The Point

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Mailbag

OUT OF THE HUNDREDS OF COMMENTS AND EMAILS WE'VE BEEN RECEIVING every day here at The Point, I have decided to select a special few to answer here. It's the first in our 'Mailbag' series, so keep those letters coming in to .

Janet Gallant from Sherwood Park, Alberta writes
Hey Chris,
What the hell does queremos paz mean anyway?
Love your show, and bring back Alice Sebold! The Lovely Bones was the best book ever.
Hi Janet,
I think you must have been confusing reading this blog and watching Oprah. The Lovely Bones is, in fact, the worst book ever. Thanks for sharing!
Queremos Paz means 'we want peace' in Spanish. I titled this entry after the song of the same name by Gotan Project from their album La Revancha del Tango. My friend Jon introduced me to it because he thought I would like how weird it was that the vocals overtop of the crazy Buenos Aires beats were, in fact, a recording of Che Guevara delivering an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1964. He was correct.


Pascal from Pickering, Ontario writes
how do you spell amir in farsi writing?
Hi Pascal,
It looks like it's spelt أمير in Arabic, so I think it's the same in Persian (aka Farsi), but they're both pretty crazy languages. What's up with that anyway?
I guess you were probably asking because you read The Kite Runner. Farsi and Dari--the language a lot of Afghanis speak in the book--are really closely related, but unless you're sneezing or asking me the time, we probably won't be able to have a very in-depth conversation yet. I feel like I sort of cheated when I talked about The Kite Runner because I only read most of these books a week or two before I write about them, but we actually did that one with my book club last year. I reread the whole thing beforehand though (a good idea, since I would have been totally lost otherwise) and now my old friend Bill Howe is telling me he thinks it might be an allegory for Sunni and Shia relationships.
Aiya. The closest I've gotten to Afghanistan is eating pomegranates in Alberta.


centavo from Córdoba, Argentina writes
I was reading your blog yesterday and I thought I would let you know about this website, which Audrey saw a show about on PBS: www.kiva.org. I haven't read all about it yet, but it seems like a cool idea. If you already know about this, sorry for being presumptuous.
Hi centavo!
No, I hadn't heard about kiva.org. Thanks for sharing, and now that you mention it, maybe I'll write an article about them (yes, my lazy dreams of becoming a freelance journalist might be becoming slightly less lazy).

That's all the time we have for today. Keep writing, friends! Stay warm.

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posted by Christopher at 10:40 a.m.

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