Did you get up close! I’ve been watching its progress online, super cool!
I did! The line to look at the cab of #4012 was huge, but worth the 2 hour wait. I got some really cool pictures, and I think Steamtown is on my list for a return visit.
We stopped by the side of the road because, reasons, and the place we stopped had a plant growing there that I was unfamiliar with. It had tall, fuzzy magenta inflorescences that the bumblers were going over. I took some pictures in which I later noticed that some some of the flowers had transformed into raspberry-like fruits, except that they were the same odd magenta color.
Loaded onto this here device, the photos app observed the foliage, and it identified it as rose spirea. Looking that up, I learned that it produces salicylates, which explains why it is a fruit that not many people are familiar with. It cannot be pleasant to eat, and could cause issues if eaten in quantity.
I further learned that this plant, spirea, provides the etymology for “aspirin”.
Cool! Two of our big, shrubby hedges are spireas — the “Renaissance” variety, with springtime white inflorescences, but not in stalks.
I never knew the connection to aspirin.
(The technical name for aspirin is salicylic acid, from Salix, the botanical name for a willow. This Latin word became the Spanish “sauce” (SAOUW-say, more or less). Hence, “soy sauce” means “I am a willow tree” in Spanish!).
It would usually be “Soy un sauce”, “soy sauce” is “I am willow tree” not “I am a willow tree”
“Soy sauce” though, is grammatically correct.
While we’re here …
Would constructions like “soy sauce” be used in “caveman” Spanish in Spanish-language media? Or Spanish marked in some other way, meant to convey “otherness”?
EDIT: Soy Groot! – was that a thing back when Guardians of the Galaxy was a new hit film?
If you say “soy XX” and XX is a name, or a nationality, like “soy Pedro” or “soy Argentino” (speaking for @Frodo here, who is probably watching a football game right now), or an adjective like tall (soy alto) it would be absolutely correct.
But if you say you are something that can be counted, like willows (sauce in Spanish) you should say how many you are (usually one, I guess) or you will sound like a caveman or a stupid foreigner.
But some adjectives also require an un, like idiot: soy un idiota.
It is probably even more complicated than that, but that is a start.
“Idiot” is a noun, not an adjective. The adjective would be “idiotic”. In English, both “I’m an idiot” and “I’m idiotic” would be correct, but the former would be much more common.
For nationalities, both “I’m American” and “I’m an American” would be correct, though I can’t help but feel that there’s some shade of nuance different between them. On the other hand, for some nationalities it would differ: “I’m British”, vs. “I’m a Brit”.
You’re correct. In Spanish both the noun and the adjective are identical: idiota, which is both feminine and masculine. But in some cases idiota is a noun, in others it is an adjective. Thinking about it, in soy un idiota “idiota” is a name, in soy idiota it would be an adjective.
Yeah, “soy sauce” only works if “sauce” means something different than the tree, suppose for example that there is a team whose nickname is “Los Sauces” if you are a fan of that team you may say “Soy sauce”
I would think that “I’m an American” is an abbreviated way of saying “I’m an
American person” (or inhabitant/citizen/something), ie, it’s an adjective in that
case.
A substantive adjective.
Garry Trudeau, of Doonesbury fame, named his first-born twins Rachel and Ross.
In 1983, a decade before the Friends sitcom. World’s Most Prescient Cartoonist.
I thought Monica was Ross’s sister.
Maybe they’re conjoined?
Ross and Rachel were a couple whose on/off love pervaded the series. People kept talking about Ross and Rachel, Ross and Rachel, until it became a meme.
The girl’s name is Rachel Grandison Trudeau (named after mother Jane Pauley’s father Richard Grandison Pauley), but her twin brother was evidently named Richard Ross Trudeau. Also, it’s likely that Jane Pauley had as much, if not more, to do with naming them as Garry.
Trudeau himself calls them Rachel and Ross, according to the new biography of him, so I feel okay making the claim.
Trudeau’s actual name is Garretson, BTW.
I’ve been bingeing Petticoat Junction episodes. Always loved Dog, the dog adopted early in the show. I remember him from Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies too.
Cute terrier, looks like Benji. He actually IS BENJI! Real name is Higgins. Trained by same guy all his life. Won a PATSY award. Actually came out of retirement (age 16) to film Benji.
The inverse of a production with long-since departed players is the oldest film with a still-living cast member: Rosalie (1937) — Caren Marsh, who was born in 1919 and is 107 years old as of 2026, appears as a dancer in an uncredited role.