And the pond is crystal clear.
We now have the garden under control. The house—not so much. There are still stacks of boxes in the kitchen as high as my chin. But it’s useable.
One of these days Jane and I are going to declare an Organization Day and start trying to straighten out the finished part of the basement so we can bring down some of the things that are cluttering the kitchen so that we can move some of the kitchen things out of the living room. It’s like that.
That kind of thing makes me think of the puzzles with the sliding numbers which I used to play with as a girl.
Exactly what I was thinking! Good luck sorting things.
Sometime between tomorrow and the close of Monday, I get to renew my lease for either 6 months to a year, and meanwhile hope for that plan toward a renovation on a rent house, working toward ownership. :-/ Hoping this works out after all.
Either it happens within 6 months, or I need to renew for a year. If I renew for 6 months, the monthly rent goes up by less than $50 per month. If I renew for a year, it remains at my current rate. I am leaning toward renewing for a year, but I want the rent house to happen within 6 months, so I may go with the 6 month term as I was planning.
I need to go through boxes in the apartment, make sure things are packed OK to move, and level them. This is doable within the 6 month term. Stuff in storage can get moved when it’s time, and I can go through that in the new place.
Meanwhile, font work is still going, but slowly, and I don’t see how I can really speed it up any more than I have, without driving myself (?more?) bonkers.
So in other words, normal life for me lately. But I have an apartment, providing the lease renewal goes fine and a path toward a rent house to own someday, maybe, down the road.
New wrinkle: I need to hear from an insurance agent re renter’s insurance, and haven’t heard back, and may have to find someone else. Phooey. But that’s doable, and I hope it doesn’t create a problem renewing the lease. Sigh.
So…. Well, it’s heating up here, temps going into the lower 90’s by day, mid to upper 70’s by night, normal to cooler than normal for here by mid-May. I’m still expecting a hotter than normal, stormier summer.
Things are about as OK as they can be, I guess. I just want things to get on an even keel and a sustainable path for me for the future. Still not really there yet. Still struggling to keep afloat and change my habits and get past old quirks I need to solve. :-/ So, just life as usual. Maybe things will improve a little; I hope.
It depends what the break-even point is between a small rent increase for a 6 month lease, vs the cost of breaking your lease before a year is up. Do I assume you don’t think anything will be happening within 6 months? If you are set on rent-to-own, get the ball rolling with your investor friends, who presumably know you’re in the market for a rehabbed home. It did take more than a year before we found the house we now own, and that wasn’t through traditional methods, but the coconut wireless.
(I had a hiccup in the lease renewal for the apartment, a comedy of errors, but that will get taken care of one way or the other next week, to renew. Comedy of errors between me, a renter’s insurance agent, my friends who dropped the ball, and the mgmt. office, who forgot they also dropped the ball. Plus, I missed two phone calls, so I didn’t discover the ball being dropped twice. :-/ )
Oh, I definitely told my investor friends to please look for a good candidate house to rent and/or renovate, and in the morning, I’m going to ask about the progress on the one still up in the air. But yes, I asked to be looking for a house they could renovate, on which I’d kick in the portion I’ve invested with them, so I could rent-to-own, and (heh) have it renovated to my tastes, if possible. (Oh, ye dreams of avarice….) Hahah. I intend to remind the friend of that when I call him tomorrow and check up on things.
When we’d last talked, he’d said that if the one home doesn’t suit me, that sure, they can find a rental or renovation candidate, and can do the renovation or flipping in around 4 months tops. Ah, let’s say that I don’t see how that can happen within the next 6 months, but maybe so. I think, given possible delays in finding and then doing the work, getting inspections and all done, that 6 months is more likely the minimum time frame before I could get into a home. I’ve seen how things are going for them and for things in general, and heh, so I think I may have the right idea. If it’s ready sooner, that would be great.
But I also realized, ack, if I renew for 6 months from now, that puts the lease coming due again around the end of November, right before or after Thanksgiving. Oh, I can just see me trying to get my things moved out of here and the storage space and into a new rent house, right at the Thanksgiving holiday. I do not need that kind of crazy! Haha.
Er, but also, personal note, the week before Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas, and the week before Easter, are very oddly the anniversaries of when my grandmother, dad, and mom passed away, various years. Yeah, I am as over that as I can be, maybe, but I don’t want that getting stirred up along with getting moved in and out and all the wackiness with it, right in the middle of the holiday season. My parents have been gone over a third of my life now, 21 and almost 19 years, and almost 8 since my grandmother. When it dawned on me that a late November, early December lease renewal would also coincide near that, it struck me first that I’d almost forgotten about that, and second that it would mean moving in the heart of the holiday season wackiness.
