Cajun French Language Tutorials

If you're looking for some help with your Cajun French, I'd advise you to click on over to Cajun French Language Tutorials. This site is run by James Leger who used to teach at Lamar University in Port Arthur, which is my hometown more or less. He helpfully provides the audio so you can hear just how all that Cajun French is pronounced. You can subscribe so that when he updates the site, you'll get a notification via email, a very useful feature.

Créole Cajun and -neaux to -no and Back Again

I was pleasantly surprised today that my blog was linked to by Michael Hébert in Evangeline Parish, writer of the blog CreoleCajun and that I got a subsequent bump in visitors from Louisiana, visitors that took a considerable and gratifying amount of time to read through my blog. Thanks for stopping by, y'all, and as Michael said, if you can help me out with Cajun French, I'd appreciate it.

Just to let folks know, both sides of my family were from Houma and those parts, but because of the stigma attached to speaking Cajun French in 1940s, my parents weren't taught by their parents. In fact, my maternal grandfather went so far as to change the spelling of his name from Babineaux to Babino in an effort to make his name seem less Cajun. My aunt had her name changed back to the original spelling some time ago in an effort to reclaim her heritage, a gesture I fully support.

It is extremely unfortunate that I didn't learn Cajun French from my grandparents, especially since I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time around them as a kid. They of course used it as a language to secretly communicate in around the grandchildren, although my grandfather did try and teach me some choice obscenities to say to my grandmother when I was about 5. I quickly forgot all those phrases since my grandmother would get so shocked.

Anyway, once I get done wrasslin' these dissertation, I plan on studying Cajun French when I can. I actually minored in French in college, but most of it didn't stick since I focused on reading. Now that I've learned a fair bit of spoken Tibetan by having a tutor for 2 hours a day while I was in Nepal, I realize that the only way to learn to speak a language is a lot of practice so if anyone hears of a teaching job for someone to teach Buddhism and Hinduism in Louisiana, I'd gladly take the opportunity to take speaking lessons in Cajun French while teaching.

Valse de Port Arthur, Part II

It's time to clear up a vocabulary item in a previous post, and it'll be about Port Arthur, since it was about the far edge of the Western frontier for Cajuns. But also especially since it got hit by Hurricane Humberto this past week quite suddenly and unexpectedly. No damage to my father's home, but it was a surprise: go to bed and wake up to a Category I hurricane.

I'm revisiting Valse de Port Arthur, and thanks to Yé Yaille, Chère!, Traditional Cajun Dance Music, by Raymond E. François, I now know what was transcribed as 'tit mom'.

Here's Mr. François' full transcription:
Verse 1
Eh, 'tite fille, j'va' m'en aller
Oh 'tite monde, aujourd'hui tu veux p'us m'voir.
Eh yé yaille! Toi tu m'as dit que tu m'aimer!
Oh, 'tit monde, aujourd'hui tu m'tourne le dos!

Verse 2
Eh, 'tite fille, t'as trouvé tu m'aimer p'us!
Oh, 'tite monde, aujourd'hui tu veux p'us m'voir,
Eh yé yaille! Ca fait d'la peine mais c'est te voir,
Ouais, tout l'temps j'va m'en aller au Port Arthur!

If you compare these verses with the other version that I discussed previously, you can see that verse 1 is vastly different. This doesn't really matter, for variance in Cajun songs is pretty standard, and the point I wish to discuss is the phrase 'tit' mom'. I wrote:
I suspect that this might be le môme which is a derogatory term meaning 'lad, kid'.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It's 'tit monde, and there is in fact another Cajun song by that very title.

Mr. François translates the above verses like this:
Verse 1
Oh, little girl, I'll go to Port Arthur! Oh, little one, today you don't want to see me anymore!
Oh, it hurts! You said that you love me! Oh, little one, today you turn your back on me!

Verse 2
Oh, little girl, you decided that you no longer love me! Oh, little one, today you don't want to see me anymore!
Oh, it hurts! It's sad to see you, yes, all the time! I'll go to Port Arthur!

So I suppose 'tit monde literally means, 'little everything', but Mr. François chose to translate it as 'little one' and leaves it untranslated in other transcriptions of songs in his book. Note that the narrator in this song is threatening to go to Port Arthur which was at this time a place to make money and the far edge of the Cajun diaspora.

Valse de Balfa, Part II

In an earlier post about the Balfa Brothers song, Valse de Balfa, I posted the lyrics and translation, and I made note of an idiomatic phrase, où mourir au bout de mon sang at the end of the first verse. Ann Savoy translates this as "or to end my own life", but I have come across another translation that sounds more accurate to my admittedly untutored ears.

It's from the wonderful book, Yé Yaille, Chère!, Traditional Cajun Dance Music, by Raymond E. François.
Here is the first verse again:
Quand j´ai parti de la maison
J´avais fait mon idée
J´étais parti pour te chercher, cher,
Où mourir au bout de mon sang.
Mr. François translates this verse thusly:
When I left from my house, I had made up my mind.
I was going to get you or die bleeding.

Although theoretically I have access to my good French dictionary, it is now in a box somewhere in the basement because of lack of space in my tiny room so I can't check it. However, it's more literal and implies violence of some sort which suits the theme of the song so I favor it.

Ah the joys of translation.

My Birthday

Since today is my birthday, I thought I'd share with you, the gentle reader, some art produced by others as well as the year of their birth who share this auspicious day as their natal day.

1524 Pierre de Ronsard
Je te salue...
Je te salue, ô vermeillette fente
Qui vivement entre ces flancs reluis;
Je te salue, ô bienheuré pertuis,
Qui rend ma vie heureusement contente !
C'est toi qui fais que plus ne me tourmente
L'archer volant qui causait mes ennuis;
T'ayant tenu seulement quatre nuits,
Je sens ma force en moi déjà plus lente.
ô petit trou, trou mignard, trou velu,
D'un poil follet mollement crêpelu,
Qui à ton gré domptes les plus rebelles:
Tous verts galants devraient, pour t'honnorer,
à beaux genoux te venir adorer,
Tenant au poing leurs flambantes chandelles!

1862 O. Henry
O Henry - Biography and Works

1885 D. H. Lawrence
Lady Chatterley's Lover

1903 Theodor Adorno
Frankfurt School: The Theodor Adorno Internet Archive

1935 Arvo Pärt
The Arvo Part Mp3 Page

Cantabridgean Again

Say hello to my little friends.














That's Heraclitus on the left, Euclid on the right.

I'm finally somewhat settled into my new apartment in Cambridge, although it's become an exercise in minimalism since the room I occupy is 9' by 10', and that includes the closet that was built into that space. There is some storage space in the basement, but I had to clear out old broken chairs and lots of bottles and cans that were laying around down there. Old tenants move out and leave the most ridiculous things such as boxes of old college catalogs and tampons, and this eats up the space for us new tenants.

