Philip Boit and Bjorn Daehlie: Cross-country friends 23 January 2014Last updated at 20:16 ET By Maddy Savage BBC News As Zimbabwe and Togo prepare to make their Winter Olympic debuts in Sochi, Kenya's first international skier recalls the unexpected friendship that turned him into a poster boy for snow sports in Africa. When Philip Boit put on his skis at the Nagano Winter Olympics 1998, it was only two years since he had first seen snow. Boit was born into a farming family in Eldoret in western Kenya, home to some of the world's fastest runners, but when the sportswear company Nike came looking for a runner prepared to to train as a cross-country skier, the 26-year-old stepped forward. "It was a bit challenging at first because I had never experienced cold weather like that in my life," he says, remembering his first trip to Finland, where he went to train. "Even putting on skis was so difficult! Some pundits said Nike was using Boit as a "marketing pawn", but he quickly excelled at this tough endurance sport. Continue reading the main story
25 Great Quotes to Inspire and Brighten Your Day Here’s a collection of great quotes by some of the most inspirational men and women that ever walked this earth. Hopefully you’ll find them inspirational in some way. If you do like them and find them helpful, check out our similar posts by visiting the links listed below. We have created over 20+ of these galleries, so there is lots more to be seen. Also, be sure to inspire your friends, family and coworkers by sharing some great quotes with them. More popular quotations: – 25 Inspirational Quotes – Great quotes to ponder upon Check out all of our galleries with nice quotes here: More great quotes:
Throw Over Your Man: Virginia Woolf’s 1927 Love Letter to Vita Sackville-West by Maria Popova “…and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads.” What makes an extraordinary love letter? Among them is this 1927 letter from Virginia Woolf to English poet Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had fallen madly in love. Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. The gender-bending character in Woolf’s Orlando, in fact, was based on Sackville-West, and the entire novel is thought to have been written about the affair — so much so that Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson has described it as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.” Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. Share on Tumblr
On Craftsmanship: The Only Surviving Recording of Virginia Woolf’s Voice, 1937 by Maria Popova “Words belong to each other.” On April 29, 1937, as part of their Words Fail Me series, BBC broadcast a segment that survives as the only recorded voice of Virginia Woolf — passionate love-letter writer, dedicated diarist, champion of reading, widely mourned luminary, muse to Patti Smith. The meditation, which was eventually edited and published in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (public library) in 1942, a year after Woolf’s death, was titled “Craftsmanship” and explores the art of writing. The beginning of the essay isn’t preserved in the recording, which begins about a third in. Since the only test of truth is length of life, and since words survive the chops and changes of time longer than any other substance, therefore they are the truest. Woolf also considers the near-mystical quality of language, the way it defies rational judgement by enslaving the intuitive: Full audio transcript below: Donating = Loving Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter.
11 Weirdly Spelled Words—And How They Got That Way Why is English spelling so messed up? We get the same sounds spelled different ways (two, to, too), the same spellings pronounced different ways (chrome, machine, attach), and extra letters all over the place that don't even do anything (knee, gnu, pneumatic). There aren't always good reasons for these inconsistencies, but there are reasons. Here's a brief look at the history of English spelling told through 11 words. 1. Thought Way back in the 600s, Christian missionaries arrived in Anglo-Saxon England with their Roman alphabet and tried to make it fit the language they found there. Later, English lost the /x/ sound, but only after the spelling conventions had been well established. 2. Two things happened in the early 1500s that really messed with English spelling. 3. Woden was an Anglo-Saxon god associated with both fury and poetic inspiration. 4. Getty Images 5. 6. Receipt is also a victim of the Latinizing craze. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. That's how you spell it, and say it, in Italian.
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