Most people know that a horse is un cheval in French. But like English, French has some more specific words for types of horses:

• une jument – a mare
• un étalon – a stallion
• un hongre – a gelding

And a few related words that might be of interest:

• un âne/une ânesse – a donkey
• un mulet/une mule – a mule, which is technically the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse
• un bardot/une bardine – the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey, called a hinny in English

I learned about un bardot, un étalon,, and une jument from an episode of a French radio show called Vos Animaux, which I listen to via podcast. It’s one I happen to like a lot.

A friend and fellow French Conversation Group member is opening a new animation studio and gallery space. The opening show for the gallery is opening this Friday, so if you’d like to get your First Friday started a bit early, please do stop by.

Time
Friday · 5:00pm – 8:00pm

Location
Motionheads Gallery
519 S. 9th Street
Philadelphia, PA

More Info
This will be the first show at Motionheads Gallery! The show features works from:

• Michael J. Patrick
• Joey Jacobson
• Rusty Eveland

Light refreshments and drinks will be served. Come out and support local talent!

I’m organizing an exquisite corpse on Twitter. I currently have four participants: Me, two coworkers, and a woman I know in NOLA. If you want to participate, let me know by Friday. The exquisite corpse will start on Monday. By Sunday night, I’ll decide the order in which people will be contributing. There will be five rounds. The hash tag will be #ecp2010. (Stands for exquisite corpse project 2010.)

If you’re interested, leave a comment here or send a tweet @cleogoblin.

The Werewolf Project: 9,875
The Shipping Project: 15,007

I realized two things recently. One, the obvious, is that I haven’t been updating much at all recently. The second is that you probably have no idea why. I’ve been remarkably busy during the last seven months or so, doing the following:

• Work
• Helping to organize my French conversation group
• House hunting
• Going to Paris
• Moving
• Fixing things around the house (and the resulting stress)
• Writing fiction again

Another part of why I haven’t been writing as much is that I’ve been posting more things, mostly links to cool news articles, on twitter and facebook. These two short-form social media do seem ideal for sharing quick “this is cool” links. Still, it sees like it should be possible to maintain both a blog and a presence on short-form social media, if I make the time. There are certainly far busier people out there who manage to.

As part of the effort to blog more, I plan on starting a weekly post on French vocabulary that I’ve encountered through reading, listening to podcasts, and other means. I’ll also continue to post book reviews, and I’ll try to include updates on the writing projects I’m working on.

I’m actually really excited about my writing projects. There are two: one about werewolves, and one that I’ll call the shipping project, although the connection to ships is rather loose. At the moment I have 8,500 words for the first and 15,000 for the second. My primary project is the werewolf one, though, so that’s what you’ll probably hear more about—although most likely in very vague terms. I tend to be a bit secretive about my writing when I’m working on it.

James Herriot’s Cat Stories by James Herriot

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a nice, quick read. I always like James Herriot’s stories. I was already familiar with most of these, as I think all of them were published in other books. However, it was nice to see them collected together, and the illustrations are nice. I just wish he had more cat stories.

View all my reviews >>

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received this book as a gift. I have to say, I didn’t like the main character, Flora Poste, for most of the book. She’s an interfering busybody who is convinced of her own superiority. Eventually, either she grew on me, or the other characters were so much worse that I got to like her in comparison. Despite that, the book is quite entertaining and well written.

View all my reviews >>

Made from scratch. Next time, I think I’ll use a different variety of potato… probably standard Russetts.

I was listening to an older episode (15 Oct) of Votre Jardin, which is a radio show on the French station RMC. The show is available as a podcast. They were talking about a fungal disease of maple trees that also causes respiratory problems in people, especially people who work with wood and trees and people in Canada. I had never really thought of plant diseases as having such effects on people.

I also find it interesting that “champignon” can refer to any type of fungus. I have to say, listening to French Radio has definitely taught me some interesting new words, often ones that I can’t imagine would come up in a class.

Maple Leaf from Montreal Botanical Garden

I know it’s probably unlikely, but for those of you with some extra funds kicking around, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof has some charitable suggestions.

This year, I decided to give away some found money. Some of it went to Philabundance, and another portion went to City Kitties. Both are organizations that serve the Philadelphia area. The last portion went to one of Kristof’s susggestions: Sustainable Health Enterprises or SHE.

SHE’s goal is to provide low cost menstrual pads to girls in developing countries in an attempt to keep them in school. Apparently, many girls miss school during their periods because of inadequate menstrual supplies. I chose this program over the one Lunapads is associated with because—while I like the Lunapads products—SHE pointed out that the absence of clean water and soap is often a problem in the developing world. The lack of clean water makes reusable pads or menstrual cups a potential source of infection.

As at least one study has pointed out though, providing girls with menstrual supplies may not be enough to keep them in school. The comments on Kristof’s blog post about the article provide some hypotheses as to why.

Despite this study, I’ve chosen to donate to SHE because I think it’s important to talk about and to reduce the stigma surrounding menstruation.