview mode.
Does WordPress have one but charges for use of it ? I’ll contribute to a preview support fund if you set one up here.
I see you’re rootling away in the background, since my quote is nw fixed. Thanx !
I’ll read this later, I’m too busy at the moment; but it occurs to me that I could charge for editing comments, make sure that errors and swearwords don’t suddenly start appearing in people’s comments, now that would be shame!
You can see in the reflection in the glass that Ø’s front room is very long. You certainly couldn’t get 60 people in our living room, not unless the late ones sat on the early arrivals’ shoulders. I think that’s Mrs Ø – Dr Ø – sitting in the background. I like the drawing over the fireplace. It looks like it’s a duck in the snow, drawn in charcoal, unless it’s an etching.
>Grumbly Stu
Quick answer.-
She should write: “Lo vio Castilla del Pino, lo llevé a Madrid…” If she wrote “me lo llevé…” she would use the reflexive “llevarse” with a figurative sense. Anyway, “se lo llevé” is incorrect unless she speaks of a medical report, for example.
Other important problem is the use of “le” instead “lo”, called “leísmo”. A “leísta” would say: “le vio Castilla del Pino, le llevé a Madrid”. In this case, for a “normal” speaker, there’s an accusative missing; it could be: “le vio el problema Castilla del Pino, le llevé el caso a Madrid”.
Jesús: are you saying that in se lo llevé the lo must be an object (like a medical report), not a person ? Is her se lo llevé a Lopez-Ibor not the right way to say “I took him to see Lopez-Ibor” ?
No sooner than I understand something, it turns out that I haven’t understood it.
>Grumbly Stu
“Of course you could say se lo tomó a mal [he took it the wrong way], where the reflexive tomarse in fact is being used. Yet se lo dio a su amigo [he gave it to his friend] is not the reflexive darse.”
That’s right. In “se lo dio” “se” replaces “le” (indirect objet) because is next to pronoun “lo” (direct objet). For example, “Jesús dio un cigarro a su amigo” can be “Jesús le dio un cigarro”, “Jesús lo dio a su amigo” but “Jesús se lo dio”. Maybe there is too much smoke in my explanation.
>Grumbly Stu
I’m sorry! I hadn’t read your post when I sent my last one, although probably your questions have been answered.
“Lo” (as “la, los, las”) is, in this case, an object pronoun. In “me lo llevé”, that means “yo lo llevé sobre mí mismo, como en brazos”, as a baby, and it has a figurative sense because the verb is reflexive here. But in “se lo llevé”, “se” is instead “le”. You can think in other verb easier than “llevar/llevarse”, like “comprar/comprarse”; “se lo compré = le compré algo = lo compré a (o para) alguien” /“me lo compré = compré algo para mí = me compré algo = lo compré para mí”.
Our “le” is the same that “lui” in French whereas our “lo” is “le”. I sometimes make mistakes with these pronouns in French writing “le” instead “lui”.
I forgot to add this interesting link: http://www.elcastellano.org/pronombr.html
Yes, it’s a big room. No, that’s not my wife, although there is a superficial resemblance. The duck is Albert Einstein.
.
>Grumbly Stu
Here in Almadén, a “leísta” kingdom, I always listen “me le llevé” and “se le llevé”. These expressions are squeaking to my ears.
As you know, apart from “leísmo” there’s “loísmo” in other places, so you can hear, for example, “lo llevé un pastel” meaning “llevé un pastel a alguien”.
I thought the duck looked rather like a whale.leaping towards the right of the picture.
Ø in the background? So, then, who is the chinese fan?
>Julia
Help me! “Algo me dice que” I am not very good at explaining things.
I should have said, “The woman in the corner is no relative of mine, but the duck is Albert Einstein.”
I can see the whale, but I still can’t see Albert Einstein.
Einstein gave Newtonian physics a good whaling.
Was Einstein a Chinese fan ? Could he at least read Chinese ?
I can see Albert Einstein all right, what I don’t understand is why some people are standing up although there are still seats available on that comfy-looking sofa. That goes especially for the lady at the back. Or was she his bodyguard? And did you have to provide refreshments for 60 people?
I wish she’d take off her coat.
No, the bodyguards were unmistakeable: they were much taller and maler than she. They never smiled, and they stayed out in the hallway. I imagine that they had heard all the gov’s jokes enough times already.
