Just Write

Word Of The Week: July 4th, 2009

Christopher Waldrop — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:46:35 +0000

Given the significance of this day in U.S. history, it seemed fitting to pick a specifically American word: barbecue. Or is it really American? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives the following definitions:

1a: a large animal (as a steer) roasted whole or split over an open fire or a fire in a pit
1b: barbecued food <eat barbecue>
2: a social gathering especially in the open air at which barbecued food is eaten
3: an often portable fireplace over which meat and fish are roasted

That pretty well fits with the definitions I know. It adds that the etymology is, “American Spanish barbacoa framework for supporting meat over a fire, probably from Taino”. That seems pretty scant, though. I didn’t want to turn to the Oxford English Dictionary, but I’m going to anyway. First, it offers up several more definitions:

1. A rude wooden framework, used in America for sleeping on, and for supporting above a fire meat that is to be smoked or dried.*
2. An iron frame for broiling very large joints.
3. A hog, ox, or other animal broiled or roasted whole
4. a. A large social entertainment, usually in the open air, at which animals are roasted whole, and other provisions liberally supplied.
b. A structure for cooking food over an open fire of wood or charcoal, usu. out of doors, and freq. as part of a party or other social entertainment.
5. An open floor on which coffee-beans, etc. may be spread out to dry.**

The verb form also has two specific definitions:

1. To dry or cure (flesh, etc.) by exposure upon a barbecue; see the n. (senses 1 and 5).
2. To broil or roast (an animal) whole; e.g. to split a hog to the backbone, fill the belly with wine and stuffing, and cook it on a huge gridiron, basting with wine***. Sometimes, to cook (a joint) with the same accessories.

It also gives a much more detailed etymological history, tracing it back to barbacòa, a Haitian Spanish word that possibly comes from a language of natives of Guyana. A French spelling of a Guyanan native word is babracot, which, like the Spanish word, means “a framework of sticks set upon posts”. The OED adds, “The alleged Fr. barbe à queue ‘beard to tail,’ is an absurd conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word.”

Even though I resisted going to the Oxford English Dictionary, I’m glad I did. Perhaps on this day, more than any other, when most U.S. citizens are celebrating the independence of our country, we should acknowledge the contributions made to the English language. It’s not the only language, but, like our country itself it’s been enriched by the contributions of the rest of the world.

*I don’t recall anyone ever saying they slept on a barbecue. Honestly it sounds pretty uncomfortable.

**Again I’ve never run across anyone who said, “I’m going to put these coffee beans out on the barbecue.” Then again I’m not overly familiar with coffee-bean processing.

***Where does barbecue get basted with wine? Must be a Kansas City thing.

Judge A Book By Its Cover.

Christopher Waldrop — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:17:33 +0000

Is it possible to be both subtle and tasteless at the same time? That’s certainly what this cover seems to achieve. Those blocks of swirlies subtly suggest mixing and the great melting pot that is the United States. And if you don’t know anything about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemmings, or maybe if you just don’t have a dirty mind, you don’t think there’s anything suggestive about the way his quill is pointed.

I’ll Take “Children’s Authors” for $1000, Alex.

Christopher Waldrop — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:49:25 +0000

As a regular watcher of Jeopardy, I’ve always been fascinated by the variety of contestants. I’ve even been told that I should be on Jeopardy by people who, for whatever reason, seem to think I’m much more well-informed than I actually am. And I’ll admit that very frequently when I watch it I’m surprised to find myself answering as many as four or five questions correctly, which makes me think that if I ever happen to be in beautiful downtown Burbank I should try out for the show. But of course I know what will happen to me. At home I do fine because I’m not under any pressure, and I’m only answering the questions I’m really certain I know the answers to. Let’s face it: I could have degrees from Cambridge or Oxford if they offered courses of study in sleeping, snack chips, or Sumerian mythology. Okay, I’m kidding: I probably couldn’t tell one snack chip from another. If I got on Jeopardy the categories would be “Q”Riffic (notice the “Q” in quotation marks), Calculus, French Historical Figures, Sing Along With John Fogerty, Generic Pharmaceutical Formulas, and, just for good measure, a special category called Eight Things You Couldn’t Possibly Know.

This week, however, it was especially exciting to see a children’s author competing alongside the plumbers, architects, and others. Tui Sutherland swept away the competition for a few shows before sadly being just edged out last night (at least in my area–I hope I haven’t spoiled it for anyone else).

