Pessebre

It seems that was San Francisco de Asis who in 1223, in Italy, invented that in Catalonia is known as the living pessebre, that is a representation of the birth of Jesucrist with real characters. Some years after, during the "concilio de Trento", the eclesiastic authorities recommended that everybody made in his home a representation of the Jesus birth just before Christmas day. Now is an extended tradition in all Mediterranean area (specially in France, Italy and Spain) to build some days before Christmas a representation of the Jesus birth in a  preeminent place of the house, normally in the hall or in the dining room. In Catalonia, this representation is called "el pessebre".

There are different classes of pessebre. In Catalonia it is usually build with vegetal objects like moss, cork and mud figures. The scene is always the same, Jesus birth in a cowshed near the virgin Maria, Sant Josep, a mule and a cow. Jesus is over the place where the animals eat, "el pessebre" in Catalan. The Cristian tradition reserved this modest place to the rescuer of the world.

In the "pessebre" we found other standardized characters, the poor, the wise and the indifferent. The poor are the shepherds that always adore Jesus and give him some presents. The wise are the three magician kings who came from the far orient guided by a comet. The indiferent people are some characters that work in their usual activities without notice about the Jesus birth. A curious tradition in Catalonia is to represent a man defecating in a reserved place. This character is "el caganer" and is a perfect representative of the scatological catalan cultural tradition. Now you can see all famous people represented as mud figures in action to defecate, as for example the catalan president Carles Puigdemon or the US president Donall Trump.

Jorge Drexler

Acabo de descubrir el cantautor uruguayo Jorge Drexler. Me dijo una compañera de chat que estaba escuchando su música, y desde entonces, lo he investigado. Lo que me llamó primeramente la atención fue su suave manera de hablar y cantar. Y habla de cosas importantes, profundas. La primera canción que escuché empezó hablando de los primeros humanos. Otra trata de los varios modos de comunicación. Además, vi un TED Talk por él, sobre la décima, una forma de poesía en español. Me gusta su música producida con instrumentos simples. Ya sé que Drexler es un famoso en el mundo hispanohablante, pero la verdad es que nunca había escuchado nada de él. Para mí, llegar a conocer a artistas como él es otro beneficio de aprender un idioma extranjero.

Frozen

Yesterday at night I dreamt with a little girl about six years old. We were at a reunion with other people in front of the sea. She held my hand to walk toward the sea while she pronounced some Spanish words. And excited I told her: "¡Oh!... hablas español!”... We get out from that place happy and in the opposite direction of the sea while we keep talking and walking some blocks until we arrived at a door that she knocked... A man opened this door getting up very quickly from his chair... looked at my face he said “Oh!... Don’t be afraid, I’m his grandfather!”... Right away the girl swooned... He picked her up to take her to the next room, where there was a doctor. And worried they told to me: "She has been frozen for many, many years and recently we have awakened her"

The Nun

Yesterday (October 28, 2018) I had a great time with my parents, we were trying to create a costume for Halloween with stuff that we already had at home. My mother found in her warehouse a wedding dress and some other party's dresses but these were too long and uncomfortable. Then we started to search on the Internet "easy costumes" to imitate some ideas. Later we started to look inside our closets things that we could use to disguise us. We also were so excited about imagining the different costumes that we could create and how would we look like with each one of all those different costumes. After having a lot of ideas, we put together all the elements to improvise a nun costume for my mother and an Inspector costume for me. Finally, when she dressed for the first time as a nun we couldn't stop laughing. We were laughing a lot because she really looked like a nun but in a funny way. Suddenly my father joined us, finding to himself The Death costume, but It was “so scary” for me, so I got from my stuff a camper costume for him. Finally, we were all happy together because for the first time in our whole life we were satisfied with our Halloween costumes. We didn't organize a contest between us but if we had done it, in definitive, the nun would have won the award.

The new politics

All we live in a world divided by blocks of power, governed by people without a real contact with population necessities, more influenced by mysterious lobbies than for democratical wishes of people. Governants are fundamentally interested in vote estimations and how to finance their political campaigns. In my opinion, people must be always in the center of the political play, and we have now technological advances that allow absolutely change how politics has been done. Now we can see thousand people dying drowned in the Mediterranean see during their escape from the war and the horror, and all as a consequence of desitions of european politicians sometimes in our name! A similar landscape can be seen in US, with people who walk from Honduras searching a future for their sons and that will find the US army as a unique answer.

I think that citizens would have to be answered for all these questions by fast and sure electronic systems to clarify exactly which tings can be done in our name and which not

I think that other politic is possible. I think that people can always understand other people, and human rights must be always first. 