The Einstein is a lithograph (I think) by Ben Shahn (I am sure), that belonged to my late stepfather-in-law. It was a gift from the artist (I think), who was (I am guessing) a patient of his.
Shahn was a fan of Einstein, but he wasn’t Chinese.
Oh, now I see it. It looks as if it might have been taken from this photograph of Einstein. I love Ben Shahn.
Those books out there on the terrace look like they’re longing to get in. Somebody should open the door for them.
Oh, we brought them back in as soon as it was over.
No, we did not have to provide refreshments. We merely provided tablecloths to put the refreshments on. Also a large number of folding chairs — that’s about it. But even those who were in front of the great man rather than behind him mostly chose to stand rather than sit. And of course we tidied up a bit. And we disposed of our Christmas tree a bit earlier than usual, too, so as not to appear too eccentric, and so as to make a bit more room for a crowd. (There have been some years when we leave it up almost until the end of January. You can see that we also keep our outdoor Christmas lights way past Christmas, but if anyone thinks that’s eccentric I don’t mind at all.) And I put on something better than blue jeans when I went to work that day, so that when I arrived home I wouldn’t feel underdressed for such a grand occasion when I arrived home and walked into the midst of it; but halfway through the morning I noticed an old food stain on the trousers, so when I got home I ended up changing after all.
There have been some years when we leave it up almost until the end of January.
We did that until we found that the goats love to eat it. Now we take it down after twelfth night. I think all my trousers have old food stains on them.
I can’t see any books on the terrace. I can’t see any terrace.
I can’t see any terrace either. But then we throught the dark side of Einstein’s face was a whale. All these chiaroscuro shenanigans are for the birds.
I didn’t think it was a whale, I thought it was a duck. You thought it was a whale.
I still can’t see a terrace or books, only the ones on shelves.
I can’t see a terrace either. I was just humoring Trond.
Thank goodness.
It’s those doors in the corner. For a moment I thought it was a terrace door and couldn’t figure out what I saw through the glass. I guess I couldn’t imagine you as a closet reader.
To revert to an earlier topic: we still have no snow, but we are expecting a couple of inches in the morning. Tesi and I are agreed that a couple of feet would be more fun — last year we had, repeatedly, a crazy amount of snow — I was shoveling on the roof — we were running out of places to put the stuff — houses, including ours, were suffering from leaks when “ice dams” formed. We are not looking for a reprise, but the opposite extreme is so boring: could we have something intermediate, please?
But it has also been noted that if it snows significantly tomorrow then some people may have trouble getting to our house for the party. This is a midday gathering for a bunch of somewhat far-flung friends of my daughter, inspired by Valentine’s Day, for the purpose of dipping things in chocolate. The last time it snowed, Tesi had to drive our daughter very carefully about 30 miles to a friend’s birthday party while I had to drive our son very carefully to his audition for the All-State Chorus. That was a difficult driving day, but although the stuff did “lie” there was not really very much of it; and then it melted away.
Sorry to bore you all with family news, but if Crown doesn’t post something new then we just have to keep the conversation going somehow, right?
I meant to ask you what you think of the new Vennesla bibliotek. (I haven’t been especially taken by Helen & Hard before, but the pictures in the latest Arkitektur N almost knocked me off my chair. Even if my first reaction was “More style than content. Literally.”)
I’m keeping my reading habits for my shelf.
Most librarians are shelf-employed.
(“to my shelf” would have been better, I think)
How much snow does it take before you have to shovel the roofs? What are old buildings designed for?
There’s not much snow here. There’s been a couple of medium snowfalls, enough to require some shovelwork in the frontyard, but each time it disappeared almost as soon as it fell. A good thing when I’m busy at work. In a god snøvinter here, there’s a steady stream of phonecalls from anxious people asking if they have to shovel their roof or balcony.
Personally I like the rhyme “self/else” even better than the rhyme “self/shelf”. It has been used more than once to good effect. But you will recall that that song which was inspired by a snippet of conversation in, probably, that same front room with the closet and bookshelves, had the line “their soul/balls up on the shelf”. I like to think that somebody was looking at our bookshelves when she uttered the words.
