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Saturday, January 17, 2004
I Sit Beside the Dark ...
I had to add something appropriate to accompany Tim Conklin's creative-writing contribution of Friday.Jay and I flew into the Katmandu airport many years before we'd met Tim. When I was working in Dubai, we once travelled to Nepal for pleasure. One big advantage of working in the Gulf, was its central location to so much of the world. We were able to head in almost any compass direction and find an exciting vacation destination. This picture was taken in 1993.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Hi Dennis, I enjoyed reading your blog. Interesting about the stuff they put on Voyager. I wonder if I might contribute a postcard story I wrote as my entry in the Victoria School of Writing Postcard Story contest. I didn't win, but they did send me a nice rejection letter which I am very proud of. It's partly about a nice walk I took with a friend of mine when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in southeastern Nepal way back in 1987. - Tim
Labels: Tim
On the Road to Jhapa
by Tim Conklin
When you have tears in your eyes everyone looks like an angel.
He remembers the road to Jhapa. "Sir, we've always lived here. When I was young, we used to hunt peacocks in the fields, and we ate rats. We packed them in mud and baked them in the fire. When they were cooked, we'd pull the mud off and the hair and the skin came away, and we would eat them."
The sweat that had soaked his shirt now was dry salt dust on his skin. The dirt road was baked hard, and a thick cushion of talcum powder dust bathed his bare feet with each soft step and came up between his toes as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
They waded through verdant seas of rice. Barefoot falls were soundless in the khaki dust. The skim milk sky was heavy with rains to come. And sometimes they talked quietly as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
"What will you write sir?" Assin asked. He told him he would write about his children, about the dancing and the drums and the peacocks.
They stopped and drank water. He admired Assin's black curls and skin dark as earth, the fine wrinkles of hands and feet born of the plains of the Holy River. And they walked again along that long quiet road to Jhapa, the province of magic, and Assin asked him, "Sir, will you come back here again?" Assin's voice filled the universe.
He said he didn't know but that it felt like home to him there. He knew he would never leave Assin and his soft gentle quietness, like dust. He gazed upon the dark skinned one and the tears in his eyes made him look like an angel.
When you have tears in your eyes everyone looks like an angel.
He remembers the road to Jhapa. "Sir, we've always lived here. When I was young, we used to hunt peacocks in the fields, and we ate rats. We packed them in mud and baked them in the fire. When they were cooked, we'd pull the mud off and the hair and the skin came away, and we would eat them."
The sweat that had soaked his shirt now was dry salt dust on his skin. The dirt road was baked hard, and a thick cushion of talcum powder dust bathed his bare feet with each soft step and came up between his toes as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
They waded through verdant seas of rice. Barefoot falls were soundless in the khaki dust. The skim milk sky was heavy with rains to come. And sometimes they talked quietly as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
"What will you write sir?" Assin asked. He told him he would write about his children, about the dancing and the drums and the peacocks.
They stopped and drank water. He admired Assin's black curls and skin dark as earth, the fine wrinkles of hands and feet born of the plains of the Holy River. And they walked again along that long quiet road to Jhapa, the province of magic, and Assin asked him, "Sir, will you come back here again?" Assin's voice filled the universe.
He said he didn't know but that it felt like home to him there. He knew he would never leave Assin and his soft gentle quietness, like dust. He gazed upon the dark skinned one and the tears in his eyes made him look like an angel.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Recycled Electrons
I did check a CD ROM and found some very old, word-processing files. It's no longer in doubt: MS Word in 2004 is able to read Wordstar from 1986. This just goes to prove how the world revolves: Here's a journal entry that I created seventeen and a half years ago. It's not only from a pre-blogging era, but even before my computer had a hard disk. Duel 5 1/4 inch, bendable floppies worked just fine, thank you. Reading the message did remind me of all sorts of things about working at the Taif Army Ordnance Corps School though.
I had almost forgotten that Saturday is the first day of the work week in Saudi Arabia.
I remember the infamous US Defense Language Institute's books.
I do not remember about any references to cherries and custard in those books.
I fondly recall watching videos and driving my old Pontiac.
I cannot remember working on a computer without a color monitor.
I certainly do remember the bank statements from the Gulf!
Saudi Arabia seemed most proud of her modern new cities. Yet,
important historical artifacts, especially those that were pre-Islamic,
were often swept under the carpet. This abandoned desert village
was not far from the city of Taif. (It does look a bit like the Mars
rover project found life on Mars, eh?)
Saturday, July 5, 1986
This is the very first entry. We'll see if the intrigue of an
electronic diary keeps me writing on a regular basis? Today was
the tiring beginning of another school week. We struggled
through the 1208 book. I think that we're finished; I do hope
so, at least. I'd taught enough about "cherry and custard pie"!
This afternoon Jay came to the room. We always watch a
video from the library. After that, we removed everything from
the truck of my wonderful old junk Pontiac. I wanted to stop the
shimmy but alas it didn't work.
This evening, I'd like to see about a color monitor at the MSK
computer store downtown. I probably won't. Mail sent: Grammy.
