Asakiyume mita

So nowadays, if you're pregnant, there's an app that will tell you how big your baby is, week by week, with fruit and vegetable comparisons (lentil sized, grape sized, lime sized, and so on). There is a website for this, too.


I found this out because the tall one's girlfriend (I'll call her "the sea spirit") is pregnant! And they have been keeping track of the pregnancy this way. And now that they're out of the first trimester, I can talk about it ;-)

Anyway, I find these comparisons very fun if sometimes a bit ??? I've been making felt pins for each week, starting with week 12, so the sea spirit can wear a different one as the pregnancy progresses.

Week 12 is a lime, 13 is a pea pod, 14 is a lemon, and 15 is an apple.

(... I know! These things come in various sizes. I know some apples that are twice as big as others. And are we talking key limes or...?)



Week 16 is an avocado, 17 is a turnip, 18 is a bell pepper, and 19 is a tomato (specifically the website says an heirloom tomato (?))

(I know very few tomatoes who are bigger than a good-sized bell pepper, but okay. If you're wondering where the bell pepper is in the photo, it's the pale orange one, because the website had an orange bell pepper and I'm apparently very suggestible.)



Week 20 is a banana--not in terms of weight or volume but length. Week 21 is a carrot (same stipulation). Week 22 was a spaghetti squash--and I cried foul. Spaghetti squash are huge and weigh way more than the 1 pound they were saying your baby weighs at this point. I made a delicata squash instead. And then week 23 was a mango. Have you ever seen a mango that was bigger than a spaghetti squash? I rest my case. My attempts to represent all the subtle gradations of color--from green to red!--that you can get on a mango resulted in this Halloweeny Frankenmango, but eh, you win some, you lose some.



Next up is an ear of corn! I've begun work...

wakanomori announced last night that we had to watch a particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Darmok." It had come up in a discussion of Japanese poetry translation--relevant, because part of what makes translation of Japanese poetry difficult is its reliance on shared cultural references and metaphors to convey meaning, and the episode is about the Enterprise's encounter with the Children of Tama, an alien people that the Federation has never been able to communicate successfully with. The universal translator is no good, because the Children of Tama communicate entirely in cultural references and metaphors, and these are unknown to the Federation.¹

The aliens beam Captain Picard and their own captain, Dathon, down to the planet El-Adrel, where Dathon assiduously repeats pertinent cultural phrases ("Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra," "Temba, his arms open," "Shaka, when the walls fell"), trying to make Picard understand.

The way in which understanding finally dawns, and what happens after that, is very effective and moving and involves Picard reading from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Picard remarks at one point, "In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure." Those words of hope and confidence filled me with pathos, thinking of where the world is today.

Anyway. It's a good episode. I recommend it.


¹ As the tall one observed, "They talk entirely in memes." Unsurprising, then, that the episode has generated memes of its own--like this one, featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Last week was the tall one's birthday. Between pizza and cake, I sent him and his girlfriend on a quest. Find me a feather, I said. They searched the woods, but reported there were no feathers to be found. They brought me these beauties instead:



But then the other day I was walking, after the rain had thinned the snow somewhat, and behold, feathers everywhere. They were hiding just below the surface of the snow, maybe, waiting to be revealed? Or was there a scuffle after the rain fell?

I’ve always thought that education was one of the only things worth going into debt to obtain—and boy did I go into debt obtaining mine—but that was about the extent of my suffering for education. But for some people? We’ve all heard stories of hardship and sacrifice, but sometimes new ones can strike with fresh force.

This morning, I was blown away by a description an Australian educator shared of the dedication of Timorese teachers, seeking out instruction in English and Portuguese (bolding mine):

In 2001 I taught English to classes of 40-odd teacher-education students in Kaikoli, "the burned campus" ... Students came to classes often with nothing more to eat than a packet of dry Super-Mi [ramen noodles] and even sometimes shaking with fever. Alongside me, other teachers taught Portuguese to classes of future teachers in classes of often twice that number. We worked in noisy, dirty, mosquito-infested rooms with no glass in the windows, no desks and no books. Yet student attendance was high and their enthusiasm for learning both languages was immense.¹

But even in this country, there are stories. The tall one told me on Friday about a young woman he’d struck up a conversation with on the bus from Northampton to Springfield. Those two cities aren’t very distant, in terms of miles, but because of the route the bus takes, the journey takes about two hours. The young woman, like the tall one, rides that bus daily. He works in Springfield; she’s going to school at Springfield Technical Community College. But her journey is even longer than his, as she first takes a bus from Greenfield to Northampton . . . and even before that, she is driven by her parents from one of the hilltowns in to Greenfield to catch the bus. All in all, she spends three hours each way on her commute.

That’s how precious education is--so precious that you’d attend classes feverish and half starved, or spend six hours a day traveling for the privilege.

¹Quoted from Kerry Taylor-Leech, with permission.