The lease terms renew for $40 to $50 more per month if I renew for 6 months, with the price remaining the same as my current lease if I renew for a year. Hmm, but as we collectively missed that deadline Monday, the rate may go up for both terms. :-/ Even so, the rate is better for a year than for half a year, and we didn’t discuss a 9 month renewal. I’d prefer 9 months to a year, which should make sure any delays are ironed out, and which, I dearly hope, won’t leave me with too many months left on the lease. I’ll go over that with friends.
So…the adventure continues bumpily along! (The insurance agent did not call because, he said, he had wisdom teeth extracted that day, he got my message, then promptly fell asleep, and due to the meds, he forgot completely and was very sorry.) Heh, OK, I get that, but it was a week before he discovered he’d forgotten me. But I’ll stick with him, if we can get it ironed out. Thing is, a few months ago, one of the investor friends really did have his wisdom teeth out, odd coincidence. I had mine out, oh, more than 20-some years ago, and oh, I was very, very glad to have painkillers after that for many days. So I get that. Ouch. To top it off, I missed his return call and just found it yesterday. Duh.
My friend as well as the mgmt. office both spaced on escorting me over so I could sign the lease. The friend just spaced on it entirely. (“I’m busy / I forgot and I’m sorr,” is understandable, but geez, can you please not do it repeatedly? Frustrating. — The management office, I called in, they said someone would be over in 15 minutes and…no one appeared the rest of the day. I would be more irritated, except they have between one and five people there at any given time to show apartments and deal with things. It is plausible that they got busy and forgot. But again, my previous comment. :-/
So I get to toss the ball for another round in the morning, then get things done next week, so I should be renewed again and all should be AOK, SNAFU. (Heh.) … I spent a while that afternoon and then yesterday, discouraged at he world in general and not too happy with myself in particular, or those three people, for what was, I late found out, a series of all of us dropping the ball. The game only works well if you keep catching and throwing that fracking ball. The game goes into hiatus if you drop it and no one picks it up. (Dang, why me, I’d like for things to go smoothly. At least now and then to really spice it up. Heh.)
But things are going OK. — The lease terms are that if we reach the renewal date and do not renew by then, the next day, it goes into month-to-month rental at a higher rate until renewed or officially terminated by me or by them. — So I should be fine still, but may pay a higher rate for this month or next, before the new terms kick in. So OK. I can live with it. Have to.
I’m hoping that things will go well and the renewal and the future renovation or rental will go fine, without too many bumps. I am still learning how to try to be patient when bumps come along and the ball gets dropped by anyone in the game.
I swear, I seem to be prone to weird exceptions happening. When it happens, it never seems to be your run-of-the-mill mishap. It nearly always is some bizarre happening. But I do seem prone to that, as often outside of my control as for anyone else coming along and messing with things.
On the upside, the most non-obvious location for an ON switch on any printer — I finally found it, after a few tries. The manual was no help either. (You really expect anyone to be able to see that? Even fully-sighted people? Really? LOL.) — The switch Is in an odd spot, entirely flush with the body of the chassis, same color, no obvious printing and no obvious raised or grooved embossing to the switch or label. I found it by persistent accident and feeling the entire surface, top, all four sides, near switches, the logo nameplate, the control panel LED readout (not there, not anywhere near there). From a major manufacturer, and I have never seen a design that non-obvious, from way back from my first dot matrix printer, through laser printers and inkjet printers. Ergonomics and product design engineering fail, would be my grade. — But I found it and can get the dang-fool thing set up and printing.
Yay for small wins! Ya gotta laugh, because the alternative…does not catch or throw the ball. Reminding myself how myself and others all missed this round. Heh. Really would’ve liked it if this had gone smoothly, as it had been expected. But it’s on the way to resolution, a happy ending, I hope.
Off-Topic, but Science Fiction TV — I’ve just seen a trailer for a new ABC TV series for the fall, called “Emergence.” The trailer has something with a male teen caring his mom about something happening. Then it’s night and there’s been a plane crash. But somehow, a girl (preteen or early teen) is found at the site, who was not listed as on the plane, an unknown, anomalous case. Things happen, she is (unlikely circumstance) taken under the wing of a woman working on this somehow. (Normally, the girl would probably go to child welfare or protective services once she’s deemed healthy enough to be out of the hospital, even if her identity was not yet ascertained, I think.) Things ensue. There’s some sort of mental powers (we see a TV or computer monitor reacting strangely). The girl is still with the woman and others investigating. A complication, and a couple show up claiming to be her parents and demanding her release. The woman acting as temporary foster parent / guardian doubts them, asks for a security man to check their fingerprints. Other things happen in flashes in the clip. The couple and the girl are gone. The woman is shown in a car, possibly driving. There is some sort of near mss or crash, the woman’s car has stopped, there’s cracked or broken glass. The woman examines this, confused, baffled. And poof, with a change of camera angle or a second of fade-out and fade-in, the girl is with her and says something. Then we get the series title and that it’s coming this fall on ABC.
