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Книжките на нашето детство

Май не ви казах, че получих две бебета за коледа? Някой ден ще разкажа за травматизиращия си опит с бремеността и раждането, но някой друг път.
Сега съм на друга тема, а именно как да изградя у децата си навика да четат повечко и да гледат по-малко телевизия един ден. Един ден. Аз обаче реших да си подготвя домашното отрано и за целта започнах да си припомням любими детски книжки. Работата е там, че имах прекрасна детска библиотека, която лудата ми баба в пристъп на идиотия, която тя удобно наrича “опит да се отtърве от вехториите” раздаде детското ми съкровище на нуждаещите се деца.

Сега съм се заела с нелеката задача да издиря и посъбера от антикварните книжарници каквото успея от детските си спомени. Много от книгите са преиздадени, но аз съм се заинатила да си намеря колкото се може повече от старите издания – дали заради носталгия по детството, дали заради илюстрациите, които и до днес помня, дали защото много от новите преводи са отврат. С помощта на уважаемите ми съученици се получи следният мини-списък със заглавия, който ще допълвам постоянно:

  • Приключенията на Незнайко” – Николай Носов – има я преиздадена от издателство “Златно перо”. Също така “Незнайко в Слънчевия град” и “Незнайко на Луната“.
  • Момиченцето от Земята” – Кир Буличов
  • ‎”Горе ръцете или враг номер 1” – Лев Давидичев
  • Приказки по телефона“, “Приключенията на Лукчо” и “Джелсомино в страната на лъзците” – Джани Родари Много неща са преиздадени, но нямам идея как е превода и илюстрациите. Могат да се поръчат от тук.
  • “Крокодилът Гена” – Едуард Успенски. Преиздадена е през 2001 от издателство “Дамян Яков”
  • “Лъвът, вещицата и дрешникът” К.С.Луис – Преиздадена от изд. “Труд”, аз обаче съм ги бойкотирала и не купувам техни книги
  • “Антон и Точица”, “Хвърчащата класна стая”, “Двойната Лотхен” – Ерих Кестнер. Преиздадени са от няколко издателства, ако някой има добър превод, моля да сподели конкретно
  • Пипи дългото чорапче“, “Роня дъщерята на разбойника“, “Емил от Льонеберя“, “Карлсон, който живее на покрива”, “Братята с лъвски сърца” – Астрид Линдгрен. Много неща са преиздадени, нямам идея за качеството на преводите.
  • Десет приключения на Лиско” – Борис Априлов
  • “Приключенията на Моливко и Сръчко” – Юрий Дружков
  • Новите подвизи на Туфо рижия пират” – Георги Константинов. Преиздадена е от изд. “Хермес”
  • Ян Бибиян и Ян Бибиян на Луната” – Елин Пелин. Преиздадена.
  • Маншон, Полуобувка и Мъхеста брада” – Ено Рауд. “Дамян Яков” са ги преиздали, би трябвало да е ОК изданието.
  • Патиланско царство” – Ран Босилек. Преиздадена.
  • 101 далматинци” – Доуди Смит. Преиздадена.
  • Приказка без край“, “Момо” – Михаел Енде. Преиздадени.
  • Приказки и картинки” – Владимир Сутеев. Преиздадени са в отделни книжки от издателство “Парнас”
  • Frohe Baba Marta

    This year I managed to get some very nice woollen threads in red and white (from Germany!) and opened the home manufacture of Martenitsa. The result is that my family, especially the German part of it are now wearing beautiful home made Martenitsa.

    Anyway, I found some more stories about Baba Marta, and I am eager to share.

    I know it has been a long time since I post something here, but I’ve been busy. Very busy.

    In ancient times “Matenitsa” was accepted as a ritual sign – an amulet for protection from evil spirits. Nowadays, almost all these functions are forgotten and it symbolises the coming of the spring. But even now Bulgarians believe that they will be healthy during the whole year if they wear Martenitsa in March. There is an ancient saying that “If you don’t wear your Martenitsa, Baba Marta will bring evil things to you”.

    The mythical character of Baba Marta personifies the spring and the sun. According to the national belief Baba Marta is an old lady. She is an old lady and she is limp. That’s why she carries an iron stick to learn on. The national beliefs define the temperament of Baba Marta as very unstable. When she was smiling the sun was shining; when she was mad, cold weather would firm the ground. The majority of the rituals aim to make her happy and merciful.

