Travel Map

I just figured out how Google My Maps works - it's great, let me say that right off the bat. I made up a map of my planned travels. You can see where I'm heading, and - if I manage to keep on top of it - where I've been and where I am now. By clicking on each destination marker, you can see the photos, videos, and links I've posted. The preliminary pictures are ones I've found on the internet - though I wouldn't have posted them if I didn't think they were good. (Especially the video of the Camino de Santiago that I posted in St. Jean Pied de Port - that's awesome, check it out for sure!) I hope to post my own photos and videos as I go along. I'll also put a link to this map in the sidebar, but here it is, straight away: Leah's Travel Map

Take Back Your Time, Parte Due

In October, we had a little "Dolce Vita" party here on Salem Street to celebrate National "Take Back Your Time Day." The idea is that work and bustle and pointless busy-ness dominate Americans' lives to the detriment of . . . well, our lives. I agree with that premise. Lots of people get two weeks (10 days) of vacation each year, but - get this - workers on average give back four of those days (probably because their jobs are so overwhelming that coming back from a two-week vacation would be more stressful than never going in the first place.) In fact, one day at my Favorite Place I was talking about saving up my vacation and taking a big four-week vacation the following year. One of the cubicle hedgehogs in the next row popped up and, in a tsk-tsk tone, admonished me with the venerable wisdom of a Succesful Career Woman: "Leah, if the company can do without you for a month, it can do without you forever." And so it can!

In any case, the reason I write about this now is that I just learned today why National "Take Back Your Time Day" falls on October 24th. It's because the average EU worker works nine weeks fewer than the average American worker. Nine weeks! Part of that is because, per EU regulations, member countries must offer workers a minimum of four full weeks of paid vacation. Some member countries require more. They also have more holidays and work fewer hours per week. Right. So October 24th? It's nine weeks before the end of the year.

Just imagine if you didn't have to work between Halloween and Christmas.

Spelling Bees and Simple Living

Worth thinking about #1: This year’s national spelling bee champ, Evan O’Dorney, spent two or three hours every night drilling spelling words. Yet he doesn’t actually seem to like spelling all that much. In fact, he told NPR, “I’m not gonna do words anymore, just numbers and notes.” (Listen to the entire interview by clicking “listen” on the NPR story page.)

Now, I’m all for excellence and intellectualism, but at what cost? That sounds like a sort of intellectual post-traumatic stress disorder. To have already overdosed on words at age thirteen?! Bummer.

Worth thinking about #2: I found Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea in my mom’s “special things” box. Lindbergh wrote in the 1950s about being a woman in “modern America,” contemplating the need to find “space” (and one’s space) amidst the pace and obligation and noise of “modern life.” Someone named “Kathy” gave the book to my mom in 1969, and here I am reading it in 2007. It makes me wonder how far back this frustration with over-stimulated, over-obligated, and under-meaning existence goes. Forever? I’d better stop there; Lindbergh, not I, is the one with “interesting things to say” tonight . . .

“For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.”

And, for champion spellers (and their high-achieving adult counterparts): “We had indeed almost drowned in the sea of intellectual work and welcomed the firm ground of physical action under our feet.”

Book of the Day: Spoken Here

Spoken Here: Travel Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley


Potts gave me this book last year, and I just finished up the last few chapters today (a bit behind "schedule"). As you might guess, it ruminates on languages with few remaining speakers. A few of these languages are thriving (Welsh, for example), but most present little promise for survival. Abley argues - and I'm pretty sure I agree - that the loss of a language is akin to the loss of a species: the "philosophical" diversity lost, so to speak, weakens the entire "ecosystem" of human thought. Ethnologue reports that there are over 1600 languages with fewer than 1000 speakers each, and it lists over 500 of those languages as "nearly extinct."

In any case, here's an excerpt from the book to think about:

Unless I have severely misread Dr. Bhattacharya, though, the glory of the language [Boro] lies elsewhere.

onguboy: to love from the heart
onsay: to pretend to love
onsra: to love for the last time

Verbs like these go beyond all borders: the ideas or sentiments they express transcend the culture that articulates them . . . While I love the surprising verb dasa - it means "not to place a fishing instrument" - I accept, with some reluctance, that my own language might have little use for it. But onsay and onsra are a different story. Having met those words in Dr. Bhattacharya's book, how can I do without them? I covet them, just as I covet the verbs for expressing anger by a sidelong glance or for feeling partly bitter. They are more than just fresh sounds on the tongue; they are fresh thoughts in the mind.

High Gas Prices?

Can you believe gas prices these days? Hmmm . . . wait a minute . . . check out this graphic. Maybe that's (at least part of) the reason that the average fuel economy of European cars is about 43 mpg and the average fuel economy of American cars is about 29 mpg.

Good Music of the Day

Today's pick: The Gipsy Kings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZwEE2s3qxE&NR=1 . I dig flamenco. It's just so . . . sensual.

Craggers

Here's a great article from the BBC on "CRAGgers": Carbon Reduction Action Groups. These people "take action" to reduce carbon emissions in their own lives - well, more than that. They commit to taking action. The things they do are, for the most part, straightforward and simple: turn off the lights, keep the heat low, share a car. One guy even refuses to fly. I'm not sure I'm ready to make a commitment that deep - I'll stick to the minor leagues of the environmental movement for now - but this stuff just makes so much sense. Why don't more people buy into it?

Check out the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6635759.stm