un regard oblique: 09/19/2004

25.9.04

Naiadtodetail
Blood, Sea
Janaina Tschäpe
USFCAM

23.9.04

21.9.04

"...The gentleness between the one-legged man and his monstrous wife
Almost too much for me..."
Leaving Beirut
Roger Waters
-
link 3rd world view

20.9.04

The bell casting is then taken to the tuning shop where it is placed, mouth upwards, on a large vertical lathe which has a revolving turntable. The bell is struck with special mallets to vibrate the metal in the areas which produce the main harmonics. After assessment by the Bell Master, the Bell Tuner removes small chips of metal uniformly from the inside of the bell until the vibrations of each of the main harmonics reach the correct frequency.

Bells in the Making
John Taylor Bellfounders

How many languages are there?

There are hundreds of indigenous languages still spoken today in Latin America, although there were probably as many as 1,750 before the beginning of the European invasions (Sherzer, 1991). Campbell (1997) reports between 550 and 700 languages for the whole region, citing sources from the mid-1990's.

There are some 56 language families and 73 isolates (a language with no known relatives) in Latin America (Kaufman, 1994a&b). For comparison, there are only two language families in Europe - Indo-European and Finno-Ugric - and one isolate, Basque. [Look at thelanguage families tables.]

Linguists divide the languages of the Americas into three groups:

North America - this group includes the languages of northern Mexico, like Yaqui and Tarahumara. We follow Kaufman 1994a in including these languages in the Meso-American lists for convenience.
Meso-America - this region extends from central Mexico into Costa Rica, and includes the Otomanguean and Mayan language families. There 11 families and 3 isolates in this group.
South America - this region includes all of South America, lower Central America, and the Antilles. There are 48 families and 70 isolates in this group.

AILLA ( Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America )

At noon I attended Mr. Potholt, who is not young, and totally blind, to the tower of the Stad-huys or townhouse, of which he is carillonneur; it is a drudgery unworthy of such a genius; he has had this employment, however, many years, having been elected to it at thirteen. He had very much astonished me on the organ, after all that I had heard in the rest of Europe; but in playing those bells, his amazing dexterity raised my wonder -much higher; for he executed with his two hands, passages that would be very difficult to play with the ten fingers; shakes, beats, swift divisions, triplets, and even arpeggios he has contrived to vanquish.
He began with a psalm tune, with which their High Mightinesses are chiefly delighted, and which they require at his hands whenever he performs, which is on Tuesdays and Fridays. He next played variations upon a psalm tune, with great fancy and even taste. When he had performed this task he was so obliging as to play a quarter of an hour extempore in such a manner as he thought would be more agreeable to me than psalmody; and in this he succeeded so well, that I sometimes forgot both the difficulty and defects of the instrument. He never played in less than three parts, marking the bass and the measure constantly with the pedals. I never heard a greater variety of passages in so short a time; he produced effects by the pianos and fortes, and the crescendo and the shake, both as to loudness and velocity, which I did not think possible upon an instrument that seemed to require little other merit than force in the performer.
But surely this was a barbarous invention, and there is a barbarity in the continuance of it. If Mr. Potholt had been put into Dr. Dominicetti's hottest human caldron for an hour, he could not have perspired more violently than he did after a quarter of an hour of this furious exercise; he stripped to his shirt, put on his nightcap, and trussed up his sleeves for this excution; and he said he was forced to go to bed the instant it is over, in order to prevent his catching cold, as well as to recover himself; he being usually so much exhausted as to be utterly unable to speak...
Dr. Charles Burney,1773

Carillon Art in the Low Country
Bells and Their Music
Beaumont Tower Carillon
Wendell Westcott
Michigan State University

6 Riddles From the Exeter Book

...though she who takes me might flinch first.
I'm well set up. Stand erect in bed.
A bit hairy at the root.
two thousand and fiveNow and again
some bloke's daughter (and a looker!)
wraps her hand around me and pulls
my rosy top, and takes my head
right into her pantry — one of those girls
with spunk....

Crispin Elsted
Poetry Daily
18.Sep.04

19.9.04

Tiny account size, mp3-wise, means only one or two songs at a time.
But this beautiful, haunting, very feminine music,
Porale Ponuthaye sung by Swarnalatha,
at Under The Fire Star, was a call to arms, as it were.
So, in acknowledgement, as resonant confirmation,
and a reminder of how big this family really is,
from Russia:
The Soul Laments mp3 (3.09mb)
Sirin Ensemble