Speaker For The Diodes

05:24 am - QotD

"Maybe the most disturbing implication of the famous sentence 'They create a desolation and call it peace' is that apologists for violence, by means of euphemism, come to believe what they hear themselves say." -- David Bromwich, "Euphemism and American Violence", The New York Review of Books, v.55,#5, 2008-04-03

05:24 am - QotD

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad." -- James Madison (b. 1751-03-16, d. 1836-06-28; US President 1809-1817; principal author of US Constitution; co-author of the Federalist Papers), 1798-05-13 (letter to Thomas Jefferson)

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-02-13:

"Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs." -- Vaclav Havel

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

05:24 am - QotD

"Snipers aren't deadly because they carry the biggest guns; they're deadly because they've learned how to weaponize math." -- Robert Evans, "5 Weapon Myths You Probably Believe (Thanks to Movies)", Cracked.com 2012-10-14 (spotted via link in a friend's locked LJ entry)

05:24 am - QotD

From Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson (1983, Timescape Books):

"Sir President, honored Seniors, Clansfolk and people of the Domain, let me first thank you sincerely and humbly for your patience. This occasion is unprecedented and therefore twice difficult--"

Not altogether meaningless noise. Monkeys groom each other with fingers, humans with words.

05:24 am - QotD

"... I don't even have an adjective to accurately describe it. I bet the Germans have one. They are light years ahead of our linguistic technology." -- Crave, author/artist of Between Failures, 2013-06-10 (author's note below comic)

[I don't know enough German to evaluate this claim, but I liked the phrasing.]

05:24 am - QotD

"It is essential to our well-being, and to our lives, that we play and enjoy life." -- Marcia Wieder

04:56 pm - Pics

As requested (suggested?), a recent photo of Perrine (in the wee hours of this morning) to mark the decade she's been with me. Sorry about the funky cropping -- it was a shot-of-opportunity, and between the size of the room, which lens I had on the camera, and where Perrine decided to pose, it was either a potentially distracting crop or definitely distracting visual clutter eating the right side of the picture.

I feel so lucky to have her around. I hope she feels the same way. To celebrate, last night I brushed her until she decided she'd been brushed enough. (This can take a while.) This afternoon we played with string.

Unrelatedly, a cute bird that I'd shot a day and a half earlier:

05:24 am - QotD

"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre." -- attriubuted to Cardinal Richelieu (b. 1585-09-09, d. 1642-12-04) nearly every place I've seen it, but Wikiquote notes that the attribution is disputed.

Translation: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

05:24 am - QotD

"A home without a cat -- and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?" -- from Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893) by Mark Twain (b. 1835-11-30, d. 1910-04-21)

Wow, has it been ten years already? Yeah, it has.

05:24 am - QotD

"I gave up the guitar in 1965. Didn't want to see a guitar. I'd go out and get drunk. When I came out of the heart surgery, the doc said, 'Promise me you'll work hard.' I said, 'I thought working hard is what got me here.' He said, 'No, working is what will keep you alive.'" -- Les Paul, (b. 1915-06-09, d. 2009-08-13)

05:24 am - QotD

"Sometimes, you have to go through a phase whether you like it or not." -- Tina Weymouth (b. 1950-11-22)

05:24 am - QotD

"Yet despite all this manificence Loiza la Vakako's private quarters, both aboard the air-car and wherever he stopped to spend the night, were always strangely austere: a thin mattress on the floor, plain white wall-hangings, a pitcher of water by his side. It was as if he accepted the gandeur as something necessary, a requirement of office, but gladly put it all aside when h could be alone. If you would see the truth of a man, look at the room where he sleeps." -- Yakoub, narrator of Star of Gypsies by Robert Silverberg (1986, Agberg Ltd.)

[Hush, Sheepie -- I know you know what an absolute wreck my bedroom is.]

