ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 90 of 91

A is for Animal Adjectives

Why does a quite provocative Paula Abdul video suddenly come to mind?

I’m in a bit of an animal ~~rut~~ groove the last couple weeks. I found this neat link to animal adjectives, most of which I never heard of. But it’s the familiar ones that got me thinking about how some of them get applied to people, sort of a reverse anthropomorphism.

These definitions come from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. They are in addition to “having the characteristics of” said animal.

aquiline – curving like an eagle’s beak (an aquiline nose)

elephantine – having enormous size or strength: massive; clumsy, ponderous (elephantine verse)

feline (cat) – sleekly graceful; sly, treacherous; stealthy

porcine – overweight to the extent of resembling a pig

Don’t you think ALBERT Einstein (hey, an A word) looks rather leonine in this photograph? (Or is it that the noble lion is looking Einsteinesque?)

bovine – having qualities (as placidity or dullness) characteristic of oxen or cows

ursine (bear) – (a lumbering ursine gait)

serpentine – subtly wily or tempting; winding or turning one way and another (a serpentine road); having a compound curve whose central curve is convex

reptilian – cold-bloodedly treacherous (a reptilian villain — Theodore Dreiser)

(Why does a quite provocative Paula ABDUL video – yet another A – suddenly come to mind?)

canine (dog) – a conical pointed tooth; especially one situated between the lateral incisor and the first premolar [OK, that was a cheat]

I discovered that some of the words on the adjective list don’t show up in Merriam-Webster at all, such as troglodytine. Words such as hircine and limacine generate a message such as this:
Limacine, it turns out, isn’t in the free Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, where you just searched.
However, it is available in our premium Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. To see that definition in the Unabridged Dictionary, start your FREE trial now.

Fortunately, there is Wordnik, which has all of these words:
troglodytine -Resembling or having the characters of wrens, or Troglodytinæ (doesn’t this sound prehistoric?)
hircine – Of or characteristic of a goat, especially in strong odor.
limacine – Of, relating to, or resembling a slug.

The Wordnix definitions tend to be more complete, in large part because it pulls from multiple sources, including something called the Century Dictionary. While M-W says of asinine, “extremely or utterly foolish (an asinine excuse)”, Wordnik says, “stupid; obstinate; obtrusively silly; offensively awkward.”

Many of the prefixes match the animal’s scientific names, such as “a slug of the subfamily Limacinæ or family Limacidæ.”

I KNEW I should have studied Latin or Greek.

(Confidential to Lisa: THIS post.)

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Z is for at the ZOO

Yes, what ARE they talking about? I’ve been paranoid about gathered birds…

Simon & Garfunkel had been performing on their “Old Friends” tour this year, and I had been considering going to one of the shows in Massachusetts. Then I heard the show had to be canceled because of Art Garfunkel’s vocal paresis.

Old Friends/Bookends was the last pair of songs, segued together, on the first side of the 1968 S&G album, Bookends. The collection also featured “Mrs. Robinson”, “A Hazy Shade of Winter” and “America”.

At the Zoo was the last song on the second side of the album. (Remember when albums had “sides”?) Here’s a video of the song.

I recall really liking this recording when I was in high school, whereas my good friend Carol HATED it, and also the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever; odd the things one recalls. And I was particularly fascinated by the attributes that Paul Simon assigned to the animals.

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo.

I do believe it,
I do believe it’s true.

It’s a light and tumble journey
From the East Side to the park;
Just a fine and fancy ramble
To the zoo.

But you can take the crosstown bus
If it’s raining or it’s cold,
And the animals will love it
If you do.

Somethin’ tells me
It’s all happening at the zoo.

The monkeys stand for honesty,

Could this be a reference to the see no evil/speak no evil/hear no evil depiction of monkeys? (And why IS that?)

Giraffes are insincere,

I suppose that could be because they wouldn’t/couldn’t look you in the eye.

And the elephants are kindly but
They’re dumb.

I suppose this is a function of the pachyderm’s lumbering gait. But I was watching an episode of CBS News 60 Minutes, rerun on July 4, that indicates that elephants are considerably more sophisticated than we might have thought. “Researchers listening to elephant sounds and observing their behavior are compiling an elephant dictionary.”

Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages,

I mean, aren’t we all wary of change? Perhaps they were picked because they are fellow primates, or because of the scansion of the word “orangutans”.

And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.

Ah, the inmate running the asylum.
Actually, it seems that the understanding of keeping animals in zoos has improved tremendously since I was a child, with more room for the creatures to roam, e.g.

“Paul Simon released a children’s book titled At the Zoo (ISBN 0-385-41771-3) which combines the lyrics of the song with the very detailed illustrations of Valerie Michaut. To make this book appropriate for children, Simon made changes and additions, including identifying Rum as a beaver.”

Zebras are reactionaries,

Because they see everything in black and white?

