Apologies to BJ commentors in more clement climes, but this week has driven me to strange YouTube places (on my annual search for the ‘perfect’ version of O Holy Night).
I’m hoping that once the pivot to more daylight happens, the general political climate will get a little less gloomy in response.
Anything on the agenda today that isn’t hideously depressing?
BGinCHI
It rains every day, sometimes water and oftentimes ice pellets. It also rains at night.
The sun comes up at 9:20, if “up” means there is a diffuse light that is different only in degree from the dark.
The light hangs on until almost 4 in the afternoon, then a few minutes after it is dark again. And raining.
Bergen, Norway. Early December.
Marc
I’m going to my Sister’s belated Birthday party this afternoon. She was rude, by spending Thanksgiving week (and her Birthday) in another city checking out her new grandchild. But I’ll forgive her as soon as I see all the pictures she took. ;)
PurpleGirl
@BGinCHI: At the end of college I had a penpal from Norway. I’ve wanted to go to Norway since then. Harald was raised in Lillehammer, where his father was the manager of a hydroelectric plant. From what he told me a lot of Norwegians spoke English; they learned it in school and then TV was broadcast with Norwegian subtitles so they heard a lot of English. He spoke it fairly well. Is a lot of their college work done in English? He implied that it would be and that’s why he got a bunch of penpals to practice his English before starting college after his Army stint.
OzarkHillbilly
I’m going to spend the day with my granddaughter. That bit of good will be balanced out by the bill for truck repairs which turned out to be quite a bit more extensive than I thought they would be. I am almost afraid to ask.
joel hanes
The perfect version of “O Holy Night” is that one sung by whoever Harry Chapin had at the time to sing the eponymous part during “Mr. Tanner”. Special blessings on the local-talent cellists.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I feel ya. We are way over on the addition and I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to whittle down the heloc we had to grab at the very end!
BGinCHI
@PurpleGirl: The Norwegians speak better English than many Americans. We used to joke about this before we came here, but not anymore, since it’s almost the truth. Norwegians are all bi-lingual. They begin English as a subject as soon as they start school and take it all the way through high school and into college. They are perfectly fluent in speaking and writing, though of course some are more accomplished than others. I just finished marking the papers from the semester and they were impressive. I have WAY more ESL issues where I teach in Chicago than I do here.
One great piece of trivia. When students learn English here, at some point they are given the choice between an American accent and a British one. I don’t know how universal that is, but it is where available. So I have students with various accents that are more like Midlands or Midwest than anything that sounds Scandinavian. At first I thought they must have studied in Manchester or the States somewhere, but no, they were just picking up the accents of their teachers.
“Harald was raised in Lillehammer, where his father was the manager of a hydroelectric plant.”
This is a good line for the opening of a short story.
I highly recommend a visit to Norway. Make sure you come here to Bergen and see the fjords north of here.
raven
@BGinCHI: This is my grandfather’s father from Lillehammer.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: @BGinCHI: My parents spent some time with friends in Belgium on one Euro tour. My mother was amazed at how their pre-teen children could channel surf the TV in 4 different languages: French, English, Dutch, and German. I dated a Dutch girl for a while who was fluent in Dutch, French, and English. My Spanish born wife spoke 3 languages when she got here (Spanish, Catalan, French) and picked up English rather quickly when she got here**. I think in Europe they are exposed to more languages as a matter of course.
** when she gets tired her words will be english but her grammar reverts to spanish. i have great fun at her expense then.
OzarkHillbilly
So what does on do with a stolen log cabin? You pile the timbers up behind your apartment complex. Nobody will ever notice.
OzarkHillbilly
You just can’t make this shit up:
Bud A. Weisser, 19, received summonses from police Thursday accusing him of first-degree trespassing and resisting arrest after he allegedly entered the Anheuser-Busch brewery property at 9th and Arsenal Streets, where the “King of Beers” is produced.
David Koch
NYT publishes front page editorial for first time in 95 years.
The last time they ran an editorial on the front page was to denounce the nomination of Harding. But even in the 1920s the Times was anti-union, effusively praising running-mate Calvin Coolidge for union busting.
mikefromArlington
Trump = Rush That’s why he’s so popular. Republican base loves a loud mouth jerk. It’s what they aspire to be. That’s gotta be the connection.
Betty Cracker
@BGinCHI: That’s fascinating about how the kids get to pick an accent. Any sense on which is the more prevalent, or does it seem evenly divided?
@raven: I have a Scandinavian great-grandparent as well. No idea if his mustache was as impressive as your relative’s!
David Koch
@mikefromArlington: that, plus the other nominees are painfully boring.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@David Koch: I do like the last line of that editorial.
MomSense
@BGinCHI:
Hi Hi. We’re having the same weather here and the sun seems to have gone missing. It’s still a little “brighter” earlier here which helps. In Norway I learned a trick from a friend. She told me to buy some little votive candles, put them on the table in an interesting pattern and then light them for breakfast. I don’t know why it helps but it does. May have to return to that ritual again. It’s not exactly SoCal in Maine.
bystander
@PurpleGirl: I don’t know about college classes but it always seems as if every Norwegian one might encounter as a tourist speaks English. Reminds me of Holland that way. Plus it’s far more beautiful than Holland. Any trip to Norway should include a couple of days on the Hurtigruten, the boats that ply the west coast.
Today is our dog’s 10th birthday. Yay for Buster!
bystander
@BGinCHI: missed that post. Bergen is one of the most beautiful urban areas I’ve ever been in. Must be great to live surrounded by such beauty. My other favorite place in Norway is Alesund. The town was leveled in a fire. Kaiser Wilhelm loved fishing there so he sent a bunch of architects and construction people to rebuild Alesund in 1905. Most of the town was built that year in Jugendstil. It’s like walking around in a fairy tale. One of those rare places where you can wear your Robin Hood hat and not feel foolish.
MomSense
New York Times is running its first front page editorial since 1920 on gun violence. Going over to have a look now.
