Plump middle-aged woman with Marty Feldman eyes, hurrying along near the “ancient” synagogue @ 08:30: “Darling, I love you … Stop being jealous … Of course I love you … Put the chicken on at 12 … “
José Mena Aguado is apparently being punished on the basis of article 7.31 of the Ley Orgánica del Régimen Disciplinario de las Fuerzas Armadas, which requires neutrality of soldiers with respect to the various political alternatives. Since article 8.1 of the constitution requires the armed forces to defend Spain’s territorial integrity and the constitutional order,…
Everyone’s getting excited because Peruvian president-elect Evo Morales does state business wearing a chompa, which the resident linguists at El País today inform us is an indigenous word for jersey or sweater, and which is a sure sign to the paranoid right-wingers with whom I hang that he’s about to do a Chávez. No worries:…
The eighteenth century would have sounded rather different if composers had employed Persian instead of Turkish music: Xenophon and others report: “In battles, Iranians played certain sounds that made the enemy fearful and escape, such as the sound of stones falling from the mountain or the sound of a waterfall or the horrible sound of…
If Javanese portray their common folk as cowards and fools, here’s a different view, taken from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535 – 1557): This Indian [in the Columbian sense] was from Java but had married on Machian/Makian/Maquiem/Maquieu/Matjan [in the Moluccas; one of the four islands to which cloves…
I had an interesting chat (ie I listened) with someone the other night about the social position of musicians in the Middle Ages. I didn’t really buy his idea of the musician as The Other–at least not in Spain–but what he told me about Moorish and Jewish musicians in Christian society (as opposed to, for…
De Son, nae d’oude sleur, De doode cruiden, deur Sijn hitte, doet verrijsen, Die doen haer open blij; Maer wie can doch in mij Levendich leven wijsen? (Hooft)