The weather has been lovely, and this has certainly eased the transition and the exploration of my new 'hood. Close to MIT, I've been discovering the restaurants and shopping so I don't starve nor go about in tattered rags. Embarrassingly, I've been fighting a spot of jet lag.

Thanks to lots of help from Shawn, I got everything out of my old storage space yesterday, although I had forgotten some of the things I had and do not have. I have a great poster of Man Ray's The Observatory Time - The Lovers that I had picked up at a sidewalk sale in my former 'hood. I, however, left all my kitchen things with my former roommate, and he left them at his old apartment so I'm missing my old pots, pans, and tea kettle, as well as my French press, but perhaps I'll be able to recover some of these things sometime soon.

At least Heraclitus and Euclid, my two stuffed octopi, survived the two years of storage, although I lost two wool sweaters to moths. It's amazing how much clothes I actually own, so a stiff purge of clothes is necessary. I still await 9 boxes of books from Berkeley, but there should be space in the basement for the overflow.

I'm thinking of purchasing a loft bed from IKEA since my ceiling is 9' high. I'm comfortably ensconced on my full bed that I missed, and if I can get up up up, then there will be space for all. Fortunately, my department has secured me a cubicle at the Asia Center to work in, so a modicum of office space will make working in my room full-time not necessary.

Huzzah!

Valse de Balfa

Another song that's been haunting me recently is Valse de Balfa, another song written by the Balfa Brothers. I was first struck by its plaintive power while listening to the Red Stick Ramblers' version from their eponymous debut. Their version, which unfortunately is not available online for listening, is driven by big propulsive drums. In contrast, the Balfa Brothers version from The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music lacks drums, not uncommon at the time, but carries that droning fiddle lines and more of an urgency in the vocals.

Here are the lyrics in French and the translation, again by Ann Savoy. Most poignant is verse 2, a common experience for most of us, I think.

Valse de Balfa (Balfa Waltz)
1. Quand j´ai parti de la maison
J´avais fait mon idée
J´étais parti pour te chercher, cher,
Où mourir au bout de mon sang.
When I left the house
I had made up my mind
I left to go find you, dear,
Or to end my own life.

2. Quand j´ai arrivé à ta maison
J´en ai trouvé -z-un autre avec toi
Ça, ça a cassé mon cœur, cher,
J´aimerais mieux mourir que voir ça.
2. When I got to your house
I found you with another.
that broke my heart.
I would rather die than see that.

3. Si j´aurais cinq jours dans ma vie
J´en donnerais trois dans les cinq
Pour passer las deux autres avec toi
J´aimerais mourir dans tes bras.
3. If I had five days in my life
I’d give three of the five
To stay the other two with you
I would like to die in your arms.

I had never seen the idiomatic phrase Où mourir au bout de mon sang but the construction with the verb mortir + au bout de mon sang is pretty well attested in Standard French, although I am sans my good French dictionary.

Another Cajun classic that goes a long way in explaining certain Cajun attitudes.

Port Arthur Blues

Since I haven't been able to resolve some of the vocabulary issues of Valse de Port Arthur, I thought I'd give the lyrics and translation of another Cajun song about Port Arthur, Port Arthur Blues. This one was written originally by the Balfa Brothers, and it's short but poignant. Transcription and translation is courtesy of Ann Allen Savoy from her wonderful book, Cajun Music: A Reflection of the People, Vol. I.

1. Tu m'as dit hier au soir / tu pouvais plus rev'nir
plus t'en revenir pour me rejoindre à la maison
ô ya-yaïe!
1. You told me last night
You couldn't love me anymore
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh it hurts!

2. Mon, je vois pas / Qui je t'ai fait
Quo' faire donc, tu veux pas / T'en revenir au Port Arthur?
ô ya-yaïe!
2. Me, I don't see what I did
So why don't you want to anymore
Come home to Port Arthur?
Oh, it hurts!

Not much to comment on, 'cept that quo' faire is Cajun French for 'Why?'. I do believe the translation of the first verse is a bit off since it looks like it should read:
You told me last night
You couldn't come back
You couldn't come back to meet me
At the house anymore, oh ya-yaïe!

Valse de Port Arthur, Part I

Since my last entry ended up being about Port Arthur, I present to you one of the Cajun songs about Port Arthur. It is a waltz called Valse de Port Arthur:

1. Oh, bébé, moi j'm'en vais au Port Arthur,
Oui, 'tit' fill', c'est toi la seul' qu'moi j'aimerai,
Oh, 'tit' fill', tu es si loin de moi,
J'reviendrai pour te r'joindr' au Port Arthur.

2. Eh, 'tit' fill', t'as trouvé qu' tu m'aimais plus,
Ouais, 'tit' mom', aujourd'hui tu veux plus m'voir,
Oh, ya-yaïe, ça fait d'la pein' de te voir,
Ouais, tout l'temps j'vais m'en aller au Port Arthur.
*Transcription of the lyrics is courtesy of http://membres.lycos.fr/breric/cajun.htm.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of slurring which utterly defeats my French transcription skills so I must rely on the kindness of les étrangers. I won't offer a translation now, but I will comment on a few peculiarly Cajun French lexical items.
'tit' fill' = 'tit' is a common abbreviation for petite, sometimes shortened all the way just to 't', especially in nicknames. My cousin Anthony was referred to by my grandfather as 'T-Ton'. Somewhat obscurely, my other cousin (and we ran long on cousins, thank you) Robert was termed 'Boscoe'. This is a long-winded way of saying that 'tit' fill' is 'little girl', a term of endearment.
ya-yaïe = "oh it hurts", a very common exclamation of pain in Cajun music. Sometimes spelled yé yaille. Cajun French transcription can be non-standardized.
'tit' mom' = I suspect that this might be le môme which is a derogatory term meaning 'lad, kid'. I'll have to check and discuss it further in Part II.

Buddhism in Southeast Texas

Here's a recent article about a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in my hometown, Port Arthur. I visited this temple many years ago, and the lotus ponds were beautiful then. Next time I go home I'll have to take pictures.

I really like this.
"Buu Mon" means priceless gate and sounds similar to Beaumont, which is why it was chosen, according to the archives.

Here is their homepage. I wonder how large the Vietnamese population is in Port Arthur? There is also a large garden with statue of the Virgin Mary on the other side of Port Arthur that was sponsored by a Vietnamese association. I didn't have a camera the last time I visited, but I suspect she bore a striking resemblance to Kuan-yin. Ah, there was one picture of it via google images but the link was broken. There is this image from flickr. Not like Kuan-yin at all.

It is called Hoa Binh Park and was built by the parishioners of the Queen of Vietnamese Martyr's Catholic Church in gratitude to the city that welcomed them upon their arrival from Asia. Here is another nice photo.