Mail received: absolutely none. I shouldn't expect anything
until next week's bank statement.
That's all for today.
Saudi Arabia seemed most proud of her modern new cities. Yet,
important historical artifacts, especially those that were pre-Islamic,
were often swept under the carpet. This abandoned desert village
was not far from the city of Taif. (It does look a bit like the Mars
rover project found life on Mars, eh?)
Labels: file archives, Saudi Arabia
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Jeepers, Keepers
Some people are born collectors and I count myself among them. By the time I first headed overseas, I had collected decades of National Geographic magazines. It was a pretty solid representation right back through some bound 1914 sets. Obviously and perhaps thankfully, travel and living in different countries prevented me from keeping much of an intact inventory. I left my poor dad with the responsibility of disposing of those magazines. In retrospect though there might be a few genes involved here as he always kept a barnful of junk!
Interestingly, computers have allowed me to pursue collecting in a manner that doesn't take up much space at all. I have all the Wordstar-format personal and business letters created on my first IBM compatible in 1986. (Did I burn those on a CD yet?) Sometimes the data isn't even accessible in a readable format. (I don't think the current version of Excel can read my old VisiCalc spreadsheets but DOS Lotus 1-2-3 used to.)
In many cases, information for its own sake is worth keeping. I could have erased this file of Top-40 Songs: 1975-79 Arranged by 1st Date Charted. This must have been used when I produced a 6-CD set of music for our 25th high school reunion in 2002. I imagine that this must have been part of my research. Yet why should I press delete and send this to byte heaven? Storage media grows cheaper by the year ... and keeping it has provided me something to post on my blog today!
Half-Megabyte Musical Chart Listing
Interestingly, computers have allowed me to pursue collecting in a manner that doesn't take up much space at all. I have all the Wordstar-format personal and business letters created on my first IBM compatible in 1986. (Did I burn those on a CD yet?) Sometimes the data isn't even accessible in a readable format. (I don't think the current version of Excel can read my old VisiCalc spreadsheets but DOS Lotus 1-2-3 used to.)
In many cases, information for its own sake is worth keeping. I could have erased this file of Top-40 Songs: 1975-79 Arranged by 1st Date Charted. This must have been used when I produced a 6-CD set of music for our 25th high school reunion in 2002. I imagine that this must have been part of my research. Yet why should I press delete and send this to byte heaven? Storage media grows cheaper by the year ... and keeping it has provided me something to post on my blog today!
Half-Megabyte Musical Chart Listing
Labels: file archives, music, opinions
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Vancouver Newsletter for ESL Students
Everybody in education is talking about blogging nowadays. It's strange I don't see more examples!
You are invited to read a 1.4 meg PDF File of esl EGG. It's a newsletter designed for Vancouver-area, English as a Second Language students.
You are invited to read a 1.4 meg PDF File of esl EGG. It's a newsletter designed for Vancouver-area, English as a Second Language students.
The Perfect Household Rodent
H3 is quite lazy but actually that helps to make him the perfect pet. He's too small to eat much. He's soft and furry, enjoys being petted, never makes a sound, and requires very little maintenance. (Previous picture entries: December 21, 2003 and September 13, 2003.)
I did notice tons of animals for sale in the newspaper's classified advertisements today. Imagine paying $800 for a dog when there are dozens in shelters looking for a home?
Many larger pets aren't really suited for apartment living. We also like being able to take a vacation at a moment's notice. H3 is fine for a week in the cage and if a longer solitary break is required, then can do quite well in the bathtub with a liberal supply of sustenance. Of course if it's a mere road trip then a hamster is quite compact. H2, the predecessor, came along on the camping trip to Newfoundland and back. That summer journey was seven weeks and 10,000 miles, but required just one pet-store stop. We needed to replace a leaky water bottle. Oh, and what's a vet bill?
I did notice tons of animals for sale in the newspaper's classified advertisements today. Imagine paying $800 for a dog when there are dozens in shelters looking for a home?
Many larger pets aren't really suited for apartment living. We also like being able to take a vacation at a moment's notice. H3 is fine for a week in the cage and if a longer solitary break is required, then can do quite well in the bathtub with a liberal supply of sustenance. Of course if it's a mere road trip then a hamster is quite compact. H2, the predecessor, came along on the camping trip to Newfoundland and back. That summer journey was seven weeks and 10,000 miles, but required just one pet-store stop. We needed to replace a leaky water bottle. Oh, and what's a vet bill?
Labels: pets
Monday, January 12, 2004
Contridiction
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
--- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
--- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
More on the Intersellar LP
Last Friday, I discovered a bit of information about the special records that were placed on the unmanned, Voyagers in 1977. The topic was intriguing enough so that I sought out the definitive source of information. You might be surprised to hear how rushed the project really was. I found this at our city library:
Hardcover: Murmurs of the Earth - The Voyager Interstellar Record Author: Carl Sagan Publisher: Random House; (October 12, 1978) ISBN: 0394410475
Sunday, January 11, 2004
'Spe....cial En....glish' and Other Silly Things
On January 5, I mentioned VOA's special English and included a 14-minute audio report from their Internet site. Here's a response from Don, a friend, reader of this blog, and current contributor ...