05:24 am - QotD

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." -- Thomas Jefferson

05:24 am - QotD

"We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts." -- John Dewey [thanks to blueeowyn]

05:24 am - QotD

"Since the Tiananmen uprising of 1989, China's rulers have loosened the economic strictures enough to allow remarkable growth -- testament to the vibrancy of the Chinese people given even half a chance. Out of this, China's rulers have devoted enormous resources to projects meant to suggest they run a modern nation -- sending astronauts into space, convening conferences on the climate, and hosting the 2008 Olympics.

"Count me unimpressed. The real sign of modernity will come when China opens up its political system enough so that the country's leaders no longer fear June 4 but treat the Tiananmen uprising with the honor it deserves."

-- Claudia Rosett, "What I Saw at Tiananmen", The Wall Street Journal, 2009-06-04

05:24 am - QotD

"In terms of US history [the biggest lie or omission] was the fact that we were taught that 'racism ended with the civil rights movement' and nobody told me about restrictive convents or redlining. The segregation in Cleveland (where I grew up) is plain as day. There are these bombed out inner city neighborhood (all black) and I could not understand why it was segregated like that. My history class didn't do much to help me understand the world I was living in. The history of racial struggle ended with MLK's 'I have a dream speech' ... and they lived happily ever after.

"Looking back I feel sort of betrayed. [...] I ended up hating history. That's why I study math. Mathematics makes sense."

-- futurebird, 2007-11-21

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-05-29:

"You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." -- Robin Williams, comic and actor.

(submitted to the mailing list by M. McGuffin)

05:24 am - QotD

"If someone offers to give you the moon as a romantic gesture, don't accept. Humanity needs that for tides and science." -- @SarcasticRover, 2013-05-31

05:24 am - QotD

"He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things." -- George Savile (b. 1633-11-11, d. 1695-04-05), first Marquess of Halifax

05:24 am - QotD

"While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed... it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges." -- Sir Edmund Hillary (b. 1919-07-20, d. 2008-01-11)

[Yeah, this should've been yesterday's quote, but I wanted the entomophagy quote to run yesterday.]

05:24 am - QotD

"Part of the problem, Durst believes, is that modern Westerners tend to view insects and arachnids as a famine food, something consumed only by the poorest peoples and during the leanest of times. And it's true that there are some miraculous stories of non-crustacean arthropods saving humans from famine. In the 1970s, for example, many Cambodians survived the famines brought on by the rise of the Khmer Rouge because wild tarantulas were readily available. (Fried tarantula is still considered a delicacy in Cambodia.) But bugs are far more than a famine food; on the contrary, certain insects are among the most desired foods in Thai and other insect-eating cultures. Just as folks in Louisiana look forward to crawfish season and folks in the Pacific northwest delight in Dungeness crab season, so do folks in Thailand feel an eager flutter in their stomachs when weaver ant season begins. Durst notes that when he goes to the supermarket, he sees insects selling for more per pound than chicken or pork. These aren't foods of desperation; they're foods of desire.

"But it isn't easy, in the United States at least, to develop a taste for bugs. I was surprised that, in such a foodie region as the Bay Area, it's still difficult to find a spot that will serve up insects. Martin explained that the lack of food regulations surrounding bugs makes it tricky for restaurants to serve them. Occasionally, a restaurant will put a buggy item on the menu, only to have the local health department step in with a wagging finger. Certainly there are restaurants and catering companies that will build you a grasshopper taco, top your ice cream with mealworms, and host a cicada boil. But without clear government health and safety standards, many of these dishes exist at the whim of the local health department."

-- Lauren Davis, 2013-05-26

05:24 am - QotD

-- from Skin Horse by Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells, 2013-05-06

05:24 am - QotD

From "Overheard in D.C." (on dcist.com), describing a conversation heard in autumn of 2012:

A family, clearly tourists with kids ranging from grade school to teenagers at the end of a day of sightseeing, are walking toward the Tomb of the Unknowns and chattering/bickering about who still wants to do what/eat where/is bothering who/etc. The youngest son keeps tugging on mom to get her attention. Finally...

Mom: "What!?!?"
Son (pointing to tombstones): "I really wish all of these soldiers were still alive."
Family: [Sudden silence]
Mom: "Um... me, too. I really wish they were still alive, too."

Bickering stopped, they all pull a little closer together before continuing on their way.