I’d link but FYWP
David Koch
flipped through twitter and the republican “reporters” on the Times’ staff are upset about the front page editorial. I sent the cowards a tweet saying if you feel so strongly against it then you should resign. No response.
fh
Why is this video clip “PG”?
David Koch
Leto
@BGinCHI: Are you sure you’re not talking about England? I live outside Oxford and it’s basically the same. Sunrise is a bit earlier at 7:30am, but totally dark by 4:30pm.
Betty Cracker
We plan to acquire and set up our Christmas tree today. We use fake trees, and we finally got rid of the one we’d had for 15 years after last Christmas; it had grown too squashy and unreliable.
Well, I meant to get a replacement in January during the post-holiday sale period, but I didn’t. I imagine we’ll encounter sticker-shock when we price the new ones.
We’re also brewing our first batch of beer today after summer hiatus: an Irish red ale. For me, half the fun is designing the labels, and I’m working on that now, using a bastardized version of the “coat of arms” for my Irish surname.
I put “coat of arms” in quotes because I doubt very much that the desperate brigands who were my Irish forebears had anything as fancy as a coat of arms in the Old Country.I don’t think they had two potatoes to rub together, which is why they fled to Boston and then to Florida, of all places.
Then after that, we’ll watch the SEC championship game: the mighty Gators vs. Alabama. I don’t know what the spread is, but I fully expect Alabama to thrash Florida like a rented mule. I just hope it’s not a ’96 Fiesta Bowl-level whupping…
MomSense
David Koch got there first. i swear that even after refreshing a few times, a bunch of comments weren’t there until just now.
Phylllis
My alma mater, Charleston Southern, is in the FCS playoffs for the first time. We thought about going to the game; weekend inertia won out.
PaulW
@Betty Cracker:
Good luck with the new tree. Just remember if you have ornaments that plug into bulb sockets, the newer light sockets won’t fit older ornament plugs :(
(cannot plug in my 1990s Star Trek ornaments now)
Leto
@Phylllis: This is surprising. I think the last time they had a winning season was when they were named Baptist College.
Schlemazel
@Betty Cracker:
Half my maternal grandparents came from Sweden, I have great granddad’s mustache cup on my dresser though there are no pictures of him. I still have relatives there though we have never spoken I know their grandparents & mine wrote regularly
Phylllis
@Leto: No, they’ve had several good seasons now under Jamey Chadwell. Who I fear will be courted by the big boys sooner rather than later. There’s always hope that the charms of Charleston will overcome the desire for the big bucks.
Leto
@Phylllis: Honestly I haven’t followed them since about 1994 when I left the area. I had a lot of friends graduate from CSU and my parents graduated in ’70. I just like picking on them and The Citadel ;)
David Koch
Hoping Clemson loses, which will ignite mass chaos in the rankings.
tybee
@raven:
nice black drum you posted. any idea as to how much it weighed?
sm*t cl*de
@BGinCHI:
Take money. Lots of money.
Elmo
Nothing can be depressing today. It’s my wife’s birthday, and I am preparing a comfortable and quiet day of sweet indulgence.
I love her so much.
Sarah
Here you go:
http://bit.ly/1OMqqy3
Schlemazel
@Betty Cracker:
Years ago there was some fly-by-night mail order outfit that would sell people a portrait of their coat of arms. You knew they were quality, they advertised in Parade Magazine (Thats a reference that has probably lost a lot of it’s meaning – have they existed at any time in the last 20 years?).
I was never interested in a coat of arms but did a lot of research trying to find the paternal line’s tartan. I have narrowed it down to 2 and I’m not excited about either. historical note: since they came from Ireland I assume they arrived there to kick ass for the Kings Jimmy (I & VI, E & S respectively) but it must not have worked out perfectly for them since they arrived here in the 1700’s, not all that much later
Phylllis
@David Koch: I was really torn last week. Would have loved to see the Gamecocks knock them off, but knew the Tigers would have sunk like a stone if it did happen.
Iowa Old Lady
@BGinCHI: You remember the old TV show Northern Exposure? In one episode, people were wearing this headgear with lights, not to see with, but to fight the depression from it being dark all the time. Is Bergen still beautiful in the dark?
Betty Cracker
@Schlemazel: I remember those ads in Parade when I used to have a dead tree newspaper subscription (when dinosaurs roamed the earth!). We went to the state fair a few years ago, and there was a booth there that would create a plaque with your family crest. Also hats and t-shirts! We knew it was bullshit because they not only had the bogus Irish coat of arms I’m making into a beer label today but that of my husband’s family, who were Polish peasants back in the day and just as unlikely to have a coat of arms as my potato farmers / fishermen.
David Koch
@Phylllis: I love chaos, but I also don’t think Clemson can beat ‘Bama. Maybe Ohio St or Stanford can. In any event we must stop Saban and Bama at all costs.
NotMax
Midwinter?
In the first week of December?
Pish and tosh. Winter doesn’t commence for several weeks yet.
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: I love the dark. Clearly I’m not suited to my present climate. When hubby and I first started dating, I lived in a cave-like townhouse that had two windows. I never even noticed it, but it drove him crazy — he wondered how I could live in such gloom!
I’m still a shadow seeker. I’ll sit around in the dark until someone turns on a light and am the last to notice when an overhead fixture is down to one working bulb. I used to think this was a personal peculiarity, but now I’m thinking maybe it’s my Scandinavian ancestry…
ETA: But now that I think on it, when I lived in Boston for a few years, I did find it depressing that it got dark outside at 4 PM in the winter. I want sunshine to be available. I just don’t want to be in it that much…
Mustang Bobby
The good news from me is that I can stand up and move around with very little pain after almost a week of back pain. I am grateful to Dog that it was just a muscle spasm issue and not something like what I know a lot of people go through, including my father with his spinal stenosis.
It’s finally stopped raining for the moment.