That's my hometown. A smidge of cultural diversity.

The Origin of "Laissez la Roue de la Loi roulez"

My last post was my 50th, so I thought I'd celebrate that mild milestone by explaining the title of my blog.

"Laissez les bons temps roulez" is a Cajun expression, and according to the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture, it "strongly conveys the "joie de vivre" ("joy of living") attitude that pervades south Louisiana." Amen, but I'd amend that slightly to include Southeast Texas since there is a high concentration of Cajuns there. There will be another post about that later.

In fact, you can almost declare about 10 square yards around any Cajun extraterritorial Acadiana because that joie de vivre can be infectious, particularly under the influence of good cooking and other less salubrious substances.

Now I modified this hoary but perspicacious truism by replacing the phrase "les bons temps" with "la Roue de la Loi" which in French refers to the dharmacakra, the Wheel of the Law. The term dharma is extremely multivalent in Indian religions, but here it refers to the teaching of the Buddha. The dharmacakra is the metaphorical wheel that the historical Buddha first turned at Sarnath outside of Varansi when he gave his first teaching. The dharmacakra is also a symbol of the universal emperor, and you can see the original sculpture of such a wheel that adorned the pillar of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka here. This capital of this pillar ended up on the national flag of India.

There is also an excellent sculpture of the Buddha giving the first teaching in the museum at Sarnath. You can see it here.

Obviously, my ability to pun in French is limited by my meager francophone abilities, but that's my attempt to capture two of my preoccupations when I started this blog: my Cajun heritage and Buddhism. I hope to up the Cajun content in coming days, but no promises.

Onward to 100 posts!

Yelping all the Way Back to Boston

It's pretty amazing how I can scout out my new neighborhood in East Cambridge through yelp.com. I have a good idea where to get Greek food (at the end of the block), where to pick up a few things grocery-wise (up on Cambridge St.), and go sit in a coffee shop (looks like Starbucks... argh). The coffee shops really are sub-par in the Cambridge/Somerville area. Most of that is due to lack of space in retail settings. Everything is so cramped that there is no space for armchairs or couches. Or free wi-fi, apparently. Oh, The Golden Roast, how I long for your comfy seating!

I'm in the Kendall/MIT Square neighborhood, and it looks alright. I know it's very industrial-parkesque down there from the occasional jaunt to the movie theater, but that means I'll be close to MIT for free classical music concerts. Perhaps I can find a nice quiet place to study at MIT as well.

Grand Tasso

It's rare, but it does happen on occasion that a song affects me deeply. Last night I was listening to the Red Stick Ramblers, one of those young and upcoming bands that is preserving Cajun music, and I was dumbstruck by the song Grand Tasso. You can listen to it for free here, it's under their 2002 album "The Red Stick Ramblers." I can't stop listening to it.

Apparently it's a traditional song with additional lyrics by two of the band members, and I'm frantic that I can't find the lyrics to the song anywhere since I'd love to learn it. My French isn't good enough to decipher it, and although I can make out some of the lyrics (mixed with some English), I imagine the dialectical differences would defeat me.

In Cajun country, there is a food called tasso--a highly spiced and dried pork sausage that is an essential ingredient in gumbo and other gastronomical delights. There is a community called Tasso, by Bayou Mallet, near Eunice, deep in an area of road houses where Cajuns come to dance at the fais do do's each Saturday. The place figures in many a traditional song.

Well, there you go! The Red Stick Ramblers not only play traditional Cajun music, but they incorporate Western swing and jazz influences from folks like Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt, and they cover some of their songs as well.

Great stuff. I know Michael Doucet also recorded Grand Tasso, but the droning fiddle of the Red Stick Rambler's version gives it a touch of melancholy that fits so perfectly and the vocalist has that touch of world-weariness that carries it home. Anyone who covers That's What I Like About The South has got my admiration.

Kill!

Based on the same source material as Kurosawa's Sanjuro, but much funnier, I saw Kill! a couple of days back. It was a relief, actually, since the last couple of samurai films had been heavy going with all the tension and unhappy endings. Kill! is rather goofy in its humor, and bless the director, Kihachi Okamoto, for that. I imagine in 1968 it was time to back down from the strident anti-authoritarianism of films earlier in the decade.

Tatsuya Nakadai, a former samurai who is now a yakuza, and Etsushi Takahashi, a ridiculously strong yet goofy farmer who wants to become a samurai, form a hilarious Felix and Oscar Odd Couple as Nakadai susses out the situation and manipulates it to a fine resolution. Nakadai, last seen in Harakiri, with his deadpan face turns in a great performance.

Recommended.

Hiroshi Sugimoto at the de Young

I finally got out to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit last night at the de Young since they are open to 8:45 pm on Friday nights. The new de Young museum itself I wasn't very impressed with at first, since it looks like the painted backdrop of a Star Trek: The Next Generation city from afar, but it grew on me as I went throughout the museum. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an example of such a backdrop from TNG so my google-fu must be weak today. I don't think the metal cladding on the building was a particularly felicitous choice. It seemed too sterile, and the texture was off putting. Perhaps as it ages and acquires more of a patina it will soften.

Whoever funded the entry court should get their money back. It's cold and uninviting and does not welcome lingering. However, the built-in fern court was a nice touch, and there could have been more warm touches such as that to lessen the monolithic dread of the rest of the building.

The view of San Francisco, however, from the Harmon Tower is magnificent and truly itself worth a visit to the museum. There is a small Ruth Asawa exhibit at the entrance to the elevator to visit the top of the tower, and that was nice to see since I missed the big exhibition they had early this year or last.

The Sugimoto exhibit itself was very dimly lit with the photos lit from behind. I suppose I enjoyed it, although it struck me that anything tastefully photographed and reproduced in monumental size would be impressive. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I found his compositional skills somewhat too frontal and centered. There were a number of series, and of course the seascape series was my favorite. That must've been anticipated by the curators since that's where they put the benches for folks to linger. I wasn't impressed at all by the temple photo, since it was stitched together from many photos and the joins were not seamless. That seems just careless in this day and age.

His abstract forms were good, but again, they would fall prey to the criticism of being interesting simply due to their size. I wasn't and haven't been very interested in his photos of dioramas and wax statues, but they are also compelling in an odd removed from reality twice sort of way. The series of drive-in theaters is very good and more complex visually due to jet-trails flying overhead than the similar set from theaters. I also liked his architectural photos, blurry yet still preserving some of the abstract majesty of the famous buildings that he photographed.

I also enjoyed the landscapes by Shi Guorui, a photographer in residence who is from Beijing. I found them terrifying in a nightmarish way, reminiscent of the old Twilight Zone black and white episodes. The series of photos of the 19th-century hand tools I found much less compelling. They are simply Ray-o-graphs, or photograms if you like, and disappointing compositionally, presented in a highly formal and flat way. I think they are to be linked with 19th-century Chinese immigrant labor, and if so, they did not serve that notion well.

