Be-Booked--Beyond Katrina

One of the many pleasures of substitute teaching is I can keep learning in an academic setting without having to do the heavy lifting—lesson prep, grading, dealing with parents.  Part of this pleasure involves what I call “found books”—books I find on the bookshelves in classrooms or perusing school libraries.  For today’s entry, I am going to take a side trip from words (Be-Worded) to discuss a recently “found book” (Be-Booked).  In a local high school library, I found a book by Natasha Trethewey, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, who spent part of her life on the Mississippi Gulf coast in Gulfport and part in Atlanta.  Currently, she is at Emory.

Her book, Beyond Katrina:  Meditations on the Mississippi Gulf Coast caught my attention.  Since I cannot borrow books from school libraries, I searched the Upper Hudson Library System, only to find none of the member libraries owns the book.  I ended up getting it through interlibrary loan from the Utica College library.  Ultimately, I asked our local public library to purchase a copy for its collection.

Beyond Katrina is a combination of prose non-fiction and poetry.  Trethewey meditates not only on the after-effects of Katrina, both natural and human-made, but also on race relations on the Mississippi Gulf coast going back for decades.  It is a thoughtful, moving thin volume that I highly recommend.  (Unlike the one thin mint in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, this one thin volume will not make your head explode.)

Trethewey makes the point that in the aftermath of Katrina, New Orleans has received the lion’s share of attention.  There is a dearth of literature about the Mississippi Gulf coast after Katrina.  However, the true appeal of this book is how Trethewey interlaces Katrina recovery with larger social and economic issues and with human’s attempts (futile) to control or manipulate nature.  (I never realized that the beaches of the Mississippi Gulf coast were constructed by humans in the 1950’s in order to attract tourism.  I always thought they were made by nature.)

When I was a child, we spent some time in the area of Gulfport and Biloxi visiting relatives.  I can remember the devastation which Camille wreaked.  I have not been along the Gulf coast since the late 1970’s, when we used to drive through to Florida, usually Pensacola.  Much has changed, evidently, since Mississippi legalized gambling and the floating casinos popped up along the coast.

In the wake of devastating hurricanes in the northeast--Irene and Sandy--I am curious to see the literature which these disasters generate.

My mark of a good book is one I would add to my personal collection.  Trethewey’s Beyond Katrina very well may make its way to my already overcrowded bookshelves.

NOTE:  As I edited this blog to post, an idea for a literature elective occurred to me--Literature of Natural Disasters.  I googled the idea to find that a book aimed at grades 3 - 6 exists, as does a course, but no such course exists in googleland for secondary or higher education.

Thingamabob (Cha-Cha-Cha)

Most of the time when we think about words, we think of a collection of vowels and consonants that combine to represent an object, an idea, or such—a small unit of communication.  We can play with words by punning—I once named a rescue cat “Clawdio” (see Note 2).  We can switch words around to create clever sayings—“truth is beauty, beauty truth,” as in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”  We can reverse expectations—no good deed goes unpunished.

What is your favorite word and why is it your favorite?  Do you like its meaning, as in “vacation”?  Do you like the way it sounds, perhaps its alliterative quality, as in the word “essence”?  Do you like the way it looks, such as an anagram?  How many of you like a word because of the way it feels to say it, the way it rolls, bounces, or slides in the mouth, its sensual quality?

My favorite word to say is “thingamabob” because it uses all parts of the mouth, has a veritable dance party in the mouth, and because it is a silly, informal, all-purpose word.  When said aloud, “thingamabob” resonates.  It starts in the front of the mouth with the tongue against the teeth, creating the “th” sound.  Then, it travels back to the middle for the long “e” sound and immediately scoots up the nose for the twanging “n” before it slams against the back of the mouth for the guttural hard “g.”  It takes a pause in the middle with the “uh” (schwa) sound and then sneaks up to the lips and nose for the tingling, tickling “m” sound—a kazoo without the actual instrument.  Next, it slides back to the middle for another “uh” sound before bouncing to the lips for a plosive “b,” rocketing to the middle for the final “uh,” and ending with a resounding plosive “b.”  (In the “bob” part, the word does the Cha-Cha in your mouth!)

Recently, in conversation on this topic, someone asked about the word “thingamajig.”  “Thingamajig” differs basically only in the final sound, the hard “g.”  The “jig” starts as does “bob” in the front of the mouth with the tongue behind the teeth instead of with the bouncing “b” of “bob.”  The short “i” slides to the middle, as does the “uh” of bob.”  However, “jig” ends in the back of the mouth with the guttural hard “g” swallowed instead of bounced out as the final “b” in “bob.”  After some time spent repeating the two words, I personally prefer “thingamabob,” as I like to end with the exploding “b.”  (An influence, perhaps, of Monty Python?)

While my intent here is primarily the fun of saying the word, I cannot end without discussing meaning.  “Thingamabob” started its life as “thingum,” an informal, or colloquial, variation of “thing,” with the “um” a meaningless suffix.  Soon thereafter, the “bob” joined the word, yet another meaningless hanger-on.  The OED lists its first usage in 1680.  “Thingamajig” joined the linguistic nonsense around 1751.

