Re: Legado de Nuevo Mexico

Posted by Frank Wimberly-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/the-role-of-metaphor-in-scientific-thought-tp7590080p7590190.html

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

On Aug 2, 2017 4:04 PM, "Steven A Smith" <[hidden email]> 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



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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