Antelopes are missionaries,

You know, the horns and the markings on their foreheads rather look like a cross, I believe.

Pigeons plot in secrecy,

Yes, what ARE they talking about? I’ve been paranoid about gathered birds since I saw that Hitchcock film.

And hamsters turn on frequently.

I suspect that hamster cages could generate lots of energy, if only we knew how to harness it. In that aforementioned children’s book, the hamsters are given headlights, which they “turn on frequently”.

What a gas! You gotta come and see
At the zoo.

ABC Wednesday

X is for Xenophobia

How do you feel about your own racism and xenophobia? Are you confident enough to declare “I’m not racist”?

So I was looking up xenophobia in Wikipedia, which lists this definition:
Xenophobia is the uncontrollable fear of foreigners. It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning “stranger,” “foreigner” and φόβος (phobos), meaning “fear.” Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an “uncritical exaltation of another culture” in which a culture is ascribed “an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality”…

A xenophobic person has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner. This arguably separates xenophobia from racism and ordinary prejudice in that someone of a different race does not necessarily have to be of a different nationality. In various contexts, the terms “xenophobia” and “racism” seem to be used interchangeably, though they can have wholly different meanings (xenophobia can be based on various aspects, racism being based solely on race ethnicity and ancestry). Xenophobia can also be directed simply to anyone outside of a culture, not necessarily one particular race or people.

Well, OK. I’m not sure if it is xenophobia or racism (or both) which led to offensive characterizations against the Republican candidate for governor in South Carolina. Or the renaming of food so as not to invoke people we don’t like. Or the absurd truthiness of this Comedy Central bit about Obama and his emotions.

At some level, I suppose I had gotten to a point where I had hoped xenophobia and racism were something of the past, such as one segment in this TV show from 1964, which like the Daily Show segment, is a parody. But I realized I was being silly. Xenophobia has lasted for millennia; why should modernism destroy it?

I’m reminded of the story of the good Samaritan. It’s significant because the injured Jewish traveler, passed by two of his “own people”, was helped by a member of a group poorly regarded, thus radically expanding the geography of “Love thy neighbor.”

At your leisure, check out If Gandhi was Palestinian. I don’t necessarily agree with every word, but the notion of trying to be in another’s shoes is appealing.

How do you feel about your own racism and xenophobia? Are you confident enough, as Greg Burgas is, to declare I’m not racist? Not even a little bit. I reject Avenue Q’s song ‘Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist’ completely.

But you really must read Roger Ebert’s take on the topic especially as it relates to his own personal evolution and development. A brief quote: “How do they get to be that way? I read this observation by Clint Eastwood: ‘The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.'”

Interestingly, a couple of the comments to the Ebert piece mention a play and a musical I have seen in the last year. The play is To Kill A Mockingbird, based on the Harper Lee novel, where the slow breakdown in the racist society is embodied by a vigorous defense of the black defendant by Atticus Finch.

The musical is Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, specifically the song You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught. (Sidebar: Mixed-race marriages are on the rise in the United States.)

Ultimately, as Leadbelly (d. 1949) wrote and sang, We’re in the same boat, brother.

The Lord looked down from his holy place
Said the Lord to me, what a sea of space
What a spot to launch the human race
So he built him a boat for a mixed-up crew,
With eyes of Black and Brown and Blue.
So that’s how’s come that you and I
Got just one world and just one sky.
…
Through storm and grief,
Hit many a rock and many a reef,
What keep them going was a great belief.
That the human race was a special freight
So they had to learn to navigate.
If they didn’t want to be in Jonah’s shoes,
Better be mated on this here cruise.—Why—

We’re in the same boat brother,
We’re in the same boat brother,
And if you shake one end,
You gonna rock the other
It’s the same boat brother

Our last song – for I believe in the power of music – is Everyday People by Sly & the Family Stone, lyrics by Sylvester Stewart, a/k/a, Sly Stone.

There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one
For living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee
Oh sha sha – we got to live together
I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me you know me and then
You can’t figure out the bag I’m in
I am everyday people, yeah yeah

ABC Wednesday

W is for Weird

Steve Silverman was a high school science teacher who wrote a book called Einstein’s Refrigerator and Other Stories from Flip Side Of History. Guess which story shows up as the very first in this book?

I need to tell you about Mike the Headless Chicken. Then I’ll tell you something REALLY weird.

On September 10, 1945, there was a farmer in Fruita, Colorado named Lloyd Olsen who experienced something unusual. Being a farmer, unsurprisingly, from time to time, Lloyd would lop off the head of a chicken, or in this case, a rooster. While the cliche about running around like a chicken with his head cut off is true, this particular poultry was still strutting his stuff the next day. So Lloyd decided to feed the bird, using an eyedropper full of ground-up grain and water, with “little bits of gravel down his throat to help the gizzard grind up the food.”

Mike could hang on high perches without falling, gurgle in a faux crowing style, even attempt to preen his non-existent head.