Having checked out Ms. Sutherland’s blog, I think next I may be checking out some of her books as well. Her Pet Trouble series has some titles I can relate to–particularly Loudest Beagle On The Block. I can only imagine what she’ll do with Dalmatians. They have been known to get into a spot of trouble, you know. Actually her Avatars Trilogy, which consists of So This Is How It Ends (an intriguing title for the first book of a trilogy), Shadow Falling, and the recently released Kingdom Of Twilight, looks slightly more up my alley. However the main thing is I’d like to congratulate Ms. Sutherland on her success on Jeopardy.

Keep The Rainbow.

Christopher Waldrop — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:10:54 +0000

To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Studio 360 host Kurt Anderson asked, only partly tongue-in-cheek, for a new design–an alternative, if you will–for the rainbow flag. The design company Worldstudio was brought in with some ideas. You can see the designs here. My personal favorite was the Circle Flag (above). Even though some people think of the rainbow as kind of a tired cliche, and even though it’s been adopted by various other organizations, I think what it represents is what matters most. The circle represents both inclusiveness and openness, and letting the colors blend says that none of us is a single color. All of us–gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, or straight–are part of and contain within us a spectrum.

Celebrity judge Isaac Mizrahi chose one of the other designs, giving a very funny, very clever explanation for his decision. His explanation almost sold me on his choice, but not quite. I still like the rainbow.

Book ‘Em: Written Music.

Christopher Waldrop — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:38:02 +0000

There’s a line that’s floated around for several years and has been attributed to various people: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” I’ve always loved that line regardless of who said it, and every time I hear it I think I’d like to see some dancing about architecture. Here’s another thought on music: the poet Stephane Mallarme considered it a bad thing that special training was required to read or write music but no such training was needed for writing poetry. What Mallarme missed, of course, is that the beauty of music is that anyone can listen to and enjoy music. Unlike poetry, which is confined to a single language and inevitably loses something in translation, music is literally a universal language. Studying music can broaden our appreciation and give us a vocabulary for sharing our appreciation, but this isn’t necessary to really enjoy music.

I thought about all this the first time I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled. To say it was unlike any other Ishiguro novel is a bit of an understatement, although it’s true that it is very different from books like The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World. In fact The Unconsoled was unlike anything I’d ever read before, and it took me a long time to figure out what exactly was going on in it. I’m still not entirely sure, but I read it as a symphony in the form of a novel. It’s in four parts, just as most symphonies have four movements. The whole theme of the book is music, since it’s the story of a concert pianist named Ryder who visits a European city to perform a concert. He seems to have lost his memory (although this is never explicitly stated) since several people around him know him better than he knows himself. He meets a woman whose son is, she tells him, his own. He discovers an abandoned car in a field and remembers riding in it with his parents. While Ishiguro’s previous books were notable for their realism, The Unconsoled seems to take place in an alternative universe. Ryder goes to see the film 2001–a big weekly event in the town–but this version of the film stars Clint Eastwood and Yul Brynner. Time seems strangely compressed in this place as well, with long conversations taking place in short spaces, and a door in a cafe takes Ryder right to his hotel even though it’s miles away.

People are angered by Ryder’s posing in front of a monument, and there are misunderstandings, such as when he listens to a young man practice a piece of music. The young man says he’s “just an amateur” and has asked Ryder for “a few tips” for a public performance. Convinced that the young man has the piece–La Roche’s Dahlia, a piece of music I’m pretty sure is as fictitious as its composer–down perfectly, Ryder walks away without saying anything. This leaves the young man convinced he’s a failure and incapable of playing. In one of the book’s most bizarre scenes a former conductor named Mr. Brodsky takes the stage again. The description makes me completely rethink the art of conducting, although, given the book’s alternative reality, I wonder if it’s anything close to what a real conductor could do.

Brodsky took advantage of the looser form of the second movement to push into ever stranger territories, and I too—accustomed though I was to every sort of angle on Mullery—grew fascinated. He was almost perversely ignoring the outer structure of the music—the composer’s nods towards tonality and melody that decorated the surface of the work—to focus instead on the peculiar life-forms hiding just under the shell. There was a slightly sordid quality about it all, something close to exhibitionism, that suggested Brodksy was himself profoundly embarrassed by the nature of what he was uncovering, but could not resist the compulsion to go yet further.

