Frank and Congregation -
I finally checked my USPS mail today and discovered that the copy of
your memoir on your NM legacy had arrived from Amazon.
Uncharacteristically I sat down over a long lunch of Huevos Rancheros
(Xmas, over easy, extra garnish in place of rice/beans) and quaffed the
entire book in a single sitting (with about 4 ice-tea chasers).
I gave up looking for metaphors in your very matter-of-fact chronicle.
As predicted, the metaphors I did find were precisely the conceptual
ones which I believe all language is built upon (as per Lakoff/Johnson,
et al)... not a bit of figurative language discovered!
I definitely enjoyed the romp through your memory and the eclectic mix
of your West/East coast life with your earliest/latest years in
Nuevomexico among communities and relatives of Spanish, Mexican, and
Native ancestry. As you know from some of our conversations, I was
born/raised among communities where Natives and Spanish speakers were
significant and sometimes dominant. I do not have my own blood roots in
the southwest as you do, and being about 15 years your junior, my
experiences were a little different, but not entirely. I prowled my
rurality with both a spring-BB gun and an air rifle but graduated to
archery over high-powered rifles in my teens, having noticed that I
didn't really want to kill animals (or people). I am probably the only
member of my grade school who doesn't still own/shoot guns for fun.
I appreciated your observation about how multilinguals often reserve one
language for one mode of interaction vs another.
I was so drawn in by your history that I wanted more details and
anecdotes. I'm sure the audience is small enough for this book and that
one chronicling more of your technical education/interests/background
would have a smaller audience, but I for one wanted to let you know I
appreciated it. I saw your sales rank is around 227,000 when I *think*
it was 660,000 when I ordered. This is something like a divide-by-zero
situation I suspect?
I will pass your book on to a very good friend of mine who is your
contemporary (also 1943) born/raised in NM/TX panhandle, visiting Los
Alamos summers where an uncle worked. He worked the switch yards on
the railroads as a college student, had a classmate who "commuted" from
school to vacations home "out west" by jumping boxcars. Getting pulled
by a big Eastern University (MIT) and joining the workforce in the 60's
as an "analyst" on big mainframes with degrees in math/architecture.
He will definitely appreciate a number of your early experiences.
Thanks for the book,
- Steve
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