Austin - Capitol Grounds, African-American Memorial (Base Portion) / Journey into Another Language, The Beginning

And speaking of memorials, we now come to probably the best statue I've ever seen in terms of quality, variation, and message - the African American History Memorial.

And what a message it is.  Imagine a people plucked from their home countries to be brought here under the shackles of labor and persecution for generations to come.  Very sobering.  I've read probably 20 books on the subject, and the state-sponsored crimes against an entire population can only be compared with the state policy of murder under the Nazis.  And to think that my African-American friends, if born 150 years ago, would have been treated thus breaks the heart.

So it's fitting, in my opinion, to erect one of the great statues of the world in commemoration of Emancipation.  I was amazed when I first saw it and knew that its beauty and message must be captured.  Unfortunately, for the next two days the sun was out strong so didn't get the pictures I wanted, and got worried that it may not happen.  However on our third day there the clouds stuck around long enough to even the light, enabling a few blogworthy pics such as the one above and in the next few posts.
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I have always been fascinated by languages.  This has set me apart from my siblings - and from all of my nuclear and extended families for that matter - for as far as I know I'm the only one that has ever expressed a serious interest and actually learned one fluently (other than English).

Not sure where it came from, but two happenings come to mind that sparked this passion.  When I was very young, probably nine or ten, I discovered an interesting book while rummaging around in my brother's bookshelf.  Don't remember the title or what it was even about, but I would spend hours poring over the foreword because the entire section was printed in 41 languages, each on a separate page.  I thought the characters used in so many different parts of the world to be beautiful, with all of their squiggles, slashes, curls, diacritics and letters.  And the fact that it was the same thing in all of these languages provided the awesome opportunity to compare word-for-word...or at least guess at such an endeavor.

The other happening involved our doctor.  My mother's best friend where we grew up in Orange, Texas, was the family pediatrician, Dr. Jeannine Stewart.  When I was eleven or twelve Dr. Stewart moved to a town called Alamo, in the Texas valley across the border from Mexico.  Once in a while we would all pile into our station wagon and drive down from Orange to spend a few days.  Of course we took the opportunity to cross into Mexico, at what must have been Reynosa.

Hearing all of that Spanish in Reynosa was music to my ears, and I couldn't get enough of it.  That Christmas, Dr. Stewart, remembering my enthusiasm, bought me a little paperback dictionary titled "See it and Say it in Spanish", a book that I have to this day.  She wrote a note inside, but unfortunately the corner of the page is torn off and the date is missing.

So those two things contributed to my interest in other languages, and now I had a resource to get started in Spanish!  To be honest I didn't use the book at the time because it moved a little fast for my understanding.  But I did take the opportunity later on, when Spanish was offered during my ninth-grade year at Stark High School in Orange.