Well, that could be good or could get old fast, if it becomes a one-note thinig. No way of knowing, but I’ll be curious to see it when it comes on. — Don’t know if this will be a “chase us, we’re on the run” show or what. But it looks like we get a woman and a girl as protagonists, main characters, with no certainty on supporting continuing characters, but the couple may be recurring antagonists. Seemed worth a look to me. — Your mileage may vary.
@CJ Cherryh — Do I remember correctly, or am I mistaken, that stsho see into the ultraviolet range, along with the ordinary human color range? And I’ve never really considered it, but do the hani see a different color range than humans or mahendo’sat? I remember the kif are specifically said to have limited color vision, which the mahendo’sat exploited and made fun of for a while, and so the kif use patterns for such things as cables and pipes, and became very conservative about clothing, blacks and grey and silvers. Apparently, they hadn’t seen a difference in some colors, which clashed in jarring ways to more color-sensitive species, which was a source of some mirth for the mahendo’sat, until the kif figured out how to circumvent this. I don’t recall anything about the knnn, tc’a, and chi, except they appear in lurid, neon, fluorescent, phosphorescent colors, yellows and ultraviolets and something else besides black.
Many quite common animals see further into the ultra-violet than humans do. The most famous are bees, which is why UV scans of flowers pick up some startling patterns which are quite invisible to us. Hedgehogs too apparently see into the UV.
We don’t have a basement, but we do have an attic, which I haven’t inspected for at least a couple of years. I don’t remember there being much up there aside from a few boxes of books and a dome tent.
I harvested my banana tree a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I did it too early (I did it while my mom was here; she wanted to watch the operation) and although the bananas ripened, they never went yellow, just stayed greenish then slowly browned. Still edible, but not very pretty; they are being peeled, frozen and will eventually become smoothies or banana bread.
Well…renewing my lease may be untimely delayed. If I don’t hear back today, I may have to ask the office folks to come escort me over, which two other times, never materialized. The close of business Monday is when it’s up and goes into being carried month-to-month until renewal or cancellation. :-/
The font idea draft I’ve been working on this month is this odd mix of what I was aiming for but not quite there, and some happy accidents. I am going to do some more sketching to see what I am missing in how I drew these on the computer. When I draw by hand, I don’t tend to think so much about grids and geometry. When I draw on graph paper, quadrille squares, that tends to constrain me too much, though I need the grids to transfer things between paper and screen. When I draw only on computer, I tend to let those geometric and snap-to-grid constraints get to me too much. — I early on liked vector graphics as opposed to paint/photoshop bitmapped graphics, but I’ve been having trouble getting to know Inkscape, and got very, very frustrated with modern Illustrator.
There’s something in what I want this to be, versus what I’ve got in the draft now, that I have not captured, and I’m not sure what it is. I may have to start another draft from scratch in order to get it to what I want. Meanwhile, I have enough with the current draft that, hmm, I will at least keep the files on hand, in case I want to do that one. It may get developed anyway. What I’m after is worth the extra effort to get it how I want it. The draft I have is not quite there, and it’s a mix of nice features and yet not quite getting it for me. Even so, it’s probably worth pursuing.
A draft I’d taken pretty far a few months back is in a different direction, but has a lot of the warm, casual, friendly, and old-timey feel that I want for it, but is distinct from what I’m after with the current font idea. So it will get developed further. — I drew a bold version to start, and this may cause me headaches to produce a lighter regular weight or two, before doing an extra bold weight for that draft.
Heh, I still feel like I’m learning and wandering around with this, even though I’ve been doing it for a good while now. I have several good font ideas in various stages, but none yet are at a stage complete enough to submit for consideration of publication, and none yet are truly finished, either. I am still learning things and still have some things I haven’t figured out how to do, which require wading through anecdotal and/or long, complicated documentation in order to learn. (I still want/need to know how to provide “alternate glyphs” in a single font, which has some lengthy documentation from a couple of designers who had to figure this out for themselves. It isn’t well documented anywhere else I’ve found yet, and how to get the font-editor programs I have to do it is not at all obvious. There’s at least a long text file involved listing the glyph names and how they go within a font to connect to their main/parent glyphs, and how and when to do substitutions, and the like. It’s a mess. It still hasn’t been automated, written in as a process, several years after the one or two designers wrote their small books on how to do it.)
