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So today is the last full day in Madrid; we are flying out at 1 pm-ish, and it's a 8-hour flight. I dread it. I saved most of Catherynne M. Valente's "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" to read on the plane. I admit that this is because I forgot the logon instructions to re-download the computational linguistics textbook. There is a point there of some sort.
(Over this vacation, I read most of the Viscount of Adrilankha twice, and also read my brother's biology textbook In Praise of Plants by Francis Halle, which is actually a really really good textbook, beautifully written and accessible even to 'I'm not a biologist, I just occasionally play one on a quiz team' me.)
We went to the Museo del America and then to the Museo del Lazaro Galdiano, both of which are free on Sundays. I was the primary navigator, but although I know addresses and subway stations pretty cold, where the two are in relation to each other gave me some difficulties. Oh, data plan, wonderful you are and expensive, I am certain.
The Museo del America, although stubbornly monolingual, did show some very interesting, although very sad, things about the history of (mostly) the Spanish colonization of the New World. There were three different copies of the series of sixteen paintings defining various mixed-race children and what their children with each other could be called. Apparently, the great-grandchild of an Indian woman could once again count as a Spaniard --- if the child's mother was white. I suppose today's classifications of Black, White, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American, or other are somewhat of an improvement over Mestizo, Castizo, Mulatto, Quadroon, etc. But...
More exciting stuff, although still saddening: they actually had, on display, the Madrid Codex. As a bit of a pre-Columbian civilizations geek, and a bit more *cough* of a linguistics geek, I had heard about the three (or four) remaining Mayan codices first back when I was about twelve, and had been fascinated. Now, looking at the various artifacts in the Museo del America, it occurred to me that it would be cool if they actually do have, available to see, the Madrid Codex. And lo and behold, in the next room, under glass in the middle of the room and visible from both sides, there it was.
One side is prettier than the other. Of course, I cannot read a hieroglyph of it; the languages I read are, sadly, firmly Indo-European and Semitic*, with a bit of very rusty katakana and hiragana. But that was the highlight of my visit, just looking at it, bitterly sad that so many of the codices like it were destroyed, but thrilled that this was a part of language history, and I could see it.
*I may still remember some interesting features of the Mayan family of languages, as our Historical Linguistics class in third year secretly retitled our textbook, by Lyle Campbell, as Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Finnish and Mayan But Have Been Forced To Find Out. I still have that textbook in Kincardine. It's a good one, despite its writer's counter-eurocentric...obsessions.
Hey, the sociolinguistics lab girls at the U of O took pictures of the fourth floor sign at Macy's in New York**; I think my nerdiness can stoop to taking pictures of the Madrid Codex.
**The great sociolinguist William Labov, for his classic work on social-class differences in pronunciation in New York City, went to multi-floor department stores of various price points, including Macy's, and asked sales staff to tell him the location of a department that he already knew was located on the fourth floor. This phrase showed how the various social classes, and the sales staff who served them, dropped or pronounced their r's.
Anyhow, we then went to find the Museo del Lazaro Galdiano, a private collection of art and ceramics, including a bunch of Goyas and a lot of historical portraits. It is in a mansion whose second floor, where part of the collection was displayed, is almost as opulent as the Imperial Palace. There was a Brueghel there I almost immediately recognized as such, from having seen his Garden of Eden painting in the Thyssen. There was also the portrait of Lope da Vega which I recognized from it being reproduced in engraving in the front of my (Russian, but great translation) Lope da Vega volumes. And there was a portrait of Anne of Austria, which looked likely to have been from life, so I could actually see who it was d'Artagnan loved.
From the gift store, we saw that Goya's El Aquelarre is supposed to be in the collection, but darn, I didn't see it. And I would have recognized it; it is one of the famous Goya paintings. I hope it is because it's on loan to some collection or something, rather than just me being blind.
(Over this vacation, I read most of the Viscount of Adrilankha twice, and also read my brother's biology textbook In Praise of Plants by Francis Halle, which is actually a really really good textbook, beautifully written and accessible even to 'I'm not a biologist, I just occasionally play one on a quiz team' me.)
We went to the Museo del America and then to the Museo del Lazaro Galdiano, both of which are free on Sundays. I was the primary navigator, but although I know addresses and subway stations pretty cold, where the two are in relation to each other gave me some difficulties. Oh, data plan, wonderful you are and expensive, I am certain.
The Museo del America, although stubbornly monolingual, did show some very interesting, although very sad, things about the history of (mostly) the Spanish colonization of the New World. There were three different copies of the series of sixteen paintings defining various mixed-race children and what their children with each other could be called. Apparently, the great-grandchild of an Indian woman could once again count as a Spaniard --- if the child's mother was white. I suppose today's classifications of Black, White, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American, or other are somewhat of an improvement over Mestizo, Castizo, Mulatto, Quadroon, etc. But...
More exciting stuff, although still saddening: they actually had, on display, the Madrid Codex. As a bit of a pre-Columbian civilizations geek, and a bit more *cough* of a linguistics geek, I had heard about the three (or four) remaining Mayan codices first back when I was about twelve, and had been fascinated. Now, looking at the various artifacts in the Museo del America, it occurred to me that it would be cool if they actually do have, available to see, the Madrid Codex. And lo and behold, in the next room, under glass in the middle of the room and visible from both sides, there it was.
One side is prettier than the other. Of course, I cannot read a hieroglyph of it; the languages I read are, sadly, firmly Indo-European and Semitic*, with a bit of very rusty katakana and hiragana. But that was the highlight of my visit, just looking at it, bitterly sad that so many of the codices like it were destroyed, but thrilled that this was a part of language history, and I could see it.
*I may still remember some interesting features of the Mayan family of languages, as our Historical Linguistics class in third year secretly retitled our textbook, by Lyle Campbell, as Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Finnish and Mayan But Have Been Forced To Find Out. I still have that textbook in Kincardine. It's a good one, despite its writer's counter-eurocentric...obsessions.
Hey, the sociolinguistics lab girls at the U of O took pictures of the fourth floor sign at Macy's in New York**; I think my nerdiness can stoop to taking pictures of the Madrid Codex.
**The great sociolinguist William Labov, for his classic work on social-class differences in pronunciation in New York City, went to multi-floor department stores of various price points, including Macy's, and asked sales staff to tell him the location of a department that he already knew was located on the fourth floor. This phrase showed how the various social classes, and the sales staff who served them, dropped or pronounced their r's.
Anyhow, we then went to find the Museo del Lazaro Galdiano, a private collection of art and ceramics, including a bunch of Goyas and a lot of historical portraits. It is in a mansion whose second floor, where part of the collection was displayed, is almost as opulent as the Imperial Palace. There was a Brueghel there I almost immediately recognized as such, from having seen his Garden of Eden painting in the Thyssen. There was also the portrait of Lope da Vega which I recognized from it being reproduced in engraving in the front of my (Russian, but great translation) Lope da Vega volumes. And there was a portrait of Anne of Austria, which looked likely to have been from life, so I could actually see who it was d'Artagnan loved.
From the gift store, we saw that Goya's El Aquelarre is supposed to be in the collection, but darn, I didn't see it. And I would have recognized it; it is one of the famous Goya paintings. I hope it is because it's on loan to some collection or something, rather than just me being blind.
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