The magical power of the language

I was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, in 1965. In my family we always speaked in Catalán, never in Spanish. I learned Spanish for the first time when I went to school. In those years, speak Catalan in public institutions like school was forbidden by the dictator Franco because he wanted an unified nation with a language only. The result was that for me, Catalan was the language of my family and Spanish the official language of school, institutions and media. This has been my feeling for all over my life.

The situation is very different now in Catalonia. In the catalán school system the usual communication language is Catalán, and Spanish is learned as a second language. This system guarantees a good knowledge of both languages at the end of primary school.

Now, I work as a doctor in a big hospital and I talk with patients with the language that they prefer. Sometimes I visit young patients of other ethnic origins, black people, Arab people... If they have learned some years in a Catalan school they can speak with me in a perfect Catalan. My feeling is that I'm speaking with a member of my family with an exotic origin...

It is the magical power of the language. 

La ducha

Hoy tendremos un contratista en la casa para abordar un problema de larga duración. No mucho tiempo después de que nos mudamos a la casa, hace 14 años, notamos un poco de daño en el tablaroca al lado de la ducha. Durante los siguientes años el daño creció muy lentamente, subiendo la pared, hasta que fue claro que resultó de agua que venía de la ducha de alguna manera.

Varios años después, tuvimos otro contratista aquí que creyó que la fuente del agua era grietas en el suelo cerámico. No queriendo hacer más que lo necesario, acordamos que reparara la lechada en el suelo y el tablaroca. Hizo un buen trabajo. Sin embargo, no resolvió el problema. El daño reapareció y comenzó su subida de la pared.

Eso nos lleva a hoy. De hecho, todavía espero la llegada del equipo. No los conozco, y es inusual que trabaje un contratista el domingo. Ya veremos que pasará.

Das Boot

Durante el fin de semana vi la película alemana Das Boot, que salió a principios de los 80. Digo "durante el fin de semana" porque la versión que vi fue la no cortada ("uncut") y, por lo tanto, muy largo. De hecho, había dos discos, y creí que contenían dos diferentes versiones, así que vimos el segundo disco sin pensar mucho en ello. Eso tuvo lugar el viernes. Ya era el domingo cuando, por curiosidad, inserté el primer disco para ver cómo era diferente. Bueno, el comienzo fue totalmente diferente, me dio más del fondo de la historia y de los personajes. Mientras la película continuaba, yo seguía buscando la conexión con el segundo disco, y seguía no encontrándola. Pasaron 15 minutos, luego 30, luego 45. ¿Qué estaba pasando? Fue a estas alturas que me di cuenta de que este disco no fue otra versión del film, sino la primera parte de la misma versión. ¡Y continuó cerca de dos horas! ¡La película en total dura casi 5 horas! Lo más gracioso es que vimos la segunda parte del film sin darnos cuenta de que no era el film entero.

Pointing the way

Science has traditionally been a men matter.  Nevertheless, this unfair rule was broken by three courageous women who decided study stars and achieved unprecedented results in this field. Her names were Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921), Cecilia Payne – Gaposchkin (1900 - 1979) and Jocelin Bell (1943-).

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Massachusetts (US) in an important date for her country, the July 4 of 1868. She graduate in a women institution, the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women in 1892. Following an interest aroused in her senior year, she became a volunteer assistant in the Harvard Observatory in 1895. Some years after, she was admitted in a women - composed research group directed by Edward C. Pickering with the mission to determine the brightnesses of all measurable stars by photometry. The reason to choose women for this project was double, the work was considered tedious and repetitive, without necessity to have a high degree of intelligence, and the salary was considerably less than men. Henrietta was especially good in her work, and soon advanced from routine work to a position as head of the photographic stellar photometry department. Leavitt’s outstanding achievement was her discovery in 1912 that in a certain class of variable stars, the Cepheid variables, the period of the cycle of fluctuation in brightness is highly regular and is determined by the actual luminosity of the star. If you know the period of a Cepheid you can calculate its actual luminosity, and measuring its luminosity you can calculate the distance to that Cepheid. This discovery leaded to a new method to accurately determine the distances of many Cepheid stars and consequently of the star clusters and galaxies in which they were observed. The most dramatic application was Hubble’s use in 1924 of a Cepheid variable to determine the distance to the great nebula in Andromeda, which was the first distance measurement for a galaxy outside the Milky Way. This measurement changed our concept of the Universe, because we learned that there are millions and millions of different galaxies in the Universe and not only one, our galaxy.