I am enjoying this, but man, is it slow, time-consuming, and tedious, going through and adjusting things, even when you have a clear idea what you want and it goes well. Being consistent, getting things right, is tedious, when you are talking 279 glyphs for an OpenType Standard layout character set, and about 4 times that when you add in support for nearly every Latin-based language you can think of, plus things like small caps and non-lining / old-style numerals (lowercase, up-and-down, very old-fashioned, and in vogue for reasons I don’t understand, but have to go with). Add in Greek and Cyrillic support, and you have around 800 to 900 character glyphs, I think it is, for all this. But, dang it, there’s enough overlap between the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, that, why not do those, as a designer? It’s kinda fun, challenging, and gives you a very large chunk of the Western world’s languages supported. — And these days, the font sellers, like MyFonts.com and FontSpring.com and others, want at least the wider Latin alphabet support, in order to be useful for a global market. This makes good sense to me as a font geek and as someone who loves languages. Why wouldn’t I want to be able to write in all those, if I’m going to create a font? Of course I would.
But dang…it’s a lot of work. — I am hoping to sit down and decide on a few display fonts (with one or a few styles) and one or two text fonts (multiple styles) to concentrate on, and bring to a point ready for publication. — But I keep getting ideas and inspirations I want to get down, so I can do those later. — And at times, I get to an impasse, stuck on some point that doesn’t feel right to me, or on which I don’t know what I want to do yet. Or I’ve worked with a single design so long, I can’t see straight, I’m burnt out on it for a while, and need to set it aside. Or then a great idea will hit and I go like crazy getting it entered, good stuff. — So…the creative design process is weird, and I must be some weird special case besides. (Or not; I hear similar things from other people.) — But I need to get to a point where I have designs further along in the pipeline and some that are finished, published, and out there producing income for me. :-/ Frustrating.
I think some of these could be real hits, or at least really useful alternatives. I like them, anyway. Others, I don’t know, but they will probably all get produced, if I can get them through the process.
I so want this to happen. I so wish the font-editor tools were better at a few things, but the upgrades are slow in coming and costly, and years later, they still don’t have several things done that I really would have thought they’d have done long ago. Bigger, more well-known folks than I am have been clamoring for such features for years, and are frustrated, like I am, with it. — So it is what it is, and I’m going on with it. I want to have things out there, finished, and producing income — and I want to see those fonts getting used “in the wild” for real work, and enjoyed by people. I still hope I’ll have some success at this. Font design is a niche market and goes through fashion trends. Obviously, some fonts are for specialty uses while others are generic enough to be used for anything. Some fonts are wildly successful while others languish, and this is not always about how legible or distinctive a design is. There is, however, still plenty of room in the market for new fonts. People always want something fresh and new, or something classic or something functional. Fortunately, there’s room for that.
So…on I go.
Book Recommendation: — @Cathy in PA et al. —
Eckert, Allan W. Incident at Hawk’s Hill.
Eckert, Allan W. Return to Hawk’s Hill.
Both are in PB and HB used, but no Kindle or other ebook editions.
(I don’t know if my old copy of the first is still in storage or lost/ruined.)
I found the first of these at one of the college bookstores, a paperback edition, by chance then, and got it. It was the old edition with a cover showing a boy and a badger, I think it was. I now find used copies of that in HB or PB are selling for embarrassingly large sums of money, ($50 – $500, are you kidding me?) but my old copy is probably no longer in good shape and may be gone. I’ve ordered more current copies of both books, around $6 each plus shipping, worth it.
The first book is about a little boy (Ben, which surprised me) who disappears from his pioneer parents’ cabin, lost in the surrounding fields and woods, to the annoyance and dismay of his slightly older brother and his parents. The boy reappears later, and has been raised by animals. In the meanwhile, and after, a number of things happen, including a cruel trapper / trader / neighbor, if I recall correctly. The older brother’s guilt and attempts and dismay at reconnecting with his little brother appear. I can’t recall for sure if little Ben has forgotten how to talk in the meantime, but I think because he’d been talking before, he relearns. (That’s true of similar cases: real “wild children” raised by animals don’t acquire language (speech) unless they were old enough to have spoken before. What this says about the nature of spoken language and thought, I don’t know, but it’s interesting.)
I don’t recall enough of the plot of the book, but I liked it so much as a college student that I’d kept it all these years. — I am pretty sure the book was written for a young adult / juvenile audience, or younger actual adult readers. I think one of the animals was threatened, but then, young teens read Old Yeller, so this is probably OK; but because I don’t recall for certain, an adult preview to make sure it’s OK for a middle schooler might be a good idea. My recall says it’s probably OK.
I had not known there was a sequel, so I hadn’t read it. This deals somehow with little Ben finding the local Indians. Note, I think the book had the Indians portrayed as antagonists by the local white settlers, which was usually how whites acted back then in the late 1800’s. Whether the book portrays the Indians in a better light or portrays the family as on more friendly terms, I don’t recall, but that also sometimes happened.
