Terry Pratchett was, to me, a perfect writer.  He allowed one to escape to a magical world so unlike the one we live in that one could simply tune out - but he also addressed things he thought were important in the real world.  He was funny, but also gentle and kind, and could make even the hardest hearts shed a surreptitious tear or two.  As a writer, my envy for his talent was only overshadowed by my admiration for his mastery of prose - but it was nearly impossible to read his work with a clinical writer's eye.  His writing turned even the most jaded critics into wide-eyed children, and he will be missed.

Well, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and an awesome New year to all my F-list (and anyone else who happens to drop by)!

And, of course, Baron H chimes in with his own unique view on Classically Educated.



*I don't do PC versions of stuff, so despite being an atheist, we're calling it Christmas here.  After all, it's no longer a religious holiday, is it?  More something hat works well for Macy's and Best Buy!

Overall, it's been a good year, but the last few weeks have been a bit tiring, and I'm starting to feel it...  Basically, I need to get myself back into active mode, as I've been relatively inactive of late (although I will admit that I have done some interesting stuff - but I'd still prefer to do more!).

As most of the long-suffering readers of this LJ already know, I read books in the order I acquire them, so there's a lot of randomness in the sequence: novels I purchase interspersed haphazardly with contributor's copies, books about old race cars and books on novel criticism.  Today's entry holds a special place in my heart because I just finished reading the beautiful hardcover edition of the book celebrating the 100th anniversary of my old secondary school, the Belgrano Day School.

When I first got the book (I was gifted one for contributing a small passage in the text), I leafed through it looking for photos of me, was interested to find a couple, but then consigned it to the TBR pile, without really stopping to wonder whether it was any good, and finally got around to it only recently.

It was a huge revelation.  I was surprised by how true to the spirit of the place the book is - the original English founder, John Ernest Green, would be absolutely delighted to see how well his initial dream of a piece of English education in the middle of the Pampas has adapted and thrived.  I was also amazed at how much emotion and feeling comes through, although the way the book was conceived probably has a lot to do with it: text including the salient facts of the school history balanced out by stories told by ex-alumni.  These stories absolutely make the book: the affection that people still have for the place, often fifty or more years after graduation shone through and left me teary-eyed more than once.

The sincerity of the exercise shines through in the fact that it makes no apologies for being a bilingual publication - if your English or Spanish isn't up to par, then you will not be able to understand parts of the book.  There is no translation for much of it, and that is true to the school spirit, which expects no less than excellence in both languages from its students, and reflects that in this celebration.

I am a part of many communities: writers, ex-alumni from my university, the guys I play soccer with on weekends, the people at work and a bunch of other groups.  But there is no group that I feel more represented by, no people I feel more comfortable with than the ex-alumni of the Belgrano Day School.

Well, I'm back in Buenos Aires after a couple of weeks of Miami...  It was a weird sensation as I was on the beach in Miami while the rest of the country was having one of its periodic snowpocalypses.

Anyhow, as always, leave links to anything earth-shattering you did while I was out!

I was up last night thinking about Life, the Universe and Everything, and I realized that I'm just not quite satisfied with the traditional answer, 42.  In fact, I already know that I see the world differently from nearly everyone else, and I was wondering whether the rest of the people who see life the way I do would be interested in reading my thoughts - not here, maybe somewhere else.

The thing is I see myself as falling into two broad categories, both of which are unpopular with some camps for some reason or another (they are equally popular in other camps, of course, so that's all right).  I am 1) a global citizen and 2) a generalist.

Let's start with #2, first.

Being a generalist in your professional life essentially means that the only thing one is good for is people management (or flipping burgers, but I'd rather not flip burgers if I have an option - nothing wrong with flipping burgers, but I try to avoid it due to the lack of money it is often associated with).  Essentially, technical careers are not open to me because I'm wired in such a way that I'm much more interested in the big picture than in dedicating my time to really, really, learning one specific skill at a world-class level.  I respect experts who spend their spare time reading technical journals, but I really don't understand them.  Obsession and focus is something I have a truly hard time with.

I am much more interested in an ever-changing management role where no two days are the same, where each week brings a different set of problems, and where, with a basic management and analytical toolkit (you DO need to have an understanding of quite a few different systems) you can face up to most issues.  The truth is that management is more about people than about analytics at the end of the day - being highly analytical helps, but won't make or break a good people manager.

