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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48632 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 00:31   |
EMoon
Messages: 669
Registered: March 2009 |
Senior Member |
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Here, today was a day of Happenings, the most of which aren't relevant to any discussion here (husband building a rock wall around the hand-dug well, because we're afraid the wooden cover is no longer up to horses walking on it. A rock-and-mortar wall because we don't have bricks or cinder blocks, and the rocks we have lying around were either freebies from a friend's ranch or already paid for. See...said it wasn't relevant here.)
What might be relevant (to past discussions) is today's voice lesson, in which Svengali elicited better sound than I do at home (nothing new) and then I sang (it could indeed be called "singing" though not particularly good singing) Schumann's "Seit ich ihn gesehen". I don't have German. I've sung a few things in German (last year's St. John Passion, for instance) but it's always a struggle with those consonant clusters...at least in the choir I can panic and go silent for two notes while someone with better language skills sings a particularly throat-wrenching mass of uncooperative sounds.
But. This was my assignment. I wrestled with it for awhile and finally gave up, going to YouTube, which helped. Svengali still stopped and corrected my pronunciation (things I hadn't caught from the singers online) but I was at 80%, not 9%. So on the last go-round, where he swore he wouldn't stop me and I should sing through the whole thing while he played, I did. The triumph? His next student knocked--Svengali invited him into the room (into the same room, with me, singing fairly loudly for me) and...my throat didn't close up and silence me. (It tried. But...I went on singing. Even the high bits. I knew they didn't sound that good and someone else was listening, but...kept on. First time.) Now to sing WELL. (maybe.)
E
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48633 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 01:56 |
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 Diane in MN
Messages: 2756
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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I don’t want to know how my computer works. I just want it to start when I turn the key in the little hole. Etc.
And you are absolutely correct to want this. Most people want this. I was primarily an applications programmer/analyst, but did a little systems work when I was employed*, and I just want my computer (AND its applications) to work when I sit down in front of it. I want it, in effect, to be the equivalent of a toaster. And since these machines purport to be HOME computers, they should be a lot closer to toasters than they are to ENIAC.**
* My husband takes great advantage of this. As a result he is a lot more likely to think of his computer as a toaster than I am. 
** And in fact, they really are. One-click software installation and automatic updates are the two standout examples of near-toasterhood, and fill me with gratitude every time I use them.
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48634 is a reply to message #48633 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 04:16 |
reading_fox
Messages: 22
Registered: September 2011
Location: Manchester ish |
Junior Member |
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It’s one we haven’t been on in yonks and yonks and they’ve relocated the freller which you aren’t really allowed to do with legal public footpaths but at least it’s still there at all. The best relocated ones are when we’re three-quarters through the long loop back to Wolfgang and we do not want to turn around, and Sleeping Beauty’s hedge rears up in front of us. The standard bad-attitude farmer’s tactic is ploughing right up to the edge so you have nowhere to walk, but you can at least flounder on. Worse is the electric fence set three inches from the hedgerow. We’ve negotiated a few of these too, with hellhounds on strangle-short lead and clearly wondering what’s sent me off my nut this time. Chaos nonetheless managed once to sting himself and he turned around and looked at me reproachfully, the ungrateful cur. Possibly my favourite is the dog-impassable stile. I don’t like lifting forty-odd-pound hellhounds over these things* and there’s one chest-high one** that is a nightmare. I haven’t been that way in a while, to see if the frelling city council was sufficiently buried under infuriated dog walkers to have had the wretched thing altered.
Oh I've played this game alot - even without the dogs it is fun. Fortunately things are a lot lot better than they were - nearly all the paths I've used now have fence/hedge/ditch crossing points, even if they aren't in good shape. Trying to get through a hedge when the last time there was a gap was a few decades ago is fun! (alway as you say threequarters of the way around a long walk - normally close to getting dark as well).
It's on of those online things - many councils now (did until the recent cuts anyway) have a dedicated highways section where you can report such things - sometimes even with upto date maps where you just point and click to indicate there's a problem. My parents now gleefully do this after every walk.
Footpaths can be divereted. It requires signs to be posted. What you're supposed to do a few years later when the signs have long since fallen down, but the maps aren't updated, I haven't yet worked out other than wander about aimlessly. This is part of the fun.
