Hope

I was reading a book this afternoon that I've mentioned before in these pages: "Cataloguing The World" by Alex Wright, and came across a reference to Esperanto, which immediately made me think of my old mate Phil, whose dad was a member of the Esperanto community, speaking and writing the synthetic language invented in the late nineteenth century by a Jewish opthalmologist from Bialystok [now in Poland]: one L.L. Zamenhof; in an attempt to create an international second and common language through which international relations could be built. The name derives from the Spanish for 'hope' or 'expectation', essentially the motivation behind the creation of the language: through commonality of thought and communication, the hope of a better and less divided world. No wonder that the Nazis characterised it negatively as a 'Jewish conspiracy', echoes of which mindset are still resounding at present in the divisive world of human affairs today. Quite tangentially, I was minded of a favourite jazz musician of mine: Esperanza Spalding, whose Christian name fairly self-evidently shares like etymology: hope. Here's a YouTube of one of her amazing performances alongside a veritable constellation of stellar musicians. Enough for now, I'm knackered...