Apropos of the conversation upthread about multilingualism, I am saddened by the fact that a lot of people in the U.S. are a) proud of the the fact they can’t speak another language (even if they can hardly speak English) and b) afraid of people who can speak more than one. I work in an environment where the majority of my co-workers are not native English speakers and yet they have not only learned it but use it as a part of their job. I took French for five years in grammar and middle school and Spanish for two years in high school plus two semesters in grad school and lived in places where Spanish is on an equal footing with English; New Mexico and South Florida. After all that I can barely order dinner in Spanish (although I do know enough to get my face slapped). The isolationism and “exceptionalism” of the American know-nothings is one reason of many that the rest of the world resents us.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: No faith in my mighty Gators to knock ‘Bama out today? Can’t say I blame you. But if ‘Bama does beat the Gators, I will root for ‘Bama in the playoffs, even though Saban is a dick…
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
I know cavers who feel exactly the same.
Phylllis
@David Koch: They ain’t gonna beat ‘Bama. I’m questionable on whether they survive UNC, to be honest.
Satby
I think the good thing about living on the edge of a time zone is I get the light effect of the zone west of me. So sunset is at 5:15 for me and 4:15 for Chicago, 65 miles away.
I’m basking in the thought that I may have a new job by the end of next week, at least until I get my move to Florida to care for my mom organized. I told her that I was planning that, her enthusiasm was a bit muted ;)
SiubhanDuinne
@David Koch:
Extraordinary. Thanks for the link.
Mustang Bobby
@Satby: Where in Florida? Anything I can do to help?
Schlemazel
@Betty Cracker:
Ah, it’s like my hunt for the right tartan, can’t take it seriously its just a fun thing to have.
On that line, I always get a kick out of people who claim they are reincarnated. They always were some princess or might war lord, apparently the old world was populated by nothing by royalty and generals. “No, not really. The odds are much better that if you lived at that time you died on a dung heap toiling under that person you claim to be.”
Betty Cracker
@Schlemazel: Haha, so true! Did you ever see that old movie “Defending Your Life” (I think) with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep? They were in the afterlife (which was like a Disney-esque hotel complex) awaiting reincarnation assignments or a bump up into a higher plane of consciousness, and there was a Hall of Past Lives where you could view your previous incarnations at a booth. Meryl Streep’s character really had been a King Arthur-like figure, and she asked Brooks what he had been, and he said, “Lunch.”
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
I took screen shots of the whole thing. Send me your email addy and I’ll share with you. My nym @ gmail.
Satby
@Mustang Bobby: about multilingualism: one thing that makes it a bit easier to become fluent is constant use, we have few chances to use a language other than English in this country other than Spanish outside of major metropolitan areas. Even then we really seldom can practice. I studied Japanese the longest of all my other languages, but I only retain the bits of phrases that I say when calling to wish a former exchange daughter happy birthday or holidays and ask about the family. Other than that, we switch to English because she’s an English translator in Japan. Using a new language regularly is key to retention, and we just don’t get a chance. I agree the wilful refusal of many Americans to respect multilingual people or learn other languages is a disgrace; I just think more people would learn and become more fluent if there were opportunities to use a new language regularly.
Satby
@Mustang Bobby: Around the Tampa-St. Pete area. My mom’s dementia is becoming increasingly pronounced to those who knew her before; she’s still independent with some monitoring by a visiting nurse weekly, but we can see that the next year will require more and she’s refusing to go into assisted living. So assisted living is coming to her.
Thanks much for the offer, I know you’re way down south though.
different-church-lady
Meh. “Bleak mid-winter” doesn’t begin until the some time during the four-month period between January and March.
Heck, it’s not even officially winter for another two weeks.
bemused
A large number of immigrants who originally settled in northern MN were Scandinavian, mainly Swedes, Finns and Norwegians, where the climate, landscape, wild animals, trees and vegetation are so similar to the countries they had left must have been a deciding factor where they would settle. It was very challenging to start a new life from scratch but had to be easier when they could use the same skills and assets surrounding them to survive.
We’ve visited Sweden and Finland and would love to go back but in the summer. The Scandinavian countries have much shorter daylight hours in the winter than northern MN does and that is depressing enough for me.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: I set up my Christmas tree last weekend, in my case it was really easy. I have a “Charley Brown Christmas Tree”, you know the tree with about 8 branches and one colored ball(a blue and gold one natch). The kid loves my Christmas tree, the “creepy Santa” doll that my aunt gave me when I was 2; not so much.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel:
No no, reincarnation, like health care in America, is reserved for only the right people.
Althea
To commenter on previous thread, what have you got against Ernest Borgnine?? The John Barrymore of his era!! How DARE you!
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks!
Satby
Here in SW MI we have a “freezing fog” weather advisory but the sun is supposed to bust through and get us up to a high near 46, and the next ten days will stay between 45-50 as daytime highs. The girls can’t decide if they’re relieved or disappointed. I keep telling them it will change and more snow will come.
We went to their first tree lighting ceremony yesterday night St. Joe’s Lights on the Bluff. Live mannequin night in the downtown stores too, some of them really were amazing.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Satby: I took Korean about 20 years ago, about the best I can do now is pick out a few words in conversation.
Jager
Friends in Chicago had a Russian woman live-in housekeeper/nanny for years. Their daughter spoke English with a Russian accent until well after she started school. The kid, in her early 20’s now, reads and speaks Russian. Another friend of mine has lived and worked in Switzerland for almost 20 years, both his girls went to school in Geneva. Both girls speak 4 languages. The oldest graduated from Texas a couple of years ago, she had 57 job offers before the ink was dry on her degree. She’s now the number 2 marketing person for a US company branch working out of Berlin.
OzarkHillbilly
@Satby: Now that her parents are dead, my wife fears she will lose her native Mallorcan (a dialect of Catalan) because she has no one to speak it with. I do not think this fear is unfounded due to the fact that growing up in Franco’s Spain, the reading and writing of Mallorcan was banned and she is functionally illiterate in it. The brain is wired to remember things written far stronger than words only heard.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Schlemazel: I think my favorite reincarnation claim was the woman who believed she had been a French whore in the late 1700s.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’m the same way with French.
Satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: I can speak a smattering of five languages and am conversant in none, really. If I was immersed in either Spanish or Japanese I think I’d recover enough to get by after a couple of months, but I doubt I’d ever become fluent. That really is a skill best learned young, I think.
debbie
@Satby:
They’re welcome to all the snow they want, so long as it stays in your state.
Liberal
@David Koch: anyone prominent?
Satby
@Satby: And when I say smattering, I mean my word retention would physically look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Leading me to try to speak a sentence inadvertently using two more more languages when I only mean to use one: “namen sie plotz, kudasai”
bemused
@Satby:
All my grandparents immigrated to MN. There were so many different ethnic groups represented in NE Minn in early 1900’s, the schools had night classes teaching English to adults and other programs to help immigrants become citizens. It was all about assimilating to become Americans and thrive. Many of the original immigrants never did learn English. Some understood English but were only comfortable speaking their own language. My parents were born here, spoke their native language but most often when they wanted to talk about things they didn’t want we kids to know. That was true of many in that generation and I think that is when the next generations losing fluency in their parents and grandparents languages started.
debbie
@David Koch:
The Times should have had the balls to do this long ago. Now seems too facile.
Satby
@debbie: Well, we need enough to sled on at least, by the end of the year. We have lots of time.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
What, no Putz?
:)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’m still working on English.
@Satby: I’ve taken 4: German in high school and college(in Austria), a quarter of Russian in college, a year of Chinese in grad school, and a year and a quarter of Korean. I’m lucky to be semi-competent in English.
ETA: I attempted to learn a bit of Malay in grad school(I had a Malay gf) and I live in CA so I hear alot of Spanish.
Satby
@OzarkHillbilly: it’s like everyone of Irish descent in America claiming to come from one of the lines of the kings of Tara.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m barely treading water their.
MattF
About multi-lingualism… My dad was the polyglot in the family. He spoke English, Yiddish, Polish, German, French, Italian, and Arabic (!). The Arabic was from going to medical school at the American University of Beirut in the early 30’s. In that era, it was fairly common for Jews to go to med school abroad, in order to avoid the quotas for Jews in American medical schools. He was always proud of the fact that his classmates at AUB did better on their boards than the graduates of American schools.
His mother spoke mostly Yiddish. She’d write us letters in ‘English’ that was spelled… creatively. The trick to understanding the letters was to read them out loud with a Yiddish accent.
Satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: I only took 3 and one of those, German, only for a year. The other two ingredients in my international word salad came from being in the countries for a while. Usually leaving just as I was getting the hang of a very rudimentary conversation at about preschool level.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Off to swim and run errands.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Ha, I sez wut you done their.
Schlemazel
Maybe it has been but I have not see this.
Why (other than the obvious need to blame Islam for all our troubles) has nobody mentioned postpartum depression as a factor in the SB shootings? I know folks have talked about isolation etc but I wonder about her mental state.
Satby
@Baud: I see what you did.
BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF:
I’m a firm believer in creative spelling.
Baud
@Schlemazel:
I think it’s been mentioned. My question is that six months of depression seems too short a time to get radicalized and possibly get your spouse radicalized and do the type of planning that they apparently did.
This is case so weird that I’m waiting to see what they find in their investigation.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Satby: The Russian was taken as a lark my last quarter and I was thinking of specializing in Soviet Economics. Chinese was just for fun and Korean is because my wife is Korean and many in her family don’t speak English. I really impressed my FIL the last time we were in Seoul by reading the back of the newspaper he was reading. ?
Satby
@bemused: I would agree. When I was small one great aunt had children’s books in Irish Gaelic, so someone in my family spoke it. But I assume only when they didn’t want the kids, my mother and her sibs, to know what they were talking about. And they speak English in Ireland anyway, thanks to the occupation.
donnah
Re: O Holy Night. Please go listen to Mahalia Jackson sing it on YouTube. I think her version is stunningly beautiful. By the final notes, I’m always in tears.
http://youtu.be/uKILk4k3xvk
NotMax
@Schlemazel
Whole thread on that.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I used to have a great interest in foreign languages. I’m a little sad that life has forced me to change my priorities.
Satby
LOL, Valentina just came downstairs and asked ” is it my imagination or is the whole world white outside?”.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I think there was something at his work, possibly little stuff over time, that made them a target.
Satby
@Baud: one of those things that fall away as we get older if we don’t use it, I think.
Baud
@Baud:
“This case is so weird…”
Like I said, barely treading water.
Baud
@Satby:
Wait till she watches the Republican National Convention.
NotMax
@Baud
The teleprompter will become your closest friend during the whistle stop tour.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
depression is a bitch, it twists your mind and could easily do this. The radicalization could have been a symptom not the disease.
OzarkHillbilly
@Satby: I was Brian Boru.
JMG
I was in Lillehammer in 1994 for the Winter Olympics and fell in love with Norway. It is very rare, at least in this country, to be in a place where people being at once well-organized and relaxed is the norm. I want to go back some day — in the summer.
WereBear
@Satby: Yay! on the job.
I am heading out with a friend for a town an hour distant; must take pictures and experience a couple of their holiday celebrations. It will be the sunniest in the afternoon that it has been for days, but it’s not rainy and we have some snow enough to be festive.
I similarly had to work last night, taking pictures at our craft show, but Mr WereBear bought me a lovely necklace, so that worked out :)
I have a light box at my office and I use it. Highly recommended, but be careful with plants; I sunburned them with it. You wouldn’t think so, it gives off hardly any heat, but the light is apparently quite sun-like. Makes me feel better this time of year!
Baud
@NotMax:
I’ll be elected to lead, not to read.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Exactly. I am prone to depression and the one time I succumbed to it scares the hell out of me such that I refuse to ever go there again. I lost years of my life to that pit.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: She might be able to find a “chat pal” online. There’s a service which pairs remote grandparents with Brazilian teens who wish to practice their English.
