A Spelling Lesson From the Bay City Rollers

Champlain points out the river.

 

S-A   I-N-T   J-O-H   N!

S-A   I-N-T   J-O-H   N!

S-s-s Saint John New BrunsWICK!!! Saint John New BrunsWICK!!!

S-A   I-N-T   J-O-H   N!

S-A   I-N-T   J-O-H   N!

[Need clarification? Watch the original here. ]

Okay, here’s the scoop. When the great French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, landed here on a sunny June day in 1604, he named the river that flowed into the Bay of Fundy la rivière Saint-Jean, because it happened to be the feast day of Saint John the Baptist.

Sometime later, the English settlers here had other names for their spots on either side of the river, but finally in 1786 they decided on the collective name of Saint John, using the name of the river to represent both settlements. Saint John became the first incorporated city in North America.

Life went on. Sometimes people spelled it “Saint John”, and at other times “St. John”. Of course, being named after as popular a guy as Jesus’ first cousin and the patron saint of France, the New Brunswick town competed with Saint John, Quebec and St. John’s, Newfoundland for distinctiveness. In the early twentieth century, a movement was afoot to change this city’s name back to Parrtown, the earlier moniker for the community on the east side of the river.

I don’t know about you, but personally, if I were a west-sider, my nose would be out of joint at such a thought.

Possibly the city council and the newspaper saw the situation in a similar light.

In March of 1925, the Telegraph-Journal suggested that the road to distinction lay in consistently spelling the city’s name without abbreviation: “Saint John”. The newspaper further announced that it would itself do so, effective immediately. A mere six weeks later, the city council made it official. The river might be the “St. John”, but the city’s name would always be spelled out fully.

So there ya go.

Full statue, with E.g. and Sonny Boy, in Queen Square.

I will, in parentheses, add that in local publications it is acceptable to write “SJ”. But no “St. John”, please.

And don’t worry; it took numerous corrections on the part of E.g. before I got this fact drilled into my own head. I may be Canadian, but I’m definitely “from away”.

Thanks are due to this page for the facts behind the spelling of Saint John.

Turtle Tops

It’s meme time!

Bobbie has tagged me for a meme. The game is to enter a string of words — preferably not a post title, and the shorter the string the better — into the Google search engine, in hopes of turning up one’s own blog in the very first spot.

That was a long sentence. Once more,

1. Think of unusual or creative phrases you’ve used in your blog — the fewer words, the better.
2. Alternately, think of several seemingly unrelated words that are contained in one of your blog entries.
3. Google the group of words.
4. See if your blog turns up at the top of the list.

Bobbie came up with a nice list of twelve phrases. Even before I’d read it through, I was hoping — and satisfied — to see that “exotic underwater nudies” was on her list. (A delightful post, by the way, even if it has nothing to do with sordid Saturday nights.)

So I hied myself over to Google. And the first phrase I entered, as a test, was one from Livingisdetail’s blog: “paddock thong“. Success! The top two Google items were entries from One Little Detail. (Livingisdetail’s “paddock thong” post, a humourous look at search terms, deserves to be read too.)

In order to answer this meme’s challenge, I decided to go through my Limericks of the Turtle page and pull out short phrases. I succeeded in finding four three-word strings and three two-word strings that will put my blog at the top of Google’s list. Some of you may remember supplying the word around which I built some of these poems. Here are the top Turtle blog turner-uppers:

• moth mouse smote
• mousies not chickies
• wee gamine Laura
• young puffin perched
• food’ll reveal
• smiled beakily
• swelly marm’lade.

Tadaa!

Now it’s your turn! I call on S. Le, Almostgotit, and Lolarusa to try the meme. If anyone else does as well, I’d be happy to hear from you in this entry’s comment section.

That’s all for now. Time to curl up with the dogs and my latest French novel (and those of you familiar with Victorian literature would know that  “French novel” was once as ambiguously risqué a phrase as “paddock thong” or “exotic underwater nudie”) .

Turtle Channels Sanskrit

Well, no. Fact is, we have only 26 letters to transcribe every word in any language ever written — Sanskrit, for example, has a much more sensible 53 — so the probability of finding a word to match a combination of English vowels and consonants is pret-ty high. Besides, I thought it was Hebrew.