The 100-year-old part of this house has a steep roof and sheds snow very nicely, but there is a newer part, added by the owner who came after the folk-music-revival doctor, which is more problematic in winter. Our bedroom roof is less steep than the main roof and can easily get into trouble (leaks), and there is also a flat roof that could conceivably get into even worse trouble (collapsing under the weight). So when it snows a lot I find myself stepping out onto the flat roof, shovel in hand, and flinging tons of white stuff over the side, and occasionally also taking a stepladder out onto that flat roof and using it to ascend higher and carefully do more of the same on the other not-flat-but-not-so-steep-either roof. I always hope I will not slip and plummet to my doom. I take it all in a spirit of adventure.
When I looked at the photo of the Vennesla Bibliotek I was not expecting the scale of a distance shot. My first reaction was that it looks like a group of really fancy white ball return racks in a bowling alley. Here is an iPad skin with a return rack.
It was so cold last night that we woke up to fairly thick ice on the inside of the windows. I have taken to wearing one of those colourful Andean hats indoors. I eventually realised why it felt so familiar – it’s lust like a scrum cap.
oops: “lust” -> “just”.
No, you obviously had it right the first time dearie.
I’ll come back to this, but I’m trying to write another post.
The library makes me think of whelk egg cases.
taking a stepladder out onto that flat roof and using it to ascend higher and carefully do more of the same on the other not-flat-but-not-so-steep-either roof. I always hope I will not slip and plummet to my doom. I take it all in a spirit of adventure.
A true risk-seeker. Stepladders kill more people on buildingsites than all electric tools.together.
Trond, I love that library by Helen & Hard. It seems just what a library should be; the books are well laid out, not jammed together, there are comfortable places to sit and the building itself is interesting, with its riblike structure, and neither pompous nor pretentious. Thanks for showing it. My wife, who works a lot in Stavanger, knows them, but I didn’t.
I don’t know too much about whelk eggs.
Ball return racks for better front end performance? Actually, I wonder if they did have those bowling alley machines in mind when they designed the seating and bookcases. They also remind me of Möbius strips – an idea I can’t remember ever having seen used in architecture, though it must have been.
I always hope I will not slip and plummet to my doom.
How about this summer you get someone in to double-up the ceiling joists or something, so you don’t have to risk your life every winter?* There is some small advantage to roofs that don’t shed snow in that they provide insulation.
*This is not structural or architectural advice. Consult your wife and a locally-licensed professional before proceeding. Wear a crash helmet and safety goggles at all times.
I’m very surprised you haven’t had any snow, Ø. Since you’re keen on snow I decided to write another post on ours. Good luck with your chocolate-dipping activities on Sunday.
Möbius strip library
The design comprises 4 archetypes – the circle, the rotunda, the arch and the yurt
Is there no end to the inconsequential reasoning of architects? Well found, though. Thanks. Someday, someone will design a better-looking Möbius strip building.
Jesus asked me for help… (how cool this statement sounds?)
Well, Grumbly and Jesús, I’m afraid I’m not the right person for explaining grammar issues. It’s like some sort of maths to me.
And the reflexive pronouns are a pain in the ass or as I would say using one of my usual wordings ¡es un quilombo!
So, I won’t dare to explain anything to you…
All I can say now, is that “Se lo llevé al Dr. X” meaning “I took him to Dr. X” is perfectly right (or common). When you talk about a child or an ill person (a patient, precisely) it’s usual to refer to him/she as ones possession, not necessarily in a bad sense but because this way the speaker shows concern for the person about which he/she is talking . Like if you mean to say “I’m worry about my husband, I’ll do anything for his health because he can’t do it for himself now “. Anyway as you can infer, this wife from the example is either a bit annoyingly possessive or his husband is completely useless at the moment.
Sorry, Stu, I can’t say anything more linguistic or grammatically accurate… that’s why I specialized in literature and not in linguistics, as my mother would want!
>Julia
Thanks! It’s very well explained. I tried to say pretty much the same. This woman treated her husband like an object (in a good sense, of course); for as is “cosificar”. It’s the same case that “ella pidió un novio a Dios = ella se lo pidió”.
“Fire and Sword” looks like a ripping read, and thank you for the Kipling poem. It’s reminded me that I have an edition of his complete works on my Kindle – time to get off the road to Mandalay, and get past Kim, The Jungle Book & the Just So stories.