I am the same in my personal life.  If you look at my bookshelves, you will find everything from Dante to classic car magazines, intermixed with a bunch of SF, Austen and Wodehouse.  Plus the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter.  I spend my time watching the 1001 films to see before you die, except when playing old arcade games on plug in TV stuff.  Except when I'm in an airport.  Or playing some sport or other (living in Argentina means that that sport is usually soccer, but I love surprising my American friends by hitting a decent curveball into the bleachers or tossing a football seventy yards, although admittedly I haven't been exposed to decent pitching since I moved back from Mexico, so I might not be able to do that anymore).

The first thing I do at a new city is visit art museums.

The interesting bit, at least to me, is that I don't do any of these things on a superficial level.  I like to get into the subject.  So in almost any given conversation, I will be the foremost expert on Austen, on Matisse and on Asteroids.  I will also be able to converse intelligently on whether Dan Reeves (the coach, not the former owner of the Rams) deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.  I will generally be the only professionally published writer in the group - and definitely the only one who has been paid for having published fiction in genres ranging from historical, to mainstream to erotica to science fiction.  Plus a variety of scholarly articles on everything from literature to traveling in Syria.

This is not always a good thing.

Most people tend to be very good at one single thing.  They love that thing with a passion, and will dedicate their lives to it.  Rock climbing.  Computers and gaming (this is particularly bad because it encompasses both work and private lives: the cliché of the programmer who is also a prolific, passionate gamer, is true more often than not).  They tend not to understand a person who is only reasonably well-versed in a subject and who, when things get truly interesting and detailed will become enamored with the next shiny thing, only to return to the first subject when fancy strikes.

There used to be a name for this: classically educated.  This is now nearly an insult, calling to mind, as it does, images of an aristocracy for whom there was no necessity of specialization.  People specialized to survive, being a competent polymath was seen as an elitist pastime, and to a large degree, it still is.

Which brings us to point #1.

Having been brought up all over the world gives one a very different perspective on nearly everything (which is why the old aristocracy had the Grand Tour as part of the aforementioned classical education).  It brings the big picture into focus and makes the local news seem trite and extremely tangential.  I feel equally at home in Milan as in New York or Buenos Aires.  One of the things I'm most proud of is that, when walking along a street in Damascus, other pedestrians (and sometimes people in cars) would stop me to ask directions.  My ability to explain, in Arabic, that I have no idea how to get anywhere because I'm from Argentina, and then answer basic questions about Argentina was just icing.

The point is, I feel part of a group of people to whom the city they are currently in in just that: the city they are currently in.  There is no real difference in living or spending time in one place or the other, and countries are interchangeable.  Basically, if you feel that nationality is important for something other than ease of entry into the countries you want to go to, then you don't understand this group.  It used to be that it didn't matter if you were a prince in Spain or in Ethiopia - the important thing was that you were a prince, and nobility the world over would open its doors for you.  The global fraternity is the same.

We don't understand Davos protestors because, to us, the world is already one single entity.  Protesting against globalization is like complaining about gravity: a very silly way to waste your time.  This has nothing to do with our politics, income or even  just with our worldview.

So I will be creating a blog for people who share these characteristics.  Some people may feel that it is a hangout for elitist assholes who are out of touch with the "real world", but others will feel that, finally, there is a place that understands them.  I probably won't spam people here with links (no promises), but thanks for being my sounding board, as always!

I haven't abandoned LJ, just been extremely busy, but I wanted to pop in and publicly share my sadness for the passing of Janrae Frank.  She was a friend as well as one of my publishers, and always had a word of encouragement and a joke to share.

I am not one for emotional posts - but she will be sorely missed (plus, the tribute at the link is much better than anything I could write; it expresses who Jan was perfectly).

Not all the schools I went to were International Schools (in fact only one of them was), but this kind of sums up the way I felt all the way to the end of high school...  Plus all but one of the schools I ever went to (seven in total) actually was international in the sense that it was outside my home country.

So you can understand me a bit more, here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/autmnjones/signs-you-were-an-international-school-kid-grak

Not quite up to my usual self today.  I have a reasonably bad cold and flu-like symptoms.  In other words, I'm perfectly all right, but in a whiny mood...  I will be fine in a day or two, and will attempt more interesting entries then!

Inspired by msstacy13, and the yonic Edsel kit, I spent part of the long weekend building a scale model car.  This is a 1/24th scale Cheetah, built from the Modelhaus kit, with Vintage Racing Miniatures decals.  Other than the decals a rear-view mirror, a couple of tiny rocker switches and the mesh for the grille, the kit was built box stock.  Photos below the cut!

( Cut for model car...Collapse )