Lemme explain. I awoke from a dream this morning, in which I was discussing Judaism with a Jewish woman about my age. We were in her rec room. I was sitting on the rust-coloured shag carpeting beside a coffee-table-sized memorial, on which sat a cylindrical, pewter urn with the letters CHAYAM inscribed around the top. I tried to remember such a word from my Biblical Hebrew course, but couldn’t come up with one.

On awaking, I decided the word was meant to be “chaim”, which means “life”. You may recall Tevye and his neighbour with their wine glasses, toasting each other with the words, “L’chaim! To life!” in Fiddler On the Roof.

But I decided to google the letters I’d seen anyway, since I so rarely manage to read anything in dreams. Is there a Hebrew word transcribed this way?

Nope; but there’s a Sanskrit one. According to Vedabase ,

chāyām means: shelter; darkness; shade.

ańghri-chāyām means: the shade of His feet.

In some ways, chaim and chāyām are in opposition: life, celebration, darkness, shade. But in both terms there is peace, gratitude, acknowledgment of the Most High. And Turtle, always one for wordplay, thinks that’s kinda nifty.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden hankering for Kosher butter chicken.

License Plate of the Vanities

Standard issue: four letters and three letters separated by a crown. Plate is updated annually with a sticker in top right corner.

A few years back, Ontario opened up to its citizens the possibility of spending even more money for government services, with vanity plates for cars.

If you’re unsure of the concept, a vanity plate is a personalized license plate. Here in Ontario, you can choose to decorate it with one of over forty graphics — the Toronto Maple Leafs, the SPCA, and the Rotary Club are a few examples — or you can choose your own sequence of between two and eight letters or numbers. As long as your sequence is unique, you’re permitted to pay for it.

Some motorists like to monogram their plates. A married couple by the name of Sandy Jones and Kim Robertson, for example, might spring for:
SJ KR .

Others may give hints about their occupation, describe their personality, spell out their name, or converse with the drivers around them. Some licenses are harder to decipher than others; solving their puzzles helps to while away travel time.

Here are a few I’ve seen lately. I like how so many of them answer questions.

Who owns this car?

• WEE JAN
• KLANCY
• SIR JOHN
• GOTTFTHR

What kind of car is that?

• MYSOLARA
• MRS KIA
• INIW
• ALEC
• HYBRID Z

Tell me something about your job.

• CHEF 1
• SIGNS UP
• MT BTLS
• RAZOR 33
• CHUTNEY

How long are you planning to work?

• TL IWIN

How would you describe yourself?

• HOTLIPZ
• QRXZ
• TEXAS A
• WER CDN
• M84EVR
• RE KING
• FN 2 BME
• MR MOST

Have you anything to say?

• RU SXY 2
• CUQT
• GO 2 GO

How would you like your license plate to read?

Emphasis Added

It’s election day in the States. Over at Urban Observation, Urban Thought asks: “Why do people keep saying that Barack Obama is ’seeking to become the first black president in U.S. history’?”

If Obama wins the larger share of the votes today, he will become the first black American President. However, Urban Thought points out, “Do you really think he is saying in his head, ‘I want to be the first black President’?”

Well — probably not. While the prospect of a black president — or a woman president if it were Hillary Clinton — is exciting, it is not the correct title. If elected, Obama or Clinton would both be the same thing: President.

I would also posit that Sir Ian McKellen did not become a gay actor, nor Louis Armstrong a black musician, nor Margaret Atwood a woman writer, nor Audre Lorde a gay, black, woman poet. They became, respectively, an actor, a musician, a novelist, and a poet.

And my point is…?

My point is, no one bothers to state that Sir Ian McKellen is a white actor, or that Louis Armstrong is a male musician, or that Margaret Atwood is a straight novelist, or that Audre Lorde is an anglophone poet.

White is expected. (In Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, Sidney Poitier was not expected.) Male is normal. (In an episode of “Petticoat Junction”, Uncle Joe assumes that the “MD” on a guest’s bag means she’s from Maryland.) Straight is the orientation of the vast majority (except in that delicious high-school auditorium scene near the end of the movie In and Out) . English is the language spoken the world over. (Apparently a politician in some English-speaking country once said, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us!”).

