palmarian update

How things come together: just a few days ago, I actually heard a Passamaquoddy speaker spontaneously use the word "dulse". And as expected, he used it in the plural. Since masses of discrete (typically stringy) objects are consistently spoken of in the plural in this language, rather than the singular used in corresponding English terms like grass, hair, spaghetti, macaroni, rice, and seaweed.

The last of these is presumably a model for dulse-ol, which is what I heard, the -ol being the expected plural ending.

Oh, and yes, I really have heard the plurals spaghettiwol and macaroniwol used hereabouts, the latter while we were at the elementary school cafeteria.

Again, this is what I do.

palmarian joy

I'm so happy: yesterday at the Eastport IGA, they had dulse for sale!

As you head up to the northern Atlantic coast, it's a popular snack, but this is the first I've seen it this far south in a non-health-food-store context. Just a big wad of dulse, in a regular styrofoam-and-saran-wrap setup, like any other produce. It's hands-down my favorite kind of seaweed so far, all salty and purple. Last had it, I think, in my patrilineally ancestral town of Cill Chaoi (Kilkee) a couple summers back: there was a girl my age selling it as "dillisk" (cf. Irish duileasc---sounds kind of Scandanavian...is it a loan? Indo-Europeanists?) on the beach in little brown paper bags.

So now I have a big mound of sea-reeking mauveness to deal with. Almost a quarter pound of it. Which is a hefty bit of snackery when you're talking dried seaweed.

Now here's the tasty possibility: somewhere online I ran into a recipe for dulse which involves frying it up with oatmeal. Or am I confusing that with a recipe for boiling down carrageenan (cf. Irish carraigín) into a pleasant goo? Oh well, I'm sure something salty plus oatmeal is bound to be good, especially if you toss some lipids into the mix.

poem for mien

electric blue on black
your art wakes me up

confection

So last night I learned the grammatical gender of whoopie pies in Passamaquoddy.

Because someone was on a snack search through my grocery bag, and the woman of the house (bean an tí, as they say in Irish) said:

No, nekom nihtol.
'No, that's his.'

In Passamaquoddy, nekom means both 's/he' and 'his/hers'.

Even more interesting, though, is the nihtol: it's the word 'that', in the special form that shows dependency of referential access---i.e. his whoopie pie, not just a discursively freestanding, independently-introduced whoopie pie---that my fellow Algonquianist linguists are wont to call the obviative.

Check my diss if you want to know more.

Now the obviative is only contrasted in Passamaquoddy for nouns of the so-called "animate" grammatical gender. So hearing nihtol applied to a possessed whoopie pie tells you that it's of that gender. Which is actually what I expected.

This is what I do for a living.

power

one of the greatest responsibilities of power is to disseminate it.

to turn your power into other people's power, to use your power to empower.

or to use the word "disseminate" directly according to its history: to spread out the seeds of your power, so that more power can grow among the people you share it with.


this is something we are learning.

that power shared is power grown.

and that as fearful as we all are for ourselves, for our families, and for our friends, we all must overcome the drive of that fear that makes us want to hoard the power we have, in the hopes that that hoarding will keep us and those we love always safe.

it does not. in the long run, it is the power---all the different powers, in fact---that we share with each other, that keeps us all safe.

this is not pie-in-the-sky idealism.

this is simply true.

and this truth is quite freeing.

so go have fun with it!

古從軍行, in a way

A scruffyish translation attempt for one of my favorite Tang poems. Criticisms welcome, since I'll admit that a decent chunk of the vocab and contextual usage is beyond me.

Oh, and the linking words added at the beginning of each translational stanza (by, hear, now, see, and, so) are meant to be read at the beginning of both lines in each stanza they head. Just written once for a cleaner, sparer layout.

古從軍行

李頎

白日登山望烽火， 黃昏飲馬傍交河。
行人刁斗風沙暗， 公主琵琶幽怨多。
野雲萬里無城郭， 雨雪紛紛連大漠。
胡雁哀鳴夜夜飛， 胡兒眼淚雙雙落。
聞道玉門猶被遮， 應將性命逐輕車。
年年戰骨埋荒外， 空見葡萄入漢家。

by
white day, we climb mountains, scanning for beacon fires
yellow dusk, we water horses, near the borderland river

hear
the scout's diaodou, so dim in windblown sand,
the princess's pipa, so great in lonesome grief

now
wild clouds: for ten thousand li, there's not a city or a town
rain and snow: incessant, it fuses the sky to the desert

see
the foreign geese, night after night, calls keening as they fly
the foreign children, tear after tear, eyes both streaming as they cry

and
we hear tell: Jade Gate is still blocked off,
we obey the general: and stake our lives to our flimsy vehicles

so
year after year, war bones are buried, out in the desert
just to see grapes brought in, to the homes of the rich.

january in my apartment

You know what's nice? Clomping home up a snowy hill to a strong glass of karkaday that's been steeping all day long, and a box of tasty dates. Such a nicely Middle Eastern way to live in Southern Maine. Now I just need a cat.