Cecilia Payne – Gaposchkin was born in Wendoven, England, in 1900. She entered the University of Cambridge in 1919. A lecture by astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington on his expedition to the island of Principe that confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity inspired her to become an astronomer. Eddington encouraged her ambition, but she felt there were more opportunities for a woman to work in astronomy in the US than in Britain. In 1923 she received a fellowship to study at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge. In her Ph.D. thesis (published as Stellar Atmospheres 1925), Payne used the spectral lines of many different elements to establish that the spectral sequence did correspond to quantifiable stellar temperatures, and also determined that stars are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. However, she was dissuaded from this conclusion by astronomer Henry Norris Russell who thought that stars would have the same composition as Earth, but finally, Russell conceded in 1929 that Payne was correct. Payne received the first Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College for her thesis, since Harvard did not grant doctoral degrees to women. Some astronomers thought that her thesis was the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.

Jocelin Bell Burnell was born in Northern Ireland in 1943. She studied astrophysics and as a postgraduate student discovered in 1967 a peculiar radio signal from space that tracked across the sky with the stars. She established that the signal was pulsing with great regularity, at a rate of about one pulse every one and third seconds. Temporarily dubbed “Little Green Man 1” the source was identified after several years as a rapidly rating neutron star. That was the first discovered “pulsar”, one of the most interesting objects in the universe, sometimes a previous stage to a black hole. His thesis director was awarded by the Nobel prize for this discovery, but she was never recognized for it.

In my opinion is necessary to recognize these three women because they pointed the way to other scientist women and contributed to our world with knowledge but with justice too.

El desayuno almuerzo

Esta mañana éramos 14 en la casa para disfrutar el brunch que había preparado mi esposa - varias cazuelas de huevos, tocino, salchicha y vegetales. Había también bageles y una ensalada de fruta. Éramos seis adultos, cinco adolescentes (todos varones) y tres niños. En la conversación de adultos tocamos de todo, desde la venta de casas, pasando por carreras antiguas, hasta dificultades con la educación de hijos. Los adolescentes hicieron sus propias cosas, especializándose en comer, por supesto, y los niños jugaron un partido de ajedrez. La fiesta duró cerca de tres horas, y todos partieron con agradecimientos y estómagos llenos.

GOOD MEMORY OR BAD MEMORY?

(Picture from thinking.umwblogs.org)

Are you able to retain things that you read or heard easily?  Do you remember what did you eat the day before yesterday?  Do you remember what did you do every day during your last trip?  If you do…..there is good news: you have a good memory!

Let´s go further:  you do not know where you put your keys or glasses, do you?  How about names, dates, addresses, phone numbers or even anniversaries or birthdays? Do you remember them without problems?  Well, if you do not….that means that your memory is not so good!

Of course having a good memory helps to increase your creativity and ability to solve problems, improve your reading comprehension and self-esteem, reducing stress, etc.   It has many benefits for your health.

But don`t worry….it is not all bad news.  Sometimes a bad memory has some advantages too.  “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory...” states a famous quote.  In some cases it can be a “gift” because you move on through the difficulties easily, not hold grudges and that can help to keep relationships.

But let us come back to the point, there are many tips and exercises to sharpen your mind and boost brain power: give your brain a workout, get enough sleep, do physical exercise, make time for friends, have a laugh, eat a brain boosting diet, do puzzles, follow a schedule, read more, etc.

If you cannot improve your memory, well nobody is perfect….at least you can learn some expressions in English that can help you to show that if you forgot something it was not your intention and that you are doing your best!.  If you add “I am sorry”, that would be much better!! Here we go:

Be on the tip of your tongue: you think you know it and that you will be able to remember it very soon.     The answer is on the tip of my tongue….

Slip your mind: you forget it.   I am so sorry I forgot your birthday, it just slipped my mind.

Your mind goes blank: you cannot remember a particular thing, or you cannot remember anything.   I tried to remember his name, but my mind went completely blank.

Ring a bell: to sound familiar. The name rang a bell, but I could not remember where I had heard before.

Rack your brain:  to think very hard.   I have been racking my brains all day, but I cannot remember her address.

I had more but I forgot them….just kidding!  I think it is enough for today!

Let us go!! Try to remember these expressions and exercise your brain!!  Good luck!

Thanks for reading it!

THE BIRD AND THE FISH

                                          (Picture by Leslie Anneliese)

A majestic bird with golden plumage landed on a rock in front of the ocean.  A tiny fish poked its head drawn by the beauty of the bird.

With haughtiness the bird began to speak:

B:   Have you ever been in the blue sky?

F: No, I haven't, but I have been in the blue and fascinating ocean full of life and mistery.

B: Have you ever touched the stars?

F: No, I haven't, but I have touched the brightest reefs on earth full of light and color.