Hi, I've been meaning to write about the 'spe....cial En....glish', but hadn't gotten around to it.
When I was in my (Peace Corps) village in Senegal, all the contact I had with the outside world was my little transistor radio. Amazingly, it picked up VoA. Most of the time I didn't bother as I was caught up in village life, like saving babies from dying, trying experimental gardens and digging latrines, but every once in a while, I would turn it on. The VoA programs in 'Spe...cial En....glish' would come on and I could listen for about 5 minutes before it drove me crazy. That was before I was an English teacher, but I used to wonder if anybody as a second language English speaker could make out of what was being read. The vocabulary and grammar level were not brought down to a level they would be able to understand, and if they had that good a command of English, those listeners wouldn't need special English. However, over the years, I have come across people who did listen to those broadcasts and enjoyed them.
Another phenomenon that always amazed me, (probably not as a boy, but later) was the Indian and Cowboy movies wherein the Indians spoke pidgin English but seemed to have an unbelievable vocabulary and knew all the irregular past tense verbs and past participles, relative clauses, present perfect and could pronounce all words correctly but still hadn't mastered simple verb 'to be' or the difference between subject, object and possessive pronouns. On the other hand, as a teacher in the Arab world, that doesn't seem so far fetched. If you can find them, watch some of the old westerns in which the Indians actually had conversations with the white man. And, by the way, who were those early ESL teachers teaching the Indians? Even the most out-of-the-way tribes seemed to speak English. It's not like they lived among the white man and 'acquired' it naturally.
Of course there are so many other aspects of the Indian and cowboy movies that are far fetched, too. The towns were always so well laid out and neat. The women all wore stylish clothes, modern hair-styles and walked around carrying parasols, the homes had over-stuffed furniture and lovely tie back curtains, and, no matter how long they had been on the trail, the cowboys were always clean-shaven. And if there was ever a dance, no sweat stains under their arms. I've been to Texas and I know, in the summer you can't even sit outside without the sweat trickling down, much less dance a square dance. And Oklahoma or Kansas are as hot. And those general stores were better stocked than my local cold store.
But nearly all historical portrayals are unrealistic, be they the old West or colonial America, the South of the Civil War or Merry Old England. Those people couldn't all have had perfect teeth, flawless complexions and gorgeous hair. In fact, the opposite is more historically accurate.
Check out a wonderfully realistic film of the 70s "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. It's about life in a gold-rush town in the Pacific northwest. And a poignant love story, as well. One of my all-time favorite films.
Hi, I've been meaning to write about the 'spe....cial En....glish', but hadn't gotten around to it.
When I was in my (Peace Corps) village in Senegal, all the contact I had with the outside world was my little transistor radio. Amazingly, it picked up VoA. Most of the time I didn't bother as I was caught up in village life, like saving babies from dying, trying experimental gardens and digging latrines, but every once in a while, I would turn it on. The VoA programs in 'Spe...cial En....glish' would come on and I could listen for about 5 minutes before it drove me crazy. That was before I was an English teacher, but I used to wonder if anybody as a second language English speaker could make out of what was being read. The vocabulary and grammar level were not brought down to a level they would be able to understand, and if they had that good a command of English, those listeners wouldn't need special English. However, over the years, I have come across people who did listen to those broadcasts and enjoyed them.
Another phenomenon that always amazed me, (probably not as a boy, but later) was the Indian and Cowboy movies wherein the Indians spoke pidgin English but seemed to have an unbelievable vocabulary and knew all the irregular past tense verbs and past participles, relative clauses, present perfect and could pronounce all words correctly but still hadn't mastered simple verb 'to be' or the difference between subject, object and possessive pronouns. On the other hand, as a teacher in the Arab world, that doesn't seem so far fetched. If you can find them, watch some of the old westerns in which the Indians actually had conversations with the white man. And, by the way, who were those early ESL teachers teaching the Indians? Even the most out-of-the-way tribes seemed to speak English. It's not like they lived among the white man and 'acquired' it naturally.
Of course there are so many other aspects of the Indian and cowboy movies that are far fetched, too. The towns were always so well laid out and neat. The women all wore stylish clothes, modern hair-styles and walked around carrying parasols, the homes had over-stuffed furniture and lovely tie back curtains, and, no matter how long they had been on the trail, the cowboys were always clean-shaven. And if there was ever a dance, no sweat stains under their arms. I've been to Texas and I know, in the summer you can't even sit outside without the sweat trickling down, much less dance a square dance. And Oklahoma or Kansas are as hot. And those general stores were better stocked than my local cold store.
But nearly all historical portrayals are unrealistic, be they the old West or colonial America, the South of the Civil War or Merry Old England. Those people couldn't all have had perfect teeth, flawless complexions and gorgeous hair. In fact, the opposite is more historically accurate.
Check out a wonderfully realistic film of the 70s "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. It's about life in a gold-rush town in the Pacific northwest. And a poignant love story, as well. One of my all-time favorite films.
Labels: Don
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