Grogu getting ready for some Thanksgiving grub:
I've heard French people exclaim "Baf!" since I was a wee little lad. I was always interpreted it to mean something along the lines of "whatever" or, at the very least, a dismissive exclamation.
I've long known that to be baffled by something is to be perplexed by it, confused by it, etc.
I've also known that a baffle is a device used to redirect or frustrate the flow of light, noise, fluid, or heat.
The o.g. use is apparently for fire:
Knowing the origins of words is like understanding the mathematics behind phenomena: rather than being perplexed and frustrated and diverted by looking at things the wrong way, you can just look at the underlying symmetries and relationships. From this new perspective it's all so simple as to warrant a mere "Bah, humbug!"
(Scrooge was, indeed, baffled by Christmas, wasn't he?)
I finally decided to dabble in the trendy fashion of AI generated 'art'. Here are my first few attempts using the site https://creator.nightcafe.studio/
First Up:
-I uploaded the picture of me on the banner here at Riddicisms and asked to have it rendered in an Andy Warhol style:
I thought about the classic "am I the butterfly dreaming the world or was I dreaming I was a butterfly?":
I tried to get an image to go with the poem I wrote a while back "Said/Unsaid" : (my favorite image thus far)
Finally, I tried to get an image to go with my old post about time, free will, and death:
Prunes in America have always been associated with old people to me: some kind of vaguely unattractive thing they would eat for medicinal purposes.
But as we often do in English, the dried fruit we name after the French word for the fruit itself: prune is the French word for plum.
When I was kid, my grandparents had a couple of plum trees in their backyard. I have vivid memories of carefully selecting the perfectly ripe plum (perhaps a bit over-ripe actually) on the tree and eating it right there, standing in its shade. (pro-tip: always pick the plum on the shady side of the tree; it will still be surprisingly cool even deep into the day). The sweet freshness coupled with the softness of the flesh of the plum could not be beat. Sometimes it would dribble down my chin and I would lean forward so as not to drip on my feet. It was some kind of holy communion with nature for a young Kenny.
I long ago stopped even trying to eat a plum since they invariably disappointed me. The version of plums I can access now just don't match up to childhood memory.
"Prunes?" you ask. Well, yes, I buy those in bulk from Costco. Is there a metaphor for youth and old age lurking in this post somewhere. Why, no... not at all...
When I speak French, I have a strong American accent. If there's a word in French that sounds like the English word, it's probably just coming out in English in the middle of my French sentence.
When I was little, my French grandparents lived next door to the mayor of their small village. In addition to being the mayor, he was a crusty old Corsican school teacher. I think he taught the equivalent of 5th grade or something (apparently being the mayor of a small Corsican village is not a full-time undertaking).
I will always remember that my grandmother thought it'd be fun to send me to school one day with him. He called me to the board to do some math problems in front of the class. I remember to this day, he wanted me to solve:
5,6
x 3,2
------
I felt like there was something here, something obvious I should be able to translate into a problem I knew how to do, but being in front of classroom of these slightly older French kids (I think I was in 4th grade) just stopped me in my tracks. I confessed I didn't know how to do it and sat back down. "I guess they don't teach that yet in America" the neighbor said. When the next kid went up and solved it out, I could tell that they were using commas where we would use periods for the decimal places and I felt stupid that I hadn't figured that out on my own. Even in the fourth grade, I could've figured out to write
17,92
To this day, there is a whole class of Corsican kids who think their math education is superior to American math...
Anyway, later that evening I was telling stories about the day in my broken French and I referred to the school teacher as le maire several times. But of course I was saying it American-style so it came out like the French word le meilleur ! Eventually my Mom laughingly corrected me "Kenny, he's not The Best, he's just the mayor" I said I knew, that I was calling him, Le Mayor!
One of the reasons I love studying, thinking about, and teaching physics is that it is the process of revealing underlying truths: the things that nature really values are not those same qualities that we first notice.
I'm happy to report that I think today's youth is better at being less superficial than my own generation in this regard, but in large part I think it is fair to say that most people put a lot of value in the following:
In both columns these may be the attributes that are most easily identified and somehow seem tangible to us. Obviously, in the moment, as you are maneuvering through the world in the day-to-day, these factors do inform that navigation. But just because something is easy to identify and others talk primarily about certain attributes, does not necessarily mean those are the important ones in an essential sense.
As you study physics and, also, really begin to understand people what emerges as important is more like:
I've always known we get our english noun "souvenir" from the french verb meaning "to remember".
I've always known this humble brass vase my Mom keeps on her mantle:
As you age yourself, you become more interested in family history and family heirlooms so, for the first time, I recently asked about the origin of this vase. "Oh that is a repurposed, spent artillery shell from World War One," she casually informs me.
This floored me that this (for me) quotidian item that I have known all my life should quietly harbor such a profound and violent past. Maybe a great uncle of my Mom's served in WWI, we are not sure.
In any case, how cool is it that my family has an actual swords-into-plowshares keepsake?
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Let Us Beat Swords Into Ploughshares, Evgeniy Vuchetich 1959 |
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." - Book of Isiah
Thank you for beating your artillery shells into vases, French infantrymen. I will souviendrai you every time I look at this souvenir.