It is good to know of successful people who don’t fit the usual model. It is good to be informed of their differences, in order to appreciate the extra struggles they had to undergo, and to rejoice with them. What isn’t good is to insist on always naming the unusual attribute, until it becomes part of the job title. Because when that happens, these successful people are no longer on the same playing field as those who fit all the criteria. They are set apart by the qualifier, often with the implication that they are on a lower rung. 

Think of it. The term “lady author” evokes someone who pens bad verses while sipping her morning tea. A “male nurse” must also be a substandard fellow, because we all know that boys, the superior sex, are doctors, and girls, the inferior sex, are nurses.

Et cetera.

It’s getting late. By the time many of you read this entry, the States will already have decided the next president. It may or may not be the man who, as the press claims, has “sought to become America’s first black president.” And maybe a few years from now, E.g. and I will be celebrating some phenomenon called a “same-sex blessing,” while Urban Thought and his fiancée will be planning their “black wedding.”

Now do you see my point?

Whoops

Yesterday, E.g. and I were discussing something — not a clue what it was now — and I summed up the situation with an old saw, to whit: “The Devil makes work for idle hands.” At least, that’s what I wanted to say, but I managed to mash this sentence with another old saw, to whit: “Many hands make light work.” This unintentional blending of these two phrases resulted in the half-whit seesaw: “The Devil makes hands for light work.”

Today, then, I’ve decided to produce a list of deliberate half-whit seesaws, constructed from proverbs, nursery rhymes, and other recognizable literature. See if you can parse them. Enjoy!

1. Every dog must know which side his bread is buttered on.
2. Strike while the fat is in the fire.
3. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan spoil the broth.
4. Make hay while on the other side of the fence.
5. What’s sauce for the goose gathers no moss.
6. Boats of mine a-boating fetch a pail of water.
7. There’s no place like a handbasket.
8. Don’t put the cart before the spilled milk.
9. The proof of the pudding keeps the doctor away.
10. You can’t eat your cake and save nine.

A French Lesson

What’s that on your nose, Cai? Is that sand?

Yes, it’s Cherry Beach sand.

Oh, you were at the beach?

Yes, Mummy and Mummy took Fergus and me down there to play tonight, right after supper. Mummy threw the ball in the lake for me to fetch. I loved it!

What’s “sand” in French?

It’s sable. Now take a look at this:

See how the lake water from the beach brings out the dark colour on my back? That’s because I’m a red sable.

Oh, that’s neat! I — hello, Fergus, what would you like?

Y’a-tu des biscuits, M’man? J’ai ben faim, moé!

Of course. You can each have a biscuit.

When Pets Use English, or, Sometimes it’s a Mistake Not to Focus on the Cat

 

 

Our Cardigans are learning to walk nicely. Cai, the two-year-old, is pretty good most of the time now; Fergus, almost seven months, still pulls; and the two of them together on their way to the park have the strength that could turn a limestone quarry into prime arable land. Where’s a plough when you need one?

So they’ve been hearing the word “Sit!” a lot. Apparently, “sit” in Cardigan means to lower one’s tail to the ground for the length of time it takes a human to say the word “sit”.

So they’ve been hearing the word “wait” a lot too. “Wait” means to gaze intently at a door until it opens two snout-widths, and then swarm it.

So they’ve been hearing the phrase “Ex-cuse me, guys!” a lot as well. This phrase is the cue to snap at one’s sibling in the attempt to make Mummy believe that it was said sibling’s fault.

Something else I tried today was inspired by one of Dennis the Vizsla’s videos. Cai has gotten to know that “Bring it!” means he needs to set the toy at my feet before I’ll reach for it to throw it again. Today, I asked him to sit, stood in front of him, and turned my back to him before throwing the toy. Pretty comical. Every time I got turned around, I would find Cai shifted to my left, keeping his eyes on the prize.

 

Cai was much less fidgety once I started standing with my feet apart and holding the toy down at his nose level. Then I announced, “Get the toy!” and threw it sideways. Cai liked this game. And look! He’s learning more English!

