Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

The Hotel Neri is beautiful–I love the rooftop garden and even the Flash-y website.

And I’m sure Keats would have been very inspired by the magical, laughing groups of twenty-somethings who keep passing just under our window as they head for what will no doubt be a wonderful party.

On the other hand, it’s only 3 p.m., so I can’t very well wish they’d all go home to bed…

Less dozey and more informative blogging later.

We are on the road again tomorrow–Princeton, Barcelona, Madrid, and then Oxford–so I’m glad to know our airports are secure from avian terrorists wearing tuxedos.

But I’m taking a break from packing to play games with Google’s language tools and the lyrics of some of my favorite traveling songs. For example, here — translated into French and then back into English–is one of my favorite songs by Willie Nelson:

On the road still,
like a band of the gipsies, we descend the road.
We are best friends, insistent on the fact that the world is turnin ‘ our manner, and our manner:

Is on the road still:
Just cannot wait to still obtain on the road.
The love of life I is music of makin ‘ with my friends,
and I then not to wait to still obtain on the road.

Nancy Sinatra’s standard became even stranger after a three-step translation(English to German, German to French, and French to English again.)

You to hold to say something for me that to have you.
Something to name with loves, to admit you however.
They to confuse, where you not a one to confuse to have
and now somebody the other gettin ‘ your better entirety.

These loadings are formed to go,
and that is right what they do
With of these days which will go completely these loadings on you.

Okay, back to packing some more.

Are you ready, loadings? I then not to wait to still obtain on the road…

Take it off–take it all off!

…your hair, that is…

May Day is coming to Harvard Square, and the big May Fair promises to make this Sunday afternoon, May 1, a wonderful outdoor party.*

Food, crafts, merchant displays, buskers, the strolling crowds–and something special and wacky from Diego Salon–“a haircutting event to raise money for breast cancer and to donate hair to be made into wigs for children who lose their hair to chemotherapy.”

Don’t you absolutely love Cambridge, MA?

Last year, Diego’s event collected $3,000 for Mt. Auburn Hospital, from pledges made by friends of 30 participants. This year, they’ve got lots of pledges and want some more.

You don’t need to get a close shave to participate–anybody who donates 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love gets a free Diego haircut and makeover. Considering that Diego Salon has been voted “Best Haircut in Boston” for the past ten years, that’s a pretty good reason to cut your old ponytail down to size for summer.

Sign up by email at Harvard Square Charity Shave.

Dear Dr. Al-Uthaiman,

The King Faisal International Prize committee created an unforgettable event for its 2005 prizewinners. As the wife of Science Prize honoree Frank Wilczek, I want to express our gratitude for all your thoughtfulness.

The Al Faisaliah Hotel made us feel very welcome, with flowers and fruit and warm, hospitable staff. I was very impressed by their technology too–the computerized bedside console for opening curtains was something I’ve never seen in another hotel.

You offered many opportunities to see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with new eyes. Visits to a hospital, museums, and a suq offered a wide perspective. (I’m sorry we came too late for the desert picnic–people who had been there told us all about the adventures with camels.) We also enjoyed the chance for conversations over meals with local doctors and professors as well as many people who work for the King Faisal Foundation.

The ceremony itself was impressive and fascinating, while headphones offering instant translations between Arabic and English were a great success. It was also a pleasure to meet even more well-educated and dynamic Saudi women, including a young museum designer whose creations I hope to hear more of in the future.

Finally, it was a great honor for my husband and me to be invited to meet HRH Prince Bandar bin Faisal and to hear about the progress of King Faisal University, the projected first coeducational and private university in the Kingdom. I hope that this worthy project of the King Faisal Foundation meets with great success.

Best regards,
Betsy Devine

Niek just sent me great photos of our encounter in Schiphol Airport–can it be only last week?

I was especially impressed that Niek snapped a quick photo of Frank, under weird light conditions, and it came out as a wonderfully evocative image. That’s what I call a good photographer!

