Mountain Woman
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Tag Archives: Yosemite
Half Dome, Yosemite
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Half Dome, Yosemite at Sunset
Yosemite Valley
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Yosemite Valley
Spies of Warsaw
Over the Hearth Art at Ahwahnee Lodge, Yosemite
The other day I made the most delightful discovery, while pawing through the Amazon online catalog. An Alan Furst novel, The Spies of Warsaw, had been turned into a mini-series. Spies of Warsaw is a BBC 4 production, marketed in the US through BBC America. I watched the first half of this series on Amazon.
I am a great fan of Alan Furst and have read almost all of his novels. I’d say all, except for that nagging doubt that I might have missed one. He specializes in World War II spy novels. More specifically, novels set in the period before and during the early years of the war. His writing is noteworthy for its attention to period detail. Over his twenty some books, I have found that there are certain rhythms that are repeated from one novel to the next. For example, there is always a meet at the fictional Brasserie Heininger, a Paris restaurant. This café is inspired by the real-life Bistro Bofinger, including even the bullet hole at table #14. I find these repeated formulaic artifacts an endearing idiosyncrasy.
This initial translation from print to film I hope heralds a burgeoning franchise. If this series is successful, then there are plenty of other Furst novels that could receive a similar treatment. This could become another spy franchise that could rival the James Bond one. The following paragraphs contain some Spies of Warsaw spoilers. I have changed the text background color to black to obscure these spoilers from being casually revealed. It looks like the paragraph has been redacted. To read this paragraph, just highlight the text and all will be revealed.
Spies of Warsaw stars David Tennant as the French Lt. Col. Jean-Francois Mercier, a military attaché at the French embassy in Warsaw. An aristocrat by birth, a World War I veteran and also a veteran of the 1920 war between Poland and the USSR, in 1937 he finds himself drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. He runs espionage rings by day and attends diplomatic parties by night. With Stalin to the east and Hitler to the west, both Mercier and Poland find themselves in-between a rock and a hard place. The one soft spot in his life is Anna Skarbek (Janet Montgomery), whom he meets, when she agrees to fill-in as a last-minute date. Other than in her company, he finds himself battling Nazis and occasionally the Russian NKVD. At the end of the series’ first half, he is seen being bundled by a pair of Nazi thugs, into the trunk of a car.
OK, enough of that nonsense. Now on to some more. Viewers might remember Spies of Warsaw lead, David Tennant, from his turn as the tenth Doctor Who. Get it, Tennant, tenth Doctor Who? The complete series comes out on DVD next week, the remaining two episodes should become available then or soon afterwards on Amazon online.
Bear With Me
Curry Village Lodge Bear
Is it “Bear with me” or “Bare with me”? These homophones are always difficult for me to parse. They sound the same, but mean different things and are spelled differently too. I’ve always had to be careful when using there, their or they’re. One of Anne’s favorite games is to point out to me select lawn art, as in “Look [dear | deer].” Anne pointed out that the bare phase means to get naked with me, which only raises more questions for me. 😉
Another example of ambiguity in English is the following sentence:
Tom while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
Without punctuation this so-called sentence is both lexically incorrect and frankly unintelligible. The example refers to two students, Tom and John, who are required by an English test to describe a man who, in the past, had suffered from a cold. John writes “The man had a cold” which the teacher marks as being incorrect; while Tom writes the correct “The man had had a cold.” Since Tom’s answer was right, it had had a better effect on the teacher. The sentence can be understood more clearly by adding punctuation and emphasis:
Tom, while John had had “had“, had had “had had”; “had had” had had a better effect on the teacher.
I would hate to have to diagram this sentence. There is a simple sentence that is easy to say, but hard to write. It is, “There are three ____ in English”, where the blank symbolizes the homophone [to | too | two], which phonetically is easily said, but it is much harder to write out.
Down in the Valley
Looking Across the Yosemite Valley at Half Dome, From Above Columbia Rock
Down in the valley, the valley so low
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow
Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow;
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
It was particularly windy last night, but today was just one of those blah kind of days. Work was an obstacle course. Every time I managed to work myself around one obstacle another one would rear up and sit there implacably in my path. At four of four I gave up for the day.
There was some excitement earlier in the day, courtesy of the National Weather Service (NWS). A winter storm watch was issued for Thursday, what the Weather Channel calls “Q”. This winter the Weather Channel has come up with a sequence of cutely named winter storms, similar in concept to the NWS named tropical storms. Needless to say, the NWS is not amused. Q is a perfect example of the cuteness involved with these storm names. As any James Bond aficionado could tell you, Q, played by Dame Judi Dench is his boss. The cuteness comes in when the Weather Channel claims that they are not referring to a copyrighted character, but to the letter of the alphabet.
Our initial forecast for Q was for 12″ of snow. All my office co-workers were in a twitter anticipating the prospect of a snow day. Later the initial forecast was downgraded to only 6″ and then finally only sleet. What can you do with sleet? It makes for terrible sledding. It always reminds me of the artificial ‘snow’ that ‘Mount’ Brighton use to feature, at the end of my downhill skiing career, many years ago. At this rate, Q will dwindle to only rain and Saint Louis will find itself only being drenched by Dench.
To make matters worse, I realized today, I missed Karen’s birthday yesterday. Happy [belated] Birthday, Karen!
So today since I’m feeling a little down in the valley, let me reach back to last summer, to our Yosemite visit. On our last day in the park, we, Anne, Dan, Dave and I hiked up to a point between the upper and lower Yosemite falls. Trolling through my photo archives, I came upon this unpublished view across the valley floor to Half Dome. To go with this new picture, I’ll dredge up the following story of this hike.
I felt old and creaky the day after our hike up the mountain. My feet hurt from all of the rough terrain that we traveled. When we set off, the boys took off up the mountain. We only saw them again when we reached our summit. When I say our summit, I don’t mean the summit. We only made it as far as Columbia Rock and then the lower fall’s overlook, but that is all we had time for. The full trail runs three miles and climbs 2000 feet. We only did half that, but it was enough for me. Near our summit, a crew was working on the trail. I wise-cracked, “You’ve got one heck of a commute.” To which one of them responded, “Yeah, but when I go on vacation, I can spend forty hours in a cube.” My only reply was, “Touché!”