B: Have you ever danced on the clouds?

F: No, I haven't, but I have danced over foamy waves following with my fins the rhythm of the sea.

B:  Have you ever flown to the most remote heights?

F: No, I haven't, but I have swum through the dizzying currents reaching the deepest of the ocean.

The bird kept silence.  It understood that that humble fish had a "sky" too: blue, vast, full of misteries, challenging , magnificent and  hearthwarming!  The bird smiled and fluttering it rose to the sky again!

P.S:  There is a "PRESENT PERFECT CHALLENGE" on a site where I practice my writing sometimes.  I wrote this one.  It is short and simple.

I think the members of this blog can do the same in English or in Spanish if they want to.  It must be a short dialogue using the present perfect tense: between people, pets, abstract things...... You can write whatever you want to.....using that tense.

After the "conditional challenge.....I need a rest..

I still have a doubt:  when I speak about the bird and the fish I used "it" and "its"......but I could use "he" and "his" too, right?

Thansk in advance!!

The English breakfast

In my opinion, the most pleasant thing to do in this life is to have a relaxed breakfast with your family early in the morning. When I was a child, I used to read adventure novels written by Enid Blyton, in particular a collection called “the famous five” (“los cinco” in Spanish). Was in those lectures where I discovered the authentic English breakfast with eggs, beacon, ham, jam of rhubarb or ginger, bread, biscuits, pastry; and all in a white table mounted with brilliant cutlery, and especially without any hurry. English people have been always intelligent. They have invented almost everything really useful; football, tennis, gin tonic, Jane Austen novels, the phone, the computer, internet, the tube and, above all, the English breakfast.

During my childhood, I never had a breakfast in my house. My mother always prepared me a sandwich (but a Spanish sandwich that is very different than an English or American sandwich, with an absolutely different kind of bread) with an orange to eat at the middle of the class. I can remember the special flavour of my class during breakfast, a tremendous melt of orange and “human fragrances”. We used to have our breakfast playing football at the same time in a tiny schoolyard.

Breakfast is the first food of the day, and it deserves all our attention. To start the day with a good breakfast is to start the day well. I’m absolutely convinced that everybody must learn all good things of other countries. In particular, I know we cannot just copy English breakfast, but we can improve it. In Spain we have serious competitors to beacon or jam of ginger. We can prepare a succulent breakfast with jabugo’s jam, omelette with potatoes, all kind of Spanish sausages and, in our case a Catalan invent, the tomato spread breath. And like English people, without any hurry and with all our family. With these ingredients we can become invincible.

Si + condicional => error

Al repetir un error usando el modo condicional en un frase que empieza con "si", voy a castigarme con algunos ejercicios...

1. Si en realidad me interesara aprender a no usar el condicional, tendría que practicar con oraciones como esta.

2. Si me interesase no repetir el error, debería escribir con la forma correcta.

3. Si me interesa aburrir a los otros socios del blog, esta es un excelente método para hacerlo.

¡Gracias por tu paciencia!

(Si te gustara un reto, trataría de traducir las tres oraciones a inglés).

THE BENCH

THAT TOUGH COLD WINTER passed leaving behind those elongated nights and shortened days of light,  melting with a beam of sunshine the last whitish snowflakes over the tight grass.

Over a lonely corner was “the bench”….while dawning she unfolded her ears listening to a tender song of a small sparrow perching on a slight branch.

Lengthening her wooden arms, still yawning she opened her dazzled eyes. With a blurred vision she saw a colorful bouquet of newly budded flowers, two straight trees looking at the horizon and a refreshing water fountain.

She did not know how long she had been sleeping. She only knew her heart was beating full of life and that  her brain had engrave the last yearnings of those who had sat there before  that she fell asleep:

That thin-skinny woman with two little boys who was crying because she lost her job and did not know how she was to feed them…..

A cheerful couple who dreamed  for long hours about their future and swore love forever….

One stubborn young man wearing rounded glasses who  studyed from a thick book dreaming to become a great doctor….

Those lively friends who  gossiped and joked carelessly…

That calm old woman who  knit while recalling with every stitch those lovely moments that would never come back….

The bench realized she was alive, ready to hear once more those ilusions, sorrows, joys, triumphs and hardships that entwine every human life.  With energy and eagerness while grinning ,  the brown bench curled her wide mouth and said: IT IS SPRING AGAIN!

P.S:  In Spanish we say "la banca"....it could be "el banco" too. I know I should place "it" to speak about the bench but I want to give a gender to "the bench".  I don't know what sounds better in this case in English: she or he.  

Thanks in advance!