The rest of the collection I zipped through, sparing a glance here and there since I suffer eye-fatigue at a museum fairly quickly. The Friday Nights at the de Young series is an excellent idea, and there seemed to be a crowd of people enjoying that under a massive Gerhard Richter.

Harry Callahan

Magnificent. I don't like all of his stuff, but he comes the closest to the aesthetic I've been lazily striving for in his photos of buildings. I love that he focused on the daily life of where he lived in his early work, photographing the mundane and making it beautiful, like this, the last photo that is of a building wall in Chicago. He experimented like mad, but his abstract photos were so tasteful.

Look at the composition of this. So fortuitous, but apparently he worked hard to get a handful of photos a year, photographing more in a weekend than others did in a year.

I love the barrenness of this. Mies Van Der Rohe was a big influence on him, great portrait.

Look how it abstracted and simplified this through contrast. Lovely.

Another beautiful winter scene from Chicago. Inspiring. I'll have to look for more books on him. It's becoming obvious that I need to take a history of photography class.

Hall and Oatesmeal

Look, I think, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am still a pretty hip guy. With it. You know, on top of trends, despite my vastly outdated slang in that first sentence.

I try and do keep up, but you know, glancing at pitchforkmedia.com every so often just doesn't cut it. I straddle that grup line, but it's starting to wear thin. Either the line or my straddle.

Anyway, I feel entirely vindicated today because in this week's SF Weekly in an article entitled "I Can Go For That: The Web 2.0 Generation recharges Hall & Oates Hits" I learned that Hall & Oates (H & O) are back. And if you check my lastfm profile, you'll see that H & O are my third most played artist. Again, I'm just ahead of the curve. Here's an interview with Oates in the SF Weekly.

Actually, I played H & O obsessively while grinding out two draft chapters of my dissertation in January and February. For some reason, the extremely well-crafted pop allowed me to hack my way through about 100 pages. I used to buy a CD when I had to write a paper. I'd just play that sucker over and over again, and I suppose H & O got me through the hump this past winter, although others suffered my enthusiasm for Messers Hall and Oates. My apologies again, J., but a boy's gotta compulsively blast his brain sometime.

Iceland in Hot Springs, Arkansas

Sometimes the cognitive dissonance gets a wee bit too much. But here's a point for the South. According to pitchfork media, Sigur Rós' Jón "Jónsi" Birgisson and Parachutes' Alex Somers have been coming together for the sake of art under the name Riceboy Sleeps and they are having an exhibit in Hot Springs, Arkansas at Gallery 801. What a coup for Gallery 801 based on the attention that they are getting. Riceboy Sleeps does paper and book art, it seems, and I think they did at least one album cover (ok, CD cover) for Sigur Rós.

Now, I've been a huge Sigur Rós fan since pretty much the beginning. I flew out to the Bay Area to see them on their first American tour in 2001 since they were only touring the Coasts. Well, I snuck in a night at Nickies to see DJ Cheb i Sabbah too. I even wrote a review about the show, which has been removed from their official site, and my encounter with three members of Metallica at the show. Metallica? Sigur Rós? Say it ain't so, Hall! I actually thought that the lead guitarist for Metallica at first was Dave Navarro and almost said so. That would've been funny.

I'm also a big fan of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why? Well, I've taken two long weekend-type vacations in that area, and when I lived briefly in Dallas, not exactly a nature preserve, trips up to Lake Ouachita (one of the cleanest lakes in the nation because you cannot build on the lakefront) were balm to my humidity-flayed soul. Hot Springs has, of course, old spas from the late 19th-early 20th century, which are a kick to visit, and the scenery is quite nice. You can rent a boat and go out on Lake Ouachita, which I've done twice, and there are some great swimming holes in the area.

But how did Riceboy Sleeps get a show there? There were a ton of little galleries the last time I was there in the mid-90s, but most of it was Western-oriented. They were a few galleries a bit out of the ordinary. I remember one that sold welded sculptures of hockey players dressed as samurai swordsmen, but still. Not exactly the most avant-garde place, Hot Springs. Or is it? Great story about how the exhibit came about here. It never hurts to ask.

Just don't eat at the Thai restaurant in downtown Hot Springs.

With a Samurai Rebel Yell!

Samurai Rebellion. 1967.

Ah, Toshirō Mifune. I have a great idea for a book based on you.

Yōko Tsukasa as his best friend. Masaki Kobayashi as the director. Another long slow boil until the film finally erupts into violence. Don't watch the trailer, it gives away too much. Masaki-san claims that Mifune was distracted in this movie because he had just started his own production company, but who'd have guessed?

Mifune finally starts showing his age, looking haggard with bags starting to form under his eyes, and he plays the henpecked father who retires quietly but is stirred back to life when his daimyo makes outrageous demands on his son and daughter-in-law. It's an odd romantic triangle in a sense, but it works. You have to love the Japanese sense of politeness, at least in the subtitling, when a character apologizes profusely while dying from multiple musket wounds, saying, "I can't take you to Tokyo! I am sorry. It can't be helped."

Another best of samurai film in the bag. One of the better ones for building up psychological tension.

Bhangra, Sitar, and Tabla at the Stern Grove on a Sunday

What a disappointment. I've liked Karsh Kale since his first album, Realize, and I suspected that I was not going to enjoy the concert yesterday at Stern Grove after previewing some of the music online and sadly, I was proven correct.

I suppose there are several factors to account for this:
1) Somewhere in the past two years, I've gotten burnt out on Asian Underground, Asian Massive, Ethnotechno (my favorite generic tag since it's more... generic and allows for music from Africa, especially North Africa) or whatever you want to call it. I used to love this stuff, but now most of it sounds... bland.
2) The Karsh Kale/Anoushka Shankar 'Breathing Under Water' project, which played yesterday, has impeccable credentials, but sadly, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I'd expect that Karsh, Anoushka, and members from MIDIval Punditz would add up to something grand, but it was the aural equivalent of slightly pleasant and vaguely ethnic wallpaper from Pier 1. Perhaps I just don't get the 'rich orchestral textures' that seems to be an increasing part of this genre by Indian musicians. I know it's from Bollywood film music, but it makes it sound... syrupy. I thought that this element really weakened the last Badmarsh & Shri album, Signs.
3) The mix was horrible. There was no balance. In fact, given the intimacy of sitar and tabla, perhaps a smaller venue would have provided the intimacy to set the proper mood for appreciation of the music, but I doubt that it would've help.
4) Finally, arriving at 1:30 assured that I was perched precariously and uncomfortably on the hillside just to get a glimpse of the performers on stage. I have no idea why that they have put in tables in the main Stern Grove area. It seems to be a terrible waste of space and only allows a certain amount of people to actually be able to see the concert. And the number of folks in attendance yesterday far outnumbered that small space. Would felling trees actually be a bad iea in this instance to landscape the side of the hill into, I don't know, a proper amphitheater?

