Added track to sleepy-time mix

Yes, I am still gradually adding to the sleepy time mix, which, if I've done things correctly, is downloadable here (without this song).

So, here's the newest addition. Is there a more beautiful song with which to tuck in your children and prayerfully end a day?

John My Beloved

I'm not nearly ready to try and say something worth reading about this album, except that it's exceptional. So far this is my favorite track. There's a lot of reasons why, though I recognize I've always been immediately partial to songs using a sustained note over the entire chord progression... (see also: this song, 10 years old this year and that sustained note halfway through still gets me)

Working on the non-verbals

Now that the girl has fully mastered norwegian babble, she's been working on things more sophisticated than actual words, like non-verbal communication.

Since the other day, she's been offering elaborate conversations, all in babble, but accompanied with complex movements of the head, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, shoulders, arms, and hands. Hips are not excluded, either. She knows exactly what she's saying. We don't, though we are certain she is drop dead serious; there's no mistaking that.

There are very clearly multiple levels of communication going on: explanation, exclamation, negotiation, rationalization, interrogation, collaboration. All that in the hands, though mostly in the shoulders lately.

She's really concentrating on developing her shrug. It's already close to perfection. She'll lift the arms and twirl the hands for extra expression. She'll do it repeatedly to get it just right. It may be a shrug to express delight or to shift the blame. The repetition gives us several tries to understand, as if it weren't clear the first time.

She's furrowing and raising eyebrows. Shaking, nodding, bowing, tilting, turning the head. Raising, folding, flapping, crossing the arms. Pointing, wagging, waving fingers.

I could go on and on. I didn't know the body was capable of such expression, especially not from a 1-year old. Scarier: she's observing all this elsewhere, carefully recording this, seeing, studying, downloading and installing, learning and practicing.

Maybe even from us.

La Vie des Gens

Our cinéma closed in September. There is one that's even better, but it requires a 30 minute drive on country roads. It's worth it.

This was at least the third occasion to go out on a weeknight to hear a director humbly present their film. Each time it's been an immense privilege. I like country cinemas that show good films and invite their directors, films and directors that otherwise would remain unknown. And it was also a privilege to realize, halfway through the director's talk, that I was understanding what he was saying. I was not lost, I was enjoying it as much as anyone else was.

This is probably not a film that will make its way subtitled to the states, and for that I'm sorry. It's a year of following a firecracker of a visiting nurse and her host of patients that become like family. We don't always fear death; we fear growing old, the limitations and the ailments and aches and the pains that come with it. And in spite of it all, there are smiles and bright spots, most often due to the visits of caretakers, those moments when solitude and loneliness are broken.

It's a tribute to humanity, and to those who give of themselves for others.

The title is simple and brilliant: it's about the life of people.

If Christianity is about visiting the sick and caring for the widows, we could all learn a thing or two from Françoise.