Life in our small Southern California town has made big city
Los Angeles TV news which occurs only occasionally. Seems some young gals swimming in their pool
Saturday heard a voice screaming for help.
Trying to pinpoint if this was a genuine call and from what location on
their usual quiet cul de sac, they responded.
A young man hollered back he was in desperate need of water -- that he
was stuck in a chimney, had been all day since 3 A.M., and also needed assistance
getting out.
Police and Fire Department authorities were called who after
several hours of effort extricated the young man covered in soot from a chimney
down the hill from the girls’ house. His explanation for being stranded in the chimney
of a home whose owners were away was that he was looking for his drone. Following hospital treatment for dehydration
he was arrested on a charge of burglary and transported to jail.
This past week’s events with testimony before the U.S.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary Hearing cannot be ignored. The hearing could have been avoided, the
nominee spared his meltdown in front of a national television viewing audience
and a woman spared possible further emotional trauma also.
All this Administration and majority political party leaders
had been required to do was follow logical procedures – order further FBI investigation
when accusations reached a level of credibility raising significant questions about
the Supreme Court Nominee’s behavioral history. There
is no excuse for this not to have been done, is insulting to women that it was
not done and was a disservice to the Nominee.
The fact the FBI investigation has now been ordered but could be limited by this President and must be completed in a week reflects more about political considerations than a search for truth.
The responsibility for the politicization of this process is
completely that of those who chose politics over seeking justice – the choice of this President
and the Republican Party. Their accusations blaming others defy common
sense facts for justice seekers. Also, false assaults on
Senator Feinstein for respecting the ethical and moral responsibilities of
confidentiality reveals just how crass her accusers have become.
This President and his political party leaders are an embarrassment
to what was once a proud grand old party that more and more faithful followers,
including friend(s) of mine have increasingly recognized -- this is one more
assault and betrayal as they say -- they hadn't left their Party, until recently, and even more now, but say “...the Party left
me.”
(FWIW I will state again that I am not affiliated with any political party, am an undeclared voter.)
New neighbors have been moving to our street this past
year. This has been another real estate
market we’ve seen here before when elevated home prices entice owners to sell
and buyers are aplenty. Typically, such
a period has been followed by a slow down with home values dropping slightly for
a number of years before the up and down pricing process resumes again.
So it is, that in the ten or so homeowners on our southwest street
section our immediate neighborhood has become even more diverse. I don’t
know any of the people living further up our street as my friends there
including an African-American couple have long since moved away, died, or
both. Our little corner has all ages,
widows, widower, young college agers, long term traditional families, same-sex
housemates, hetero couples. We have
European-American, Mexican-American, Indian-American (India) homeowners, and a couple renters -- the latter, interestingly, seem to be more reclusive.
A Chinese-American couple moved in down the street a year ago. I recently learned their first child will be
born in a few months. Now a non-English
speaking Chinese couple have moved next door this summer. I don’t
speak, read or write Chinese so I decided to experiment with Google’s instant
translation site. I don’t know what
dialect it is but hoped that my new neighbors would understand.
I printed a page, front and back, of mostly simple sentences
(both English and Chinese) introducing myself, offering the usual neighborly
welcoming gestures. When I went to
their door, handed her my greeting, I was pleased to see the lady of the house, nodding her head in affirmative recognition of the translation’s Chinese symbols.
She offered a fairly common English first name which started
with an initial letter whose sound she struggled to produce. Though her tongue had been unable to position itself to clearly articulate an /l/ sound, her smile and affirmative nod confirmed I had interpreted her name production
correctly.
My later research revealed
that phoneme consonant sound is among those most difficult for Chinese speakers
to produce. We weren’t able to speak
long, but if they choose to have further contact I did refer them to the Google
site I used.
I expect now there are likely some audio sites I haven’t
explored yet that give instant translation.
Have you had foreign-to-you language experiences and/or
translation devices or websites you’ve used to aid communication?
