Vineyards Around Paso Robles
I will be away from my computer for a few days while I attend the wedding of my niece Hilary in Paso Robles, where my brother Dan lives. The ceremony will be held at a B&B in nearby Templeton. Martine and I will also be spending some time at Solvang and Coalinga.My next post will probably come on Monday afternoon or evening.
The Former Saint Henry Church and Elementary School
To begin with, I have a terrible admission to make: I never finished First Grade. As my birthday is in January, I started kindergarten at Cleveland’s Harvey Rice Elementary School on East 116th Street in January 1950. I was not a huge success, as I did not speak a word of English. Mrs. Idell sent me home with a note pinned to my shirt that said, “What language is this child speaking?” Duh! She was teaching kids in a Hungarian neighborhood, so she should have guessed. But in 1950, people didn’t think that way.
Halfway through First Grade, my parents moved to the suburbs in what was then called the Lee-Harvard area. After half a year of First Grade at Harvey Rice, I started in immediately with Second Grade at the newly opened Saint Henry School on Harvard Avenue. Please don’t tell the authorities at the Cleveland School District that I didn’t complete First Grade, or they might come looking for me and make me sit for six months at one of those tiny school desks in which my adult posture would become stunted.
Dominican Sisters (a.k.a. Penguins)
For the next seven years, I was a prisoner of a mixture of Dominican nuns (whom we referred to as penguins because of the color of their habits) and lay teachers. They included:
I started Saint Henry with a rudimentary knowledge of English and ended up something of a whiz kid—with a specialty in English. In my younger years, I took a lot of guff because of my foreignness, so I deliberately set about becoming something of a specialist in the language. I could still diagram a sentence. (Do they do that any more?)
I Am Flying LAN Down to Lima
… but not just yet.
Yesterday evening I book my flight to Peru via Kayak. I got a nice nonstop from LAX to Lima (LIM) on LAN Airlines. Formerly LAN Chile, it is now part of the Latam Group, after having merged with TAM of Brazil—a South American aviation giant. And yet, while airlines in the United States are cutting back on service, LAN provides meals on real plates with real cutlery and free wine. Would I fly a U.S. airline out of the country? Uh, no.
When Martine and I took LAN to Buenos Aires in 2011, we enjoyed our flight as much as possible considering how long we were in the air. The LAX to Buenos Aires run is just about one of the farthest trips one can take in the Western Hemisphere. We both felt that the airline was well managed, especially as compared to Argentina’s own national airlines, Aerolineas Argentinas, which once landed us at the wrong airport—not bothering to tell us until we were in the air. That cost us a $60 cab ride from Ezeiza, as opposed to nearby Aeroparque.
How do I feel about my upcoming trip three months from now? Let’s ask Herbie the Magical llama:
Cool
Agora
But as for merchants, their holdings are increased by false oaths, and the art of becoming rich is to show contempt toward the gods, and they sail to every city, doing this evil, lying, deceiving, and misleading. And whoever knows how to do this best will come away richest.—Libanius (4th Century A.D.), Progymnasmata: Comparationes
Still from Luis Buñuel’s Mexican Bus Ride (Subida Al Cielo, 1952)
For various reasons, I am inordinately fond of the films that Luis Buñuel made in Mexico between 1946 and 1965. Since then, he has perhaps made greater films, but remember there is a big difference between fondness and admiration. Because these films were made in Mexico, where perhaps not enough money was budgeted for each production, the director had to use his ingenuity to make the films his own. And when he succeeded most, the results were wonderfully human and surreal. The films from this period that I liked the most are, in order of production:
Of these, the most admirable are the last two, just as the director was ready to step onto the world stage. But the ones I would like to watch over and over again are Mexican Bus Ride and Illusion Travels by Streetcar.
Mexican Poster for Mexican Bus Ride
In the first film, a young man travels from a coastal village to a large market town on a long bus ride during which one passenger dies, another gives birth, and he himself is seduced by the lusciously ripe Lilia Prado (see photo above). Somehow all works out well, almost magically in fact. I have seen this film half a dozen times and am still not close to getting tired of it.
Illusion Travels by Streetcar involves—and tell me this is not unique—a hijacking of a streetcar in which a disconsolate streetcar driver who hijacks a streetcar, takes it on a route of his own devising while offering free rides to a motley crew of passengers who join him on his route.
Both films are hilarious and loving. It is obvious that Buñuel had considerable feeling for the people of Mexico, which shows through again and again.
Ancient Aymara Burial Towers
This fall, when I travel to Peru, one of the places I hope to visit is Sillustani, near the shores of Lake Titicaca roughly between Juliaca and Puno. When I arrive in Puno by bus from Arequipa, I will have a couple of days to adjust to the 12,500-foot (3,810 meters) altitude around the lake. On one of those days, I hope to take a half day tour to visit the chullpas at Sillustani. These are Aymara burial towers, presumably for noble families, of the pre-Inca Aymara people who lived here.