I’m sure there’s someone out there thinking the same thing as your wife.
WereBear
@Satby: When I was in Brazil, I knew enough Spanish to get in trouble in Portuguese. I ordered “chicken under God” in a restaurant and flustered the poor waiter.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That worked so well for us in CA.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Remember when Republicans wanted to “amend for Ahnold”? Good times.
Kay
@Baud:
I am too. The bomb-making part makes me think more of Columbine than an international terrorist thing. Columbine was planned as a bombing.
The larger explosive devices they made failed, so the shooting because the focus. I also always keep in my mind that a lot of what we were told about Columbine simply wasn’t true. They weren’t alienated or bullied or ostracized. One manipulated every person he encountered (including the adults) and the other was depressed but functioning quite well as far as school. The manipulative shooter was in a juvenile justice “diversion” program prior to the event where he received extensive counseling and evaluation- they didn’t pick up that he was a threat because he lied to all of them- pretended remorse, etc.
BillinGlendaleCA
Yup.
Iowa Old Lady
I recently read FLIRTING WITH FRENCH, by William Alexander. He describes his efforts to learn French as an American in his 50s. It’s very entertaining.
I’m in a good mood because I have editorial feedback on a YA book I just sold, so now I can start revision, which is my favorite part of writing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel: Anne Laurie did a whole thread on that last night (and took some stick for it).
donnah
My comment is in moderation; it contained a youtube link.
But anyhoo, give a listen to Mahalia Jackson’s version of O Holy Night. It’s gorgeous.
Sean
Troy Andrews has the best version of O Holy Night. As performed on Studio 60 years ago.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I4YMxGUiwyY
Chris
@Mustang Bobby:
Apropos of the conversation upthread about multilingualism, I am saddened by the fact that a lot of people in the U.S. are a) proud of the the fact they can’t speak another language (even if they can hardly speak English) and b) afraid of people who can speak more than one. I work in an environment where the majority of my co-workers are not native English speakers and yet they have not only learned it but use it as a part of their job. I took French for five years in grammar and middle school and Spanish for two years in high school plus two semesters in grad school and lived in places where Spanish is on an equal footing with English; New Mexico and South Florida. After all that I can barely order dinner in Spanish (although I do know enough to get my face slapped). The isolationism and “exceptionalism” of the American know-nothings is one reason of many that the rest of the world resents us.
The thing that annoys me is that the crappy language options are frequently still the case in college, even for universities that bill themselves as having strong international relations department. My undergrad was one of those (American University), but offered only four semesters in Arabic, Persian, Russian… any language, I think. (Spoiler alert: not enough to learn fluency).
My graduate school (Florida International University) offered even fewer language courses, though it’s more Latin America centric and I suppose they figure living in Miami is a Spanish immersion course in itself.
The best program I’ve been to yet was Arizona State University, whose language institute offers intensive classes in the summer – four hours a day, plus homework that’ll take up another two to four hours. I can’t possibly stress how much better you learn when you have to do that every day for most of the day, instead of just once or twice a week for a couple of hours. But even then, they only offer the equivalent of four semesters’ worth, although they do complement it by tacking an additional month of immersion abroad (if you can afford it) onto the summer program.
I’m told the University of Maryland used to offer really good language courses (even full degrees?) but haven’t been able to lately because the DOD funding that used to pay for them has dried up. (Because it’s not like the U.S. military needs language expertise, amirite?) The other place I heard fantastic things about when first applying to colleges was Middlebury, but I never got into that one.
ETA: and yeah, I do agree that the aggressively proud ignorance of the American Exceptionalist ethos has a lot to do with this. We expect other people to come to us, not the other way around. Applies to more than just language.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Chris:
That’s pretty much how I took Chinese, but only for half the summer(one year equivalent).
ETA: I took it at UCLA summer session.
Kay
We’re taking our 13 year old to a Christmas music program – an orchestra. He loves music and he plays in the school band and he’s always liked the music events we have taken him to but now he has a group of friends he spends most weekends with so he may be getting tired of palling around with his parents.
A group of them were here last weekend and I was listening to them talk and they were discussing how adults look at them suspiciously. So (apparently) they feel like these adults are somehow judging them. They started this whole thing with first names, they would say a name like “Barbara” or “Debbie” or “Paul” and these names mean the person is a certain age. I just think it’s hysterical that these names mean “older” to them- like maybe “Mildred” or “Harriet” or “Harold” would to prior generations.
Chris
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s pretty much how I took Chinese, but only for half the summer(one year equivalent).
That sounds about right. It was seven weeks for me, three and a half weeks being equivalent to one semester. Even without the additional four weeks of going abroad, easily the best academic experience I’ve ever had.
Satby
@Baud: I don’t expose children to pornography in my house.
PurpleGirl
Somewhere around 6:30 or so, I fell asleep so I’m catching up with the thread now. BGinCHI — thanks for your answer. Also, thanks to everyone else who commented about Norway. Now to have breakfast and get into the day. (And read the rest of the thread.)
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Yes, but can a person so depressed do that kind of planning and amassing of weaponry?
BGinCHI
@raven: Wow. Amazing. Just back from various Jul markets.
Nice, non-commercial, non-preachy holiday atmosphere here.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl: I made the mistake of snuggling with my girls and fell asleep for 3 hours after the 11pm news. It’s 7am and I’m still awake; I’ve got to limit snuggles to 10 minutes max.
ETA: Girls in this context are the canine variant.
AndyG
Late to the party but…..
….best version of “O Holy Night”? Jussi Bjorling. None other
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVYCudlVMSM
shell
When I first read this I thought “Gah, whats happened now!?”
But I guess its just a overview of t his generally shitty week.
Wont get my Chriistmas tree for a while. My sisters birthday is on the 10th, and its been a tradition in our family not to dive into the holidays till after.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’m reading it now and enjoying all the tangents he goes off on. I wonder it that’s why adults have a tougher time learning languages: too many distractions and lack of focus or attention span.
