Brittanica said that Sam Walton was born today (a long time ago).  Sam Walton's store makes me think of Ben Schnell.  He probably never intended that, but then, there are a lot of consequences of our words and actions that we never intend.  Fortunately for Schnellbo, it's quite likely that most of those consequences are good things.  Which thought, is, in itself, a good consequences of who he is.  Good job, Ben.  You're a swell kid.  And nearing a quarter of a century, right?  Wisdom, pure wisdom.

Frances Jane Crosby

While I was waiting for my students to show up, Garrison Keillor told me that Fanny Crosby was born this day, 1820. I was pleased to hear this.

I’ve been a secret admirer of Mrs. Crosby for several years. A distant one, for I have not tried to get to know her at all, but every time I see her name on the page, I feel like I’m with an old friend. It seems every other day that we sing one of her hymns. 

Mr. Keillor said she wrote thousands of them. I was impressed. He said she used several pen names. I was interested. He also said she was blind. I was intrigued. I imagine her as a quiet type, with a roving, soaring spirit. But maybe she was just a stolid old blind woman who was always writing.  Maybe not.

I don’t know Fanny Crosby, and never will. But I do know that Fanny Crosby wrote things that I love to hear. And that is good enough for me. Fanny Crosby is now one of my heroes.

Happy Birthday, Fanny.

adverse to converse

There's something about me that keeps my students from being completely comfortable in class.  They'll often whisper to a neighbor asking what something means or what I said—if they ask about it at all.  And they ask in Spanish.  More often than not I just repeat things like three times, and still no one is doing anything.  I often give up and resort to my pitiful Spanish.  This is not ideal.

Everyone (okay, that sounds like a lot of people.  I usually have three or four who make it.) sits in the back row.  Except one.  Sometimes one of them ventures to the second-to-last row.  They don't try to practice asking me questions in Spanish.  Hardly ever, anyway.  My biggest challenge has been to get people talking in class.  I know there are some logical, practical reasons for this:  they don't know tons of vocabulary, we've only studied the present and past simple tenses, we don't have anything to talk about.  It'd just be nice to have students who were sometimes over-eager about speaking.  

It just occurred to me that this could also be somewhat of an issue of men vs. women here.  Because now that I think of it, when I had male students they were actually rather boisterous—that's a funny word, but it came to mind.  Sometimes annoyingly so.  So maybe I should appreciate these passive students.

Frankly, it's all just a daily reminder of how inept I am at practical conversation skills.  I'd say that sometimes I've done all right.  Maybe with closer friends, or with a really friendly person.  But in reality, those times are, at best, simply passable.  Usually I just end up getting fired up about something and trying to spew out all the thoughts that are tangling together in my over-eager mind.  Or I'm just barely hanging onto a thread—desperately clinging to a possible key word used by the "sender" and doing my best to stay alert and on track.  And I never know how to end conversations.  

If I were better at laughing at myself, I'd have a lot to laugh about.  But that's another toughie for me.

everybody knows El Niño means The Niño

I thought I noticed differences a few days ago, so yesterday I looked into it a little more carefully.  Sure enough:

The Wall Street Journal:  Col. Moammar Gadhafi
The Guardian:  Muammar Gaddafi
New York Times:  Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi
Los Angeles Times:  Moammar Kadafi
Chicago Tribune:  Moammar Gadhafi
Boston Globe:  Moammar Khadafy
San Francisco Chronicle:  Moammar Gadhafi

And then I looked up what smarter, paid people have to say about it.  Like this person.  Apparently there are numerous spellings because there is no "universally accepted authority for transliterating Arabic names."  And the man himself hasn't established a "Roman orthography" for his own name.

My name is cool.  I like it.  I think it's funny, though, that Dad always says they chose it so that it would work in several languages.  Instead of the ph they chose ff so that it would be pronounced the same in Spanish (and French and Italian and Chinese?).  Ironically, people here or in Argentina never get my name right.  It's usually Cris.  But I've gotten Cristopher, Christ, Cristofer, and maybe a couple others.  Sometimes people call me Christian.  And ph has never been a problem.

the Ides

The Ides of March.  I always forget what that is, but I love how it sounds.  It has the sound of something like regal fortitude to me (ironically).  I should figure out some way to celebrate it.  To celebrate the sound of it.  The Ides of March.  Okay, I just said it out loud and it doesn't sound nearly as cool as it does when I say it in my head.  Man.  The small things.

I just got back from another funeral.  It was for the mother-like figure in the life of a co-worker of mine.  Most of the union staff went.  For the first time, I think, I let the thought kind of settle a little bit that I'd have to start going to funerals of my own family members within the next few years probably.  A sobering thought, certainly.  They sometimes call it a wake, right?  It can also be a wake up.

I suppose that it's rather natural for the mind to wander over to inspect death a little closer these days.  I don't have conclusions, necessarily, but I have been peering into the coffin.  Mostly though, it's like a mirror, or an open window.  At first it doesn't make sense, but then I realize that staring into death isn't really staring into death at all, but looking into the eyes of life.  This isn't a new idea, I know.  But it's always a little novel to the person first experiencing it.  Or re-experiencing it, which is usually the case.  The funny thing about life (life life life) is that it is fully of ifs.

I'm going to go home now and eat some Oreos.  Exactly, there is no point.

Tangled weed and mangled brush,

Where's the end to this wooded trail?

Tangled thoughts and mangled past,

Where's the end to this would've tale?

I just noticed a violin playing from somewhere in the apartment complex.  It's either a kid or a beginner, probably both.  The player has a good tone though, doesn't scratch much.  And flat notes are quickly adjusted to the correct pitch.  I don't know what is being played, and it is slow and hesitant, but I couldn't help stand by the window and listen.  There have been many moments here when I wished I had my violin to keep me company.  Moments when I would have turned off all the lights and slunk to the back of my room and just wailed and scratched away.  It's something only I could enjoy, really.  I just never got too good and it's been downhill since my junior year in high school.  Often, I'm even sick of hearing myself play.  (If you can call it playing.)  But there's something about just holding the instrument.  My childhood is in that wood.  It was one of the first acts of kindness I remember, and one that probably helped to shape me a little bit: receiving the violin as a gift from my teacher.  It's a handmade one, and feels a little bigger than normal full-size violins.  There's a tiny dent on one of the faces, maybe from my bow.  The bridge was always loose, and I'd reposition it every now and then.  

The player is still plugging away, low notes and slow.  Careful.  Maybe hating it.  Probably unaware that there is an audience and he is being memoried back to before.  Probably unaware how potentially special that instrument might become for him in the future.  Probably, unaware that those low, slow notes are a gift.  But I know.

You know that glow in the morning, when the sun is peeking over the wall with one eye, but you can still sense his big smile?  You know how it comes into the rooms and leaves them a hazy yellow.  It's the morning yellow.  It's when everything has a shiny skin around it—the glazed sheen of sunshine.  You know that?

Me, too.

Sometimes, even though life isn't necessarily hard, living it is hard.  Sometimes you're a battleground between the blessings you know you experience every moment and the inescapable difficulties of aloneness and longings for things you don't have.  Sometimes you're just right in the middle of those times.

Like now.