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-01-03:

Go hiking in the mountains, camp out under the stars,
Start shopping for a violin or else a new guitar,
Get started on that book I've always wanted to write
Run ten miles in the morning, do yoga every night,

I'm restless, I can't sit still
Gonna feed my addiction, gotta have my fill
I want it all right now, I think I can and I will
I can't slow down 'cause I'm restless.

There's a big stack of novels I've been meaning to read
Gotta get to 'em, 'cause I'm feeling the need,
Call up some politicians, maybe start a couple fights
There's about a million wrongs I'd like to right.

&bnsp; -- Heather Johnson (aka Heather Blush), from her song Restless. [ http://www.heatherblush.com/restless.html]

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

05:24 am - QotD

"The Futurians are a thing of the past. The wave of the future is the Pastafarians." -- Keith F. Lynch, 2013-05-17, rec.arts.sf.fandom, Message-ID: <kn3tff$k8c$6@reader1.panix.com>

05:24 am - QotD

"What's worse than the world seeing Christians disagree with one another is the world seeing Christians remain silent when their own go on TV and tell the parents of children lost in a tornado that those children and their families got what they deserved. What's worse than the world seeing Christians disagree with one another is the world seeing Christians remain silent and supportive when their own are accused of multiple counts of child abuse and appeal to the first amendment to try and avoid investigation. What's worse than the world seeing Christians disagree with one another is the world seeing Christians perpetuate an abusive theology that teaches people that whatever abuse they are suffering, whatever pain they are enduring, whatever violence they have been subjected to, is deserved and perpetrated by god." -- Rachel Held Evans, 2013-05-21 [thanks to the friend who linked to this in a locked entry]

05:24 am - QotD

"You can be the best in the world and not be recognized.... A lot of it has to do with breaks. If a coach at Tennessee State hadn't given me a break at 14, I never would have been in the Olympic Games." -- Wyomia Tyus (b. 1945-08-29), sprinter (gold medals in 1964 and 1968).

05:24 am - QotD

"They know enough who know how to learn." -- Henry Adams [thanks to blueeowyn]

05:24 am - QotD

"If the use of leisure time is confined to looking at TV for a few extra hours every day, we will deteriorate as a people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884-10-11, d. 1962-11-07), My Day (newspaper column) 1958-11-05

12:45 am - Solo Recordng Day

Last month, I posted some sheet music, for a tune called "Eff the Big C" (or "F#$% Cancer", but there are already a lot of works with the latter title, so ...). Today I finally got around to putting an MP3 of it on the web (along with a couple other versions of the sheet music -- different clefs, with/without tab -- at http://www.dglenn.org/music/Eff_the_Big_C.html.

It's sloppy, and I know it -- I started out yesterday or the day before, working to a metronome and then playing along with a MIDI file to keep me in time, but the result kept turning out thuddy and plodding and I wasn't happy with any of those takes, so I punted and started over without external timing aids, and the result was a little uneven. And beyond that, a couple of tracks ought to have been redone, but I hit the "not enough disk space to do much more" point about the same time as my ears started going wonky and the dog started wanting to make noise, so the "tired enough to make things worse with stupid/climsy errors" stage was probably right around the corner anyhow. Bottom line: I'm feeling too impatient to set it aside nearly done and wait for the next day I'd get a chance to finish it, so I've stuck it on the web even as rough as it is. Somdeday I'll tackle it again.

My bandmates can attest that I do sometimes need a bit of nudging with regard to timing when we're playing together, and some do-overs in the studio. It's even harder when it's just myself. (Yes, I know the answer to this problem: More Practice. I mostly take the "playing counts as practicing" approach and just play, but every so often there's some specific thing I need to focus on, and it's time to do the kind of practicing that feels like practice/drill work. Also: I haven't been playing/practicing mandolin enough lately.)

