Four Somethings

On 90's nostalgia & cassettes, hot priests forever, “half-tucks”, a son’s language, a father’s love and more!

Thank you for all the wonderful messages and comments in response to my last two newsletters. There is so much worry and sadness in the world right now and so many people are dealing with hard stuff including loss. I am so glad I could offer a reminder that a good distraction, in any form, might help in some small way and that we are all dealing with hard things. On that note, today’s newsletter is much lighter, and I hope it distracts you and maybe even makes you smile ahead of the weekend.

Detail of Caravaggio’s Flight Into Egypt. The artist plays a prominent role in the Ripley series (see hot priest learning Italian below).

Mother’s Day in the UK was in March and in Poland it is in a couple of weeks, but in many countries including Canada, U.S., Australia and many other parts of Europe it falls on the second Sunday of May so yes, this upcoming Sunday! If you need a last-minute gift, may I suggest pre-ordering Mother Tongue Tied! It is perfect for the mother who wants to read about emotional labour, social justice, linguistic inequality, linguistic identity, childhood bilingualism and so much more. Flowers are great, so are chocolates but throw in some essential reading about really important world issues and you are set!

Four Somethings

Four Somethings, it is loosely based on the idea of four gifts: something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read.

Volodymyr Hryshchenko via Unsplash.

Something You Want: Cassette tape nostalgia

I really wanted to love the new podcast ‘Dear Felicity’, a show from The Ringer and Bad Robot Audio that revisits the coming-of-age show 25 years after its premiere on the WB. (Were you team Noel or team Ben?) The podcast show’s name is a nod to the cassette tape recordings Keri Russell’s character Felicity made for her French tutor Sally, who I forgot was voiced by Janeane Garofalo. It is one of those details I could not stop thinking about considering I was listening to snippets of what were supposed to be tape recordings on a podcast! Oh how life changes so quickly.

I am making my way through the episodes slowly and it is nice to have these voices around again and get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes moments of the show. If you are of my era and you watched Felicity the first time around, give it a go. I am still on the fence whether I think the podcast is good but either way, it has been a nice trip down memory lane and a reminder of the beauty of tape recordings! (Tell me your stories of trying to record radio songs on cassettes as a kid. Or was that just me?)

Something You Need: Hot priests learning Italian

I just finished the series Ripley on Netflix. If you love Andrew Scott, a.k.a. hot priest from Fleabag as much as I do, watch it simply for him. He is riveting and despite playing a horrible, I mean, horrible person, he has this way of making you feel bad for him. And, he is so engaging. Scott, who is Irish, not only learned fluent Italian for the role but he had to learn how to speak Italian as an American who learned Italian as an adult! Whoa. The series is beautifully shot in black and white and of course made me want to spend more time in Italy.

Something to Wear: Or maybe not?

Around 15 years ago (!) my husband and I had a blog together about sports and fashion called Game of Style. He was the sports guy, I was the fashion writer, and we would post about, you got it, fashion and/in sports. When something happens in the sports world, a fashion collaboration or a collection is entirely inspired by something sport-related, we look at one another, nod and agree it would have been perfect for GoS.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at fashion photos online, likely on Pinterest (another one of my favourite distractions) and the half-tuck (side-tuck?) kept coming up. “I don’t understand this half/side-tuck,” I said to my husband. Trends are trends and I don’t question many of them, even if they are not for me. I understand the front tuck, loose back and I understand the untuck, but the half-tuck, I am perplexed. To which my husband responded: “You mean like Gretzky’s half-tuck.” Clearly an opportunity lost for the GofS blog.

Something to Read: A father’s love, a son’s linguistic identity & coming of age

I was moved by this New York Times Magazine story by Paul Tough, who I met years ago in Edmonton. The essay follows Tough and his son Max through early days of Max’s childhood all the way to a father-son trip the two take to Uzbekistan. Max begins learning Russian at the age of 12 and when the pair travels to the Russian-speaking region together some years later, Tough sees his son in a new light, coming of age in a place and a language he is not familiar with. The essay is about language of course but more than that, it is about fatherhood and learning to let go of our children as they embark on their own life journeys. Hard stuff.

Wait! There is more you might like:

New issue of Mother Tongue magazine is out now, and it is so good! Miranda July!

Matrescence by Lucy Jones is now available in North America. It is a beautiful book and look at that Louise Bourgeois cover!

Happy anniversary to the beautiful Eye Mama book.

And finally, last month for Culture Study,

Anne Helen Petersen

wrote about the phrase “I resonate with that” (instead of “this resonates with me”). As Petersen notes, languages are living and change all the time and as I always note, when we consider something wrong, we should always ask, wrong for whom? Or, who decides what is wrong and right in language? Language shift occurs because language is used in different ways even if it is annoying and sounds oh so wrong!

Thank you for reading and I hope this weekend brings sunshine and joy.