Dec 19th - The Tower of Babel

I've been reading The Last Lingua Franca by Nicholas Ostler.  It's a fascinating book.  I haven't finished it yet but it's got me thinking about the obsolescence of Linguas Franca which is I'm sure the premise of this book.

What's a Lingua Franca? Originally a form of communication used in the Levant, a stripped-down Italian peppered with Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish words. The name is probably from the Arabic custom, dating back to the Crusades, of calling all Europeans Franks.   Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

So now I hear some of you asking what is the Levant?  The term Levant, which first appeared in English in 1497, originally meant the East in general. It is borrowed from the French word levant 'rising', that is, the point where the sun rises.  

 The Levant is the area around the eastern Mediterranean; from Turkey to northern Africa and eastward to Iran; the site of such ancient civilizations as Phoenicia and Babylon and Egypt and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and Islam.  From theFreeDictionary.com

There have been many Linguas Franca in the history of our world.... there was perhaps the very first Lingua Franca, the language used by the ancient survivors of the Great Flood to build the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar.  According to the biblical account, a united human race of the generations following the biblical Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower "with its top in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth." God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8).

If you are a follower of the Christian Bible we've been "babbling" ever since.  Oh we've gotten together over time - first there was the language of the Levant, then Latin, then French and now English.  I've probably skipped a few in the middle but you get the idea.  Learned people and tradesmen around the world of the day feel the need to communicate with each other and choose a language to do so with. The current leader of the common world usually gets to choose the language.

But... with the vast use of computers these days do we really need a Lingua Franca?  After all, the machines translate for us.  I communicate with my past foreign exchange students on Facebook using Google's translator.  You can buy a handheld translator so you don't need to learn Chinese or Slovakian or.... whatever language of the country you're travelling in at the moment.

So is the human race finally recreating that Tower of Babel - this time in the form of a machine?  If you believe in God, what will he do?  Destroy the machinery so that we are back to being unable to do "anything which we purpose to do."  Or if your an agnostic, an atheist, a follower of other religions and thoughts, is that what is happening to the world? Are we facing our own destruction brought on by angry weather and angry people and an angry planet? Will we be scattered around the world, with our machines blown out by bombs, or earthquakes, or storms or tsunamis and have to rebuild our civilization all over again, over centuries, only to have the same destruction fall upon us when we think we've finally almost reached the pinnacle of the new Tower of Babel of the age? 

December 12th - the first of many

Our first foray into blogging ... our Christmas Letter... went fairly well, we've heard back from many of you that you enjoyed our ramblings about the past year, so we thought we'd try to blog once a week with a peek into our thoughts and adventures.

'Tis the season to be merry, and very busy.  Saturday December 10th we spent a delightful afternoon and evening with friends in Arvada. We had tickets for  "The 1940's Radio Music Hour" at the Arvada Theater then had a great meal at the Golden Europe Restaurant just down the street.  Czech, Polish and German food are their specialties and if you are in the mood for schnitzel, this is the place!  Larry and I reminisced with the owner about our visit to Cesky Krumlov - a picturesque world heritage town in the Czech Republic,  We all had tried the river rafting down the Vitava River - he and friends actually got their wooden raft down the slot without upending themselves! We regrettably didn't try it.


 It's a small world!

Boaters on the Vitava River

Cesky Krumlov

More next week -  Larry and Patrice Stevens

  

“All around the world, people believe that there is a great conflict between good and evil. Well, it’s true that there’s a conflict, but it only exists in the human mind.”—Don Miguel Ruiz

Christmas Letter 2011

“A little smile, a word of cheer, a bit of love from someone near, a little gift from one held dear, best wishes for the coming year … these make a Merry Christmas.”  John Greenleaf Whittier

Hi all!

We hope our letter finds you happy and healthy and enjoying the holiday season.  We’ve been so busy the last two months we have been absolutely Scrooge-like and haven’t gotten a single Christmas decoration up.  With two weeks to go before we head to California again, I may just choose to enjoy my friends’ fabulous decorations and leave the boxes downstairs till next year. The 20 degree highs we’ve been having are also a bit of a discouragement for outdoor decorations

How have we been busy?  Well, we’ve been on the hamster wheel dashing out to California to celebrate Hallowe’en with the grandkids, then back again to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and Janet Albright and her dad Gerry Hendrickson.  Then the Oklahoma property we had invested in finally sold and while we didn’t make any kind of profit on it, we did have some money to reinvest.  With the economy in the toidy bowl, we chose to buy a rental property down in the Springs.  (Yeah, real estate isn’t the best investment either, but it was the littlest of all evils.)  Now we are in the midst of getting quotes to finish out the basement.  Once we have that going, we get to paint, clean, freshen up, etc. while the basement is being transformed.  We hope to have it on the market by mid January.  Once rented, life should settle down for a while.

