New Orleans.

OK, this is the last post on Absinthe (for now), but I couldn't resist its appositeness and topicality. It's art from the absinthe era (late 1800s): 'Absinthe House, New Orleans', by Guy Pene du Bois*.

George Bush has promised: "And here in New Orleans, the street cars will once again rumble down St. Charles, and the passionate soul of a great city will return."
But this city's passionate soul is not so easily recreated, for it was formed from a rich cultural past, many aspects of which are repugnant or embarrassing to today's 'respectable' society. I fear that once more the real juice of history will be watered down a little further, cleaned up, sanitized, reset in modernized form in concrete and plastic that: 'You can touch, but you can't feel'.

* Painting shown by permission: Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, MN.

Absinthe's alchemy...

"Robert  Jordan  pushed  the  cup  toward  him.  It was a milky 
yellow now with the water and he hoped the gyspy would not
take more than a swallow.   There was very little  left of  it and
one cup of  it took the place of  the evening papers,  of  all the
old evenings in cafés,  of  all chestnut trees  that would be in
bloom  now  this  month,   of  the  great slow horses  of  the
outer  boulevards,  of  book shops,  of  kiosques,   and  of
galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo,
and of the Butte Chaumont,  of  the Guaranty Trust
Company and the Ile de la Cité,  of  Foyot's  old
hotel,and of being able to read and relax in
the evening;  of all the things he had
enjoyed and forgotten and that
came back to him when
he  tasted  the
 opaque,
 bitter,
 tongue-
 numbing,
 brain-
 warming,
  stomach-
warming,  idea-changing liquid alchemy."
from For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway.

Café Absenta.

My latest tipple, which I thoroughly recommend:
Black Cat Coffee Absinthe*, made in Tarragona.

Absinthe has been considered a vivifying elixir since ancient times. It contains thujone, a chemical present in wormwood which, apparently, mildly increases the firing of neural synapses. Sounds good to me. Thujone is found in several plants, including wormwood (Artemesia Absinthium), sage, tansy, clary and cedar.

I'm drinking it today just with water, though I've been drinking it with ice, lemon and soda water. Delightful:

Smell: caramel, coffee.
Taste: (I sip now) a first burst of aniseed flavour, reminiscent of plain absinthe, quickly blends into a sweeter taste which flows into burnt caramel and coffee, leaving a final very pleasant warm coffee lingering on the palate.

Absinthe was effectively banned throughout Europe early last century, and has been unavailable outside of Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. It never was illegal in the UK, but no one told us. Thujone and drinks containing it are still illegal in the USA, though most sites say importing absinthe for personal enjoyment is not an issue. And people do it.

A famous absinthe site: Le Fee Verte (the green fairy).
Some good stuff on absinthe and thujone.
The Return of the Green Faerie by Modern Drunkard magazine.
You can buy absinthe online.

* "Teichenné se complace de ofrecerles el licor de Café Absenta Black Cat, elaborado a base de un destilado de Artemesia Absinthium de alto contenido en tuyonas, café y otras plantas aromáticas. Todo ésto confiere a ésta bebida un sabor único y delicioso."

Not nuts.

'Nut' in Spanish is 'nuez'. However, 'nuez' means only walnut. 'Nuts', as we classify them in English, come under 'frutos secos' here.

Horchata de Chufas
An ancient drink made from chufas, or tiger nuts, the tuberous roots of a sedge-family plant (so not a 'nut' at all, or a dried fruit), Horchata de Chufas is said to be named after a king's remark to a girl who had given him the drink: "aixo es or, xata" (this is gold, cutie - !): 'xata' being an affectionate Catalan term for a child.
Make your own horchata - from tiger nuts or from chufas.

And peanuts, or groundnuts, aren't nuts at all, either; neither in English nor Spanish - they're legumes (legumbres), same as peas and beans.

'Peanut' translates as 'cacahuete' or 'maní'; both Amerindian words.

Spannabis.

In a list published in the current print issue of Spannabis magazine, I counted the number of grow shops in mainland Spain. There are 128 listed. That's very healthy: a sign that there is a live and flourishing subculture in Spain.

As long as these businesses thrive in a country we may be sure that the thought police are inactive and that the lawmakers and authorities are engaging themselves with matters of true concern.

There is another sign, too, in this same area, of Spain's sensible tolerance, as reported earlier in El País:

"Starting this autumn about 600 patients will be enrolled in clinical studies to treat different diseases with the cannabis extract Sativex.
If the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting proves to be effective it is intended to treat another 240 patients with Sativex, which will be imported from Canada."

