Palleting on pallets, men and beasts

Recently, Rich and I attended a folk concert where the group performed the Mississippi John Hurt song, “Make me down a pallet on the floor.” As a Louisiana native, I slept on many a pallet as a child while visiting relatives.  (Some relatives offered if enough beds were not available to hang us on a nail to sleep, but I always preferred a pallet.)   Chances are that those of you who did not grow up in the South at some time have laid down “a temporary bed made from bedding arranged on the floor, especially for a child,” the definition taken from my brand spanking new American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5^th edition.  The word “pallet” ultimately goes back to the Anglo-Norman and Latin words for “pile of straw,” which in days of yore would have made up a guest bed.  The OED also lists a rare but not obsolete usage of “pallet” as a verb, so at bedtime you could say, “Let’s go pallet on the pallet.”

These thoughts bring me back to the basic idea of sleeping places—beds.  While the word history itself of “bed” is simple, actual meanings of the word in its origins have interesting variations.  For this investigation, I pulled out my OED.  The Old English form of the modern word “bed” is actually “bed” or “bedd”—quite straightforward as far as word histories go.  However, the meaning began in Germanic times as “a dug out place,” and “a ‘lair’ of men or beasts.”  “Bed” in its origin also referred to a garden-bed.  It is unclear if the naming of a “garden-bed” was influenced by the concept of the sleeping bed for “men or beasts.”  As one whose bassets slept in the bed with her, I appreciate this connection of men and beasts sleeping in beds.

Regardless of where you sleep—pallet, bed, or elsewhere—or with whom or what you sleep, I wish you sweet dreams!

Shakespeare's birthday

Ode to My Oxford Shakespeare

The musty fresh scent of autumn leaves

Piled in airy layers over roots.

I inhale, breathing deep meaning,

Smelling words characters, plots, humanity.

Four hundred years--composted yet not rotten.

Happy 449th birthday to Shakespeare, 23 April!  I initially wrote this little poem in 1996.  When I would visit Laura at college, she would give me a tour of her current classrooms.  I would write "Read more Shakespeare" on the bottoms of the chalk boards.  Today, to celebrate his Big Day, I offer to my readers to same exhortation.

Are you buxom?

Are you buxom?  Most male readers probably immediately respond, “Absolutely not!”  Readers, what image pops into your mind when you see the word, “buxom”?  Most readers probably flash on a mental image of a female “full-bosomed” or “healthily plump and ample of figure,” as The American Heritage Dictionary, 3^rd edition defines the word.  (My husband imagines the character of Joan on “Mad Men.”)

However, guys, suppose you stumble upon a magic lamp.  In response to the genie’s offer of a wish, you wish for a “buxom” woman.  Imagine your surprise when the genie conjures a woman “obedient,” “pliant,” or “tractable,” some definitions offered by the Oxford English Dictionary, for a now obsolete usage, and not “full-busomed.”

I first stumbled upon this obsolete definition while reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in graduate school.  In the fabliau (an Old French dirty story) “The Merchant’s Tale,” an old codger decides it is time to settle down after living 60 years with an “appetite on women,” my rendering of the Middle English.  In convincing himself that marriage is a good thing, in contrast to his previous promiscuity, he asks, “For who can be so buxom as a wife?” (line 1287, for those who care).  Later, he waxes poetic, imagining that a wife is a husband’s paradise of earth, “his disport/ So buxom and virtuous is she.” (lines 1332-33 for those who care).  In this fabliau, January’s concept of a “buxom” or obedient wife becomes ironic.  The young woman he marries may indeed be buxom, or obedient, to a certain extent.  However, she may also be buxom or ample in figure, in the modern sense as she attracts a young suitor.  She ends the tale by having sex in a tree--a convenient place of escape from her jealous old husband--with that young suitor.

So, readers, take away these morals:  be careful what you wish for.  Make sure you know the complete meaning of words before you let them go.  Anyone can be "buxom" without plastic surgery.  As I am writing this entry on Earth Day, 2013, cherish trees, for they have MANY different uses in this world!

Finally, the next time you are at a boring party, liven it up by announcing that you are feeling buxom!

Wood Chucks Chucking Wood

As a beginning teacher, in an effort to encourage reticent students to ask questions, I had them begin the term by submitting a written question as part of a brief, first‑day writing assignment.  I still use this strategy.  I learn a lot about my students by the questions they ask, and they learn a lot about me by the answers I give. 

 

One semester early in my teaching career, a freshman asked the classic, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"  This question appealed to my own imagination, so as an exercise, I assigned the question to my two sections of freshman English. 