I wound up trying different guitars looking for one that had a sound that fit the tune even after being run through my half-baked recording setup. (The solid-body electric would've been the most convenient -- no microphones to mess with -- but I couldn't get the sound I wanted going direct.) When I got to the point where I had too many instruments to fit on or next to my bed, I relocated the computer to Mom's living room. Which I'm going to need to tidy a bit before I crash. (Yes, that's an old Radio Shack PZM (pressure zone microphone) gaff-taped to the wall; and yes, there's a dynamic mic tied to a guitar stand with a bungee cord (all my mic stands are in Baltimore).) Things mostly worked except for my own sloppy playing (OT1H, a day when I wasn't feeling well wasn't the best day to work on this; OTOH, if I'd been feeling better, I would have gotten other things done, which involved driving, instead of this) ... and my not figuring out how to capture the sound of the doumbek adequately (but I know whom to ask about that later).

Anyhow, it might not be "put on a CD to sell" quality, but at least it's recorded and there, so folks who don't read music can hear it. From my comments here you can tell that I don't think it's great work, but I'm happy enough with it to let y'all hear it, and I think I've learned a little more about my reccording tools in the last two days, so I should get better at some parts of this process. And I'm definitely pleased with the composition, this thing I wrote in 2011; I just need to work on the execution.

So there it is: Eff_the_Big_C.mp3 for whoever's interested in hearing it. And a long list of other tunes I should also be trying to record ...

05:24 am - QotD

"I was born, lucky me
 In a land that I love
 Though I am poor, I am free
 When I grow I shall fight
 For this land I shall die
 Let her sun never set
 Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, 'toria
 Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, 'toria."
  -- from "Victoria" by The Kinks (1969, Arthur), written by Ray Davies

[Happy Victoria Day to my Canadian friends! Yeah, I know I just quoted an English, not Canadian songwriter, but he did mention Canada in the last verse ...]

05:24 am - QotD

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." -- Nelson Mandela

[To Christians celebrating on the Western calendar: a blessed Whitsunday -- Pentecost -- to you!]

05:24 am - QotD

[Y'all remember Xena: Warior Princess, starring Lucy Lawless, right?]

"In short, when I can tell you how I break the laws of gravity,
 And why my togs expose my intermammary concavity,
 And why my comrade changed her dress from one that fit more comfily
 To one that shows her omphalos (as cute as that of Omphale),
 And why the tale of Spartacus appears in Homer's versicon,
 [She holds up a tomato:]
 And where we found examples of the genus Lycopersicon,
 And why this Grecian scenery looks more like the Antipodes,
 You'll say I'm twice the heroine of any in Euripides!"
   -- from "I am the very model of a heroine barbarian", by Kevin Wald, 1996 [the melody should be obvious, no?] Note: original has footnotes which some folks may find useful and/or entertaining

(Though I'm a night owl and more likely to be falling asleep than getting up at the relevant time, ever since first reading this all those years ago the line "I wake up every morning, ere the dawn is rhododactylous" flits through my head every so often and makes me giggle. When I first saw this, something about the way that word (a) fit so perfectly, (b) yanked me straight back to middle school and Greek class, and (c) was just not a word I expected to see in an English-language piece, made me laugh so hard I had to stop reading to catch my breath. It took me several readings to make it past that line to the rest of the verse and the rest of the song.)

05:24 am - QotD

"I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom." -- Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

[Donald Glen Arthur Sr.: b. 1931-11-04, d. 1999-05-17]

05:24 am - QotD

Gerald N. Callahan, author of Between XX and XY, interviewed by Thomas Rogers in Salon (published 2009-07-07):

[I've had this in the queue for ages; I'm using it today because a friend recently linked to this article about a lawsuit related to the topic.]

05:24 am - QotD

"What do they call it ... the primordial soup? The glop? That heartbreaking second when it all got together, the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets." -- Edward Albee, Seascape

[To everyone celebrating the giving of the Torah today, I wish you a good Shavuot (or at least a good nap if you were up all night).]

05:24 am - QotD

"My father spent his years fighting his size, wishing he was smaller, weaker, less of a giant. He was taught to hate his body, and he was ashamed of the amount of space he took up. But he passed his strength to me, and I won't squander my inheritance. I will not let myself be diminished." -- Tiffany at morecabaret.com, 2013-05-07 [thanks to multiple friends on FB who linked to this]

05:24 am - QotD

"We are learning that those amenities we took for granted before 2003, you know- the luxuries -- electricity, clean water from faucets, walkable streets, safe schools -- those are for deserving populations. Those are for people who don't allow occupiers into their country.