It’s a family-centered and kid and animal centered adventure book, true to the time period for which it was written.
The title finally popped into my head out of the blue. A few weeks ago, I’d wanted to find this and couldn’t remember the name of the settlement or homestead, only that it was, “Incident at” something and involved a very little boy and animals and an older brother and family.
I’d say this one would be fine for high school readers. If I’d reread it recently, I could give a recommendation, rather than being a little overly cautious. — It is a slim paperback, a novella or a shorter novel length, rather than a full-length or large-format paperback. For comparison, I think it’s shorter than Merchaner’s Luck, say. I’ll be glad to reread this one and the sequel. Amazon’s info says the first book earned the Newbery Award in the 1970’s when it was written. There are at least two cover styles or editions shown, so it must have gone through a later edition and printings.
Wow. The first book arrived today. That’s preternaturally fast, and rather than a used book, it’s a current edition printing. The second book is on its way, so perhaps during next week.
Thank You BlueCatShip; I’ll give those books a look. Our boy is spending a lot of joyful time OUTSIDE right now. Running, with and without dogs, working in gardens, up in trees … as a youngster should. Sometimes, he’s got a book with him 🙂 We spent part of last week with him, and he asked me for sequels to several of the books recommended from here, yay! My daughter is busy sourcing the Spanish versions of more of his favorites, as he goes to middle school in September, where there will be no more Spanish till high school. We are most anxious to try and help him preserve the Spanish abilities he’s learned in the last 7 years of full bilingual immersion school. Fingers crossed … and the skills of my library director daughter!
@Cathy, if your daughter can keep him reading in Spanish that should be enough to keep his skills up and increase his vocabulary without needing a school setting.
It’s how I kept my English after the one year in Australia when I was eight, just because there were so many more interesting kids books to read in English than in Dutch. When we did get English in high school I could just sit and read in class instead of paying attention, and still get nine out of ten on my grades, just from the sense of the language I’d gained from reading.
The one possible downside is if his peers at school start to bully him for reading or speaking something other than English, that might put him off…
There may be remarks by kids who think they can make fun of “Mexicans.” But on the other hand, there are plenty of kids who will think it’s “way cool” if someone speaks another language, plus plenty of actual Hispanic or Spanish-speaking kids who will be very happy that Cathy’s grandson speaks Spanish. Even the idiot / prejudiced kids didn’t bother me about speaking Spanish and French, and because I was friendly about it, I had friends in school who were immigrants or locals from many ethnic / religious groups. That can be a source of friends and enjoyment for Cathy’s grandson. Heh, also a potential dating source once he’s old enough they’ll let him date, haha.
Any large US city has some sizable Latino population, and that’s filtering through other parts of the country that don’t have a high percent in the state anyway, the way mine does. So although Pennsylvania doesn’t have a large percentage, in cities like Philadelphia, there’s a good-sized population, for instance. So unless he’s someplace small, he’s likely to have kids and their relatives around who are at least Hispanic or who speak Spanish. (That being a continuum between two different things.) It gives him a good chance to make friends and learn about Spanish culture here in the US and in Latin American countries and Spain and Portugal in Europe. All good things for him.
Any small-minded, racist bullies who don’t think it’s “cool” for a boy to be speaking Spanish, well…he will probably recognize them as idiots and prejudiced a mile off anyway. Heh. And they’ll be outweighed by all the friends her grandson can have who think he’s cool for liking Spanish.
This reminds me of the reaction when I was in junior high and a Chinese girl was listening to a portable pocket radio playing a Chinese song. Instead of the other kids making fun of her (which some might have) another kid heard that and said, hey, cool, turn it up, they wanted to hear it. 😀 It was completely “foreign” to that kid, who would’ve had no idea of the Chinese words’ meanings or anything about the traditional stye it was in. (I didn’t know either, back then.) But that kid and others thought it sounded really neat, cool, and wanted to really hear it, because it was so cool (and weird) to them. The girl didn’t really want to turn it up and call attention to herself, but she ended up turning it up for a few minutes. Me, at that age, I had to think I was smart and so I said something in support of it being in Chinese, traditional style, that the other kids wouldn’t understand…and meanwhile, I was missing the point that the other kids did not care about that, they wanted to hear the song (and not me blabbing about what I thought). Heheh. If I had been really smart, I would have hushed and asked the girl to please turn it up and play that, because it was so cool, and maybe ask what it was, where it was from, and so on. I remember her being a nerdy girl; puberty wasn’t being so kind to her as it was to other girls. But there were plenty of Chinese-American and immigrant kids, as well as other Asian kids, in my school district, right along with everyone else. So there was a good opportunity for learning a little. (Hmm, I wonder what happened to that girl. I don’t recall seeing / hearing her much, but I think she went to my high school, maybe the full four years. Also fairly sure she outgrew that awkward stage. I was also in that awkward stage. I am not sure anyone is not, in junior high / middle school, haha.)