Random Thoughts from a Sunday

First:
If you are an Asian woman with attitude to burn, wearing this shirt should provide maximum deterrence against the would-be fetishists who seem to be endemic to the Bay Area. I saw this shirt on the MUNI, and that woman had attitude to ignite a fusion reactor.

Second:
The new movie Underdog has on its promotional poster at bus stops the following:
Underdog. One Nation Under Dog.
However, I initially read it as One Nation Under a Woof, riffing on the classic by Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove. Seriously. This is how my mind works. I actually like my slogan better since the original by Disney could be construed as blasphemous.

I suppose if you were Irish, you might read it as One Nation Built on a Bog. One Nation Under Bog would be the Clockwork Orange slang (nadsat) version.

Besides, I'm enough of a Gen-Xer (wincing) that I can't believe they are shot the new movie as a live-action film, abandoning the classic cartoon Underdog. Sad, the continuing regurgitation of the pop culture of my childhood. This ranks alongside with the new Bionic Woman, sheesh.

Third:
I've added some new elements to the blog. I have no expectations about the Google AdSense button. I hardly expect to make any money, but I was curious to see what kind of ads they'd run. Very similar so far to what I get in gmail. Ho ho ho.

Pottering Around

Well, I finished off the last Harry Potter book yesterday, and there weren't any major surprises, except that I for some reason was expecting a higher death toll. Shame on me. It was pretty engrossing, but it's hard to determine if that was due to the desire to race to the end to get it over with or genuine pleasure. I suppose it depends on where you fall on the Harry Potter like-spectrum.

I also saw "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" last Thursday at a matinée showing in downtown Berkeley. A blissfully empty theater, but never sit against the wall where another action movie is showing because the sub-sonic rumbles from the Surround Sound were quite annoying.

I think that they did a disservice in cutting this movie. I've read that it's the shortest of the films, and that's alarming, considering how dense the last 3 books are. Surely, given the target market for these films, children, the child-like and me, they could've gone for a longer cut because it seems like it was the breathless Cliff Notes to the book (with a few inevitable minor changes), and I think anyone who hadn't read the book would be hardpressed to make sense of it all. Hasn't the Lord of the Rings films taught anyone that or is it going to be the inevitable DVD release with all the extra scenes or the director's cut to sop up some more of that marketing money? Alas.

It was disconcerting for a while until I realized that Robert Hardy, who plays Cornelius Fudge in the movie series, is also the voice for one of the main characters, Lord Malan, in my favorite new BBC radio comedy, His Master's Voice. He is quite spry for a gentleman of 81 years, for I would have never guessed his age.

One thing that they did absolutely right was the casting of the character Luna Lovegood, a 5th book character addition that adds a lot to the series. They picked the perfect unknown actress, Evanna Lynch: she has the perfect look, manner and voice. Kudos for that. She is apparently quite the Harry Potter fan with correspondence with J. K. Rowling predating her involvement in the franchise. The rest of the film was enjoyable, but marred by the necessary perfunctory treatment of most of the major characters. I await the DVD then.

Always Awake for the Earthquakes

Yet another earthquake that I wasn't asleep for. This was my third, and I was already awake at 4:30 am this morning, probably due to the first BART train waking me. This was the worst I've been in, actually. The one I was in in Boston just rocked my old dorm room back and forth gently, there was one I was in in Oakland that felt like a truck hit the building with a short sharp jolt, but this morning I was afraid that the bookcases were going to come down in my room.

The one in Boston I was awake for (it was very early on a Sunday morning) and that I wasn't really sure it was an earthquake was because I was... um... tired from the rather active evening before, let's say and couldn't sleep.

I suppose the strength of this earthquake due to being close to the epicenter here in Berkeley, unlike the other earthquakes. Ke garne. I was always terrified of an earthquake while in Kathmandu since the geology there is very similar to Mexico City: a valley of loose soil above a major fault. And the faults don't get any more major than when the Indian subcontinent rams into Eurasia. And given that KTM is due for its periodic 75 year quake, it seems inevitable sometime soon. Cinderblock buildings seem to have little chance against any earthquake of any size, the one international airport in KTM would probably be damaged, and the overpopulation and overbuilding in the KTM Valley in the past 10 years would all add a major catastrophe. It was the biggest fear of most long-term expats in KTM, not surprisingly, even after Jana Andolaan 2 in 2006.

Well! That's gloomy enough to begin this morning.

Bowling by Candlepin Light

Look, metafilter: candlepin bowling, while it might be experiencing a revival, is really, really an offense against the gods of polished wood slats. It may be that I haven't bowled in an antique wooden alley in New England or Nova Scotia, no, I haven't, since my haunt of choice was Lanes and Games. It screws up your regular bowling game like that one semester of badminton (don't ask) screwed up my tennis game.

It was sure entertaining to watch candlepin bowling on cable access in Boston though. Too bad I don't have a candlepin bowling Hall of Fame t-shirt to match my bowling HOF tee.

Get a Southern Belly

Not a Jelly Belly, not a beer belly, nor a red-bellied woodpecker, but a Southern Belly.

Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South by John T. Edge looks great. Any book that discusses Kool-Aid pickles has got to be a keeper. There is a good article in Salon about it.

What is it about the South and pickles? I had a deep-fried pickle spear with my BBQ in the Charlotte N.C. airport, and I'm still bemused.

Harakiri

Praise all the chthonic spirits that Berkeley Public Library has such a good film library. I finally got back to watching samurai movies last night, and it was a gem, a psychological thriller that burns slowly until the very end, Harakiri. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the introduction by Donald Richie, the doyen of Japanese cinema, to play, but what to do, neh? Surprisingly, there wasn't a full commentary, usually a feature of Criterion Films, especially for a 2 disc set.

I got to tick that one off the list of the 50 Greatest Samurai Movies that I got from a book which unfortunately I can't find the title of. Tatsuya Nakadai, familiar from Akira Kurosawa's films, was excellent. It's one of those anti-authoritarian early 60s samurai movies similar to Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but with much more pathos.

I highly recommend it.

BBC 4, Baby

Recently I've taken to listening to the BBC while working since I'm doing rather repetitive grunt work at the moment. Normally if I'm writing, I can only listen to instrumental music, preferably baroque music, with the odd earworming infinite repeat of certain bands that aid me in my madness. I'm sure you can suss that out if you check my lastfm stats.

