The cost of university in Europe

There's a feature in today's Guardian about the number of universities, students, the cost of studying and more interesting information about different European countries. How does Spain rate? Find out here

Are you a lost generation?

With this huge and long-lasting crisis, for many young Spaniards (and not so young) finding a job is an impossible task. Even if they were lucky enough to finally find one, they would most probably be underpaid and overworked. This makes me so sad... To think you will probably have to migrate to be able to earn a living!
It is not a bad thing to go abroad to work, in my opinion it is something everyone should try at least for a period of time. But the reasons you do it shouldn't be because you have no alternative. It feels like there's no future, as the Sex Pistols would say...
Let's hope the answer to the question is NO.
There's an interesting piece of news on today's Guardian about this topic. I highly recommend it so here's the link:
Unemployment Special

Happy World Book and Copyright Day!

"Translation is the first step towards the rapprochement of peoples, and is also a decentralizing experience, teaching diversity and dialogue. Translation is one of the driving principles of our creative diversity, which enriches each language through contact with all the others."

Irina Bokova, Director General
Message for World Book and Copyright Day 2012

By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright. 

23 April is a symbolic date for world literature, since 23 April 1616 was the date of death of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. 23 April is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

• Source: Unesco's World Book and Copyright Day

  
  

  So there's not much I want to add to that but I do want to finish this post with an English translation of a beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda. Neruda is one of my favourite poets and although it is much better to read poetry in its original language sometimes that's not possible. I thank all the translators who have made it possible for us to enjoy the works of so many different authors. They do an amazing job at translating the sometimes untranslatable.

  
  

  Taken from: Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
  Translated by W.S. Merwin
  
  The poem read by Glen Close:
  
  
  
  Me gustas cuando callas
  by Pablo Neruda
  
  
  Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
  y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
  Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
  y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.
  Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
  emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
  Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
  y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.
  Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
  Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
  Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
  déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.
  Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
  claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
  Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
  Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.
  Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
  Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
  Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
  Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.
  
  
  English Translation
  
  
  I Like for You to be Still
  
  
  I like for you to be still: it as though you were absent,
  and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you
  It seems as though your eyes had flown away
  and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.
  As all things are filled with my soul
  you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
  You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
  and you are like the word Melancholy.
  I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
  It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove
  And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
  Let me come to be still in your silence.
  And let me talk to you with your silence
  that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
  Your are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
  Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
  I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
  distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
  One word then, one smile, is enough.
  And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.

For Adrienne Rich, an inspiration

 Adrienne Rich has just died and it is a sad loss. She was a person who fought for what's right and truthful. She was a seeker of justice, of equality, of Peace. She was an amazing woman and a wonderful poet who spoke of the writer’s obligation “not to fake it, not to practice a false innocence, not pull the shades down on what’s happening next door or across town.”

In a 1984 speech she summed up her reason for writing — and, by loud unspoken implication, her reason for being — in just seven words. What she and her sisters-in-arms were fighting to achieve, she said, was simply this: “the creation of a society without domination.”(source: The New York Times)

FOR THE DEAD by Adrienne Rich

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight
  
And now the poet herself  reads her poem "What Kind of Times Are These." Part of the Poetry Everywhere project airing on public television. Produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH Boston, in association with the Poetry Foundation. Filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. For more information, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/.

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

Adrienne Rich by Alison Bechdel

Happy Women's Day!

Let's celebrate International Women's Day , which is tomorrow, March 8th, with an homage to a great woman and human being. A woman who rose in spite of the things against her for not only was she a woman in the 19th century but also black and a former slave.
Sojourner Truth was an an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was born into slavery, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties. She later said:

"I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."

She was also one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win the case.
In 1851 she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio where she delivered her famous speech on racial inequalities,  "Ain't I a Woman". Marius Robinson, who attended the convention and worked with Truth, recorded his version of the speech in the June 21, 1851, issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle.
^"One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity: "May I say a few words?" Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded:"

---

 Ain't I A Woman?

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.


In the following video, Poet Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple) reads the 1851 speech as part of a reading from Voices of a People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,) November 11, 2006 in Berkeley, California.

WORLD BOOK DAY 2012

World Book Day is the biggest celebration of its kind, anywhere. Millions and millions of book vouchers given out, great free books for kids, excitement everywhere (on blogs, in newspapers, on TV and in schools, libraries and, of course, bookshops), people coming together (including lots and lots of young readers) in a big, loud, happy celebration of reading.
We can join in the celebration from Spain by downloading the brand new World Book Day App  for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch on the iTunes store, the low, low price of absolutely FREE!
It includes six brilliant short stories written especially for World Book Day by some of the best Young Adult authors in the world!

Let's celebrate some more with this poem by Dr Seuss:

I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
Dr. Seuss

I can read in red. I can read in blue.
I can read in pickle color too.
I can read in bed, and in purple. and in brown.
I can read in a circle and upside down!
I can read with my left eye. I can read with my right.
I can read Mississippi with my eyes shut tight!
There are so many things you can learn about.
But…you’ll miss the best things
If you keep your eyes shut.
The more that you read, the more things you will know
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
If you read with your eyes shut you’re likely to find
That the place where you’re going is far, far behind
SO…that’s why I tell you to keep your eyes wide.
Keep them wide open…at least on one side.

LOVE IS...

To celebrate Valentine's Day I'm posting a poem written by Adrian Henri for his short-lived (late 60s) Poetry-Rock band The Liverpool Scene. It is a fun way of looking at poetry which many of you will appreciate. It's like a pop song made into a poem, a pop poem maybe? Oh, how I love the wonderful and sometimes unexpected world of poetry!

Love Is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is
Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is
Love is  when you open Valentines
Love is when you read those awful lines(?)
Love is when you read between the lines*
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is a prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you're away from me
Love is
Adrian Henri

* These three lines are from the version in the following video, the original went like this:
Love is white panties lying all forlorn.
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm.
Love is when you have to leave at dawn.