Now compare this with what happened earlier this morning. When Cuca, our four-year-old cat, woke me up, I stumbled downstairs, opened the laptop and turned it on, set Cuca’s little saucer of wet food on the table (the only way to keep Fergus from stealing it), started the coffee, and took Fergus for his potty break. On arriving at the table myself with my cuppa, I saw that Cuca had entered something on my Google home page:

ngf gg

I smiled indulgently. Aww, how cute! And just for fun, I googled it.

The page is copyrighted, so I’m not supposed to reproduce it without permission, but it’s probably okay to describe it: a scholarly paper by six anatomists describing the development of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) in facial nerves and geniculate ganglia (GG) of developing quail embryos.

Ah, here it is, thinks Cuca. This section makes it clear that the more a bird twitches its 14th ganglion, the more nervous it’s becoming. If I can keep an eye on the 14th and the 6th — the one signalling imminent flight — I’ll know at what moment I need to strike…

Street kitties. They know how to survive.

Looking Ahead a Little and Behind a Lot

George Bernard Shaw.

Photo pinched from Readprint.com .

I have three books on the go currently. Almost done a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories; a third of the way through a James Thurber anthology (his own, The Thurber Carnival first published in 1931); and starting in on the second act of G B Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.

I love the interplay of the timely and timeless in my reading. I enjoy, for example, how Holmes is presented using the most up-to-date equipment: steamboats, the telegraph, a gazeteer (don’t ask) , trains that hurtle through the English countryside at 53 1/2  miles per hour. Thurber’s technology, though a bare thirty years later, seems much closer to our own era than to Conan Doyle’s: the car, the telephone, the airplane, mentioned with little blasé shrugs.

Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra was written in 1901, the same year in which Queen Victoria died, and contemporary with the Sherlock Holmes stories. While Shaw was careful to avoid anachronisms in this play, he did skewer turn-of-the-century England in his stage directions.

I’d like you to think of an upper middle-class, late Victorian drawing room. Think of the upholstery. The wallpaper. The table cloths, doilies, antimacassars, cushions, chair and chesterfield skirts, drapes, tassels. The fresh flowers, automata, carved mantelpiece clocks, pre-Raphaelite prints, looking-glasses, cut-glass decanters, taxidermia. Picturing it? Good. Here’s a bit of Shaw’s social commentary, in the guise of setting, from the beginning of Act II of Caesar and Cleopatra. Enjoy!

• Alexandria. A hall on the first floor of the Palace, ending in a loggia approached by two steps. Through the arches of the loggia the Mediterranean can be seen, bright in the morning sun. The clean lofty walls, painted with a procession of the Egyptian theocracy, presented in profile as flat ornament, and the absence of mirrors, sham perspectives, stuffy upholstery and textiles, make the place handsome, wholesome, simple and cool, or, as a rich English manufacturer would express it, poor, bare, ridiculous and unhomely. For Tottenham Court Road civilization is to this Egyptian civilization as glass bead and tattoo civilization is to Tottenham Court Road.

I’m intrigued by the play so far. Good thing, too, because in a week or so I’ll be accompanying E.g. and her longtime friend Gilda down to Stratford (Ontario) to see Christopher Plummer take the role of Caesar himself. Gilda lives ‘wa-a-ay over in Saint John, New Brunswick, so whenever she manages to visit, she wants to go to Stratford. She’s a sensible woman.

Eeews for Tuesday

“Current temperature, 28 degrees and tasty.” 

Too much cooking in the warm weather; my brain’s overheated. Result: puns. Beware.

I. E.g. caught Fergus chewing a piece of stick on the balcony. She took it away and scolded him, saying, “Why must you always be eating things that upset your tummy?”

I replied, “He’s just making sure to keep up the splat-us quo.”

II. Things I reflect on while washing the dishes:

• What denomination would snakes be?
• Probably Pentecostal: they speak in tongues.
• Why, then, would a snake smile as a hawk flew away with him?
• Because he was caught up in the raptor.

III. Goodbear posted a nature quiz the other day. Her readers were to try and guess the bird from a photo showing mainly its right foot, with a little of its underbelly and wing feathers. I correctly identified it as a Great Horned Owl. When I found out this morning, I bounded upstairs to E.g. singing out, “Guess what! I won the talon contest!”

All right now, get back to your more sensible blogfriends.