Tras haber creado mi anterior blog cecilmundo varias personas, muchos de ellos mis alumnos, me sugirieron que creara una secciòn dentro de cecilmundo para publicar mis obras de docencia de idiomas. Dado que la cantidad de documentos de explicaciones, ejercicios y exàmenes de inglès son muy numerosos porque tengo màs de 30 años del ejercicio de la docencia, preferì estrenar blog con mis alumnos a como ellos realmente merecen. En este blog planetcecil no solo iràn mis documentos didàcticos de inglès, sino tambièn la producciòn literaria de varios alumnos que se destacan en las letras. Tambièn darè oportunidad a aquellos que tienen excelentes obras pero que no han logrado publicarlas ya que en mi paìs Nicaragua todo se mueve por la marrana polìtica, y si una no pertenece a determinado partido no verà jamàs publicado su opus. Tambièn tenemos la desgracia de contar con seudoeditores quienes al no conocer verdaderamente de literatura se convierten en mercenarios de la imprenta solo para llenarse ellos mismo de dinero y fama a costillas de los escritores. Todos aquellos que deseen participar en este blog, denlo de antemano por suyo. Aunque lleve mi nombre en un arranque de egolatrìa, yo soy sencillamente vuestra servidora.Cecilia

Las alas de la educación

Las alas de la educación
La educación es un viaje sin final.

La lección de física

La lección de física
Casi aprendida

lunes, 14 de julio de 2008

On Bastille Day




19th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

July 14th
Libertè.Egalitè et Fraternitè?
Born on a day like today were
1486 Andrea del Sarto Italy, painter (Recollets)one of the best artists that Italy has given the world 1602 Jules Mazarin France, cardinal, French 1st Minister (1642-61)…was it true that he married Anne of Austria in secret?
1918 Ingmar Bergman Uppsala Sweden, director (Cries & Whispers, The Serpent`s Egg)I will never forget how my father snored while I was watching The Serpent`s Egg

Died
1958 King Faisal II PM of Iraq, assassinated at Baghdad, what was solved by his deah?

1789 Bastille Day-citizens of Paris storm Bastille prison, thus beginning the French Revolution
1969 "Soccer War" between El Salvador & Honduras begins, to show how naive and dumb Central Americans still could be back then

It is easy to think about libertè, egalitè and fraternitè at so many kilometres up in the air, lulled by the soft oiled purr of the helicopter 325 Vercingètorix moving smoothly under an iridescent sky, warm in a cocoon of safety, sipping some tea, at the keyboard of the laptop fitted into the helicopter as part of its gear. I am free from the pull of gravity, libertè. If this gadget falls, we will al equally die or live to tell a wonderful horror story. Egalitè. WE are joking, or reading something, or writing something. We smile.The pilot hums something by Siolvio Rodriguez of the new Cuban troubadour movement, while the two French guys aboard sing something by Edith Piaf. Fraternitè. Today is Bastille Day in France.Champagne, Place de la Concorde(the square where more liters of grapeshot were spilled), and everybody will weave home completely sou (drunk). But did France and the world itself finally achieve these three things after all? Do we practice them every day? The French that lives under my sallow skin want a goblet of champagne or Anjou Rosè, because I still believe that wine and French are synonyms and all the other people who have tried to produce wine have succeeded in making sweet vinegars or the utter ridicule. I confess I still think in French. I still think of the Tour Eiffel and my heart skips a beat, like when I see you so elegant in dark, my dearest reader, and I cannot hold back a smile. Isn`t it funny that now I evoke those tartes aux fraises from Fauchon, the merguez which I ate despite knowing what they made it from, the quiches Lorraine I had for breakfast and I feel a certain pull of pining for Paris? Am I not supposed to be well rid of that? Is it that Pablo Neruda was right when he said that love was so brief but forgetting was so long? Can I continue loving my other half patrie, despite Vietnam, and Chad? Can I ever be successful at tearing out a piece of my heart that I deposited by Pont Neuf by the statue of the Green Gallant Henri IV, if I had a French dad?
I go quietly during flight, writing and letting my thoughts go by, up, around, all the imaginable prepositions. I go to 1798. The Parisian people was tired of seeing the Austrian Ma.Antoinette wearing new dresses every day, the infamous Madame Dèficit, while they never ate anything. The poor cuckolded king Louis XVI, fat, stupid, impotent and a predator who killed all the wolves off the Bois de Boulogne, was unable to govern. So the people of Paris just had the bright idea of storming that old medieval fortress called The Bastille. Constant oppression brings out rebellion. I wish more spouses read the history of the French Revolution! With all the storming of the Bastille, which was by the way lacking its most picturesque prisoner(the Marquis de Sade had already been moved away elsewhere, he had been held there through the infamous letters de cachet that could be bought to glue your enemies to a prison without any trial),came the greatest social movement of the Century of Enlightment. The French revolution would bring along the Declaration of the Rights of Man(what about women, folks?), and the idealistic concept of Libertè, Egalitè and Fraternitè. Concepts that man has never been able to carry out into reality, just like Marx`s perfect communism because we are weak, warped and just too plain selfish.
When France almost took Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar from her unstable throne, sent her to die in exile in Algeria after she was nicknamed the Ugly Monkey in Paris, were they being fraternal to her? Francois Mitterand certainly treated the Nazis with lots of fraternitè when he formed part of the Government of Vichy during the German occupation of France during World war II, but he had no libertè in mind for the Algerians, who were massacred during their struggle for independence. The fact that he is already dead doesn`t make me regret that I refused to shake his hand when he was on political campaign trying to get votes in 1981. I never shake hands with war criminals, or people who hates Jews or guys that coin up phrases that are so pejorative as pied noir. He was left standing there with his hand extended, looking like the idiot he really was. I voted for George Marchais, who sometimes was a bit like a buffoon, but then…all men are women `s buffoons at some time in their life. Or all thoughout it.
Some people ask me why I am so critical of France`s foreign policy. You can love yet criticize. How to explain what I felt when they meddled in Chad or what they did to Vietnam before it became independent through the struggles of that great poet and chef Ho Chi Mihn? But I have always been critical of all the follies that men have harboured in their everyday run through life. On a day like today, also, but in 1969 I remember my grandmother panicking after I came back from the music conservatory, carrying my Andalusian guitar. “Dearest baby, there will be war. The Salvadorean guanacos (sobriquet for Salvadoreans) and the Catrachos(nickname for the Honduranians) are throwing balls of shit at each other. Let`s hope they don`t splatter us.” Imagining myself splattered like a Dalmatian dog, I just laughed. This 5 day conflict would be known as the Soccer War, and the consequences went far beyond a match played in the Soccer Cup between El Salvador and Honduras. It would also be known as the 100 hour war, because it was brief.The tensions between the two nations were reflected by rioting at a match between them; but the war was not caused by a football game, as has been popularly reported internationally. The war was caused by political differences between Hondurans and Salvadorans, including immigration from El Salvador to Honduras. Most believe the name is derived from the rioting at the football match immediately preceding the war, others that it refers to the sensationalist way in which international journalists overlapped war reporting with rioting from a series of football matches.
History is simply a continuity of all the follies men and women have produced. Nothing can change it, while us as participants or simple onlookers may be shocked or amused by those who in the name of three things as sacred as liberty, fraternity and equality just made a whole messy mudpot out of their lowly instincts.

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