Once, many years ago, I lived in a village by a wadi, beneath a rounded hill. Sometimes, not very often, I climbed that hill, and looked down on the tiny houses and orchards, and the vast landscape. Decades later, thousands of miles away, I climbed another rounded hill, and looked down on the tiny farms and villages, and danced. Such recollections are laid across my mind like those hills: the structure of my memories.
Antonio Salieri was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher. Born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, he spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg Monarchy. Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera who helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary. He was director of the Italian opera from 1774 until 1792, and he wrote works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. He was one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, and Ludwig van Beethoven were among the most famous of his pupils. He never met a Shaffer of whatever ilk.
Gold was found in the Dolgellau area in the 1850s and a mining rush developed. The first gold was discovered at Gwynfynydd in 1863, but it was not until 1887 that the mine was developed commercially. By this time the mine had been acquired by William Pritchard Morgan, who was to become known as the "Welsh gold king", and who paid for two police constables to protect the mine.
By 1888, two hundred people were employed at the site, the gold being extracted by driving horizontal tunnels (adits) into the mountainside, with the miners working deep underground by candlelight. The machinery was powered by water wheels and water turbines. In contrast to other mines in the area where the gold was found in shallow deposits, the Gwynfynydd gold is extracted from large quartz veins deep underground.
In linguistics, functional shift occurs when an existing word takes on a new syntactic function. For example, the word like, formerly only used as a preposition in comparisons (as in "eats like a pig"), is now also used in the same way as the subordinating conjunction as in many dialects of English (as in "sounds like he means it"). The boundary between functional shift and conversion (the derivation of a new word from an existing word of identical form) is not well-defined, but it could be construed that conversion changes the lexical meaning and functional shift changes the syntactic meaning. Shakespeare uses functional shift, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence.
כל מה שפעם היה ונשכח היום הוא לא חוזר
All that once was, and was forgotten,will not come back today.
It's strange that words are so inadequate. (T. S. Eliot)
'The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization...' (S.Freud) Why does Freud always address pertinent issues and manage to just miss the mark?
A whole book could be written about Magritude Feather. Unfortunately not this one. This fascinating woman was recently excised from my novel and is urgently scurrying around trying to find a home elsewhere. Please don't forget her.
There were golden days when Rama, Sita and Lakshmana having traveled along the banks of river Godavari, settled in a garden clearing where they built houses and lived off the land. But far away, beyond the stone mountains, Rakshasa, the demon king, was stirring.
As an indicator of financial resilience, our beloved transvestite taxidermist, Gruffydd Beddows, who recently sold his business and retired, likes to point to the income from his sideline as a repairer and renovator of percussion instruments. However even he is stumped by the unusual damage to the Welsh tabwrdd that is standing forlornly on the workbench in his garage.
(It is fascinating that beyond their specific role in novels, some characters continue live out their day-to-day life in events that have no link to the plot into which they were conceived.)
Kitniyot (small things) are foodstuffs similar to those banned at Pesach (Passsover). Ashkenazim refrain from eating things like rice and beans for this reason. In the 1930s Maxwell House hired a rabbi to research coffee, resulting in a determination that the coffee bean is more like a berry than a bean, thus making it kosher for Passover. However, we do not know whether this applies to Nescafe instant coffee (that to the colour-blind looks like flour).
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. (T.S.Eliot apparently)
The Five Worlds are the comprehensive categories of spiritual realms in the descending chain of Existence. They are: 1/ Adam Kadmon (אָדָם קַדְמוֹן) Primordial Man, 2/ Atzilut (אֲצִילוּת), Emanation, 3/Beri'ah (בְּרִיָּה) Creation, 4/Yetzirah (יְצִירָה)Formation, and 5/Assiah (עֲשִׂיָּה), Action. The original builder of the Royal Pavillion (with two L's) could not have know how his creation would evolve either.
In case it is not clear, there seem to be two Metatrons, one spelled with six letters (מטטרון), and one spelled with seven (מיטטרון). Neither should be confused with Megatron (and definitely not with Enoch Powell). It is mentioned here because it is related that Elisha ben Abuyah (the Akher) bumped into the Metatron when he entered the orchard. In mentioning the Orchard or Pardes(פרדס ) it is clear that the meaning is Paradise (same etymology) and that (for Davnob geeks) suggests a familial link. But let's not be over-judgemental.
In the Book of Chronicles (דִּבְרֵי־הַיָּמִים) we learn that the Shuppites and Huppites were the descendants of Ir, and the Hushites the descendants of Akher. This Akher was someone else Akher completely (not the later vilified and misunderstood Rabbi). There are some politicians who try to identify Akher in other texts with the figure of Akhiram from the tribe of Benjamin (in Numbers 26:38).
Four men went into an orchard, and three are still there. The other, the Akher, went out and, as Isaac Deutscher notes, took a stroll with Rabbi Meir. But the Akher saw that the Rabbi had reached the Eruv - the boundary beyond which he ought not proceed, and advised him to return. Without that intervention the Rabbi would have transgressed.
