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Birdwatching for Translators
I was asked recently when on this trip I had particularly felt I was somewhere else. Well, running, last Friday. It was a gray, cold, drizzly morning with a strong wind, easily run-in-a-fleece weather; a day worthy of Michigan at the end of March (remember, we just celebrated the first day of spring). The wind…
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First Day of Spring
Podrán cortar todas las flores pero no acabarán con la primavera–they can cut all the flowers but they won’t do away with spring– Lapachos in bloom I wonder how long I’d have to live in the southern hemisphere for September to mean springtime to me. I do associate September with beginnings– new school year, time…
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Running on Sunday
I set out to run on Sunday, either over toward the Paraná River and along the bluffs on the shore for a bit, as I’ve done before, or maybe taking Blvd. Oroño in the other direction, toward Parque de la Independencia [map]. But I found that the boulevard is closed to vehicle traffic on Sundays…
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Paraná River Cruise
A few pictures from last weekend’s river cruise, a two-hour trip from the Estación Fluvial (just below the Monumento a la Bandera), up to the foot of the Rosario-Victoria bridge and back. The water was high, so the boat was able to take a further channel, between islands, then return via the main channel of…
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Signs (taken for wonders?)
The exotic is always alluring; borrow a few words from another language, or a cinema icon from another era, and the possibilities blossom. Or wilt. I always enjoy reading signs (we recently turned the car around to photograph a sign for “Salad Shrimp” offered right next to night crawlers; imagine our disappointment when it was…
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Orientation: Stone Windows
alabaster window It’s orientation week, for students and visiting faculty alike. I want to say disorientation as well (notice my self-restraint–no parenthesis around the prefix, though both training and inclination leave me tempted to ask a word to be its opposite even as it is defined, greedily hoping to hold ambivalence and precision in the…
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Travel guides new and old
I love reading travel guides. I’ve bought several in preparation for my upcoming trip to Argentina, and I’ve pretty well cleaned out the public library’s shelf. (Good news for those planning their own trips: I leave at the end of the month, and all books will be returned.) The university library has just one book…
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Time and Place: Past/Present/Spring/Fall
I’ll be teaching in Rosario in the fall. I always say “fall” when I announce this plan, though it will be spring in Argentina. It is almost impossible for me to think of October as anything other than autumn–I can imagine the month with different weather than that of Oregon or Michigan, but it’s hard…