Sideshow promoter Hope Wade convinced Lloyd to put Miracle Mike on tour, and for a time, he made $4500 per month, from 25-cent viewings, good money even in these days. Mike even made it into LIFE magazine, a hugely popular US periodical in the day.

Guesstimates were that, sadly, Mike died in March 1947, eighteen months after the beheading, from choking on his mucus.

But the legacy of Mike the Headless Chicken lives on. On May 17, 1999, Fruita held its first Mike the Headless Chicken Day, complete with a 5K Run Like a Chicken race. You’ve missed the 2010 event in May, alas, but there’s always next year. Punchline of the festival theme song: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To try to find his head!”

I first became aware of Mike when I watched the October 8, 2000 episode of CBS Sunday Morning, not long after the show aired. Subsequently, I came across a PBS documentary and even a film about Mike.

Now here’s the weird part.

My wife and I have a friend named Kelly. Kelly used to have lots of parties we used to attend before parenthood. At these parties, we met her friend named Steve Silverman. Steve was a high school science teacher who wrote a book, published in 2001, called Einstein’s Refrigerator and Other Stories from Flip Side Of History. Guess which story shows up as the very first in his book? If you guessed Einstein’s refrigerator, you would be wrong.

With the tape from CBS News and the chapter from Steve’s book, my wife put together lesson plans that her junior high students really ~~ate up~~ enjoyed. Read Steve’s chapter about Mike the Headless Chicken here, and other information dubbed by Steve himself as useless here.

ABC Wednesday
>

V is for Veteran

Most of the wars fought by the United States, starting with the Revolutionary War, included a subtext, even the promise, of justice for, and fair treatment of African-Americans.

Back at the end of February 2010, I did a presentation for the Underground Railroad conference about Black Soldiers in Post WW II Germany. I’m certainly not to replicate it here, but a few points I’ll mention.

Even though the first casualty of what would become the American Revolution was Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre of 1770, the American colonial powers fighting Great Britain were resistant to allowing black soldiers to serve. It wasn’t until the British offered freedom to black fighters that ultimately got George Washington’s attention. Ultimately, blacks fought on both sides of the conflict, but their reason was singular: freedom.

Again, in the American Civil War, many black men felt that serving in the military was a way they might gain freedom and full citizenship. As Frederick Douglass asserted that if blacks fought, “no power on earth can deny that he has earned the right” to freedom.

General David Staunch took it upon himself to free slaves, not just on islands controlled by Union forces, but in south Florida, where he recruited men capable of bearing arms to form the first black regiment. This was ultimately opposed to, and disbanded by President Lincoln, fearing moving more quickly than “public opinion would bear.”

There was a modicum of freedom for the newly emancipated but this was negated by the Jim Crow laws and other restrictions. During World War I, WEB DuBois wrote in The Crisis magazine, “First your Country, then your Rights”. A by-then familiar refrain.

So, most of the wars fought by the United States, starting with the Revolutionary War, included a subtext, even the promise, of justice for, and fair treatment of African-Americans. World War I and especially the Civil War brought the issue to the fore.

But it was with World War II, with large numbers of black soldiers in uniform, that the contradiction between fighting for freedom for others and a lack of freedom back at home reached a tipping point.

Germany in post World War II was occupied by thousands of American soldiers, many of them black. While Hitler’s mantra of racial superiority might suggest that the black soldier might have a difficult time in the former Nazi-led country, the experiences were far more mixed. A huge part of this involved the black GI and the German fraulein, something that clashed with the norms of two countries. What took place during that period changed both the condition of African-Americans back in the United States and the occupied German people as well.

Due, in part to the pressure by the black press, reporting on the superior conditions for the black troops in what was Hitler’s country, the armed services were integrated in 1948.

So, was it a sense of history or a more personal connection that my father to keep a Newsweek article delineating this phenomenon for 54 years, from 1946 until his death in 2000, or was there something more? My father was in the European Theater of operations from February to November 1946, but we never really talked to him about the war.

There is a surprisingly large bit of literature on this topic of race and Germany after the war. It doesn’t cite the Newsweek article, but rather an article from a then- relatively new magazine called Ebony (October 1946).

I would particularly recommend The Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs, and Germany, a research project and digital archive. The creators received a prestigious award from the storied civil rights organization, the NAACP.
I’d also note Historians study black vets’ role in civil rights for the very first paragraph: In the words of retired Gen. Colin Powell, postwar Germany was “a breath of freedom” for black soldiers, especially those out of the South: “[They could] go where they wanted, eat where they wanted, and date, whom they wanted, just like other people.” Or, as it notes in the Ebony article, Berlin was freer than Birmingham (Alabama) or Broadway (New York City).

Additional bibliography:
Blacks during the Holocaust.

An unexpected freedom: Black U.S. soldiers found acceptance and tolerance in post-war Germany – and sometimes even the love of their lives. By Peter H. Koepf