I had to add something appropriate to accompany Tim Conklin's creative-writing contribution of Friday.by Timothy Conklin
When you have tears in your eyes everyone looks like an angel.
He remembers the road to Jhapa. "Sir, we've always lived here. When I was young, we used to hunt peacocks in the fields, and we ate rats. We packed them in mud and baked them in the fire. When they were cooked, we'd pull the mud off and the hair and the skin came away, and we would eat them."
The sweat that had soaked his shirt now was dry salt dust on his skin. The dirt road was baked hard, and a thick cushion of talcum powder dust bathed his bare feet with each soft step and came up between his toes as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
They waded through verdant seas of rice. Barefoot falls were soundless in the khaki dust. The skim milk sky was heavy with rains to come. And sometimes they talked quietly as they walked on the road to Jhapa.
"What will you write sir?" Assin asked. He told him he would write about his children, about the dancing and the drums and the peacocks.
They stopped and drank water. He admired Assin's black curls and skin dark as earth, the fine wrinkles of hands and feet born of the plains of the Holy River. And they walked again along that long quiet road to Jhapa, the province of magic, and Assin asked him, "Sir, will you come back here again?" Assin's voice filled the universe.
He said he didn't know but that it felt like home to him there. He knew he would never leave Assin and his soft gentle quietness, like dust. He gazed upon the dark skinned one and the tears in his eyes made him look like an angel.
Saturday, July 5, 1986
This is the very first entry. We'll see if the intrigue of an
electronic diary keeps me writing on a regular basis? Today was
the tiring beginning of another school week. We struggled
through the 1208 book. I think that we're finished; I do hope
so, at least. I'd taught enough about "cherry and custard pie"!
This afternoon Jay came to the room. We always watch a
video from the library. After that, we removed everything from
the truck of my wonderful old junk Pontiac. I wanted to stop the
shimmy but alas it didn't work.
This evening, I'd like to see about a color monitor at the MSK
computer store downtown. I probably won't. Mail sent: Grammy.
Mail received: absolutely none. I shouldn't expect anything
until next week's bank statement.
That's all for today.
Hardcover: Murmurs of the Earth - The Voyager Interstellar Record
Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Random House; (October 12, 1978)
ISBN: 0394410475
Hi, I've been meaning to write about the 'spe....cial En....glish', but hadn't gotten around to it.
When I was in my (Peace Corps) village in Senegal, all the contact I had with the outside world was my little transistor radio. Amazingly, it picked up VoA. Most of the time I didn't bother as I was caught up in village life, like saving babies from dying, trying experimental gardens and digging latrines, but every once in a while, I would turn it on. The VoA programs in 'Spe...cial En....glish' would come on and I could listen for about 5 minutes before it drove me crazy. That was before I was an English teacher, but I used to wonder if anybody as a second language English speaker could make out of what was being read. The vocabulary and grammar level were not brought down to a level they would be able to understand, and if they had that good a command of English, those listeners wouldn't need special English. However, over the years, I have come across people who did listen to those broadcasts and enjoyed them.
Another phenomenon that always amazed me, (probably not as a boy, but later) was the Indian and Cowboy movies wherein the Indians spoke pidgin English but seemed to have an unbelievable vocabulary and knew all the irregular past tense verbs and past participles, relative clauses, present perfect and could pronounce all words correctly but still hadn't mastered simple verb 'to be' or the difference between subject, object and possessive pronouns. On the other hand, as a teacher in the Arab world, that doesn't seem so far fetched. If you can find them, watch some of the old westerns in which the Indians actually had conversations with the white man. And, by the way, who were those early ESL teachers teaching the Indians? Even the most out-of-the-way tribes seemed to speak English. It's not like they lived among the white man and 'acquired' it naturally.
Of course there are so many other aspects of the Indian and cowboy movies that are far fetched, too. The towns were always so well laid out and neat. The women all wore stylish clothes, modern hair-styles and walked around carrying parasols, the homes had over-stuffed furniture and lovely tie back curtains, and, no matter how long they had been on the trail, the cowboys were always clean-shaven. And if there was ever a dance, no sweat stains under their arms. I've been to Texas and I know, in the summer you can't even sit outside without the sweat trickling down, much less dance a square dance. And Oklahoma or Kansas are as hot. And those general stores were better stocked than my local cold store.
But nearly all historical portrayals are unrealistic, be they the old West or colonial America, the South of the Civil War or Merry Old England. Those people couldn't all have had perfect teeth, flawless complexions and gorgeous hair. In fact, the opposite is more historically accurate.
Check out a wonderfully realistic film of the 70s "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. It's about life in a gold-rush town in the Pacific northwest. And a poignant love story, as well. One of my all-time favorite films.
A blog is merely an electronic blank sheet. What one does with that can really be anything. A blog could be a diary, a place to spew venom, or a place exercise the freedom of expression. But dare I say most personal blogs are just cheap, vanity press?
NASA's Flash Animation and Site
Some of the Recording's Content
Physical Aspects of the Recording