LIFE BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA

The world before social media      Yes, there was a “world” without internet and social media….different, but not bad at all!!  I thought that while looking at the picture.

I think that most of us agree that technology has advantages and disadvantages, I do not pretend to argue about this. I rather than want to focus on how life was without it.

I showed the picture to a couple of teenagers who cried out:  Ohhh how did you live without facebook!!?... I would have passed away without “Instagram”…and so on.  Other thought a globe was a sort of old mixed….

Then I shared the picture with friends, I got funny comments!!!

“I was the “remote control” of the house!  -uttered one- There were 6 siblings in my house, I was the youngest. Every afternoon we sat together to watch our favourite T.V programs.  Everyone said to me: go to change the channel!  I stood up and did what they wanted many times…You know, the price to be the “little” at home.

Another one stated:   “In my childhood we did not have video games, we spent the day making up games with our neighbors. We were “pirates”, “superheroes” running outside the house, kicked balls, climbed trees, laughed and talked in person, went to places together instead of visiting online..that was fun!”

“My mom -explained Jessica-  loved to collect pictures from the whole family whit her old “polaroid camera”.  She took those pictures for special occasions and she spent many days cutting every photo and putting together a photo album for every member of the family. With her handwriting she described those magical moments, adding thoughtful comments on every image.   On Sunday all the family got together to see the pictures and listen to the stories of those shoots from my mother’s memories”.

“My house was not big -stated Antonio smiling- , we only had one green, antique phone placed on a corner at the entrance of my home.  When that phone rang everyone rushed to take that device, we never knew who was calling, every call had a kind of mystery and surprise…. We had to line up to use it and all knew whom you were talking about!! Nothing to say about the bill…I cannot forget my parents’ face”.

I could follow more and more…Technology is great, otherwise I would not be able to write this blog and sharing it with you, but listening to those experiences was valuable and priceless.   Life was somewhat mysterious and captivating!

La guerra de Vietnam

Un amigo español me dijo que había visto un programa sobre la Guerra de Vietnam, de hecho, una serie de programas que duró 20 horas en total. He visto la misma serie. Es algo muy intrigante e informativo. Me dijo también que el programa había cambiado su opinión sobre los EEUU de aquel entonces. Su impresión de niño en los años de la guerra fue que Vietnam era un país muy pobre (así era) y que los soldados de EEUU estaban allí como conquistadores. La serie le mostró que fue una situación mucho más compleja.

Para los EEUU, la guerra fue una tragedia en el sentido clásico, como el de los dramas griegos. Los EEUU entró Vietnam con buenas intenciones (por lo menos, desde su punto de vista), pero con una falla fatal. Una vez comprometido con la derrota de los comunistas, no podía concebir salir del conflicto sin una "victoria". Cualquier salida que dejara a los vietnamitas del sur amenazados por el Norte habría sido una rendición, y una desastre para los políticos. (Nota que presidentes de ambos partidos continuaron la guerra.) La guerra y los oposición a ella desgarraron al país. Perdimos nuestra fe en el gobierno, que ocultó los hechos reales. Salimos de la guerra derrotados, humiliados (algo bueno) y mucho menos confiados en la buena voluntad de nuestro país.

La despedida

Nos faltan solo dos días para la partida de nuestro hijo a la universidad por primera vez. Ya hemos pasado por esto tres veces con sus hermanos mayores, pero cada despedida es una ocasión de emoción y melancolía. ¿A dónde han ido los 18 años? ¿Qué de él nos extrañaremos más? ¿Cómo estará en un nuevo ambiente sin sus padres y familia? Por supuesto, nosotros sobrevivimos por nuestra propia partida hace unas pocas décadas, y nuestros otros hijos hicieron igual, así que no tenemos mucha causa de la preocupación, ¿pero quién sabe? Cada persona hace su propio sendero.

Me acuerdo de mi primer vuelto a casa después de ir a la universidad. Sólo dos meses había pasado, pero yo había cambiado. Estaba mucho más simpático hacia mis hermanos menores. Supongo que, por haber estado separado de ellos físicamente, no tuve que continuar separándome de ellos emocionalmente.

COZY FROG

COZY FROG

“At that small and enchanting fountain

rests cheerfully a chirpy frog

while smiling, singing, croaking

it says “welcome” to every door

I can feel that refreshing water

with its calm and shiny drops

greeting and reviving that tiny-little frog…”

P.D   I took this picture on Sunday.  While seeing it...these words came to my mind.   Even a small frog can inpire a "writer".  

HELLO EVERYONE!

Hi, I am new here. I want to improve my writing skills.  My native language is Spanish, so I can help in exchange!

Have a great day!