[FRIAM] Legado de Nuevo Mexico

[Frank Wimberly]

Al contrario Steve.  A usted gracias!

Once I said to Reuben Hersh that I was inhibited about writing to John Baez
to ask questions about his book on mathematical physics (Gauge Fields,
Knots and Gravity). Reuben said that authors love to get comments and
questions about their books. Now I understand.  If you don't receive such
communications you have a feeling that you have thrown a bottle containing
a note into the ocean.  Hence my feeling that I am the one who owes you
thanks.

As for metaphors, I did say that Norman Crider was like a fish out of
water.  But I guess that's a simile.

I still do own firearms but I haven't fired them for decades except once
when I shot a gopher with a .22 short from my study window. Anyone who has
a garden around here will understand.

It's interesting that you would have liked more anecdotes.  I could have
made the book twice as long but I thought that would make  it boring and I
was in a hurry for fear of becoming disabled before it was published.
Irrational, I know.

Thanks too for the plan to pass the book along to your friend.

Frank

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918


On Aug 2, 2017 4:04 PM, "Steven A Smith" <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

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



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170802/00c190b4/attachment.html>