PurpleGirl
@Betty Cracker: I’m getting a tree also today, although it goes on the terrace until I have the table cleared where it will go. I get a real tree and there is a tree seller by our buildings this year. (I think the same people who were selling veggies and fruit, truck farmers from NJ.) I had a fake tree when I first had my own apartment. When I moved to Woodside I began to get real trees, having the terrace and an elevator made it easier to handle a real tree. It isn’t every year I’m in the mood for holiday decorating — this year I am.
Satby
@WereBear: Thanks (for your earlier comment), and LOL. I’m lucky I have little idea of the things wrong I’ve said. Though once in Japanese instead of saying “not very skillful” I said “not very Jewish”. Or so I was told by my snickering Japanese friend.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Seems evenly split from what I hear.
I wish I could have chosen my accent. Indiana rural would not have been in the top 5.
BGinCHI
@MomSense: I do notice that people here have a lot of “Strategies” for coping with lack of light.
My plan is coffee and work, mixed with a little light depression.
BGinCHI
@bystander: Want to get there and to Trondheim.
Funny thing is that when you live in a place like this you kind of lose the desire to travel. Too much to do here.
Although a weekend in Malaga wouldn’t hurt right now….
BGinCHI
@Leto: Luxury.
shell
Just got my first look at that marble bust of Cheney. Damn, it really does look like the guy from Sling Blade.
BGinCHI
@sm*t cl*de: Exchange rate is VERY good right now. Around 8.5 KR to the $.
But yes, prices are very high.
bemused
@BGinCHI:
I like sunny days better than cloudy but especially in the winter when daylight hours are much shorter. I am definitely a lot more energetic on sunny days. If it starts out cloudy, I am not very peppy but if the sun suddenly appears I immediately feel much perkier. Taking more vitamin D over winter has helped.
BGinCHI
@Iowa Old Lady: It is. That’s one of the really nice things. You can see the lights on the houses as they sit on the mountains, as well as the lights of the funicular.
People are also out a lot and restaurants are always very busy. It’s bustling.
I like the feeling in the evening of both loneliness (I don’t really live here and have friends and so on) and a deep satisfaction of living in a European city. As a poor kid in the midwest it’s what I always dreamed of. That and publishing novels.
2-2 so far.
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear:
I think you invented our new national motto.
BGinCHI
@Iowa Old Lady: Hey, big congrats!!
I didn’t know you wrote books!
BGinCHI
@bemused: It’s so true. You get that one day of sunshine and it just lifts the mood.
That plus exercise keeps me going.
shell
I have an artists lightbox in my studio, for tracing and such. Wonder if I get the added benefit of light therapy.
PurpleGirl
@Schlemazel: I’ve always thought that as the daughter of an electrician, if I lived in an earlier time my father was probably the candlemaker.
Iowa Old Lady
@BGinCHI: Depending on how you define “books,” there’s a divided opinion. :-)
BGinCHI
@Iowa Old Lady: I always picture you sitting in a rocking chair in front of a fire place knitting. Based on your handle.
So this still comes as a pleasant surprise.
Doug R
For some reason my Alien 5 comment failed.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: jaw on floor
Mike in NC
@Matt McIrvin: And President Trump will decree that his image will henceforth appear on all of our coins.
scav
@BGinCHI: Ooohh, I am sooo vicariously enjoying that vision of winter markets. Only been to Scadinavia in summer personally, but with that, descriptions of others who have been there in December and some cheats from more southerly xmas markets . . . . whimper. Are you permanently in Bergen? Have you been to the stave church (not sure how far out of town it was, things get blurry, but it stuck as highlight in itself).
BGinCHI
@scav: The stave churches are well out of town, so no. But the Jul thing today had us in the Bryggen for most of the morning. That’s all wood and so old and lovely.
For those of you who have never seen it, Google “Bergen Norway Bryggen.” We live a 3 minute walk from there.
We are here for a year.
PurpleGirl
On trying to learn a foreign language: I took French for 3 years in Junior High and began German in college.(I managed to use science as my 3-year group for NYC’s high school requirement.) In a weird turn of events, just as I should have begun thinking in the new language (instead of doing translation) I’d begin to stutter in the new language and any learning seemed to come to a full stop. In college, the dean of academic affairs understood the pressure this put on me and he ruled that I could drop the foreign language requirement but I still had to do the same number of credits. (The rest of the committee though I should take ancient Greek or Latin, a language I wouldn’t have to speak.)
WRT the stutter: my mother once told someone that she couldn’t teach me Italian or Spanish (which she spoke) because “We had enough trouble teaching her English.” No, dearest mama, you did not. I had trouble talking but that WAS NOT THE SAME as learning my first language. I learned English and reading well enough to be ahead of my class in elementary school (although it wasn’t noticed until my first standardized exam).
ETA: Sorry if this is long but there was a lot I wanted to say. I am always impressed by others’ ability to speak or read/write in another language. I wish I were able to. I’ve like reading all your experiences in acquiring another language.
scav
@BGinCHI: Ahhh! Another thing that stuck, only without a name! And it is another of the Hansa places we kept ending up in. Oh, you lucky man.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl: This reminds me that in college there were a number of French, Spanish, etc for Reading courses aimed at people who would be more mining the literature or journals than striking up conversations. But people I know who took the course found that it helped with both. Funny, I recall also that one guy had a mild stutter and really did well.
Laura
Patti Smith sings a beautiful Oh Holy Night. That’s my favorite version.
Amir Khalid
On the subject of languages, the Language Log blog, familiar to some here, had this absolutely darling post from a few days ago.
Another Holocene Human
Quick update: the meds adjustment worked, mood finally bounced off the lows yesterday. Unfortunately, was also exposed to some musty mildewy environment yesterday morning and got a nasty migraine. Plus change in the weather isn’t helping. So I am pretty useless today. But thank goodness for the meds–that was scary.