Like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in which D minor dominates until it’s finally supplanted by D major, The Unconsoled seems to be in a minor key but searching for a major one. Ryder is humble but unhappy. Like many of the people around him he’s lost and confused and wants an escape that ultimately music can’t provide. Or can it? Ishiguro’s art–writing–peels back reality and exposes “peculiar life-forms hiding just under the shell”. It’s strange, fascinating, and reveals, in a subtle way, just how far art can go. It’s almost like dancing about architecture.

Word Of The Week: June 27th, 2009

Christopher Waldrop — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:11:23 +0000

As I was gearing up for yet another lap around the alphabet and looking for a word that started with the letter ‘a’, I noticed something curious. The word zenith, which starts with the last letter of the alphabet, has a synonym which starts with the first letter of the alphabet. The synonym is acme. Now, technically these words aren’t true synonyms. Turning to my old workhorse the Oxford English Dictionary, here’s the definition of zenith:

The point of the sky directly overhead; the highest point of the celestial sphere as viewed from any particular place; the upper pole of the horizon.

It’s also used “loosely” to simply mean the sky overhead, but its third definition is, ” Highest point or state, culmination, climax, acme.”

So acme is actually used to define zenith. Acme–the word, not the company that supplied Wile E. Coyote with an endless number of defective gadgets–means,

The highest point or culmination; the point or period at which something is at its best or most highly developed.

Etymologically both acme and zenith derive from Greek, although acme comes to English almost directly while zenith came via a much longer route through Latin and French.

The nice thing is that in twenty-five weeks when I’m digging around for a word that starts with ‘z’ no one’s going to remember this and, with a few minor changes, I’ll be able to recycle the entire thing. I probably shouldn’t have said that, though, should I?

Here’s a bonus word of the week: the word alphabet comes from the Greek alphabet which started with the letters alpha and beta. But why use the first two letters? Shouldn’t it have been the first and last letters to be truly inclusive? The last letter of the Greek alphabet, though, is omega, and alphomeg does sound clumsy. But the last letter of the Roman alphabet is z which comes from the Greek letter zeta, so instead of alphabet, why don’t we call it alphazet?

Beware Of Giant Talking Liverwurst Sandwiches.

Christopher Waldrop — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:37:15 +0000

Because, you know, they might be a district attorney in disguise.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XN3462SD-K8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Lost And Found.

Christopher Waldrop — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:36:49 +0000

The April 2009 issue of National Geographic Explorer reported that the remains of Everett Ruess had possibly been found. An artist, poet, explorer, and naturalist, twenty-year old Everett Ruess came into Escalante, Utah, one of the most remote places in the United States, in late 1934. He stayed a few days, watched Death Takes A Holiday with some local boys, then rode out of town. He then disappeared. More than seventy years later Daisy Johnson, a Navajo woman, told her brother Denny Bellson about something their grandfather, Aneth Nez, had seen in 1934. Sitting above a canyon he’d seen a young Anglo man on two mules chased by three Utes who chased him, hit him in the head, and took his mules. In addition to being outnumbered, there was another reason for Nez to not interfere.

For centuries Utes living north of the San Juan River had been fierce enemies of the Navajo, whose homeland lay south of the river. As late as the 1930s, tensions between the groups occasionally broke out in violence. Nez’s perch was only a few miles from that ethnic frontier.

After the Utes left Nez did go down and find that the young man was dead. Unable to do anything, Nez put the body in the folds of a ridge and left him there.

Intrigued, Bellson got a topographical map of the area and started searching for the young man’s body. And he found it. Although the original article only said that it was highly likely that the remains Bellson found with some fragments of clothing and a few items, including a mercury dime button, belonged to young explorer. On April 30th, 2009 forensic scientists using DNA confirmed that the remains were those of Everett Ruess.

This story made me think about two things. The first was how far off our romantic notions of Native Americans sometimes are. I’m guilty myself of thinking that Native Americans lived in a kind of paradisaical state, in harmony with nature and each other. In fact they could be just as territorial and aggressive as Europeans or, for that matter, people anywhere in the world. The fact that Utes chased and murdered Ruess, and the fact that a Navajo man watched, afraid and unable to interfere, underscore this.

The other is that, as an explorer, Ruess was always seeking the unknown. He was interested in going places where there was no one else and, if possible, where no one had ever been. It would seem that there’s now very little left to discover. There are no big patches on the map marked terra incognita. And yet the mystery of Everett Ruess lasted for decades and was only recently solved. There are still mysteries and things that remain to be discovered–if you know where to look.