I do still love the english footpath system though. Wherever you are, you cna pretty much step out of the door and go for a walk.
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48636 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 11:03 |
sixpence
Messages: 49
Registered: August 2009 |
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My mother - who was first in Japan in the '30s - told me that back then when phone calls were still operator connected, if the line was silent the operators would assume that one had hung up and disconnect the line. People had to keep talking -hence moshi moshi if one was pausing for thought.
sixpence
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48637 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 18:23 |
Besunami
Messages: 24
Registered: October 2011
Location: CA |
Junior Member |
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All of my sources and Japanese friends told me that moshi moshi (said very fast so it almost blends into one word) is not simply "hello" for speaking on the telephone. It originates in tales of the kitsune, spirit foxes who often tried to trick people by assuming human guise. When the telephone came along, you could not see the person on the other end. How could you tell if you were speaking to a person or a trickster spirit? Because of the shape of their mouths, kitsune cannot say "moshi moshi" as quickly and distinctly as a human. If one tries, it will garble the phrase into one word. Thus the Japanese could detect an inhuman caller at the beginning of the conversation. This clever ruse has now become tradition. I wonder if during the 30's moshi moshi was also co-opted to fill the need with operators, kind of a "Hello, are you still there?"
Robin, I'm sorry Ashley-san's voice irritates you. To put it in cultural context, which you may already know, so apologies if you do, the Japanese prefer women to speak with high-pitched, childlike voices. It is considered more feminine. That's a bonus for me since I tend to sound like a 12 year old on the phone, but can really grate on some people's ears. This is why my father hates it when I watch anime; he can't stand the female voices. As a very chauvinist culture, Japanese women are also expected to act a little childlike/"innocent". I have to wonder what Ashley-san's job really is. Many women in Japan's businesses are Office Ladies (glorified tea makers) and are not promoted because they are expected to marry and leave the workforce to be a housewife. This is changing, but a bit slowly.
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48639 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Thu, 01 March 2012 20:52 |
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boddhi_d
Messages: 70
Registered: October 2008
Location: Tennessee |
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This sounds a bit like the Appalachians?, where up till recently, since I don’t think there’s much untouched back country left, there were isolated areas where they still spoke the Queen’s English—Elizabeth I, that is, not II.
Yes, in the southern Appalachians (North Carolina/Tennessee border, stretching on up to West Virginia). I wouldn't say 'untouched' - everybody mostly has electricity & plumbing*, and paved roads are the norm - but still isolated. You don't have to go far off the interstate or main road to be back-of-beyond. I'm only 10 minutes from downtown Knoxville, but there are lots of places within a 30-mile radius from my house that can only be called remote.
Up until he died in 2003, you could go hear Ray Hicks tell Jack Tales at one storytelling festival or another. His dialect was considered to be very quite archaic - something that you would have heard in the 17th-18th century. Google his name for more info, but here and here are a couple of sound clips.
Dawn in TN
*No, I'm being serious. Between the poverty & inaccessibility, modern utilities weren't as readily available in some parts until, I'd guess, the early 1980s. Maybe the late 1970s.
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48642 is a reply to message #48635 ] |
Fri, 02 March 2012 00:31 |
claning
Messages: 266
Registered: February 2010
Location: California |
Senior Member |
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Chirpy bees? Rather a mind-boggling thought. Cute, though.
(Sorry, not having a chirpy week here. It's becoming clear that a Situation at work is going to go right on Situating for months. Sigh.)
O Chris Laning <claning@igc.org> - Davis, California
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| Re: A day in which almost nothing happens but I rattle on endlessly anyway [message #48676 is a reply to message #48630 ] |
Sun, 04 March 2012 00:32 |
librarykat
Messages: 572
Registered: October 2008
Location: Redneck Riviera |
Senior Member |
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My dad was a sergeant in the Air Force, and he was stationed at Tachikawa AFB, kinda near Tokyo. For the first couple of years we lived in the housing area called Washington Heights (now Yoyogi Park - I attended Yoyogi Elementary School there), which the Japanese government took over to build the National Gymnasium for the 1964 Olympics. The Air Force built the Kanto Mura housing area closer to the base and moved all of us out there in 1963. My grandparents and aunt and uncle lived in Kawasaki, and that's where we spent most weekends and holidays.
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