Iowa Old Lady
@Another Holocene Human: Glad it’s getting better.
Laura
Here’s the YouTube link to Patti Smith. I hope you enjoy it.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5E6VwSZpE
PurpleGirl
@Brachiator: I tried that in Junior High School and took the two year Regents in French. I passed but not with a very high grade. I failed the first semester of French in High School and the teacher pointed out my inability to speak French. Just some quirk in my brain, I guess. But when I found the experience happening again with German in college, I requested that NYU drop the foreign language requirement for me. I was lucky that the dean understood what the experience meant to me and how depressed it made me feel.
Baud
@Satby:
Whose house do you go to?
;-)
Germy
“I Am Tired of This Crap”—Lindsey Graham Plays Thundering Scold in Wild-Eyed, Nothing-to-Lose Speech
“Not the speech you thought you were gonna hear, right? Not the speech I thought I was gonna give.”
bemused
@BGinCHI:
I think the no sun blues might have a lot to do with high alcohol consumption in Finland and other Scandinavian countries too. Come to think of it, northern Minnesotans drink quite bit too.
Suzanne
Mr. Suzanne is a bilingual speech-language pathologist. He started a new job this year working for one of the best school districts in the city, in two Title 1 schools providing speech and language support to Spanish-as-their-first-language kiddos, some of whom are severely disabled. He got hired in this district because they are starting full “dual-language” programs, in which they speak exclusively in English for half of the school day, and the other half in Spanish. We have had Spawn the Younger in dual-language preschool for the last year and a half, and it is amazing how much Spanish she knows, even as she’s learning/developing in English simultaneously. We’ve decided to have her do the full dual-language program. I am excited, as I didn’t start taking language classes until eighth grade, and I have always struggled with it. I am visual/spatial/mathematical, and I don’t have that gift for fast language acquisition.
Everyone complaining about lack of sun can trade me places. Phoenix has had a cold snap this week, but we still have our oppressively sunny skies.
Germy
@bemused: And alcohol inhibits vitamin D uptake. So the “solution” to the problem increases the problem.
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh good. I was hoping to hear “the rest of the story” with a happy ending.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl: yeah, facility with languages can be funny. I remember once watching a young girl on the LA Metro talking to her younger brother. She would say everything twice, once in flawless English, then again in flawless Spanish. She seemed to enjoy playing with the words as she spoke them.
One the other hand, in college one of my building mates could speak 7 languages, and didn’t have anything interesting to say in any of them. Nice guy though. He was from Wisconsin, I think, and would speak to his mother weekly, in Norwegian, on a ham radio.
Gimlet
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-nonexistent-case-for-progressive-taxation/2015/12/04/4ef17830-99e6-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
George Will
Progressives are increasingly preoccupied with income inequality, and their current hero, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), favors increasing the tax system’s progressivity. So, in this 103rd year of the income tax, it is timely to note that there still is no intellectually sturdy case for progressive taxation.
inequality, even when unlovely to some, is unjust only when it arises from unjust social arrangements. So, the degree to which inequality is morally troubling depends on the degree to which the process that allocates wealth does so according to political influence and rent-seeking rather than merit and self-reliance.
bemused
@Germy:
I didn’t know that. Interesting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy: I see that speech referred to a lot, (can’t quite bring myself to read or watch it), and I’d guess about 5% of those mentions mention that Lindsey Graham, valiant moderate, may have actually lapped old man McCain as a desperate, wild-eyed, spittle-flecked, hysterical war monger
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
Was in Copenhagen a few decades ago and while shopping with a friend for a present for his girlfriend back in the states we were in a shop and this beautiful blond sales girl walked up to us to help. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Then she started talking. I asked her if she was from Oxford. No, she was born and raised in Copenhagen but why would I ask? Told her that I very much liked to try and guess where people are from using their accent and that hers was classic Oxford. Her english professor was from Oxford and all the kids in her class spoke with the same accent. A lessen learned, never judge a person by how they speak (or and even more so how they look) for often you will be wrong. Still fun to guess accents.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: last night on the Hayes show, they played a clip of Lindsey saying (on Andrea Mitchell’s Happy Villager Neocon Funtime Hour, naturally) that he’s been hearing for about a year about ISIS-bride schemes. Hayes asked Sen Chris Murphy if he had heard of similar plots. Murphy kind of smirked and said something like “Well, we all know Lindsey gets excited about these kinds of things.
Brachiator
It’s a lovely day today and I am torn between getting a lot of stuff done and doing as little as possible. I may go see the movie, Brooklyn, after reading a range of lovely reviews, and want to buy some books in an actual bookstore, as opposed to Kindle downloads.
I also recommend the movie Creed, especially before the screens get taken over entirely by Star Wars. Like the original Rocky, the movie is as much a romance as a sports movie. So it is a good date movie. And it is an audience pleaser, so best seen with a crowd, rather than sofa riding the video release. Great cinematography by a woman DP. And director Ryan Coogler gets great performances from both Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone. The film also has a nice take on family being more than biology or ancestry, and also sets itself in a working class milieu, both in the US and in Liverpool, where one of the movie fights takes place.
ETA. The thing by George Will, above, shows what a gas bag he is.
tazj
When I was a child there was a show called “The Big Blue Marble”, and through it you could get a pen pal. My pen pal was from Norway and of course, we communicated in English Her writing was excellent.
I took French from 7th grade through college but I’m not fluent or close to it. I took Russian in college also, and briefly entertained the idea of becoming a translator before settling on the more practical Nursing major. I don’t think most people in the U.S. are proud of the fact that they can only speak English. Our schools don’t provide enough opportunity to learn other languages well. My husband, who grew up in Canada, started taking French in elementary school. My kids take Spanish in elementary school but it’s only once a week.
