Tuesday, 3 May 2022
Ants swarming like it’s a peony, no?
Voting day some states. Here early voting began on Monday, so our airwaves (if that still works) are jammed with Seriously Annoying candidate ads, and Even More Annoying ads contributed by outside organizations.
Monday, 2 May 2022
One year ago we were train-spotting in Missouri (among other things). What have I been up to? Mostly being a homebody.
Sunday, 1 May 2022
All week I heard about the showers we’d be having today, aka First Alert Sunday; however, each day the severity was slightly reduced. Even this morning, we were promised pop-up showers…which is far less than the pattern promised early in the week. You can guess the outcome: totally dusty-dry outside.
Saturday, 30 April 2022
I went out just a few minutes ago, well after dark, because I needed a photo. This is the sky…dark on the ground, but magic above (with the camera’s computational powers).
Friday, 29 April 2022
More backyard labor this morning. No privet to attack. Other species, names unknown to me, attacked. This, however, is the decorative, woody perennial Liriodendron tulipifera.
Thursday, 28 April 2022
For a short while, after visiting the UN when I was about ten, I thought I wanted to be a simultaneous translator. Of course, I only knew one language, and that rather irregularly. The simultaneous translator idea didn’t last long, BTW. Still, I have retained a curiosity about language.
So, an article this week was right up my alley. It’s by Timothy Snyder, in the New York Times, dated April 22nd, and titled, The War in Ukraine Has Unleashed a New Word.
The new word is “рашизм.” And it’s Ukrainian, if you didn’t catch that; written Ukrainian uses Cyrillic letters, like Russian, but it’s not Russian (duh). Roughly, рашизм translates as “Russian fascism.” The article is about how much that translation skips all the cleverness folded into the actual word. Lesson: plenty is missed in translation.
First, рашизм’s seriously multi-lingual, including English. So clever, so complicated. Go to the article (apologies: paywall) and learn all the intricacies.
One thing I didn’t know, while English refers to Russian and Rus (red), etc., with the vowel u, in Ukranian and Russian the vowel is o. I had no idea (why would I, actually?). (And it’s more than o, actually, as Russians pronounce it like an a. Surprise.)
And now, we have handy pocket translators, good for a giant assortment of languages. I have not checked what mine makes of the Ukrainian рашизм.
Wednesday, 27 April 2022
I vanquished another privet today, or perhaps the joke’s on me, as it left several lateral roots behind that could spring up above the ground again very soon. The bed’s a mess, and needs more cleansing, but: progress. Neither of us has a plan for what to do with it. Very shady. Light-wise.
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
I had my way with a privet today. By “had my way,” I mean I uprooted it and sent it off to the compost. Took a half hour with a mattock—thump thump, wrench, strain. [This fading peony is much nicer.]
Monday, 25 April 2022
Typically when I name photos for this space, I use an underline (_) between words. For some reason, I didn’t today. I intended “shaft of light,” but I read “shaft o’ flight.”
Sunday, 24 April 2022
We just started a new international television series. It’s called Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı, or Midnight at the Pera Palace. For enquiring minds: the Pera Palace is a real hotel that had its grand opening in 1895.
Turns out that just like Finnish and Swedish, we can’t understand Turkish merely by listening to it.