However, I've been really enjoying BBC, particularly BBC 4 "Literate Speech" for the indeed literate and often very witty discussions, and the comedies can be hilarious. It's like reverting back to the Golden Age of Radio.

For comedy, I particularly recommended His Master's Voice, a political satire that has just started, and I'm Sorry I Haven't Got a Clue, an extremely long-running program that bursts with innuendo and bon mots.

For a more serious bent, there is Start the Week, a discussion group of four newly published authors about their books and related topics. Very literate, very well-informed. It's hard to imagine mainstream media of this quality in American.

You can also poked around and find local programming in the arts scene in Scotland, say, which can be fun. I think I'll avoid the Welsh language programming for the moment though.

7:07 on 07/07/07

First pitch for the Red Sox game tonight in Detroit was at 7:07 pm on the 7th of July, the 7th month of the 7th year of this Millennium.

Good timing, I'd say. Today most numerologists and astrologers are going nuts, I reckon.

A Picture in the Hand is Worth Two in the Gym

Ah, good news to brighten a dreary June gloom Berkeley day.
Tomorrow begins the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit at the de Young in San Francisco. I became aware of Sugimoto-san's work while in Nepal from an international version of Time or Newsweek, so I am very excited that I'll get the chance to see this exhibit while in the Bay Area. It runs from July 7th to September 23rd. I'll probably have to go at least twice!

There was a book signing by Sugimoto-san tonight, but oh well, can't be everywhere all at once.

In other related news:
It's rare that I find photography that I like so today when at my gym I discovered some photos that I really admired in a new exhibit I was of course excited. The quality of the exhibits at my gym, Berkeley Ironworks Rock Climbing Gym, has been mediocre at best so today was quite a surprise. The photographer of the new exhibit, Ryan Zeitler, seems to have a deft touch with abstraction and landscapes. His website is Sharp End Photography. However, once I visited his site, I realized that all the pictures out of what he has available for viewing that I like best are of course the ones that he has put up in the gym in his Focus Exhibit. All of his other photographs of climbers and outdoor scenes are well done, but I'm enthralled by his compositional skills.

New News on Old Persian

Over at the Language Log today, there is a brief article on the discovery of an Old Persian administrative text on what looks like to be a clay tablet. Old Persian was thought to perhaps only have been used for inscriptions, but this looks like evidence that the use of it might have been more widespread that thought. I've only briefly studied Old Persian at the University of Texas, Austin, with Dr. Mark Southern when he was there, and it was striking how similar it was to Sanskrit.

However, the reason that I posted about this is that the article mentions one of my mentors and my teacher of Khotanese at Harvard, Professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø.

It is gratifying to see that the Language Log has mentioned the various Iranian language primers that Dr. Skjærvø has generously made available for free download at a webpage entitled Iranian Studies at Harvard University. I know he worked hard on those primers with a lot of feedback from his students.

So you can now get started on Old or Young Avestan, Sogdian (which I studied with Dr. Skjærvø for two years) or Old Persian. Just remember that I believe that it was Émile Benveniste, the famous linguist who called Sogdian "the devil's own language." Don't say that I didn't warn you.

There are also two Kurdish primers by W. M. Thackston, and two course readers for Dr. Skjærvø's Intro classes for Zoroastrianism and Manicheism.

All in all an Iranian cultural feast gratis.

Turkish Maps and Legends

Yesterday I helped a friend pack a container for moving, and the result of carrying hundreds of pounds of a tasteful book collection down two flights of stairs is aching hamstrings. These tender 'strings of mine reminded me, naturally, of the mountains and passes that comprise the heart of Inner Asia, especially since for light bedtime reading I've been working through Peter Hopkirk's corpus. This morning when I woke up rather too early for my lackadaisical tastes I finished off his Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet.

A lot of Westerners attempted to reach Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, by traveling through the extremely sparsely populated and desolate plain in the north of Tibet, the Chang Tang. The harsh climate and the eventual discovery of their parties usually defeated them before they were able to reach Lhasa, and in any case, the so-called race to Lhasa had been won by a Bengali, Sarat Chandra Das, one of the so-called native explorers, or pundits, trained in surveying.

In any case, thinking about the northern part of Tibet reminded me of something I stumbled on recently about Khotan. Kashgar would be usually be the gateway for any 19th century Western explorer who attempted to enter Tibet from the north or who wanted to explore the Tarim Basin, and when I recently did a Google search on Khotan, as I periodically do, I was somewhat surprised to find some new information that had been added to the wikipedia entry for the Kingdom of Khotan.

Under the sub-heading of Culture, there is this new (at least new to me) bit of information:

In his Diwanu Lughat at-Turk, the 11th century Turkish scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari included a verse describing the Muslim conquest of Khotan:

Like river torrents

We flooded their cities

We destroyed their monasteries

And shat on the statues of the Buddha.

Now I am certainly familiar with the Muslim conquest of Khotan in 1006, and I've been searching for references to it in Tibetan sources connected with the Western Tibetan kingdom of Ngari somewhat desultorily since the Qarakhanids were also active in Western Tibet and there seems to be some connection between Khotan and Ngari in resisting these incursions, but I had never seen this particular and unfortunately scatalogical reference. Further investigation via wikipedia reveals that Mahmud al-Kashgari wrote the first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, the Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk (Arabic: Collection of Turkic words) in 1072. This, of course, is the source mentioned above.

But that's not all. There is a fascinating map in this text showing the distribution of Turkic tribes. Here is some more information on how to read the map.

Well, of course I had to look and see if there has been a translation of this text, and sure enough, after rummaging around on the Internet with my extreme flopping fish google-fu, I found this:

Maḥmūd Kāshgarī, 11th cent.

Türk şiveleri lügatı = Dīvānü Luġāt-it-Türk / Maḥmūd el-Kāşġarı ; inceleme, tenkidli metin,vİngilizce tercüme, dizinler, Robert Dankoff, James Kelly.

Duxbury, Mass. : Tekin, 1982-1985 (Printed at the Harvard University Printing Office)
3 v. : folded map ; 28-29 cm. + 7 microfiches (11 x 15 cm.). ( Doğu dilleri ve edebiyatlarının kaynakları ; 7. Türkçe kaynaklar ; 7 = Sources of Oriental languages and literatures. Turkic sources ; 7 )

Actually, it wasn't Google, but the good old Harvard Hollis Catalog. But don't discount the difficulty to find this reference though.

There was also this reference from my notes:

Mahmud al-Kashgari, Diwan Lugat at-Turk ("Turkic Lexicon"), translated with Introduction by Zifa-Alua Auezova and Index by Robert Ermers, Almaty "Daik-Press" 2005. ISBN 9965-699-74-7.