My husband grew up speaking Cantonese in his household but he told me it’s hard for him to understand anyone outside his family. He has no accent at all but sometimes gets English idiomatic expressions wrong. He has tried to teach me a few Cantonese words but always laughs at me. “You’re saying it wrong, you’re supposed to hear a ring.” I don’t really understand but it’s funny trying.
BGinCHI
@bemused: I don’t know. So far no matter how much I drink it’s still dark.
Amir Khalid
I’m sorry, it’s probably wrong of me to say this; but I can’t see a big musical number like that and not think of the Christmas in Heaven sequence from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life.
Ruckus
@Mustang Bobby:
Was in a south american take out place the other day and ordered a dish and because I used the proper accent to order, the woman responded in spanish to me. The look of total lack of understanding on my part almost made her laugh. Me too. I’ve studied 5 different languages besides the american I speak, french, latin, spanish and russian. I’m
prettyabsolutely useless in all of them.Chris
@Ruckus:
I didn’t know where ABBA was from until someone told me, but I would not have guessed “a non English speaking country.”
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’d ask how one does not succumb to that which sneaks up on you and then smacks you in the back of the head but I’ve learned over the years to recognize the spiral before it’s too late. Which does take some experience on how to accomplish. Like most things.
MaryRC
@donnah: Donnah, you beat me to it. Mahalia’s is indeed the perfect O Holy Night. She gets the lyrics wrong a couple of times, but it’s the imperfection that makes it perfect. There is so much feeling in it that you don’t care.
Snarkworth
@Iowa Old Lady: Congratulations on the book! I agree about the pleasure of revising. You know you have the basics nailed down; it’s a matter of improving what’s there.
grumpy realist
@Satby: YES. I finally managed to organize my brain so I could keep three language in use (usually they’re English, Japanese, and French) and be monolingual in each one of them without difficulty. But the other languages I know….yowza. Ask me to talk in one of them and it will be a polylingual mess.
gelfling545
I’m babysitting my grandson while my daughters, their daughters (17 and 8 years old) & my sons in law go to the Planned Parenthood support rally. I believe we will watch Polar Express.
Ruckus
@grumpy realist:
A friend of mine, Latino in origin once told me that the spanish that we hear in socal is really spanglish. No one she knows speaks monolingual. But then I have an artist friend who is from Mexico, citizen for over 20 yrs, who is perfectly monolingual in spanish and english. Like in all avenues of life, it takes all kinds.
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
Sounds very Moscow-like.
Trooptrap Tripetrope
If you’re O Holy Nighting, try the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble’s version.
Another Holocene Human
Great, so I’ve already seen people arguing strenuously online that landlords have the right to violate their tenant’s rights and open up property they own to whoever because whatever, because apparently if you rent you’re now a subhuman and give up any sort of rights or dignity because your pathetic stank ass sends cash to a landlord on a monthly basis. You monster.
gogol's wife
@bystander:
You have a Robin Hood hat? Why have I never seen this? Pics or it didn’t happen.
Ruckus
@Another Holocene Human:
Property owners are after all the leading citizens in the universe and can do no wrong. If you doubt this look at the current Greasy Old Poop party leading candidate. He owns property and he’s a fine, outstanding…… OK I can only carry this on so far.
Rogue Commissioner
211,000 new jobs in November. Thanks Obummer!
bystander
@gogol’s wife: I only wear it when I’m in Alesund.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
If those gym members ever visit the US with that mistranslation in mind, they’re either going to be very embarrassed or have a really, really good time and go back talking about how friendly Americans are.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
On this side of the country, I woke up with what I think is a swollen lymph node, but it’s kind of freaking me out. It’s a slight swelling right under my chin on the left-hand side of my windpipe. Any doctors in the house?
rikyrah
High-poverty schools often staffed by rotating cast of substitutes
By Emma Brown December 4 at 5:27 PM
Mya Alford dreams of studying chemical engineering in college, but the high school junior is at a disadvantage: Last year, her chemistry teacher at Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Academy quit just weeks after school started, and the class was taught by a substitute who, as Alford put it, “didn’t know chemistry.”
The year before, there was no permanent biology teacher until December. Students at Westinghouse, a high-poverty school in one of Pittsburgh’s roughest neighborhoods, often see a rotating cast of substitutes, Alford said.
“You’re looking at test scores,” Alford said of the school’s low performance on state standardized tests in math, science and reading. “But we didn’t have a stable teacher.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/how-can-students-learn-without-teachers-high-poverty-schools-often-staffed-by-rotating-cast-of-substitutes/2015/12/04/be41579a-92c6-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_faketeachers-535pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
IANAD, but I get those sometimes, especially when a cold is coming on. But it never hurts to have a doctor check it.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@rikyrah:
I’m getting into an argument in the thread above about public schools (though it’s Detroit, not Chicago). Detroit claims that they’re spending $14K per pupil, but their teacher get paid $18K less per year than the next largest school district for the same number of teachers. So where the hell is all of that money going?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@gogol’s wife:
I hope it’s not that hell cold that all y’all have been getting on the East Coast — I have an office holiday potluck to plan for next Friday!
julia
@Laura: When you said “Patti Smith singing O Holy Night”, I just had to watch! You’re right, it’s understated and very moving. Who woulda thunk it??
Avalie
Can’t find a link, but best version of O Holy Night I’ve ever found is by Na Leo Pilimehana on their 1998 CD Christmas Gift
tybee
@bemused:
“when you live in minnesota and you’ve got a drinking quota…”
Laura
@julia:
The tenderness is what guts me. I am irreligious and yet humbled by this raw acknowledgement of the devine that may be where one was or is or may hope to be
rikyrah
@Elmo:
that is so sweet
dollared
Sorry I’m so late to this thread. Far too many soccer matches in the rain, even if two were indoors. But Anne, you need to know that the most perfect version of “O Holy Night” is the “O Holy Night Cha Cha Cha, by Brave Combo, the world’s only Tex-Mex Polka Punk Klezmer Band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOIlnnXH1K0
Mo MacArbie
O So Late, but I had to post the version apostropher linked way back when.