These days, school kids are very likely to hear some of their friends listening to Latino and crossover pop / rock hits, or popular or traditional music genres from the US and from anywhere in Latin America. At least in my city, that’s very likely. Small towns or some other cities, less so, but in any large city, highly likely. Latino culture is making friends and making inroads and cross-pollinating some with Anglo / mainstream US culture. This, despite the current regressive backlash from some who feel threatened by it. The friendly side is going to win by sheer numbers, besides that they are right. The detractors don’t get it. American culture is not going to be destroyed or “ruined” by all the incoming ideas and cultures. American culture, like those others, is strong enough to pick up and blend in the good points and go right along with its own American take on things. Our culture will change some, but it will only die out if it works to destroy itself from within.
Oh, and the movie Coco is a really sweet movie, for folks who like Spanish culture.
@BCS, my experience was different. I’ve been ‘odd man out’ and a target for the class bullies from age 8 to 17 for being ‘different’, for speaking another language, and also a bit for liking to read and speaking up about that, and for having asthma and being bad at games.
It taught me to be emotionally self-sufficient, not easily influenced by everyone around me, and strengthened my love for reading, but it wasn’t easy as a child to go through that.
I hope Cathy’s grandson has better experiences.
@Cathy, You’re certainly doing the right thing. It is well established, languages are most readily learned in childhood, the more the better. The benefits aren’t so’s one can understand foreigners, but that it gives the brain more ways to think about things. Thinking is at base a symbol manipulation process, an “algebra” of sorts, and learning different languages gives the brain more “algebraic rules” to think with. See if you can interest him in an eastern language, Chinese, Japanese, et al.
IMO, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is no longer an hypothesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
I think very few linguists today would agree with the strong form of S-W, but certainly the weaker form is still around.
Interesting discussion by linguists here, with several links to research papers and books.
I thought I’d come up with that theory on my own. Ah, well.
Very cool! — Is there maybe a local Spanish enrichment program for middle schoolers that he could go to in his area, say another middle school or high school or a youth center? I don’t know if a community college would have programs for his age group. Or, hmm, there should be a local bilingual Spanish community. Maybe he could make friends with some Spanish-speaking kids his age (middle and high school level), and get some practice that way. Some cities have Spanish radio and TV channels, (Univision for TV is one that’s carried on national cable networks.)
But wow, Spanish-language novels of popular books (or maybe some common classical or kid/teen literature) are great ways for him to learn and practice and keep his Spanish fluent. Three years is a lot of time a young preteen and teen could use to keep and grow his Spanish skills. That’s terrific!
Yay for all the outdoor activity too. A kid should be out there enjoying the outdoors and nature and growing things, the land and the animals. We adults should do more outdoors. — If and when I get a rent house, rent-to-own, a renovation, I am looking forward to having a yard again, though someone else will be doing the maintenance on most of that. Too much concrete and glass in the city is not a good thing for the soul.
I am always in favor of libraries and bookstores, librarians and bookstore clerks and owners.
Maybe a Spanish language cookbook? Another type of instructional book?
Oh Thank You all, Tommie, BlueCatShip, Paul, Hanneke, GreenWyvern! This boy definitely needs a village, so I appreciate your insights and input. He has a strict TV “governess” lol in my daughter, and she seeks out movies he loves, in Spanish versions … he loves cartoons in the Spanish version of course 🙂 As he is a very social, curious and friendly child, not much intimidated by grownups (the sources of food, money, treats and of course books LOL) he makes friends easily. I expect he will keep up with his Spanish speaking friends. There is also a large Spanish speaking community in their area, so lots of opportunities … he knows he can’t have his beloved tacos unless he orders in Spanish 😉 His teachers took the entire 6th grade class on a camp retreat for 2 days this week (only about 38 kids) … when last seen he was sitting on a flat rock in the middle of a stream, writing stories in Spanish in a journal book.
Tommie, he does love to eat, and to cook … I will add Spanish cookbooks to my list! I think he has one or 2, but I’ll look for something special.
Hahaha, that is awesome. Good that he’s naturally social and likes adults as well as kids his own age. (Eegad, teen years approaching. Yeah, that village will be needed! Hah!)
