Free Flamenco Downloads
Artists looking to promote their work post free MP3 downloads on Flamenco-World.com - great way to keep up with what's new, decide what to buy, and drive the family nuts (I am particularly fond of percussive guitar, clapping and stomping).

Charming Old Irish
Remember Merlin's Charm of Making in John Boorman’s film Excalibur? Michael Everson figures the language is a sort of mangled Old Irish and here provides a transcription and translation both into Modern Irish and English. That was a great movie, and this is a bit of fun reminded me of how much I'd liked it.

Postmortem for Postmodernism
Some are saying postmodern literary theory (the isms) is on its way out ... Back in vogue? Objective truth, beauty and the literature itself.

Primary Over, Highways Safe Again
Well, it's one day after the New Hampshire primary, and despite the glop of snow on the highway this afternoon, the commute felt oddly safer with the sudden dirth of pundits now on the road. Yesterday you couldn't break out of a single I93 bottleneck without finding yourself behind, next to or nearly underneath a massive SUV with Washington plates and several cybernetic broadcast organisms inside beaming live feeds to CNN, MSNBC, MTV and WRKP. Not that I've got anything against CNN, SUVs, cybernetic pundits or the primary ... they're all muy fantastico .. even better when they come only once every four years.

By the way ... I've used the word "pundit" for years never realizing it derives from Sanskrit and in its original meaning refers to a Brahman scholar.

The Modern Word
What a great site ... can't believe it's been up this long and I never came across it! Good thing some reader pointed it out to LanguageHat, where I found it. The site's dedicated to modern literature, including some of my favorites, such as Jorge Louis Borges, Umberto Eco and Gabriel García Márquez. The design is great: main sections with clever names to major authors (The Garden of Forking Paths for Borges, The Brazen Head for Joyce), nice graphic motif, lot's of content. So much so that it would be possible to get lost in here for a month and come out the world's worst cocktail party bore: "Did you know that Borges said Wilde's work is at the nexus of two currents, Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolism? No? You have to leave? But it's only nine fifteen, and I simply must tell you about it..."

State's New Poet Laureate
What a pleasure it was to see this article: Cynthia Huntington, with whom I served on The New Hampshire Writers Project board of trustees, is now poet laureate of New Hampshire! This article tells us a little about her work, especially the darkness in "The Radiant." When the book was released, Cynthia brought some to a board meeting and I got a copy. Powerful stuff.

Baby, I'm Amazed
Last week we went for Kristen's checkup and a second ultrasound (they did the first one quite early to confirm some dates, and so the doc ordered another at the normal time). Beyond confirming that all is well and also that Sofia is indeed Sofia and not Gabriel, the ultrasound also served to remind me that Kristen is five months pregnant. Amazing. She looks so beautiful and has so much energy, I am hard pressed to keep up with her. It was the same when she was pregnant for David - rather than craving unusual foods at odd hours, she craves organization, re-organization, literature, attention to fiscal matters and pre-natal swim aerobics. All that on top of full days chasing a high-energy toddler around the house.

Yesterday, she went out and got some sort of wire and steel organization contraption to file mail, bills, notes, and the like, reorganized the office, the closets and the checkbook. Meanwhile, I'm going to toe to toe with David in a play marathon, and he drops me in the second mile. By the time I put him down for a nap, I can't keep my eyes open either and we doze together until Kristen wakes us up to start dinner. This is getting more and more common for me lately, and it's a real struggle to find the motivation to get anything (writing, exercise, Spanish) done after David goes to bed. Maybe my lethargy is a sympathy symptom; in that case, how to explain her exceptional vitality?: a sympathy symptom of my non-pregnancy?

The Future of Latin
This piece has a lot going for it: it starts with a scene from "Life of Brian," moves on to training the soldiers to speak in Mel Gibson's "The Passion" and then explains why some folks think Latin, because of its clarity and purity, may have an important role in our linguistic futures. I keep returning to my Latin book, at least once every couple of months, never with the zeal I give Spanish, but enough to keep the hope alive that I may someday be able to follow the The Finnish Broadcasting Company's hugely popular weekly news bulletin, "Nuntii Latini."