I'll probably have to scour the Interlibrary loan for that one though since I'm not sure where I stumbled across that reference. In any case, the vitriolic tone of the above passage from the "Turkic Lexicon" might provide another nugget or two of information about Khotan, something I'm always on the lookout for. I wonder if the city was named explicitly since the reference given in the wikipedia article is singularly uninformative and somewhat hard to find in the U.S.

Unknotting Knoxville

A few farewell photos of Knoxville, mainly of the part of town called the Old City. The Old City is a few square blocks that consist of very old buildings under heavy development. Unfortunately it's penned in by a highway and the railroad, but it is rapidly gentrifying with design and architects' offices. Great bit of graffiti. My sister tell me that this local artist is well known and that people will pry off the plywood at building sites to keep she often sketches on. Summer thunderstorm sky over downtown Knoxville.

The old JFG Coffee building where they roasted coffee since 1926. It's been recently closed and operations moved elsewhere. Repurposed bowling alley as car lot. Doesn't get any more post-modern than that, does it? Bricolage amongst the suburban detritus.

My Grandparents and Father Jules Daigle

I have kept few mementos of my adopted maternal grandparents. I had a leather bag full of things belonging to my grandfather, but that bag molded over in the Southeast Texas heat and humidity while in storage in a shed. I think somewhere else in storage I have some of his things, but I don't have anything of my grandmother's since I was not in Texas when she died, and she had been sick for so long with Alzheimer's, that most of her possessions had been discarded or absorbed into the family.

Last night I was looking through a stack of my sister's books, and I found my grandparent's copy of A Dictionary of the Cajun Language by Rev. Msgr. Jules O. Daigle, M.A., S.T.L. It's signed by Monsignor Daigle, but unfortunately there is no date. Here is the information that I've been able to find about Father Daigle from here:

Jules Daigle, born December 4, 1900, is the son of Oscar Daigle and Eliza Landry and the 6th of 17 children. Father Daigle spent the first 2 years of his career in Baltimore, Md. and the final four he studied in Rome. He boasted that all of his professors went on to become Cardinals. Father Jules Daigle, who was ordained at the Vatican in 1926, returned to Louisiana where his sermons in Cajun French drew overflow crowds. After 48 years as a priest, he retired in 1974 and began a writing career. By 1984, using his own money, he published his 600 page dictionary which immediately became a best seller and supported many charities. His influence has spawned successful education programs teaching French to South Louisiana's children and adults even after his death on January 2, 1998.

He was also the author of a book called Cajun Self-Taught. Apparently, he was fluent in eight languages and a main proponent of the preservation of Cajun French. He certainly had some acerbic things to say about topics such as "Is Cajun bad French or just different French?" and "Other myths about the Cajun language". He had earned the right to be cantankerous, for he states in the introduction that he has been using the language for 84 years.

On the backside of the front cover in what I think is my grandfather's handwriting is his and my grandmother's names and their address. They must have purchased this somewhat close to the end of my grandfather's life, for the address indicates that it was after they had sold their house and moved closer to my mother so that she could care for them as they grew infirm.

I was able to find one book review of Father Daigle's dictionary:
Mary Patricia Trenkle, The French Review, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Apr., 1986), pp. 836-837. Although Father Daigle was convinced that Cajun was a separate language from French based on a variety of factors such as vocabulary, question formation, the uses of après, donc, and voir, abbreviations and repetitions, Trenkle remains skeptical. I leave that matter to the experts in the field and those that like to smash their heads against the language versus dialect debates.

I've always regretted not having been taught Cajun French by my grandparents, especially after I started studying French in high school. They didn't teach it to their kids, but it wasn't until recently that I realized the stigma attached to speaking it from the beginning of the 20th century to about the 1970s. From the same page above that gave me that biographical information on Father Daigle:

The French language was once so dominant in Louisiana that official state documents were published in French and English. In 1898, the State Constitution provided that "the French language may be taught in those parishes and localities where the French language predominates". But in 1921, the Louisiana Constitution prohibited the teaching of French in public schools. Children were spanked for merely uttering French words on the school grounds.

It's been said that the stigma against Cajun French was because que ce n'est pas le bon francais, but the stigma must've been stronger than that, for my grandfather even went so far as to change the ending of his name, Babineaux, to an -o, Babino, to make the name appear more Italian. I'm uncertain when he did that, but my maternal aunt, being the maverick that she is, changed her name back to the original spelling several years ago. I should look and see if I can find the documentation for the spelling change of his name. I'll have some more posts about this kind of stigmatization later.

I'm sure my sister will hold onto the dictionary. It doesn't look used at all, but I'm sure my grandfather and grandmother had little need of it, except as a reminder of their heritage and to honor Father Daigle.

Waitin' and Grabblin'

Ah, the delicious dichotomy of sexual mores that is the South.

One can see several billboards around Knoxville promoting abstinence. Yes, and by abstinence, I mean sexual abstinence, not abstinence from deep-fried foods and the flesh of swine roasted over various types of wood. These billboards have been around since I visited here previously in 2005, but they appear to be in good repair. The name of the organization is called Just Wait. Apparently, it is a local organization, for the homepage declares eagerly that:
"We have gone from teaching in 3 counties to 13! We have gone from a staff of 3 to now more than 10! We now see over 25,000 students and have the privelege of sharing the life-changing message of abstinence until marriage."

I had assumed that this was a national organization. One wonders where the funding is coming from. Their graphic design is somewhat effective, I suppose, in a cheery vacation bible school sort of way. The most eye-catching of the billboards is the image on this t-shirt, which at least gave me pause to investigate what was going on further. I'm not so sure about the veracity of their slogan "Safe Sex Isn't", but apparently, you can add sexual education to the list of topics such as politics and religion that aren't to be discussed in polite company but can be trumpeted from billboards.

Now for the grabblin', brought to my bemused attention courtesy of the weekly here in Knoxville, The Metro Pulse. And what is grabblin', you naturally ask? Welp, according to catfishgrabblers.com, it is:
"... the art of fishing with your hands. In the spring of the year the catfish move to shallow water to lay their eggs. Spawning is triggered by the increasing length of the days and the warmer water temperatures. Spawning in the Tennessee River area usually starts about late May."

For further details, I refer you to this page. And why do I bring this up in a discussion that is presumably about the sexual mores of the South? Simply put:

Girls Gone Grabblin'

Yes, it's a take-off on the infamous Girls Gone Wild video series whose highly repetitive commercials afflict those cursed with insomnia and who happen to stumble (or is it thumble with a remote control?) upon one of the many channels that hammer these products ad nauseum and ad infinitum in the wee hours of the morning.

However, Girls Gone Grabblin' simply must be infinitely more charming, for who can resist the following ad copy:
"Believe it or not! We now bring you the first and only Girls Gone Grabblin' DVD ever produced. Be one of the first to watch & be amazed as 35 Southern Women bring you the thrill of catching catfish weighing up to 44lbs. with their hands and wrestling them to the bank."

