Homage to Catalunya

Blaise is in Barcelona, without the camera unfortunately, and reports that he is drinking tempranillo, sampling pintxos and seeing art. I in Seattle am reading my way there via Barcelona, by Robert Hughes, an Australian expat art critic and one of my favorite writers. Very enlightening about Catalan mentality. For instance, bound oddly up with an ancient independence and practicality, there is the fascinating tradition of the Christmas caganer.

Hughes has some amusingly caustic statements about Barcelona's "designiness", of which an excellent contemporary example can be found here. Some of you know that we siphoned off a fine example of Catalan talent, Alfred, who is responsible for the beautiful Seadragon logo and more recently, Photosynth's.

I hope that the children will get a chance to find a connection with Barcelona. Anselm's name turns out to be all Catalan, by happy coincidence (except the Castilian replacement of y for i in the surname, and our failing to keep up the generational permutations in the hyphenated name); he is Anselm Josep, for his paternal grandfather, and Catalunya is one of the few places where Anselm survives in use. Josep Anselm Clave' was a leader of the 19th century Catalan musical revival, and our Josep senior has music deep in his bones and family heritage. I looked at Catalan girls' names for Eliot, but didn't find any that appealed.