[I wrote this while watching Cory Booker speak on the floor of the US Senate for a record of over 25 hours straight, passionately speaking against the wickedness of the president and his sidekick and in favor of (among other things) diversity, equity, and inclusion; calling repeatedly on my hero John Lewis; and cleansing the nastiness of the previous record-holder, Strom Thurmond, who was filibustering against the Voting Rights Act of 1957. I wept, I cheered, I was moved to hope, at least for a few moments.]
Two triggers for this posting:
— the Zippy strip for 9/30 (so, something close to hot news) in which Zippy and Zerbina reminisce about their fabulous vacation at the Diet of Worms in 1521 (yes, Martin Luther is involved)
— 2022 e-mail from my old friend and linguistics colleague Elizabeth Closs Traugott (who’s a year older than I am but in vastly better shape), about a trip for pleasure she was about to take to (the) Pinnacles, south of here, which reminded me of a similar trip my guy Jacques made years ago. Which then took me to a vacation J and I took together. (Yes, this topic has been simmering on my desktop for three years; I have a prodigious backlog.)
Hier stehe ich. The Zippy:
(#1) “I remember we had the bratwurst”
On the Diet of Worms, from Wikipedia:
The Diet of Worms of 1521 (German: Reichstag zu Worms) was an imperial diet (a formal deliberative assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire called by Emperor Charles V and conducted in the Imperial Free City of Worms [on the Upper Rhine about 40 miles south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main]. Martin Luther was summoned to the diet in order to renounce or reaffirm his views in response to a Papal bull of Pope Leo X. In answer to questioning, he defended these views and refused to recant them [AZ: according to tradition, declaring Hier stehe ich — ich kann nicht mehr].
(#2) Luther at the Diet of Worms, an 1877 portrait depicting Martin Luther by Anton von WernerAt the end of the diet, the Emperor issued the Edict of Worms (Wormser Edikt), a decree which condemned Luther as “a notorious heretic” and banned citizens of the Empire from propagating his ideas. Although the Protestant Reformation is usually considered to have begun in 1517, the edict signals the first overt schism.
From ECT’s e-mail of 3/10/22.
I am going to Pinnacles this weekend — was there a long time ago when I could manage the toeholds and grabbers, but am sure I can’t do that any more, so will take gentle hikes, and then stop in San Juan Bautista, where, I am sorry to say, I have never been. I’ll educate myself a bit on mission life — and send some pictures.
To which I replied:
Jacques did a weekend at the Pinnacles on his own, while I was off plying my linguist trade. Some nice photos of his trip.
On (the) Pinnacles, from Wikipedia:
(#3) Rock formations at Pinnacles National ParkPinnacles National Park is a national park of the United States protecting a mountainous area located east of the Salinas Valley in Central California, about five miles east of Soledad and 80 miles southeast of San Jose. The park’s namesakes are the eroded leftovers of the western half of an extinct volcano that has moved 200 miles from its original location on the San Andreas Fault, embedded in a portion of the California Pacific Coast Ranges.
I then replied about her plan to visit Mission San Juan Bautista:
We had a fantasy of touring the whole chain of missions, top to bottom. Got an excellent book on them and all. But there was never enough time to take a vacation like that, I was always committed to lnguistics stuff. We took one actual vacation together [in the early 1990s] — a long weekend in DC when I got to show him all the places I loved there (my Washington), with only a brief visit to the Linguistic Society of America offices. Every bit of it was just wonderful, and we added on various spur-of-the-moment things, like a rock/folk concert at George Washington University [Arlo Guthrie, James McMurtry] and an art gallery we stumbled on. We did get to go lots of great places together, while I did my professional stuff. But only once entirely focused on the pleasure of being with each other. (Yes, regret.)
The gallery was the Phillips Collection (we also got to the Hirshhorn, which was old familiar for me). From Wikipedia:
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington DC. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company.
… Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is part of the museum’s permanent collection..
Big wow for me. I’m a tremendous fan of this Renoir, and was stunned to see the actual painting. From my 12/4/24 posting “Hunky idolators”:
Association: Poussin to Renoir. A crowded scene in which an assortment of couples interact with one another, their relationship shown by the alignment of their bodies, their gaze, and their facial expressions. Characteristic Poussin, on a huge, sprawling, scale. And, in close-up, the composition of Auguste Renoir’s great Impressionist work Luncheon of the Boating Party:
(#4)
Vacations. From NOAD:
noun vacation: 1 [a] North American an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling. British term holiday: he took a vacation in the south of France | people come here on vacation | [as modifier]: a vacation home. [b] a fixed holiday period between terms in schools and law courts. 2 the action of leaving something one previously occupied: his marriage was the reason for the vacation of his fellowship. verb vacation: [no object] North American take a vacation: I was vacationing in Europe with my family. [verbing of the noun; OED cite from 1896]
After my early teenage years, I never took a conventional vacation; I needed to work through all periods outside of teaching, though I got to travel to wonderful places on linguistics business of one sort or another. Though occasionally, I took 3-day vacations, long weekends traveling to someplace pleasant without any academic commitments.
And then, this, from my 3/15/22 posting “The Tides of March”, in a section on the twice-annual 5-day drives with Jacques between California (Stanford) and Ohio (Ohio State):
In time the trips became familiar adventures. Also like little vacations: some stunning scenery (though really appreciable only by the guy who wasn’t driving at the time); a lot of time just to enjoy one another’s company (without the constant pulls of my professional life); small touristic pleasures, like county historical museums.
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