[...]

"We're learning that the leaders don't make history. Populations don't make history. Historians don't write history. News networks do. The Foxes, and CNNs, and BBCs, and Jazeeras of the world make history. They twist and turn things to fit their own private agendas."

-- Riverbend, 2013-04-09 [thanks to twistedchick for linking to this]

05:24 am - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-05-12:

"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." -- Honoré de Balzac

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

05:24 am - QotD

Upon being awakened by a phone call: "I have a recurring nightmare that I'm never going to get a good night's sleep and then I wake up to find it's a recurring reality." -- from Freevall by Mark Stanley, 2013-05-10

05:24 am - QotD

"Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice." -- Henry Louis Gates

Why this quote today:

"In a symbolic act of ominous significance, on 10 May 1933, the students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of 'un-German' books, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. On the night of 10 May, in most university towns, nationalist students marched in torchlight parades 'against the un-German spirit.'" -- Wikipedia: Nazi book burnings

Today is:
Gregorian: 2013 May 10
Julian: 2013 April 27
Hebrew: 5773 Sivan 1
Islamic: 1434 Jumada t-Tania 29
Persian: 1392 Ordibehesht 20
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.0.7.0
Indian Civil Calendar: 1935 Vaisakha 20

05:24 am - QotD

"What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884-10-11, d. 1962-11-07), Tomorrow Is Now (1963)

02:22 am - The Trip Back, in a Nutshell

Stayed up late packing, slept a couple hours, then got up again and have been going for 26 hours and counting w/o more sleep. Am home (if it counts as home before I've picked up Perrine and brought her back here). Check-in at BA was going to charge us a whole lot of money for extra baggage -- nearly 2/3 of what their published policy said, so less than we expected -- then there was a long period of waiting and confusion and phone calls between BA staff and then all of a sudden we weren't being charged anything for extra bags and they handed Mom's credit card back. Don't quite grok what happened but didn't want to jinx it (or add still more delay) by asking. Larnaca security confiscated a bottle of Commanderia and jar of watermelon glyco from Mom's carry-on (no, I don't know what made her think these didn't count as too much liquid to carry on. Heathrow security was annoying as %$^# but I don't think I lost anything there this time. Company that does all the weelchair assistance for all airlines at Heathrow screwed up so the four wheelchair passengers (including Mom) were 20-30 minutes late boarding, but pilot flew very fast and made up most of the time. Near end, pilot announced the flight was being rerouted "east" to avoid weather; I had trouble recognizing what terrain peeked through clouds, thought I recognized the Magothy river but didn't think that made sense, then I saw something that looked rather a lot like the US Naval Academy, which would mean "east" was really "east and south"; at end of flight, pilot beamed a huge smile when I asked whether we had flown over the Academy and confirmed that we had. US Customs took a long time (mostly waiting in line), opened all of Mom's bags and none of mine, and let everything through after asking what stuff was and how to pronounce "dra(c)hana". Guitar and banjo survived trip as checked baggage in inadequate cases (saz went as carry-on) but the backgammon/chess set I bought in Ledra wound up with a busted latch despite being in middle of suitcase with soft stuff inside & around it. Have done most of what I really needed to get done before I could go to bed (including making the bed, finding the charger for the PowerBook, and getting Mom to find her pills). So: good night. Don't forget, The Homespun Ceilidh Band is performing at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt, MD this weekend. I think I can wake up by then.

(Stella: like I said, when tired, I babble. Now very very tired but tried to keep this short anyhow.)

05:24 am - QotD

"A closed mind is like a closed book: just a block of wood. " -- Chinese Proverb [thanks to blueeowyn]

05:24 am - QotD

"When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed." -- Russel D. Moore, "Ecological Catastrophe and the Uneasy Evangelical Conscience", 2010-06-01

05:24 am - QotD

From "My Time of Day", from Guys and Dolls (music & lyrics by Frank Loesser:

My time of day is the dark time
A couple of deals before dawn
When the street belongs to the cop
And the janitor with the mop
And the grocery clerks are all gone.