Women in Riyadh wear long black abeyas and cover their heads. Some women–fewer than half–also cover their faces. Mia brought glamorous abeyas for both of us from Cairo. I’m sorry this photo doesn’t show the opulent gold-patterned sleeve and scarf-ends on mine, but generalize from her fuchsia band and you get the idea.

Many indoor spaces, including our hotel, were abaya-optional zones–full of dynamic, well-educated Saudi women, some of them wearing head-scarves and some of them not.

Outdoors, their black color makes them hot when the sun comes pouring down. I predict that the inventive Saudis will soon invent a new, improved tradition of wearing white abeyas in summer.

Now it’s Frank’s turn with our ethernet cable!

When I saw this sentimental Victorian painting, years ago, I was startled to recognize two modern little girls in the very front row–Margaret and Ruth, the daughters of friends of ours. It was even in character (then) that Ruth was dipping a few extra flowers out of her sister’s basket.

Now, 25 years later, and in Riyadh, grown-up Margaret and Ruth turn up again, still looking just the same, having acquired gravitas and major scholarly credentials while still looking just the same–at least to me.

No wonder Alma Tadema could paint them both for Queen Victoria…

This morning, we visited the Riyadh suq, an outdoor market with many different displays of sandalwood, buckets of antique jewelry, and enough inlaid daggers to set off ten kinds of alarms at airport security.

The King Faisal Foundation is taking wonderful care of all their winners–and I’m loving our rooms in the Al-Faisaliyah Hotel, whose luxuries range from fresh fruit and flowers (including floating pink rose petals) to ultramodern touchpads at each bedside that let you open or close three levels of curtains.

But even outside this VIP coccoon, I’ve found Saudi Arabia more welcoming than I expected. In Dammam airport, as Frank and I tried to find our way to our next airplane–picking up somebody else’s suitcase by mistake, and leaving one of our own suitcases behind–the many Saudis we spoke with went out of their way to help us. I’m told that hospitality to guests is one of the first social skills a Saudi child learns–I can well believe it. Even our suitcase gaffe was met with great tact.

Living in any country on this divided planet, it’s easy to pick up some caricature ideas of any other country you can mention. This eloquent statement by Saudi foreign minister HRH Prince Saud Al-Faisal addresses a lot of western caricatures of this part of the world.

Another perspective comes from British scholar Carole Hillenbrand, who just won a King Faisal International Prize for her book on the Crusades as seen by Islamic eyes. By the way, Carole would like to make it clear that she is not “fluent” in 11 languages other than English–11 is merely the number of languages she’s studied.

Such modesty is admirable, but…I clearly remember once trying to play a dictionary game in a group that included Carole. We had to give up because none of us could find, in the big dictionary, even one English word Carole didn’t know…

We got to the Al-Faisaliah Hotel about midnight last night — it’s a striking sight against the Riyadh skyline, somehow more welcoming than the Kingdom Tower.

We’re here because the King Faisal Foundation very kindly awarded Frank a King Faisal International Prize in Science.

Other prizewinners got here several days ago–we missed camel rides and a picnic in the desert–but Frank had a previous promise to Delft that could not be broken. The KFF was understanding about our delay, and gave us a royal welcome even at midnight.

After meeting a number of charming dignitaries, drinking watermelon juice, eating cotton candy with salted almonds (and not eating even more tempting things we were offered), and then unpacking, we finally got to bed around 2 a.m.

Then we got up at 7 for today’s very full schedule. So if I’m incoherent, that’s my excuse!

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

Thomas Sowell, via Niek Hockx

I’m off to the airport, where Frank and I will meet the famous Niek, and then get on a plane for Saudi Arabia. I told Niek to keep his eye open for somebody wearing solid black from neckline to ankle and wrist. Not sure if I’ll be able to blog from Riyadh, but la vida es una buena aventura, and this certainly will be a big adventure.