One of the things I am beginning to learn is that Peru consists of many more pre-Columbian peoples than just the Incas. Before 1400, the Incas were a relatively small tribe who created a large empire, largely due to Pachacuti, a.k.a. Yupanqui, whose reign rapidly spread north to Ecuador and south to Chile.
Below are two local indigenous women photographed at Sillustani:
Two Aymara or Quechua Women Working on Their Handicrafts
Notice the spindles in their hands. From what I understand, both men and women spend much of their spare time creating the textiles for which the area is famous.
The Spiral M31 (Andromeda) Galaxy With Our Moon in the Foreground
As if we didn’t already have enough troubles, the Andromeda (M31) Galaxy is set to collide with our Milky Way Galaxy. But then, as I am told, there’s no point in crying over spilt Milky Way.
According to CBS News, two neutron stars in M31 just collided. By “just,” of course, we mean two million years ago—which is more than 400 times longer than when Ken Ham thought the universe was created. It took that long for the light of the collision to reach our telescopes. The CBS News website has a neat animation of what the collision with our galaxy could look like.
In case you’re upset about this adversely affecting your weekend plans, let me assure you that the event is between two and four million years in the future:
But there is nothing to worry about, [Astronomer Dennis Overbye] noted, because long before that, the Earth will have entered the solar system’s “hot zone” and become too hostile to sustain human life, so no one [that we could recognize, in any case] will be around to experience the collision.
By then Ken Ham will have been resolved into the two or three molecules that make up his brain.
It’s Called “The Ship of Theseus”
I got this puzzle from The Futility Closet, which I have decided to add to my links:
Suppose we have a complete wooden ship, and one day we replace one of its wooden planks with an aluminum one. Most people would agree that the ship survives this operation; that is to say, its identity remains unchanged. But suppose that we then replace a second plank, and then a third, until our wooden ship is made entirely of aluminum. Is this the same ship that we started with? If not, when did it change?
Thomas Hobbes adds a wrinkle: Suppose that, as we did all this refurbishing, someone had gathered up all the discarded wooden planks and used them to assemble a second ship. What are we to make of this? “This, without doubt, had also been the same numerical ship with that which was at the beginning; and so there would have been two ships numerically the same, which is absurd.”
And philosopher Roderick Chisholm adds another: “Let us suppose that the captain of the original ship had solemnly taken the vow that, if his ship were ever to go down, he would go down with it. What, now, if the two ships collide at sea and he sees them start to sink together? Where does his duty lie — with the aluminum ship or with the reassembled wooden ship?”
The Young Poetess Half a Lifetime Ago
Losing a poet is a serious thing. They tend not to get replaced often enough with others who are as good. Or maybe we have gotten too used to their voices to hear newer voices emerging from the mass.
I was saddened to hear of Maya Angelou’s death this morning. She had been in poor health and slipped away from us quietly. Fortunately, her voice remains behind to remind us of what we are missing. Such as these brief lines entitled “Awaking in New York”:
Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.
I love that image of children sleeping while exchanging dreams with seraphim.
To one interviewer who asked in 1984 about how she wrote her poems, Miss Angelou had a quick retort:
I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.
Maybe that’s what I should do when I write these blogs!
Jorge Luis Borges in 1921
I was so very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.
My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (G. K. Chesterton and Honoré de Balzac); things associated with my past life (Cleveland and Dartmouth College), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the months to come, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. To see my other entries under this category, hit the tag below marked “ABCs”.I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. Today, we’re at the letter “J,” for Jorge Luis Borges.
Ever since I first learned about Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), I have been hooked. By now, I have read just about everything that has been translated into English, sometimes two or three times. He has guided my reading for over forty years: Without him, I would never have discovered Iceland or the works of G. K. Chesterton. Without him, I would never have gone to Argentina twice, once in 2006 and once in 2011. His City of Buenos Aires has become one of the ineluctable geographies of my dreams.
Of his works, I recommend most highly Labyrinths, Ficciones, Other Inquisitions, and, of course, his magnificent poetry. Below, from the recent Penguin anthology entitled Poems of the Night, I have excerpted one poem entitled “Sleep” as translated by Stephen Kessler:
SLEEP
The night assigns us its magic
task. To unravel the universe,
the infinite ramifications
of effects and causes, all lost
in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget
your name, your elders and your blood,
every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake,
the illusory point of the geometricians,
the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves,
your cheek on the pillow, the coolness
of the fresh sheets, the Caesars and Shakespeare
and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can
erase the cosmos and erect chaos.
Most people who know of Borges know only that he was blind. For the last half of his life, he was a kind of Teiresias. That’s why I wanted to reproduce above a photograph of the poet in his twenties. The other thing many people know is that he was singled out by the Swedish Academy to be passed over for the Nobel Prize for Literature, primarily because one member of the selection committee disagreed with his politics. This was supposedly because he accepted an award from Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. I do not care a fig if Borges’s politics are to the right of mine: All that counts is that he has had a benign, lasting, and ever growing influence on the person I have become.
Tarnmoor 
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