Unfortunately for English sufferers, Sativex is not yet approved in the UK, where it was developed and produced; though it's been available in Canadian pharmacies since 20 June 2005.

"Picasso can’t paint a tree."

The English Royal Academician, Alfred Munnings, after looking at Picasso's work for the first time, remarked:

“Picasso can’t paint a tree.”

Picasso replied, when he was told of this insult:

“No, he’s right. I can’t paint a tree. But I can paint the feeling you have when you look at a tree.”

¡Viva Paris!

"Pastora Pavón finished singing in the midst of silence. Only a little man, one of those emasculated dancers who suddenly spring up from behind bottles of white brandy, said sarcastically in a very low voice: 'Viva Paris!', as if to say: 'Here we do not care for ability, technique or mastery. Here we care for something else.'

At that moment La Niña de los Peines got up like a woman possessed, broken as a medieval mourner, drank without pause a large glass of cazalla, a fire-water brandy, and sat down to sing without voice, breathless, without subtlety, her throat burning, but... with duende."

from 'Theory and Function of the Duende' by Federico García Lorca. Translation by J L Gili.
Image © 2005 S Carlos

Valladolid links.

• Just about everything about Valladolid - a beautifully-designed and colourful site, a real pleasure to look at, in Spanish, French, English and German.
• For an amazing resource for online reference, take a look at Valladolid Public Library's Biblioteca Virtual.
• If you're into solving programming problems (I'm not), like The Cat in the Hat or Ugly Numbers, check out Valladolid University's Problem Set Archive.
• According to Wikipedia, Vallisoletanos are reputed to speak the purest Castilian of all of Spain - but it's a myth (they say).

El Gran Hermano te vigila.

In Valladolid, in a two-star hostal, in room 101.
Habitación 101 - pero éste no es el año 1984 y no hay jaulas sobre la cabeza con las ratas hambrientas que amenazan comer mi cara: "¡No, no, yo no! ¡Hágalo a ella!".

"Tras confesar O´Brien sus verdaderos sentimientos de odio al Gran Hermano, lo envían a la Habitación 101. En dicho habitación se encuentra lo peor del mundo de cada individuo. En su caso lo peor era las ratas. La única forma de salvarse era interponer a alguien, en su caso a Julia. Gritaba que por favor le echasen las ratas a ella, y eso le salvó. Luego se encontró con Julia, y ambos se confesaron su traición."

Puede leer el resumen del libro 1984
Puede ver un blog titulado La Habitación 101
Y otro blog de interés por Puzzle

Traductores ¡cuidado!

La Mexicana.

Room 306, Hostal La Mexicana, Santander
- a quaint, strangely-shaped room.

¿Impresionado?

At the ship's roulette table a guy was hanging round who fancied his chances with the very fanciable croupier. She did some fancy croupier moves, looked at him and said, sardonically: "Impressed?".

Nothing in Portsmouth.

A small part of a large hoarding (hence the seam).

Ferry godmother.

¿Intercambio Duro?

I've been hearing and reading about 'intercambio' (language students swop mother tongues, with possible pillow talk) at www.notesfromspain.com - it seems Portsmouth has its own version.

Bebiendo.

Le bon cidre de la belle france, et l'amusements avec plume apres quelques bouteilles.

¡Estela!

Wake! Wake! Wake! Wake!





Let all your negatives, all your doubts and distrusts, uncertainties, pasts, failures, failings, whatever, fall over the edge of the boat into the water and rush away with the wake, fading further and further into the distance, 'til gone.

Otros pasajeros.

Pasajero disgustado.

A passenger is upset about the price of something these days.

En el barco.

De Plymouth a Santander. (No sé si la palabra correcta es 'barco' o 'vapor' - mi libro de frases esta muy antiguo.)

equipaje y silla...

Me levanto.

Me levanto, y me preparo para esta vida virtual en que hay tiendas turísticas llenas de regalos, castañuelas y mantillas; con dueñas viejas que gritan en voces altas, '¡Puede verlo sin tocarlo!'. (escucha) Este soy yo. Un guiri. No toco nada.

Wake up!

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

The cock crows where my rosemary grows,
though nobody knows why carrion crows
carry off little ducklings and chicks
when they're not even hungry,
or foxes raid henhouses for
murder and mayhem;
and badgers likewise.

(image: www.istockphoto.com)