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fpb1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people questions when they want to be interviewed. And it just keeps going, and going, and going....
1. Is there a particular work (book, song, play, poem, painting, anything vaguely creative) that you can say has influenced you in your life?
2. Are you a day bird or a night owl?
3. How far do you resemble your star sign, if at all, regardless of whether you believe in astrology or not?
4. Is there any one ambition that you can single out which you want to achieve, over and above all the others?
5. Rice Krispies chocolate cakes... good or bad? :p
1. Oh my goodness... many, many. The work of Georges Dumezil, the greatest historian in the twentieth century, determined the direction of my own research; and that of generations of great comics artists, a mountain range crowned by the titanic peaks of Jack Kirby and Hayao Miyazaki, made me a cartoonist. Then there are the great classical musicians: Beethoven, Schubert, Verdi, Mozart, Bach, Haendel, Rossini, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Palestrina and so on and so forth and so following. Popular music: Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Francesco Guccini, Edith Piaf. Movies... Oh my God, where do I begin? And then Keats, Virgil, Dante (the greatest poet I ever read), Goethe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dr.Johnson, Sappho, Aeschylus, Homer, Thomas Mann, Kalidasa, Horace, Rabindranath Tagore.... I do not think that there is a place at which I can stop. I have read and seen and listened to and watched many, many things that I have loved, and I have learned from everything I have loved. And yes, there were Cathy, Ruth, Clare and Debbie, too. They do not count as works of art, except of course from God's hand, but they taught me what life was about.
2. Hard to tell. It depends on how much I ate the previous day, really.
3. Quite a bit, especially if you take in the Chinese year system. I was born in the month of the Lion of the year of the Tiger. Figures, does it not?
4. Depends what you mean. That I would like to achieve and think I can: to become well known as a historian (preferably without prostituting my views or my professionality). That I dream of: to marry the woman I love.
5. Good: for the taste. And bad: they probably have the nutritional value of dirty water.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people questions when they want to be interviewed. And it just keeps going, and going, and going....
1. Is there a particular work (book, song, play, poem, painting, anything vaguely creative) that you can say has influenced you in your life?
2. Are you a day bird or a night owl?
3. How far do you resemble your star sign, if at all, regardless of whether you believe in astrology or not?
4. Is there any one ambition that you can single out which you want to achieve, over and above all the others?
5. Rice Krispies chocolate cakes... good or bad? :p
1. Oh my goodness... many, many. The work of Georges Dumezil, the greatest historian in the twentieth century, determined the direction of my own research; and that of generations of great comics artists, a mountain range crowned by the titanic peaks of Jack Kirby and Hayao Miyazaki, made me a cartoonist. Then there are the great classical musicians: Beethoven, Schubert, Verdi, Mozart, Bach, Haendel, Rossini, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Palestrina and so on and so forth and so following. Popular music: Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Francesco Guccini, Edith Piaf. Movies... Oh my God, where do I begin? And then Keats, Virgil, Dante (the greatest poet I ever read), Goethe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dr.Johnson, Sappho, Aeschylus, Homer, Thomas Mann, Kalidasa, Horace, Rabindranath Tagore.... I do not think that there is a place at which I can stop. I have read and seen and listened to and watched many, many things that I have loved, and I have learned from everything I have loved. And yes, there were Cathy, Ruth, Clare and Debbie, too. They do not count as works of art, except of course from God's hand, but they taught me what life was about.
2. Hard to tell. It depends on how much I ate the previous day, really.
3. Quite a bit, especially if you take in the Chinese year system. I was born in the month of the Lion of the year of the Tiger. Figures, does it not?
4. Depends what you mean. That I would like to achieve and think I can: to become well known as a historian (preferably without prostituting my views or my professionality). That I dream of: to marry the woman I love.
5. Good: for the taste. And bad: they probably have the nutritional value of dirty water.
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2. About my children (Part One)
Date: 2006-01-09 01:16 pm (UTC)These are, of course, the twins. These days Nicholas has wonderful long, blond hair down to his shoulders. Such is the current rage with their age group and all the way up to college. Like mine was when I was his age, it is long, wavy, and extremely blond. Christopher, on the other hand, likes to keep his close-cropped, not much different from Nicholas' in the above picture.
Christopher is the older of the two, having beaten Nichalas into the outside world by all of two minutes. One of my nicknames for him is "Eldest", for obvious reasons, but I don't use it much at all. It is usually reserved for when his behavior warrants reminding of his age, and that really doesn't happen all that much. Christopher is generally subdued, astute, and usually fairly mindful of others. His sense of humor is no less dangerous, and he is quite silly from switching gears to monumentally silly at the drop of a hat. He is a chip off the old block in that respect. He likes apple juice, Doctor Who, Curious George, is very good at small unit tactics in real-time video games, likes drawing and writing, and one of the things he doesn't like to let on is that he is deeply emotional. He also plays basketball and likes riding his new bike.
Nicholas is a rock star, Mr. Personality. He smiles quite a lot, to the point he is already getting smile lines at the tender age of 11. He is a social animal. In sixth grade now, he is already getting quite popular with not only his classmates but the seventh, eighth, and some ninth graders. Every teacher since third grade has made a remark along the lines of "He tries to hide his intelligence, but it never works." Nicholas is an avid writer, reader, and conversationalist. Again, he's a chip off the old block. He likes cran-grape juice, drawing, puzzle video games, ninjas, broccoli, and is known to have an easily bruised ego (like most class clowns and social animals). Like Christopher, he is deeply emotional but tries not to let on. He, too, likes watching Doctor Who, but for him it isn't a moral entertainment imperative like it is for some in the household.
Both enjoy my love of food, particularly Italian and Chinese foods.