Folks, I too find it hard to believe that this is the first and only Girls Gone Grabblin' DVD produced. But I predict that in this specialized case, the supply will create the demand, for who can resist the allure of not 10, not 20, but 35 Southern women catching catfish and wrestling them? It would take a stronger and far more virtuous man that I, given my predilection for all things deep-fried and the fact that these are not, I repeat, are not farm raised catfish fed Purina Mills Catfish Chow so they'll taste right once cleaned.

Grabblin'. You couldn't make this stuff up.

"Boy, thou uproarious shark of heaven..."

Heavens, how have I not read Kim until now? I am assuredly on a Raj-era India literature kick, but I lay the blame squarely (or rectangularly as the case may be) at the feet of Book Eddy here in Knoxville, those purveyors of $1.50 soft cover books that I cannot resist. I'm also working my way through Orwell's Burmese Days, although that is a dreary trudge given that it is mainly set in the hot before the monsoon in Burma and supremely depressing in the inability of anyone to really communicate with one another.

Does not the title of this post suit Kim, even though it is taken from A Clockwork Orange? One of the great characters in literature, comparable to the immortal and redoubtable Zorba the Greek in sheer joi de vivre.

If you have a taste for it, and mine waxes and wanes dependent on some mysterious cycle unknown to me, there has been a fair amount of post-colonial criticism of Kim as well, most significantly and beginning with, I assume, Edward Said, "Kim, The Pleasures of Imperialism," Raritan, 7(1987): 27-74. One can also sample online a paper in a similar vein by a former student, Nandi Bhatia, at my alma mater, the University of Texas, Austin. The paper is titled, "Kipling's Burden: Representing Colonial Authority and Constructing the "Other" through Kimball O'Hara and Babu Hurree Chander in Kim."

I did not know that John Lockwood Kipling was the curator of the Lahore Museum that figures prominently in the beginning of Kim. If that's a fair representation of Kipling Père, then he was a burra sahib indeed in language skill and art acumen. It's been a long time since I've read it, but I'm certain that Stanley Abe's "Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West," in Curators of the Buddha, ed. Donald Lopez (1995) deals with Kipling's depiction of the Lahore Museum. Perhaps Dr. Abe was able to give an accurate account of Kipling Père's true abilities.

I also seem to remember that a former professor of mine at the University of Texas, Dr. Janice Leoshko, writing something on this very subject. Ah, here it is:
Janice Leoshko, 'What is in Kim?: Rudyard Kipling and Tibetan Buddhist Traditions', South Asia Research, (Fall) 2001, pp. 51-75.

Quite an interesting topic, given the state of knowledge about Tibetan Buddhism at the time of the composition of Kim (1901-1902, I believe). I cannot remember offhand if L. A. Waddell's work on Tibetan Buddhism with the lengthy title of Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, With Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology and in Its Relation to Indian Buddhism had been published at this point. Yes, it had in 1895. My, Waddell seems to went off his nut later on in life, if the following publication is any indication: Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons (2nd ed. 1925). I wonder if anyone has written a biography on him.

There is this, English in Tibet, Tibet in English: Self-Presentation in Tibet and the Diaspora, by Laurie Hovell McMillin. Sounds like just the thing for exploring some of these issues based on the table of contents. One of her chapters covers Kim.

There is still the question, at least in my mind, of Kipling's sources for the Kulu and Kangra districts and the religious practices there. I shall have to procure a copy of Dr. Leoshko's paper once I have significant library resources.

Good lord, Peter Hopkirk has also published a book of note on Kim. Entitled Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling's Great Game, it is said that "the author visits the locations of the novel and discusses the real-life personages that may have possibly inspired its characters." I believe this man has had entirely too much fun mucking about Central Asia and writing about the Great Game and the exploration of Central Asia and Tibet.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, how do you do it?

Experiment at the Quarry Lake in Knoxville. I need to figure out how to do a long exposure with this new camera without everything washing out. I had borrowed my sister's tripod to do this since I could tell from Google Maps that this pond was a cerulean blue.

Well, 'magine my surprise. Sugimoto-san had an exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. when I was there last week. Somehow I missed that in my trip planning.

Dang.

And his exhibition at the Asian Art Museum isn't 'til this fall. When I'm not likely to be in the Bay Area.

Dang.

Nevermind, his show at the Hirschorn was last year. Still won't get to see his show at the Asian Art Museum.

Dang.

Here's a photo to calm down with.

Rock and fire, baby... rock and fire

Here's me at the Tennessee Smokies game on Tuesday night, trying my hand at the pitching booth. I think that radar gun wasn't calibrated correctly. That young lady next to me was condescending after she asked my age. I should write a complaint.

Phyllis and I had a head to head challenge. I barely beat her, but she couldn't hit the backstop!

Here's a picture of my sister below. That girl's getting more tat work than a white trash carnie.



















Always good advice.

















Baseball pastoral.

Knoxville Perambulations

Quite a bit of ground covered today in Knoxville with a walk of over 4 1/2 hours. I walked up to the Harold Lambert Overlook Park, which is across the street from my mom's and sister's apartment. This is where the Civil War era Union fort, Fort Dickerson was located. The views across the river are obscured by the luxuriant summer growth, but it was a nice hike up and I learned a fair bit about the siege of Knoxville by Confederacy forces. I then walked downtown, stopping frequently to take photographs of various architectural details as is my wont.


Since I had ample time to cogitate, I was struck as I always am when I cross the South Gay Street Bridge on foot by the thought that I can't imagine a more thorough bungling of riverfront property than in Knoxville. Building an expressway right next to the riverside and having only one pedestrian bridge for access from downtown is just about the height of stupidity, especially since there is frantic development downtown gutting old buildings and putting in lofts. What a waste of real estate and a sad reflection of the overwhelming influence of car culture.


I worked my way up Gay Street, and I finally ended up in an alley between an abandoned building that I was taking photos of and a building that apparently houses the printing press that churns out University of Tennessee t-shirts. There was a gentleman there who was sitting in the shade, and it looked like he had been there a while, given the number of empties he had next to him. He asked me not to take his photo, which is natural, given that he was drinking in an alley. He didn't look homeless; rather, he looked like he just wanted a quiet place to drink. We chatted for a while about various things. For a man in a deserted alley, he seemed eager to talk, telling me of his sexual exploits in Vietnam while he was there during the war.


After excusing myself, I walked back up the street to purchase an iced coffee, my summertime drug of choice, and walked across Gay Street to pop into Yee Haw Industries, a self-described industrial letterpress. I really like their Southern influenced design work, and it's a shame that I'm so skint at the moment, otherwise there were several extraordinary posters I would have walked out with. This poster for a Freakwater show is just wonderful. They have a nice storefront, which I neglected to take a picture of.