Book ‘Em: Any Love.

Christopher Waldrop — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:26:46 +0000

The funny thing about an attempt to censor a book is that they just draw attention to that book. They make people want to read it. As I mentioned last week (original article here) there was an attempt to get the book Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block from a West Bend, Wisconsin, library. Reports on the issue included some brief summaries of the book, but I decided to go to the source material itself–to read the book, in other words. Like young adults and probably adults as well across the country I wanted to find out for myself just how obscene the book was, and whether there was any basis for claiming that for a library to even own a copy could constitute a “hate crime”.

The story is straightforward enough: set in the 1970’s in California, it’s about a young man named Dirk. He meets and becomes friends with another boy named Pup. They become close friends, spending every day together and staying together long into the night. They play basketball in strangers’ driveways and sneak into peoples’ backyards to swim in their pools. There’s an illicitness about it that makes it exciting, but it’s harmless. Pup, whose mother is poor and whose father has left him, also goes in for some petty shoplifting, stealing a lemon cream pie and flowers from various yards to present to Dirk’s grandmother Fifi. Dirk’s parents were both killed and now he lives only with his doting and sweet grandmother. The friendship weaves a spell around them, and Dirk realizes he’s falling in love with Pup, but Pup pushes him away. Instead, following Pup’s lead, the boys have their first sexual experience–Pup with the prettiest girl in school and Dirk with her friend, all of them in a hot tub. It’s agonizing for Dirk, and the spell of their friendship has been broken. Rejected by Pup, Dirk dyes his hair black and shaves it into a mohawk. He immerses himself in the local punk scene, seeing himself reflected in the eyes of other boys who, in their own eyes, have desire mixed with hate. After a concert he’s followed and badly beaten by three skinheads.

This is all part one. While elements of surrealism or even magic realism have crept into the book before this, flowing effortlessly out of Block’s lush prose style, now magic takes over almost entirely. A myserious woman named Gazelle appears to Dirk in his room and begins to tell him her story. He speaks to his father as well. Dirk is alone and afraid. He feels different. He’s an outsider. He’s found and lost the love of his life and he’s not even adult yet. But he’s reassured. At one point Gazelle says to him, “Any love that is love is right.”

If this is obscenity, if saying love is right is a hate crime, then we live in a very sick world.

Some, including the plaintiffs who want Baby Be-Bop withdrawn will say they worry about the message it sends. I worry more about the message that withdrawing and physically destroying the book will send. Dirk is gay, and, though it may be easier now for teenagers who are going through that to come to terms with it than it was in the 1970’s, it’s still difficult. But he also feels like an outsider. He feels rejected, unwanted, unloved and unlovable. Those are feelings children, teenagers, and even adults all share, regardless of whether we’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, or straight. There are magical moments in Block’s book, but she doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities either. There’s nothing obscene about presenting the world as it is, although I suspect that what those who label Baby Be-Bop “obscene” are really worried about is that it promotes tolerance, understanding. Its message ultimately is, “You are not alone.” Banning it would be the greatest obscenity.

Word Of The Week: June 20th, 2009.

Christopher Waldrop — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:26:44 +0000

When I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one of the things that stood out most strongly from his youth roaming the streets was when he bought his first zoot suit. Ultimately it was a look he would reject, but when he bought it the suit was a sign of success. It was flamboyant and ostentatious and, I’m sure, beautiful.

[S]ky blue pants thirty inches in the knee and angle narrowed down to twelve inches at the bottom, and a long coat that pinched my waist and flared out below my knees.

He also bought a hat with a feather in it, and, as gifts, the store gave him a belt and a gold-plated chain. It carried heavy cultural implications as well. Times have changed significantly, though, and, while the zoot suit may harken back to an earlier time, it can also be worn as a costume, or simply a personal statement of pride and joie de vivre. A store called El Pachuco in Fullerton, California has been selling zoot suits for more than thirty years. In a story for Studio 360, Associate Professor of Chicano Studies Susan Green explains that the suit has multiple possible meanings. There’s been a long conflict between the zoot suit wearers of the 1940’s, who felt they were advertising their success, and critics who thought they were “wartime wasters”. Even now she gets calls from parents whose sons or daughters aren’t allowed to wear zoot suits to the prom.

Hey, clothes make the person, right? If the zoot suit is about pride, success, about joy, those are things to celebrate. And if it looks good, wear it!