Personal – Page 2 – An Echo That's Reversing

On learning a language and becoming a person

I started taking Italian lessons a month-and-a-half before I left for Italy. Well, I was taking Duolingo lessons before that for a few months but I don’t count those lessons much after the quality of my experience with a Real Live Tutor. No offence, Duo.

My six months anniversary with Marina hits on October 10th so, as with all anniversaries, I’m assessing the state of the state of my improvement. I guess as arbitrary as they are, anniversaries are still good for taking a moment to assess or else we’d end up being goldfish. And you always want some proof of advancement or else in its absence the effort becomes wasted time that is soon abandoned. With the approaching anniversary, around two or three weeks ago, I started realizing that I’ve become a Real Live Person during lessons.

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Anniversary dissonance

I missed the one year anniversary of beginning work on the piece. I’m not sure how to feel.

Where was I?

First vacation of the year (then I had one two weeks later… Bad Planning) was to Fasano Italy and surrounding cities in southeast Italy: Martina Franca, Locorotondo, Sassi di Matera, Lecce, Monopoli, and Bari.

My first Blue Apron meal

I had avoided these meals-by-mail services only because they seem very environmentally unfriendly: single portions packaged and shipped individually, somewhat logically, eliminates the efficiency of scale. However, NPR reported back in 2019 on a study that found that meal kits were better in several ways:

Results indicate that, [1] on average, grocery meal greenhouse gas emissions are 33% higher than meal kits [and] A Monte Carlo analysis finds [2] higher median emissions for grocery meals than meal kits for four out of five meals, occurring in 100% of model runs for two of five meals.

However, the environmental friendliness of home delivery with other types of shopping is much more uncertain.

So, how did the meal go? I am an average to less-than-average cook–cooking quite infrequently–so there’s a handicap in how I might view the process, but overall I was extremely happy. First experience last night was Smoky Butter Shrimp & Orzo with Zucchino and Tomatoes.

The Ckab

There was a guy I worked with, just post-college at a call center, named Steve Baker. He had once taught English in some somewhat respectable university in California (I don’t remember), moved to Atlanta for some reason, lived on the streets in L5P, and then got this sweet-sweet-job making calls for a bank updating people’s insurance coverage records. The calls were legit, but we were still viewed suspiciously by those on the receiving end. He was intelligent and well-read, obviously, and the two of us and another co-worker, Bruce-something, had active discussions on literature, history, politics, all of that stuff. They were both maybe 10 years older or so. Post-call center Steve taught world lit at Moorehouse for a while and then we lost touch. I have very fond memories of him.

I still have the book he wrote and lo-fi self-published.