Projects: Aikido Guitar
Pragmatica: Finances
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY.
1990. April: Toronto: Discours et langues au Canada. Michael Berryhill visits in August. Looking for a house. 25 October, move. Halloween conference in Toronto (Ethnohistory conference, English version of April). Kitchen remodelled for Xmas.
1991. February: to Paris for Convergences conference. June visit of McCausland. August: translate Uncle Napoleon. 5 December: departure for Paris (see Georg & Corinne Sat. 7). See Namaa-ye nazdik (Kiarostami). APELA conference in Montpellier. Return to Edmonton after being bumped, 20 December.
1992. 7 February to Winnipeg: Wickikapawistatowin. Reading week to Tofino (Nasrin’s operation announced a few days before). 10 April, Nasrin’s operation. 21 August: SNOW. September, conference in Ottawa: Le jargon tchinouk d'avant 1846, with side-trip to Montreal. November conference in Toronto for Editing Travel Texts. Xmas trip to Berkeley and Big Sur
1993. Squash begins. “No hay centro”. Departmental melt-down begins. April trip to Montreal (job interview), then Guadeloupe for ALA. Become Associate Chair of Romance Languages in May. June and July: softball. July trip to Portland. August to Brasília. October: Impératif transculturel. First attempt to market ET. December trip to Houston and Austin. Followed immediately by MLA in Toronto.
1994. Winter squash at Harley, much with Hector, and then Sam. 16 April – 12 May: Esme’s crisis. May: IAPL conference and work on “Jihad”. 16 June: Bloomsday BBQ. World Cup in July. Bathroom remodelled. August trip to Washington DC to see Taghi. ICLA in Edmonton. September trip to Guyana and Curaçao. Then to Ottawa for conference on Bandeirantes. First FEC, as elected member. November to Calgary for Pomo. Xmas/MLA trip to Big Sur and San Diego (for job interview at USWL)
1995. Mother and Nancy’s visit in a mild mid-winter. “Sande”. Easter visit by Farid. 1 August: Nasrin’s sinus operation. Sabbatical begins. Baker Creek in early September. APELA in Lisbon, followed by Sevilla. Mid-October trip to Paris and Cannes.
1996. SPCL in San Diego. Visit of Mary Lang in May, followed by trip to Seattle Sabbatical ends. October Creolissimo conference in Toronto. Stress crisis begins in December. Xmas Turkey in Calgary.
1997. Teaching at FSJ. Oranous here during the winter, and many tests for the stress crisis. Nasrin begins Riverwalk sessions. In April, the decision about becoming Associate Dean. From June on, Associate Dean. Nancy and Rick visit in late August. Lake Louise early September. October: Kelowna. November MESA trip to San Francisco. NR to Calgary alone during Xmas.
1998. In February, NR to Prague. March ALA in Austin. May: final draft of ET. Tokyo in late June. Aikido begins in July. In August accept to be Acting Chair and also print Memory, the Mockingbird. Austrian Centre and Cortona events in September. Nasrin’s mono in November-March. December last rewrite of ET, during Xmas holidays.
1999. February trip to Vancouver for Simon Fraser review. May visit of Lee Nichols. June: Second trip to Tokyo, and sign-off as Associate Dean. Nasrin’s surgery 4 October. Trip to Saarbrücken in October. 21 November: brown belt. Lake Louise just before Xmas. NR to Chicago for MLA.
2000. Cortona departure 8 January. 24 January: Paris. Sidetrips to Florence, Venice, Milan and Rome. Venice and L’Aguila with Nasrin. Lake Louise in May. Toronto for Nima’s wedding in June. NR to Switzerland in October. And Iran for Xmas.
2001. January departure for Vienna, Saarbrücken, Paris, and Montreal. Return in early February. Work on Making Wawa. “Azure”. May trip to Texas.
7/29/2000: Eyes full of your vestiments. Making a virtue of necessity. L'amore e' eterno, finche dura!
Gert Jan Van Gelder, Of Dishes and Discourse: Classical Arabic Literary Representations of Food (Richmond: Curzon, 2000?). TLS March 31, 2000
Patricia Crone and Shmuel Moreh. Princeton: Wiener, 1999. The Book of Strangers: Mediaeval Arabic Grattiti on the Theme of Nostalgia. TLS March 31, 2000
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans. TLS March 31, 2000
Roberto Grossi e Stefania Debbia, a cura di, Cantiere cultura: Beni culturali e turismo come risorsa di sviluppo ocale: projetti, strumenti, esperienze (Milano: Il Sole 24 Ore, 1998).
"La cucina giapponese è come la cucina toscana ma orientale." Bruno Munari, Arte come mestiere (Milano: Editori Laterza, 1999), 118. "Le macchine non esisterebbero senza di noi, ma la nostra esistenza non è più possibile senza di esse" (Pierre Ducassé in ibid., 15)
"Da qualche pensatore greco… Cicerone trova probabilmente anche qualche suggerimentio per i'idea che il culmine dell perfezione umana fosse rapresentato dall'arricchimento che la cultura poteva apportare a una nature già per sé ben confermata" Emanuele Narducci, a cura di, Cicerone, Il poeta Archia (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1992), 55.