There are (at least) three great skills I am very glad my parents and grandmother taught me, which have come in handy as a bachelor: I can cook pretty well and it’s tasty; so as long as there’s any food, I won’t starve. Knowing how to cook was a gift from all three, mostly my grandmother and my dad. But as a bachelor, being able to cook is a most welcome skill. I learned to touch-type in my teens. I am not as fast as my mom was, but oh, is it needed in modern life. I learned how to do laundry and other household chores around 10 to 12. I had to show two college roommates how to wash their own clothes and how to tie a tie. They had no clue, poor guys. (What, did your mother wash clothes for you guys? Wow.) The one guy who did not know how to tie a tie was a regular church goer, conservative brand. How he managed to get to college without learning how to tie a tie in that life, I don’t know. But I taught him. 🙂
Language skills, math skills, any music skills, cooking skills, cleaning — and any handyman skills he can learn from anyone around — will really help him enjoy life before and after college and finding anyone special.
That language camp retreat sounds fantastic. I had a computer camp (day camp) as a young high school student. That was also awesome. Glad he got to enjoy the camp. — Being able to order food, get directions on where to find things in the city or around the corner, shopping for food and clothing, doctor visits, home maintenance (I am sure finding this one out), all these everyday vocabulary and conversational needs, I am finding do not always get taught at the college prep or university levels. — There are a few books for specialized vocabulary for such things. Those will help him in a practical way. (Ah, from a language standpoint, street Spanish or cuss words, he can pick up on his own, but later on, yes, there are books that cover that too. Ahem. He’d probably be fascinated, which goes along with that upcoming teen rebellion phase. As that phase is bad enough without feeding it, I’ll only say that, from a strictly linguistic side, it’s all vocabulary and grammar, culture and word-history. Those words in English have odd and often perfectly proper origins. Never mind.) He will learn those, even when you’d rather he doesn’t. Life happens. — But there are a selection of good Spanish-English books to learn specialized vocabulary for situations like home maintenance, getting along while traveling, and so on.
In between high school and college, I got to see Mexico City and Tenochtitlán while my dad was there on business (engineer) and my mom and I got to sightsee. I still had full fluency from Spanish II in high school and three years of French in high school. (I had an intro to foreign language course in 7th grade and Spanish I in 8th grade. It was thanks to that, that I discovered I loved languages.) — This was an eye-opener for a big-city and suburban Texas boy who was familiar with the Tex-Mex side of things from outside my home. (I’m Anglo; Spanish and French were learned, not native.) — So in Mexico City in the mid-80’s, I saw the good and the bad there. I got a glimpse of things I had not seen in my own big city, like people washing car windows for a few centavos or pesos, when the Mexican economy was tanking and devaluing so much, they later divided by 100 and redid the currency, to catch up; something we may do here too. A few other things like that, which made an impassion then and would be important later. A middle class, self-taught cabbie, who was great. (I gave him my Spanish-English pocket dictionary when we left, so he’d have a better resource. But he was surprisingly fluent.) Some political visitor was in town, so just outside our hotel one day, there were Mexican military guards in formation (honor guard of some kind) and we, American tourists, my dad had been in the US Army in occupied Berlin in the 50’s, so he knew what the Mexican guards were capable of and I had only an inkling — We tourists walked on by as ordinary as we could, into and out of our hotel that day, and whoever the visitor was, no mishap occurred, thankfully. I would only realize later, that they would not have wanted to, but could have really defended themselves and Mexican and foreign visitors.
Seeing a few things in town was amazing: the Ballet Folklorico; the Museo Antropologico; the art museum too, I think, or that’s blended together in my memory. — Everything from pre-Columbian Indian cultural artifacts to colonial days to their side of the fight for Texas independence from Mexico. (Santa Ana was both hero and dictator/lunatic, but mostly hero, to them, but they did also respect Texas’ independence. That was interesting.) I’d had a very good Texas history teacher in junior high, and wish I remembered her name. She was only a few years out of college and loved the subject, and our Texas history textbook ws very good that year.
Getting to eat multiple authentic styles of Mexican and Latin American food was a highlight too. (Food while being entertained by the business contact in Mexico, two big companies working together, myself getting a little tested by our host, one learned that, hmm, fancy food is not any more special there than here, and was not local cuisine, unfortunately. — I attempted the steak with chocolate mole while visiting the pyramid site (Tenochtitlán). My mom was a chili-head. Any chili peppers and she was fine. Me, I did my best to wait as long as possible between gulps of iced tea. The chocolate mole sauce as applied that day to the young norteamericano’s steak was, just perhaps, more spicy than usual. Even though I did my best to test my Spanish ordering my food. Heh. I hope I made a dent for American honor. 😀 My mom was unfazed entirely by her food.