 

One challenge of the assignment for me was to explain it to the non‑native English speakers in the classes.  I had to explain that it was not a serious question, but a fun one, and I had to make sure they understood all the words.  A second challenge for the students in general was understanding the literal question.  Many students had to look up the word “chuck”.  In the context of the sentence, some thought it meant "eat" or "store," rather than "toss" or "throw." 

 

 One of the more clever students took a methodical approach to the question.  Starting with the size of a cord of wood, he estimated by body weight and size how much wood a woodchuck possibly could chuck.  (Sadly, I do not remember his exact calculation.)  Other students, befuddled by the question, researched woodchucks and discovered that they are also known as groundhogs, are a kind of marmot--which is a burrowing rodent--and they are part of the squirrel family. 

 

Intrigued, I decided to take a linguistic approach to the question, which is technically a tongue twister.  In my research, I discovered that tongue twisters are more than mere wordplay.  Many are passed down over generations in families.  Tongue twisters serve practical purposes.  Funk & Wagnall's Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend informs that dentists use tongue twisters to test dental work, such as dentures.  Tongue twisters are also helpful in diagnosing speech impediments, or treating speech impediments such as stammering or lisping.  Sometimes directors use them to test enunciation in stage auditions or for radio announcers. Tongue twisters also serve as warm‑up exercises for singers.  According to folklore, tongue twisters can cure hiccoughs.

 
This assignment originated as a fun and unique exercise in research, working with sources, and understanding meaning.  However, it had added benefits, showing that often one can approach a subject in a number of different ways.  It illustrated the difference between understanding literal meaning as opposed to more abstract concepts.  As one who now heats with wood in the winter, I have developed a whole new respect for woodchucks and chucking wood.

"Integrate"

NOTE: I first wrote a slightly different version of this piece soon after the controversial version of Huck Finn appeared replacing the "n-word."  I am posting this piece on the word "integrate" to mark the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Integrate (verb, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, late 1960’s):  an effort on the part of government officials to appease the requirements of Brown vs. the Board of Education; action involving the placement of one or two black children in traditionally white classrooms.

            In my 6th grade classroom in 1967, “integration” involved placing one African-American boy in a classroom of close to 30 white children.  We noted his presence but otherwise went about the process of being 6^th graders.  One boy caused a stir one day by uttering a fairly harmless obscenity at the water fountain.  Some boys discovered girls and vice versa.  In music class, we sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”  Meanwhile, the solitary black boy sat quietly in the classroom while this white world swirled around him.  In retrospect, I have wondered how he must have felt, being “integrated” in this manner.  What did any of us learn as a result of his “integration” in that classroom?

            My real lesson in race relations that year came outside of the classroom in the halls of a local hospital.  My mother shepherded my sister, a 4^th grader; my brother, a 2^nd grader; and me through the halls to visit my maternal grandmother who was dying of breast cancer.  Before we entered my grandmother’s room, my mother pulled us aside and quietly admonished, “Do not tell your grandmother that you have black children in your classroom.  It would kill her.”  My 6^th grade self did not quite understand why that news would strike my grandmother dead, but we obeyed my mother’s warning.  Breast cancer took my grandmother in March, 1968.  Louisiana finally settled Brown vs. the Board of Education in 2004, the last state to do so.

Integrate (verb, Anywhere, USA, early 21^st century):  an effort on the part of well-meaning people to whitewash the literary record

The controversial “revisions” of Mark Twain’s classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, are disturbing.  Revising the work to replace Twain’s language of separation with less offensive euphemisms negates the experiences of those who worked so hard publicly for integration and civil rights and for those who were unwitting participants, such as the black boy in my 6^th grade class.

Much progress has been made regarding integration and other aspects of race relations, not only in the South but across the nation, as well.  While the race issue will never be totally resolved in this country, separate but equal has, in theory, disappeared from classrooms, from public facilities, and even from public office.   However, the record of this racial segregation should remain integrated in its original language.

In another classic work of American literature, published in 1940, which examines race relations, Richard Wright’s protagonist in Native Son, Bigger Thomas, is in hiding after accidentally smothering the white daughter of a wealthy philanthropist.  As he huddles in subzero temperatures, Bigger laments that no black leader had come before to lead the way for blacks:  “If only someone had gone before and lived or suffered and died—made it so that it could be understood!”  Bigger’s thoughts eerily foreshadow black leaders who were soon able to break open the civil rights movement—Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, among others who followed in the path which they were able to forge.  These leaders were able to inspire and validate the experiences of the lesser known people whose efforts contributed to the civil rights movement to create a world of integration for the real children who were “integrated” so many years ago and for the fictional Bigger Thomas’s.