Teaching my boy a little bit of literary style and a little bit of French on the side...

[NNadir]

I chose these lines:

<<Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J'ai reçu un télégramme de l'asile: Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. Cela ne veut rien dire. C'était peut-être hier.">>

We did a little translation then sounded out the words in French, because next year he's going into sixth grade and has to choose a language.

Regrettably in my school district there are no Mandarin, no Cantonese, Japanese or Hindi classes. You have to choose a European language in sixth grade and, if you choose to not take a language for any reason in sixth grade you can only have Spanish in 9th grade.

(I found this out from my, um, 9th grader who is taking, um, Spanish.)

No Russian, no Italian, no Cantonese, no Swedish, no Cherokee, no Dine. No Scots. No Gaelic.

Anyway the lines above are beautiful lessons in style I think, so spare, so matter of fact, so unadorned, so detached.

The American system of teaching languages sucks, and it weakens our country enormously that we are not serious about language, especially Asian languages.

My son found that French hilarious, by the way, and went around all day saying <<Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.>>

I talked to him on the phone tonight and asked if he missed me, he said "sort of."

<<Aujourd'hui, Papa est morte.>>

"Sort of?" ask I.

"Well, I kinda miss you teaching me stuff," quoth he, "but Mom only has to take care of two of us now. Less laundry."

<<Aujourd'hui, Papa est morte.>>

He's a wonderful boy, and I can't wait to get home to him, even it means more laundry.

<<Peut-être demain, je ne sais pas>>

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear NNadir...

Ah, what a melancholy piece to teach your son! And yes, I recognize it; I majored in French in college, lo these many years ago!

Are you traveling on business? I can easily see you miss him, and he certainly misses you...

May you soon be home, teaching your son, and making more laundry...

:hug:

[NNadir]

2. Yes Peg, I'm traveling on business.

I'm quite near you actually and had two different business dinners in Redondo Beach two different nights.

I'd look you up, but it's incredibly tightly scheduled, I'm traveling with people, and I just found out that there's a fairly important business problem back east. I've got meetings all day tomorrow and then I'm outta here.

I had lunch at the Kettle in MB on Sunday. At that point, I'd been awake for about 20 hours. Except for the prices, the food hasn't changed in 20 years.

Maybe next time I'm here, I can say hello.

I suppose I should be reading emails, but I'm here at DU just to have a few minutes to blow stuff off. I can't believe how many completely different topics I had to discuss today and I'm tired and I'm barely able to comprehend what's happened in the past two days because I couldn't find time to read all the emails.

As for that French, I find the whole thing kind of droll and not necessarily all that dark. Whenever I read that book, I just can't keep from chuckling because life is really that, well, as all the critics say of that book, absurd.

I mean we live in a country where several nations were plunged into a terrible war in part because Maureen Dowd and people like her made a big deal about whether Al Gore looked good in his suits. As we New Yorkers might say, "Algiers ain't got nuttin' on us."

I'm going to teach it to my boy as humor. It's certainly no more tragic than the years 2001-2009 and in comparison to those years, it's at least amusing.

I got to speak a fair bit of French today, my Pidgeon French, and that, at least, was fun.