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.