I used to dream about words, such as “mellifluous,” “diaphanous,” and “avuncular.”  While these words are fun to say, especially “mellifluous,” “thingamabob” remains my favorite word to speak aloud.

NOTE 1:  In researching “thingamabob” and “thingamajig,” I took a look at the word “thing.”  The entry in the OED is quite long, including some amusing variations on the word, such as “thingness.”  Soon, I will devote a blog entry to the word “thing.”

NOTE 2: Many years ago, I adopted an older cat from the Humane Society.  As most people prefer to adopt kittens, I figured I had saved the cat from death row.  I named him “Clawdio” after Claudio in Measure for Measure, who is also on death row.  I tried my best to teach Clawdio to mew Shakespearean speeches.  Ultimately, I abandoned my efforts, realizing that I could not teach an old cat mew tricks.

Daymare

As a student, I never had the stereotypical nightmare where final exams arrive and I realize that I must take a final in a course I have never attended.  Oddly enough, after my daughter went to college, I had a nightmare in which she was indisposed, so I was tasked with attending her classes and taking notes for her.  In this nightmare, I could not find the classroom or was late or such.

 

On the contrary, as a full-time teacher, and even as a substitute teacher, I have  had a nightmare in which I cannot find the classroom, am late for class, am not prepared to teach,  do not have an attendance list, and such.  Sometimes these nightmares translate into bad daytime experiences, or a “day-mare.”  I realized early in my teaching career that such a thing as a stupid question really does exist, in spite of what teachers are taught to say.  While teaching freshman composition as a graduate assistant, I had one student who frequently made the class a “daymare” for me.  Late in the semester, a different student from that class told me that I would visibly wince when the King of Stupid Questions would raise his hand.  (To make my daymare even worse, he ended up taking a second class with me!)

 

A different student caused dismay with his monumental indifference, a condition found more frequently in students (and others).  Most students will at least feign interest on some level, attempting to hide their distractions behind books or innocent facial expressions.  I wrote a poem about this student which I entitled “Daymare”:

 

Cheeseburger/fries waft

In the low gravitation

Behind what should be

Knowledge-hungry eyes.

Out-to-lunch

Rings up on dusty, green lenses.

As he sits and stares,

Not even pretending to take notes,

I total out the day’s tape and wonder

How much change I owe him.

While I never published that poem, I was proud thinking that I had coined the word “daymare.”

Imagine my surprised pleasure recently to run across the word in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.  The narrator is speaking of his unshakeable thoughts of his current guardians, “a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them!”  The OED defines “daymare” as “a condition similar to night-mare occurring during wakefulness.”  The first example of usage is dated 1737 and the last 1889.  My American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed. includes the word as Standard English, but I have not found it in abridged current dictionaries.

Sometimes when we wish someone goodnight, we say “Sweet dreams,” meaning "sleep well."  In the daytime, when we say, “Good day,” we mean “goodbye.”  In the day time, when we wish good will upon parting, we say, “Have a nice day.”  Perhaps in the context of “daymare,” we should wish someone well by saying, “Sweet day.”

Have a sweet day!

Smarty pants addendum

I put up the “smarty pants” blog (May 22, 2013) hurriedly.  Later, after thinking about it, I decided to add some more thoughts.  (By the way, thinking is a highly underrated activity.)

In some circumstances, we may want to call someone a “smart-arse,” but the presence of polite company or young ears may prevent that impulse.  To accomplish the task discreetly, take a lesson from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.  One character, Maria, is disgusted with another pretentious character, Malvolio.  After a contentious exchange, she tells him to “Go shake your ears.”  (Donkeys, sometimes referred to as asses, shake their ears, so in telling someone to go shake his or her ears, you are indirectly calling that person a donkey or an ass.)

A second way to call someone an ass discreetly came to me via the OED word-of-the-day service.  Come to find out, a “neddy” is a donkey.  The word history simply states that “Ned” is a shortened form of the name “Edward,” but it does not elaborate as to which historical “Edward” gave his name to the meaning of “donkey” or “simpleton.”  However, the OED lists usages as far back as 1790.  So if you want discreetly to call someone an ass, refer to that person as “Ned” or “Neddy.”

On the other hand (or in this instance other cheek), sometimes we want to make fun of ourselves.  In a wonderful scene from Much Ado About Nothing, a simple, uneducated constable, Dogberry, unwittingly captures a criminal, Conrad.  The illiterate Dogberry calls in a scribe to write down the Conrad’s confession.  After the scribe has left and Conrad is being led to jail, he calls Dogberry an ass.  Dogberry, in his naive and comic misunderstanding of language, mistakes this name to be a compliment, and laments, “Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he [the scribe] were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down yet, forget not that I am an ass.”  When I want to be self-effacing, in a tribute to Dogberry, I say, “Forget not that I am an ass.”

When I used to visit Laura at college, she would give me a tour of her current classrooms.  Sometimes I would write, “Read more Shakespeare” near the bottom of the chalkboard.  Occasionally, at the next class meeting, she would find the exhortation still on the board.  Today, I leave my readers with that exhortation, as Shakespeare is partially responsible for some of the fun and subterfuge I offer with language in this blog entry.