A B(ea) Sees...: Recent Episodes
Bea Weinand
Today we're talking about Arrival! There's a plot summary, a discussion of the linguistic theory that drives the plot, and a fun other effect langauage has on us. Background music is taken from the film.
Sources/Fun Reads:
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Arrival (2016)
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"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang
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Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive (TedTalk by Phuc Tran)
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“Reasoning Counterfactually in Chinese: Picking up the Pieces” by Yeh and Gentner
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“Linguistic Relativity” by Lera Boroditsky
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“How Do Infants Become Experts at Native-Speech Perception” by Werker, Yeung, and Yoshida
For more info on smith college's series of lectures on translation that are free and open to the public via zoom, contact the prof running the course at cshread@smith.edu. Today's quote is about witnessing strangers and feeling a kinship to them coupled with the knowledge that you don't know their lives at all. I hope we all can people watch in a cafe sometime soon. Have a good night!
We're back to Jenny Slate! Today's quote is: “On the way home to the United States, a man on the plane spilled his coffee on his seat. He got up and showed it to the flight attendant, and he pointed at the spill with a smile that was shy but also had a little light in it like he was thinking of a funny memory but knew it would make no sense to anyone else if he were to laugh into the air of the place. She wasn’t mad at him and understood that he didn’t want to sit in the coffee puddle, and they figured out how to deal with it. Across from me, a girl with a silver sparkly scrunchie was looking at pictures, and even though I was far away and I couldn’t make out the face in the pictures, I could tell that it was her in the pictures because the person in the pictures also had a silver scrunchie. I really liked her for looking at pictures of herself.”
As ever, for more info on Smith's series of lectures on translations, contact the prof running the course at cshread@smith.edu. Today's quote is about the equivalence (good or bad) of being clean and being good, and feeling like a child again. I hope you have a good night!
Today's quote isn't from Jenny Slate's book! I know! I'm sorry! But it's from another great great book: "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong. It goes: "... [I] saw his chin moving to work the act into what it was, what is always has been: a kind of mercy. To be clean again. To be good again." It's going to be a sad hour!
For more info on Smith's series of lectures on translation that are free and open to the public, contact the prof running the course at cshread@smith.edu. I hope you are out on a walk sometime soon and pick up a rock or a leaf, and bring it home (bring it in!) with you! Have a good night.
Today's quote: “There has been a misunderstanding about wildness. Bring it in, bring it in, bring wildness in, and care for it. Place a shell in your shower. Get a whole plant in there. Put a geranium in your kitchen. Stand in your space and howl out. Bring it in or go out and see it. Wildness is the mother, the first think, not a lurking predator. Wildness is holy.”
For more info on Smith's series of lectures on translation, you can contact the professor running the series at cshread@smith.edu. Today's quote was about being in a house and being lonely but finding peace in the solitude of the nature outside. I hope you can take time for yourself outdoors soon! Have a good night.
Today's quote: “I feel very lonely sometimes, and I felt very lonely when I bought the house. But I walk through the back door into the kitchen and I say to the oranges that they have made me the happiest woman on earth, and I say to however many ghosts might be watching me that I am so glad to be in the house, and I let my loneliness be there too, here in a very old house in a notch in a living hillside, not looking out and down but looking straight into the energetic wildness that drapes itself all over itself and has many mysterious roots that shoot deep into the earth.”
For more information on Smith's lectures on translation (that are free and open to the public via zoom), contact Prof. Carolyn Shread at cshread@smith.edu. They run from 7 to 9 on Monday nights. Today's quote was about nothing happening but it feeling like something was, and feeling touched when you weren't. I hope you get to hold/are held by someone you love soon. Have a great night!
today's quote: "I said goodbye to all of them and I felt very odd. Something had happened but nothing had happened, really. Nobody touched me but it felt like I had been touched." Enjoy!
For more information about Smith College's lectures on translation (that are free and open to the public via zoom), contact Prof. Carolyn Shread at cshread@smith.edu. They run from 7 to 9 on Monday nights. Today's quote was about running ringing and not totally changing that for anyone, and I hope you find time to run a little wild soon! Have a great night.
Tonight's quote: “[when I was little] I just wanted to go fast, so what happened was that [my mother] put the little bells on my shoes and that way i was free to roam and she could hear me as I ran ringing through the house…If you let me onto your land, I might be very wild, and I will not be able to totally change myself, but you can always track me by the tinkle of my lively clamor.” Tonight is about loving the untamed parts of yourself. Give a little yell, do a little dance. Have fun with it.
For more information on Smith College's lectures on translation (that are free and open to the public via zoom), contact Prof. Carolyn Shread at cshread@smith.edu. They run from around 7 to 9 on Monday nights. Today's quote was about wanting to be touched and wanting to be held, and I hope you get to do that soon! Have a great night.
Tonight's quote: “I am supposed to be touched. I can’t wait to find the person who will come into the kitchen just to smell my neck and get behind me and hug me and breathe me in and make me turn around and make me kiss his face and put my hands in his hair even with my soapy dishwater drips. I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?” It's my favorite! Buckle up for some songs about yearning. Hold someone's hand. You know the drill.
For more information on Smith College's lectures on translation (that are free and open to the public via zoom), contact Prof. Carolyn Shread at cshread@smith.edu. They run from around 7 to 9 on Monday nights. Today's quote was about being confident in yourself and your actions, and I hope that describes you! Have a great night.
Today's quote from Jenny Slate's book Little Weirds is: “I was drinking my beer [in the Norwegian airport] and I saw a business lady buying a hot dog, and she was doing this in her business outfit and it was normal to her. In the USA, a businesswoman would not feel so free or dispassionate about buying a hot dog in an airport. I can’t really imagine an American business woman doing this without imagining her either laughing or crying about it. Her hot dog purchase would be a sign of something going on with her. This Norwegian woman was just having lunch.”
Enjoy!
For more information on Smith's lectures on translation that are free and open to the public via zoom, contact Carolyn at cshread@smith.edu. They run from around 7 to 9 on Monday nights. Today's quote was about love, and I hope you hug someone you love soon! Have a great night.
Today's quote: “…we went to dinner in a castle named after a woman named Karen. Karen was from the 1600s but her name was Karen…[The castle] was lovely and cozy and good….Where I was, there was also a rose garden. There was a castle built there in the 1600s for a woman named Karen. How does that feel? Hey Karen. It’s, like, 1617. I built you a castle with rose gardens. Inside the castle I couldn’t pay for marble so I painted the wood to look like marble. Karen? It was the best I could do for the person who I believe is the best. You’re the best, Karen. I made you a castle.”
That's all for tonight! Thanks for tuning in, and feel free to come back next for more tunes and a new quote from the amazing Jenny Slate!
Welcome to the first show! Today's quote by Jenny Slate is: “I want to look out a window at something bright and wide and at that point accept my nature and understand my intended use and have a clean shirt and clean hands and feel similar to a small planet. I want to be in a fine wooden house by the sea and to have a big sweater.” Enjoy!