My point being, the trip gave me enough of an idea of what life was like in the country immediately south of my state, and a major trading partner for my city, and the origin of many of my state’s people. — For a young guy headed to college in the fall, who loved languages, this was my first real test of what it could be like to live in a country where I didn’t speak the language fully fluently, but where, at the time, I could halfway get by. — If I had been entirely on my own for weeks to live there immersed in it, oh, I would have discovered things I had no idea at the time I did not know. — It also showed me that some people are very poor and struggling hard to better themselves, and that ordinary people on the streets could be just…ordinary people…and not scary / dangerous. — In a newspaper article in college, I’d learn a bit about what street kids in my own city went through. It shocked me as a suburban young guy. I was too sheltered and had no idea. (It also was a blip toward dealing with being gay, eventually.) — But the experience seeing Mexico City was fantastic. Getting to do a little travel, to see a foreign country for which you’ve studied the language and think you can get by, being tested and discovering, hmm, you can, but there are big gaps and big successes, and you kinda liked it, all of this was good for me then. — I have also been discovering a whole lot I did not know, while living here in my own city, in an apt. complex that is largely Latino. Wow, the vocabulary and some grammar I keep finding I’m rusty on or never knew. (Talking to a maintenance guy to fix your apartment, when his English is not as good as your Spanish, and you are both really struggling to get past that barrier, has been so strange, but so funny and instructive. And it again says, people are people, good and bad. If you give most people a chance, they are mostly OK or good folks. Only occasionally are there vocal bullies and idiots.)
While I was taking French in college, I considered once the study abroad program, which would have been a summer studying there in France. (My prof was a native Frenchwoman, not Canadian.) We didn’t end up doing that, but talked about it. — If I had gone, it would have been quite a shock to discover just how much I didn’t know about living on my own then, besides the language immersion side of learning how much I did and didn’t know. — But that would have been good for me. If I could’ve learned that earlier, and in a setting like a country in which I could be welcome and learn those things, hmm, it might have made a difference in my whole outlook, and might have gotten me and my parents a little needed freedom from each other too. (Specific to me, not to anyone else’s case.)
So, on thinking of it, if your grandson gets a chance to visit a Spanish-speaking country in a way that would be safe yet an adventure, a good challenge to grow his language and his understanding of the world, then oh, do so. — A student exchange or study abroad program is good for some students. When he’s ready for some of that, if there is the opportunity, do so. — Any other country is also a good chance, whether English-speaking or a Latinate language or entirely foreign to him. All those have their good points, for a kid who might make languages an important part of his life, in whatever capacity. Having had language immersion already is a step in his favor. (Oh, there are risks, and some people are more suited to it than others. But some folks fall in love with language and being overseas, and some, especially if they are social anyway, can really thrive on it. For both business and personal sides. Whatever Spanish ends up being for him in his life, good for him, and yes, keep feeding and growing that. It’s more needed than ever in our globally-connected world. Trade and information trade, travel, getting along with others, all good. Translation or whatever it might be.
Hmm…. So he was writing in his journal and maybe writing stories, was he? Hah! If he is a budding writer or artist or musician, awesome. If he was just having a good time putting down is thoughts at camp, also awesome. But that sounds like a good thing. — Reading and writing / authorizing — Listen, I was an English major with enough for a French minor or start of a major, in college. I did desktop publishing back in the day, but it was more small publication design, copyediting and proofing and writing ad or other copy for hapless clients, graphic design, and at one point, a little font designing. My mom was an English major and pro artist, and my dad was an engineer with a love for history. Both loved reading, so I grew up with this love. — So hey, anyone who shows interest in books, in writing, in languages, any student who might grow up with loves like that? — Well, most or all of us here love that. If anything I say helps grow that, then good.
And…right now, a portion of our US population is regressing and xenophobic / racist, among other phobias and things that are not good for our democracy. — So any kid showing an ounce of good common sense and love for what is so good about our wider world, our planet and people, so we might have a chance of a future for him and those after him, well, good too. We live on a little blue-green oasis in a vast, empty black desert called outer space. We need to make this work for our species and all the others we share this little oasis with. (An expression of, «Il faut cultiver notre jardin.» We must tend / cultivate our garden, from Voltaire and St. Exupéry, or going back to the Garden of Eden injunction to do the same, stewardship, ecological management.) So… one more kid who already has the start of that love for something beyond his own back yard, for people and living things and things that are exotic, foreign, new and not yet imagined, good, go to it, kid. We need people like that.
And…whatever he becomes in life, that love of reading, writing, language, those other skills, he’s going to need that and other people will.
Nuts, I’ve written another epistle. I need more outlets in life. — Anyway, good to hear, and maybe suggestions here will help. It sounds like he’s getting a very good start. Whew, middle school. He is going to learn social survival skills in a high-pressure environment known as early adolescence. Best of luck, kiddo. I don’t know anyone who didn’t feel very tested in that arena. Haha. But somehow, we all got through it, so, hmm, he’s got a good start, anyway. D