When the smell of the rainwashed pavement
Comes up clean, and fresh, and cold
And the streetlamp light
Fills the gutter with gold

That's my time of day

05:37 am - Easter in Cyprus

From Cyprus Trip

Easter in Cyprus is loud. Between the loudspeakers blaring the chanting and the rest of the service to all the people who couldn't fit inside the church, the fireworks being set of in various parts of the neighbourhood, the church bells ringing chaotically when the big moment is announced (then gradually coming together as they continue ringing), and later on the enthusiastic screaming of children at play after a huge family meal in the wee hours right after church ... it's joyous and it's loudly joyous.

As we were walking up the street to my cousin's house (where we're staying, and where today's big family gathering is) from my other cousin's house (where this morning's huge dinner was), my cousin was startled to notice how alive and awake I was while eveybody else had that "way past my bedtime" feeling -- after a few weeks of seeing how tired I've been most of the time. I've been trying to tell them I'm a night-person... I really did feel more alive then -- I'd been not just awake but interacting with people, and it had been at my time of day; I wasn't merely awake and trying desparately to get to sleep.

I took only a film camera loaded with high-speed black and white film to the church itself, so no digital photos of that to post now.

05:24 am - QotD

[To Christians celebrating on the Orthodox calendar, Happy Easter -- Χριστος Ανεστη!]

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake." -- Basil Hume

"My mom used to say that Greek Easter was later because then you get stuff cheaper." -- Amy Sedaris< [This works when it's a week later. When it's a month later, like this year, not so much.]

12:13 pm - Photos in a More LJ/DW-Friendly Place (I Hope)

Cyprus. Good: I did get around to copying all of the Facebook ones to Picasa, which I think will be easier for the non-FB-users (do let me know whether that's correct). I'll try to do another post-of-thumbnails here soon -- where we're staying now, WiFi reception in my bedroom is iffy and moving the charger and plug-adapter back and forth betwen there and the dining room is a bit of a pain). In the meantime, here's one recent image I wanted to comment on, and a link to the Picasa album.</p>

From Cyprus Trip

I find it interesting that some authors' names get transliterated on translated editions (also note 'TZ' -- that's tau zeta -- for 'J', and the P-shapes are uppercase rhos) and others appear in their original alphabet. Also, I'm amused that Dan Brown's book's title appears half in one alphabet and half in the other (I'm guessing that's because the half of the title not translated or transliterated is the name of a famous historical figure usually sppelled in the Roman alphabet). I didn't expect to see as much alphabet-mixing as I've been seeing here.

(I mentioned this elsewhere but I can't remember whether I've said it here: I'm learning to hate words -- especially business names -- that lack internal clues as to which alphabet they're written in. Although reading an alpha as an ay is no biggie, and prounouncing a beta as if it were a bee is close enough to be recognizeable, substituting aitch for eta (uppercase), vee for nu (lowercase), or pee for rho (either case) makes a much bigger difference.)

This afternoon/evening: rest. Tonight: church for midnight (I think) Easter service. (Dunno about anybody else, but it works better for me than a sunrise service, so I'm not questioning the plan.) Tomorrow: huge family gathering and meal for Easter day -- when I asked whether comparing it to American Thanksgiving was apt, I was told that was about right (but the weather will be much warmer). Haven't been to Kyrenia yet -- that might be on the agenda for Monday, I'm not sure. Tuesday maybe some last minute shopping, then figuring out again how everything fits into the suitcases. Wednesday: awake and on the road to the airport too darned early and a long, long flight home.

SATURDAY: a Homespun Ceilidh Band gig -- we're playing at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt, Maryland. I'd really hoped a bandmate with a more stable Internet connection would create a FB Event for that -- dealing with the photo-posting interface on a slow computer with sporadic signal loss is bad enough! -- but I don't think that's been done yet. Or if it has, they forgot to invite me on FB.