We didn’t do much travelling this year, if you don’t count the many trips to California.  We were there in April for Jen’s birthday, then again in June to say a tearful goodbye to Jeff Stevens, Larry’s nephew who succumbed to liver cancer.  In October Brian Liddicote flew us out for Hallowe’en with the grandkids – apparently we’ve always been there for goblin day and he wanted to continue the tradition, and finally for Thanksgiving.  Except for the June trip they were weeklong jaunts to visit family and friends.  In June, Larry graciously offered to stop in Salt Lake City for a day so I could do some family research at the LDS Genealogical Library.  It was great!  I was able to track one branch of the family back to the late 1600’s through the Altenheim Church records and hope to spend more time this summer – Janet and I planning to join up and do a research trip while Larry takes off on his bicycle around the area.

While we didn’t travel, we did have travelers visit us this summer and fall.  Our notorious Valencia Bridge Group descended on us in August and we had a great time showing off the Front Range, sitting on the back porch laughing and drinking cocktails and wine well into the night.  Then Nancy Landon Stevens came to visit in October and again we had a great visit, touring several mining towns of Colorado, the Royal Gorge and taking her along with us to our Let’s Dine Out group dinner at Colorado Wines (is there a theme going here?) and the Kiwanis Empty Bowl supper.  We visited; we played games, and had a great time.  We love showing off Colorado and invite all of to come – summers are lovely for hiking and sightseeing and the aspens are absolutely stunning around the last week of September into early October.

In fact, ok, we did do one small road trip to enjoy the aspens at Aspen, Colorado and the Maroon Bells – three mountain peaks that look like, well maroon bells.  They are the most photographed mountains in Colorado and we got some absolutely stunning pictures of the golden aspens reflected against the glassy surface of the lake, the red mountains and white snow.

UNLV fans - Connor, Aiden, Brooke Lynn

Our grandchildren continue to grow – Brooke Lynn started kindergarten this year, Aiden is seven and playing soccer – his team won the league championship this year! – and Connor will be 4 the 12^th of December.  He’s excited that he gets to start soccer next spring but mad as a hornet that he has to wait till 2013 to start kindergarten – he tries so hard to keep up with Brooke but he’s a December baby so he’s forced to wait an extra year. With Brooke Lynn and Aiden teaching him all their lessons, he’ll drive the poor kindergarten teachers crazy when he finally gets there!

My parents are doing well, considering. Mom has recuperated enough from her broken hip that she can drive herself and dad around (he no longer drives) and they play bridge two or three times a week.  They were excited that all five of us siblings were there for Thanksgiving dinner this year.  We had it at Heather’s house so mom could just come and relax and Jen, Janet Albright and I did the cooking while Heather and her brood went out to her Brian’s Nana’s house for an early dinner and joined us for dessert and gossip and pictures.

Left to Right: Michael, Aiden Lidddicote , Brian Berg, Jennifer Stevens Berg, Brooke Lynn Liddicote, Larry, Patrice, Heather Stevens Liddicote, Connor Liddicote, Brian Liddicote, Gerry Hendrickson,  Mom (Jackie), Kristofer, Rhonda Worley Foehner, Dad (Bill), David, Steven, Taylor and Richard 

Larry got a new bicycle again this year – the gear bracket broke on the last one, so they company replaced it with an even faster, lighter bike.  He’s been riding up and down the Front Range, doing sixty mile jaunts and enjoying the great outdoors.  He continues to work with Kiwanis at Bingo once a month and helping out in other ways – don’t ever pass up a Salvation Army bell ringer, it might be him.

I have been deep in genealogy research this year; and consequently my weaving has fallen by the wayside.  But just last week I got a hankering to start up again and ordered a new DVD intermediate weaving video to refresh my skills. I hope to spend many of our stormy winter days at the loom.

We do have a great trip planned next spring – we’re off to southern and eastern Africa by way of Istanbul for a few weeks of exploring on our own before we join a safari in Kenya and Tanzania.  We also get a break of three days to see Zanzibar (one of the places I’ve wanted to visit since I read M.M. Kaye’s book Trade Winds) before we join a second tour to see Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.  We’ll be gone for two months…. Wish us well!

Larry and Patrice Stevens

“Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity.  Be fair in thy judgement, and guarded in thy speech.  Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger.  Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life in the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility.” Baha’i Prayer for Peace