The Ladies' Man
We took David out for Chinese for the first time, and he loved it. Not the food, so much, but the lights and decorations, the music and waitresses! He bopped his head in time to the Chinese techno pop and let the waitress, who was so taken with him I thought she might pull up a chair and spend the whole meal at the table, feed him ice cream. It strikes me that in most groups, if everyone notices somebody else and ignores you, you get a little piqued, but if they are ignoring you to pay attention to your child, you're perfectly content to be invisible, wouldn't draw focus if you could, and somehow feel more puffed up than if you'd just won an Oscar.

David's first fortune cookie: Your ability to be silly will serve you well.

Indeed.

How Did, Or Did Not Art Evolve?
Archaeologists have long debated the origin of figurative art; the assumption being that art has evolved from most primitive to most refined over long ages. A new find has some rethinking that - it's possible that humans have been capable of creating sophisticated figurative art from the outset of humanity. That the first humans might have been sophisticated artists reminds me of the argument Chesterton makes about the evolution of society in "Everlasting Man" - that what might be labeled primitive has existed side by side with what might be labeled sophisticated all along. Back to art, though, this seems to have a bearing on how we think about changes in art: just because something is new does not mean it is automatically higher up the evolutionary ladder, because for things like this, evolution has less to do with it than the inborn brilliance of the artist.

Is It Worthwhile To Explore Space
Public opinion is split on President Bush’s recent announcement of a space program
that includes manned missions to Mars and a permanent colony on the Earth’s moon. The arguments against: it is too expensive, and the money can be spent on better things, such as education and healthcare. Seems to me, though, that at the core of education, and perhaps the current problems in education, is the inquisitive spirit of our species and its blunting by too much information presented out of the context of a grander vision for humankind or for the human spirit. The deadening of Romanticism, the triumph of a gray, materialist state that is, if not totalitarian yet in its political life, is certainly well on its way in the intellectual and spiritual spheres, is an ugly, scary and I hope not inevitable progression. If the imagination of a nation cannot be excited by the idea of colonies among the stars, of our species’ first tentative steps beyond the cradle of the Earth, and if the inherent value to education and society of such agitation can’t be realized, then perhaps we are already further down that sad road than one might have guessed.

Cool Still Cool

Why is that while many slang words come and go while some endure? In particular, 'cool' has remained cool for a long time - a surprising long time, actually. Here's a nice look at its etymology.

David's First Swimming Lesson

Having passed through the holidays and come out the other side well-rested, despite the fact that we either were company or had company nearly ever day of my vacation, I return again to this Web log with a report on David's very first swimming lesson.

Today was blisteringly cold, a few degrees below zero when we left the house, and certainly not weather to put one in the mind for swimming. Still, David was excited, as he always is when he and I hit the road, and was working very hard to say the words "pool" and "swimming." They sounded like "oo" and "swih."

I'd gotten him lessons at the Y for Christmas, although in retrospect this seems as much a gift for me as for him, because we had such a terrific time together. We got changed and took our rinse-off shower in the locker room's big multi head shower area; which puzzled him a good deal. He gave me the eyebrow raise, but was otherwise unperturbed.

From there we went down to the pool, where a mass of mothers, fathers and babies, toddlers and kids of all ages were gathered for lessons in groups of Shrimp and Pike. (David is a Shrimp.)

David took easily to the water; I could tell he trusted me and it felt good beyond description: he put his mouth under water and blew bubbles, cupped his hands and paddled and even sat on the edge of the pool and jumped into my arms. In fact, that last bit was his favorite part, and he insisted on doing it over and over.

In all, the swimming lasted a half an hour. The expedition took nearly an hour and half. The drying off, the dressing, the bundling up, the packing of gear, the rigging up of belts and buckles for the car seat, all these things take a long time because everything is still so new for David, and he wants to see each thing, examine it, start toward understanding it. And he's teaching me not to rush either, to savor moments. I've often been guilty of spending whole days with my mind flung far into the future or anchored to some object of the past; I am less guilty of that now. I can see each of these moments as the gifts that they are, and I want to be as aware of them as possible. And when I really am, they're as new for me as they are for David.

Yes, indeed Merry Christmas David, and Merry Christmas Dad.