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I had forgotten I had taken this picture of Señora in St. Charles a few years ago. Obviously it was Christmas time. We were with a group of folks in the historic downtown district of this city sitting on the Missouri River, visiting the various quaint shops that are nestled in among restaurants, bars and monuments and references to Lewis and Clark.
Ain’t she purrrr-ttteeee?
Y’all come back now… hear!
I was working online with one of my Spanish teachers, a Venezuelan woman who has fled her country with her husband to Buenos Aires. We were reviewing and discussing an article that listed various Christmas traditions from around the Hispanic world.
There is a tradition from the Catalonia region of Spain that we glossed over as neither of us really wanted to discuss it. The tradition struck both of us as a little gross. The traditional there is to place a defecating – pooping if you will – figurine discreetly?? in one corner of the Christmas Nativity scene that folks commonly put out this time of year. Typically, this figurine has always been of a peasant in the traditional dress of the region. And like most of these things it is supposed to bring good luck.
It has since morphed so frequently the figurines are of famous people from around the globe. This has grown into a big international souvenir business, with the majority of the online sales going to the United States.
Fast Forward
Talking about synchronicity… Looking at the news online this morning there was an article from The Guardian: Christmas caganer figurines of Catalonia Just a warning if your are sensitive to such things, there is a bit of a yuk factor associated with the pictures in the article, but on the whole it was an interesting read, at least for me as I had touched on the subject just a couple days before. It was also amusing to see which public figures they chose to depict.
If you are curious, look up the Spanish verb cagar (the noun caganer is derived from the verb) in an online translator. When I was young it was a word that was not used in polite company.
Oh we humans… I wonder how far we really are from the bonobos.
I am a big fan of myself and others using turn indicators, turn signals if you will. At the minimum it is just common courtesy. It is also, many times, a manner of safety. Using and acknowledging turn signals keeps traffic flowing in a safe and sane manner.
However, I am utterly convinced that this device, usually a lever that controls the signalling lights, is missing or broken in many vehicles. I even wonder sometimes if they are still installing them in new vehicles. Perhaps no one has bothered to educate the drivers of these vehicles on how they function. I remember the salesman taking 20 minutes to explain how the touch screen worked on the last new car we bought. For my money they could be throwing in the turn indicator functionality as a public service.
To give you an idea of how old I am, I actually Continue reading “My Turn Signal Conundrum “
You are going to need just a wee bit of background to appreciate this… or not.
There is a stereotype involving Latino mothers – especially Mexican mothers – involving their ability to do accurate long distance child correction using a well launched chancla, chancla being the Spanish word for flip-flop. Practically every Latino I have spoken to more than casually has a chancla story. If you doubt the stereotype, just type chancla into the YouTube search box and you will have a wide selection to choose from. One of my favorites can be found at this link: Hispanic moms don’t miss with that chancla or the video at the bottom of this post.
I’ve been working with a Mexican young man, Saúl, via Skype for Continue reading “Spanish Tutor Cracked Me Up”
I used to be a bit of a Bill Maher fan, but not so for the last several years. I now find him to be a self-righteous pendejo, and thus hard to watch. However, the video below was embedded in an article that appeared in the online version of the St. Louis Jewish Light: ‘Where do you think Israel is going?’ Bill Maher quips in viral eight-minute clip.
Maher makes a lot a sense to me in his segment. At some point you just have to move on. Of course, it took me a few years to stop lamenting about some of the fallout from my divorce, but you just do it. Sometimes you just need to let go.
Given that this is Bill Maher, the language is reasonably clean.
If you want a good quick review of the current history of Israel and The Occupied Territories, I discussed a recently published book by Daniel Skotach at this link: Can We Talk About Israel?
And is almost always the case, there are two sides to the story, if not more. I discussed a 2005 Arabic language movie about the recruitment of two young West Bankers to be suicide bombers here: Paradise Now | Revisited
While not Jewish myself, my wife is, so much of this strikes close to home. Especially so as our October trip to Israel – a lifetime dream of my spouse – was cancelled abruptly.
And so it goes in this absurdity we call life.
yeah I know you did not ask!
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
Next time you are troubled by one of your fellow travelers in this absurdity we call life, consider this: You share 99.9% (sources vary from 99.6 to 99.9%) of your DNA with every other Homo sapiens on this planet. What a big deal, positive and negative, we make of that 0.1%. That amount of difference is just a little more than a standard size shot glass in a 15.5 gallon keg of beer. It is one McDonald’s cheeseburger among a pile of 1000 similar sandwiches.
And just in case you are feeling smug… While we are not direct descendants of apes, chimpanzee, and bonobos, we do share a common ancestor with them. As such we share 98.8% of our DNA with them. That is a difference of 16 shot glasses in our keg of beer, or 12 cheeseburgers in your pile of 1000 such sandwiches.
So by and by when next you look deeply into my sorrowful, wistful simian eyes… remember that.
And so it goes.
To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day
“In life it’s not where you go – it’s who you travel with.” ~~ Charles Schultz
To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day
“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”
Rodney Dangerfield and me… we just do not get any respect.
Señora and I were lying propped up in bed this morning, drinking coffee, doing our morning routine. I was reading the news on my phone and she was working New York Times puzzles on hers. We both had something to do, in different directions, at 0900.
Realizing suddenly that time was indeed flying, I said to her ever so sweetly, “We need to get out of bed, make it, and you need to hop in the shower. ”
“You need to stop barking at me,” came flying back to me from her side of the bed.
I gently reminded her, “I thought you liked it when men were forceful, commanding, taking charge of situations, their testosterone on full display?”
The jet fighter came in for another pass, this time letting loose its rockets, “Oh, blow it out your arse.”
It goes without saying that I made the bed by myself. I am just grateful she left me some hot water for my shower.
And so it goes.
Recently WordPress and Nextdoor came to some sort of agreement about allowing WordPress bloggers to automatically feed into Nextdoor.
I did it, not sure why. The only reason I am on Nextdoor is to occasionally sell items I do not want. On the whole I just find Nextdoor to be a bunch of whiny Millennial/Gen whatever they are, or overly paranoid citizens.
Anyway this post was flagged as unacceptable after someone complained. Only thing I can figure out is that arse offended someone. Perhaps ass would have been better.
Tis interesting though, I generally try to keep my post clean, but I get about 10% flagged… even if they are not political. Perhaps they do not want to degenerate into the swamp that is X former Twitter.
Señora – aka Robin – is down to singing in only two choirs, the Allegro Choir which is for persons 50 years and older and her hospice choir. She sang for 22 years with the choir at the Center for Spiritual Living until its director became too old to lead them and they discontinued it. The Allegro choir has grown to over a 100 souls.
This is Allegro’s holiday concert. It includes a mixture of songs from various traditions… and many familiar tunes. Señora is sitting down to the left of the piano in a green blouse. Ain’t she prutteee.
Enjoy.