According to Primo Levi, in "I sommersi e i salvati" in Se questo è un uomo (1947), Jews in the camps used to call the losers among them, destined to death, "Muslims" (Mussulmani).
World War II as the definitive victory of the New World over the Old. The inscription of Judaic religious belief about the non-historicity of the Shoah into European secular thought, and the long range consequences in terms of anti-semiticism.
>>>>>>>>
Sunday 16th. Depressed. Monday 17th, Disappointing Classes. Invited By Sandra For Tea.
January 15. Trip To Florence. Dinner With The Alumni At L'Albegio Italia.
January 14, 2000. Friday. To my surprise I finish Trogonidae. Tuesday night, once again jetlag.
January 11, 2000. First hit on "Missing Trogan:" which then becomes becomes Trogonidae
January 10, sleep in the evening.
January 8, 2000. Jetlagged In Cortona. A long afternoon unpacking and trying to stay awake till 9pm. Jetlag nonetheless struck, and I read A Prodigal Spy most of the night.
NOVEMBER 28, 1999. Back to this notebook after reading my old handwritten ones, first for traces of poetry, then for the nostalgia they evoke. Since SB I have tried to keep in mind the need to return to poetry. Already slimming down for the Cortona trip, I have forced myself to a put the guitar away, and turn away from a diversion towards flamenco. This was confirmed when I was reading the journals. Somewhere in 1983 I had a full head of stream up about poetry, but deviated into the study of guitar.
OCTOBER 25, 1999. Resume of the SB trip made on the plane back. First Sunday on the Platz. Monday sleeping late, then to the Uni. Speaking German with Natasha. Evening, artichokes. Tuesday downtown, buy hat and muffler and gloves. Must send Olney obit to Margit. Tuesday night reading with Dennis Cooley and Jan Horner. Tuesday evening to the Amadeus with the "team" and Klaus. Wednesday, up to Avis at 10. Overland to Bruyeres, andouilles for lunch. Then quickly to the site of death, then the memorial, then "home", crepes with Natasha. Thursday, I sleep in again, then shop for CDs etc. Thursday evening Warming at Hauck. Up late with Paul, and little sleep, but Friday is a full day, paper at 10:30, panel at 2:15; reading with Ted at 4:15. Up to Uni for the President's reception, and then to the Turkish resto with Ted and Jonathan. I sleep in on Saturday morning, since the cold was coming on. At the Hotel Mercure by 11.
Afternoon sessions and Jonathan's reading. Home briefly, then the banquet. Sunday boat trip. Evening at Klaus Martens. And that is that.
OCTOBER 15, 1999. These notes were made on the plane to Saarbruecken.
Economics as a liberal art. The New Yorker article on Minter Hoxby, on the economics of competition in education.
Cortona Film festival. Ossessione; Paisano; Bitter Rice; Voyage in Italy; La Dolce Vita; La Notte; Death in Venice.
Apple reports in the Frankfurter Allegemeine. Erst kommt das Fressen und denn die Morale.
Sword isn't the right word. Closer to a dagger, the short curved weapon I pulled down from my grandmother's mantel … Memories, they say, are events which do not go away, a good thing a parent would say, since warnings. But my grandmother's warning… Probably I dragged over on of the lacquered dining room.
I've been back lurking lately, but also on the move, so I just caught up with the thread on bossa nova. I think we can take the point that BN is not particularly complex, rhythmically speaking. As you can tell by looking the manuals around or, hey, by listening, the trick to BN is a fairly simply one, consisting largely of syncopated anticipation of chords, many of which are indeed the "jazz" chords so horrifying to some flamenco purists. Gilberto's hits of 59, beginning with "Chega de saudade", were classic cases, and in fact at lot of people at the time considered his "stuttering guitar" to be something of a gimmick. (See Ruy Castro's marvelous Chega de saudade A historia e as historias de BN_ ). Of course it is open to debate, though probably not by many on this list, whether bossa nova or flamenco is "more complex" rhythmically, since flamenco variant rhythm concocted in BN.
In most other senses, though, bossa nova and flamenco are apples and oranges. For one thing, although there is a certain amount of bossa nova nova around (which I don't particularly like), BN should be spoken of in the past tense. It evolved into MPB (musica popular brasileira), some of which is also great stuff, but BN was basically a passing commercial style, one among many in Brazil, which some claim is the second largest producer of commercial music in the world. In fact, one of the most interesting things about BN was the extent to which it was a response to American commercial music of the times, Sinatra and, dig it, Nat King Cole, having been crooner idols par excellence of the 50s, a period when TV, variety shows in particular, and record production spread rapidly in Rio and Sao Paulo.
Personally I love bossa, but whatever interest Paco and some others may have found in BN type arrangements, these are two kettles of fish.