    People believe also that Baba Marta would visit only a very clean and tidy house. That’s why people clean their houses thoroughly at the end of February. Symbolically this is a spring cleaning from all bad, old and infertile stuff from the past year.
    Baba Marta had specific requirements to the people she was going to meet the very first day in March. The old people didn’t go out early in the morning because they could get her mad. She liked to meet young girls and women on the first of March which meant that the weather would be warm and nice. (I also know many other people who want to meet young girls and women, but they are usually not called Baba Marta.)
    Baba Marta was very favourable towards the people that wear Martenitsa. On the first of March everybody should wear Martenitsa, especially young children, just married couples or newly born domestic animals. Some of the fruit trees, the handles of the door, the vineyard also have their own Martenitsa.

    So – give a Martenitsa to all your beloved creatures and have a beautiful, sunny spring.

    How to Lose Followers & Alienate Friends, on Twitter

    I almost forgot to share this absolute, a must read manual.
    My personal favourite is No 9 auto-welcome direct messages.
    How about “I know you mean to be friendly, but I hope you won’t take amiss if I ask you to sod off and die?”

    I think it’s time for me to start tweeting.

    Sugar Mummies

    What makes a man want to marry someone old enough to be his (grand) mother?

    A British documentary about couples way outside each other’s age groups. Definitely worth watching. There is a Bulgarian imbecile called Petyo in the beginning of Part 2, there is no way not to be ashamed of. He distilled ages of human evolution in the following sentence (holding two apples in his hands):
    “People make people, maybe this two apples is my balls”.
    Charming.
    Watch Sugar mummies part 1 – 5

    Via Milena F.

    Cinema-ish

    The Spirit is a complete disappointment. Nothing can excuse such stupidity. Mr. Miller, your ability to make movies is an oxymoron. Read the review here.

    To avoid getting into movie abstinence, I logically turned toward series and oh, Mighty God of Entertainment – my prayers got a very particular answer, with the cute face of Anna Paquin in it.
    True Blood” starts with the prerequisite Japanese scientists discovered a formula for making an artificial blood for medical purposes, but the blood appeared to be a good nutrition for vampires, too. Which led to the big getting outside and all the fun afterwards.

    The other breeze of freshness came from Tim Roth, brilliant as ever, playing the character of micro-expressions specialist, helping the feds in investigations. The coolest part of the episodes is when our guys are explaining the emotion they’ve just captured on a suspect’s or witness’ face, backing it up in parallel with images of politicians with exactly the same guilt or shame expression on their faces too.
    Actually, the basis of these series is a serious scientific work dating back from the ’60s. It’s worth to dig deeper and a good start is this wiki article.

    Sum of all fears

    This ranking is so cool, that I am directly copying it here from Ivgin’s blog (with his permission).

    ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
    Number 5
    Python

    Origin
    Daughter of Gaia, the Old Earth Goddess

    Description
    Meet Ms. Python. The real one, not the one in the zoo. Python was a nasty dragon-like reptile feared yet revered by the old Greeks. The long snake currently named python offends to the real thing, in my opinion.

    Area of expertise
    The disgusting drake protected the Earth navel. (Why should you protect the navel of your mother is something which mortal humans like you and me could not and should not know.) The navel was located in Delphi Oracle, where people went to seek advice and glimpse in the future. At the time it was considered wise to protect your most important stuff against robbery and desecration with big snakes.

    Current status
    Dead as a doornail. Apollo raped and/or killed her, then desecrated Delphi. Snake insurance got out of fashion.

    Notes
    Python is one of the many dragons to be slain over the course of history. Young virile men have some kind of fetish for freshly stabbed dragons, I guess.
    ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
    Indeed, young man posses that kind of fetish, but will tell you about that some other time. Stay tuned for more monsters.

    Quick reporting in green

    Sorry, I wasn’t here because I wasn’t here.

    Meanwhile, some quick reporting.

    Spain is still gorgeous, warm and sunny. We were staying a bit outside Madrid, in Miraflores de la Sierra. 50 km. away from the capital, this small village in the mountain is simultaneously close enough and far enough from the vortex of the capital. There is a very special place there – the usual small town drinking place, with the usual wither furniture, napkins on the floor, gambling automates and of course 2+ fellow citizens, looking like they haven’t been home last 2 days. The hidden treasure in this place is a small restaurant on the back, in which Angel, the owner, is cooking for a selected clientèle. There is always a chair sitting in front of the entrance to this part of the hall, if you are not invited, or already a member of the club, you would never go there. Angel is an excellent Chef and a pedantic host. There isn’t any menu, Angel cooks whatever he feels like (he is cooking for his friends most of the time), but everything, every spring onion, every leaf of salad, every piece of meet comes from a special garden of farm. He makes no compromises with the quality of food. When you don’t finish your meal, Anjel will ask you what the reason for this is. If you continue disrespect his food, you will loose your membership privileges, forever. He won’t serve you again. This is the kind of restaurant, I would like to have one day. Serious attitude towards food preparation requires serious attitude towards eating. This is the second year we are visiting this place, and I believe we are very close to be able to go there alone and to actually get some food.

    We went to Spain not only to see our dear friends Pablo and Lidia, with who we did a marvellous 1 week motorcycle tour *Spain – Portugal – Spain* last summer, and who recently became Miguel’s happy parents. We also went for the promotion of iUnika Gyy.
    Lightweighted, Gyy has a mini 8-inch screen, 128MB RAM, a 400mhz processor, up to 64GB storage. Needless to say they all run GNU Linux. The best part is that its body is composed of bioplastics and recyclable biodegradable material that was made from starch and cellulose. Gyy is also equipped with solar panels, which is making it the greenest laptop I have ever heard of.

    Being on the green wave, another extremely interesting green project, the Riversimple’s Hydrogen car. As described, the project have at last two issues, which I have no chance not to love:

    • Super-lightweight vehicles, constructed from carbon composites, with network electrics managed by ultra-capacitors (so-called electric network hybrid vehicles)
    • Open source design and development. Riversimple will invite the community to help develop its vehicles.

    I am happy to see how community model is invading more and more sectors, previously being seen explicitly as trade secret ones.

    Trivia: It is funny how much and with passion I am talking about “green” as in the sense of environment friendly, but in fact green and brown are the colours I really hate. The earth colours. Interesting.

    There’s something in the water in Switzerland

    I am so impressed. In this comatose region, even the ants are retarded.

    Recently an ant colony tried to make friends and set the basic for discussion about sharing the apartment. After 2 – 3 days of dispute with varied success, the colony finally found the perfect hiding place…. in the dishwasher.

    This morning I performed a mass destruction. Or maybe it was a ritual suicide? I wonder what Darwin would say. There must be something in the water.

    Smiles from the old films

    The recent series of unfortunate events starring Jaunty and my computer brought at last one good thing: I had to find alternatives ways to entertain myself. Fortunately, I am pretty good at that.

    After playing some Beethoven sonatas, I decided to give up to melancholy and what would be more melancholic than old Soviet union movies? No sooner said than done – settled comfortably in front of YouTube, the journey through some the most brilliant Russian movies I’ve seen started.

    First stop – Табор уходит в небо (Queen of the Gypsies) based on one of the early Maxim Gorky’s stories, it is a beautiful story about the life of Moldovian gypsies. Svetlana Toma is gorgeous and the music is… the music only gypsies can make. See for yourself.

    Still on the wave of gypsy music and drama, I remembered another beautiful one – Жестокий романс (A Cruel romance/Ruthless). Based on Alexander Ostrovsky’s “A Dowerless Girl” play this movie is the first one for another Russian beauty – Larisa Guseyeva. That one should have been a blockbuster for its time – both the director and the actors were real stars in soviet Russia. Plus the soundtrack is unbelievable again – russian gypsy romances, here, and here.

    Staying on the same tune, next stop literally – Вокзал для двоих (A Railway Station for Two) funny, sad, desperate, this move is a true love story in the absurd of the soviet reality.

    The last stop of my journey – Утомленные солнцем (Burnt by the Sun) a wonderful story about the fragile line between friend and enemy in Stallin times. There is a brilliant and very sincere dialogue between the little Nadia and one of the KGB officers:
    “Nadia: Excuse me, have you ever been to the zoo?
    Officer: Mhm
    Nadia: So why did you run away? They haven’t been feeding you properly there?”

    Russian movies are probably not for every taste and I think, to be able to fully enjoy them, you should be from certain generation and geographic area. But it is worth a try.

    Not my day at all

    I wish I didn’t get panic attacks every time a software upgrade comes.
    I wish there was a “downgrade” button.
    I wish my computer’s audio wasn’t gone after the upgrade.
    I wish after solving the problem with the audio, the video wasn’t gone too.
    I keep my fingers crossed for the browser and internet connection.
    I wish CUPS was also working. I guess I am not gonna play “Cornflake girl” like Tori Amos today.
    I wish a couple of developers wouldn’t get laid for a long time.
    I wish there was a bit of sunshine. Please, Mr. God.

    It is time for Swiss chocolate.