Another synchronistic occurrence listening to the podcast yesterday. About a month ago I had an opportunity to participate in a group psychedelic experience...that was synchronistic in itself as i was turned on to it by a friend i had lost touch with but reconnected with after 18 years. He certainly wasnt someone I would have ever expected to have participated in such things. He made an introduction and in July I participated in a ceremony (interestingly at 56 years of age i was amongst the youngest participants).
During the experience I believe I had an encounter with my grandfather who had died in World War II and whom I never met. He was a medic and the report of his death indicated that he had courageously attended to a wounded soldier when he heard an incoming shell and coveedr up the soldier, giving is life and saving the other. The report indicated he died instantly. During my trip and my encounter with him I got the feeling he didn't die instantly, that he heard the 'thundering sound" coming to take him down. And that for however long he had before he passed he was "grabbing at the earth, holding on tight, wishing for [his] momma and [his] sweet heart's delight (perhaps my grandmother and my mother).
The family narrative was always that my grandfather was a hero and died instantly. And certainly, there is a truth to that. But this encounter with him allowed me to see there was likely way more going on. He himself never experienced any sense of heroism. He regretted his decision to enlist and leave his mother, wife and daughter. Im not a believer in life after death, reincarnation or speaking to the dead in any way and I can only describe the experience and wont try to explain what happened.
The song Border Country very much illustrates what was communicated to me during this experience.. The shadows in both directions describing the towering trees in the impenetrable, treacherous Hurtgen Forest. The thunder, the shelling.
Loved this episode. Pete- It was like the good ol' days of sitting at the Bliss Cafe and enjoying a cold brew with ya. I've always loved your stories, poetry and inspiration. Miss ya buddy.
I enjoy the juxtaposition of being heavily involved in the quaker community, but not liking fantasy books because they’re not real. Humans are complicated haha
>>I was headed for Cairo, which is pronounced “Kay-ro.” I don't know why. They do this a lot in the South and Midwest. In Kentucky, Athens is pronounced “AY-thens” and Versailles is pronounced “Vur-SAYLES.” Bolivar, Missouri, is “BAW-liv-er.” Madrid, Iowa, is “MAD-rid.” I don't know whether the people in these towns pronounce them that way because they are backward, undereducated shitkickers who don't know any better or whether they know better but don't care that everybody thinks they are backward undereducated shitkickers. It's not really the sort of question you can ask them, is it? At Cairo I stopped for gas and in fact I did ask the old guy who doddered out to fill my tank why they pronounced Cairo as they did.
“Because that's its name,” he explained as if I were kind of stupid.
“But the one in Egypt is pronounced 'Ki-ro.'”
“So I've heard,” agreed the man.
“And so most people, when they see the name, think 'Ki-ro,' don't they?”
“Not in Kay-ro they don't,” he said, a little hotly.
There didn't see to be much to be gained by pursuing the point.<<
Doesn't seem fair to expect people to pronounce correctly words from a language they don't know. But Spanish vowels are so Easy, so regular.
You know the origin story of Buffalo, New York? The place was founded by the French. Since it's at the point where the Niagara River flows out of Lake Erie, they called it Beau Fleuve. When the Brits took over, they learned its name from the local Indians. But the Brits couldn't pronounce it properly & it degenerated into "buffalo". Of course there were no buffalo within many hundreds of miles.
This story has been contested, but it sounds very plausible.
Just to be equitable, the Spanish word for moustache (which is a French word...) is "bigote". The story there is that the fashion caught on in Spain during the Peninsular War after they saw British soldiers wearing them. The soldiers used to stroke their moustaches & said "By God!" a lot.
Who knows how true this is, but it makes a colourful story.
"It seems like so many place names are mistakes in translation but in that, a richer story forms."
Exactly. Language is anarchic, which is creative & fun. Also, it's a living thing, changes all the time. And hard rules are never that hard — if the consensus changes away from what you or I think is correct, too bad for us. Language refuses to be policed.
Well, English does, but French and Spanish actually have a "policing" policy on their language, though I don't know how well it works. My favorite weird word thing is the town of Coalinga, CA (pronounced ko-ah-ling-ah). It was originally the first coaling station on the railroad, thus "coaling A."
France & Spain both have official bodies — the Académie française & the Real Academia Española — whose task it is to regulate the language. This is a laughable notion, but it’s tradition.
The Académie française has become a vehicle for bestowing honours on literary figures & bigshot statesmen. It’s true that it publishes a dictionary considered the final say on usage, & this supposedly determines what’s taught in the schools. But nobody gives a damn what the Académie thinks. For example, it has repeatedly tried to exorcise English terms from French, but nobody pays attention.
I don’t know Spain or Spanish, but imagine the same is true there. I was once told by someone who lived thru it that even the Nazis failed in their attempt to eradicate Latin-based words that had crept into German, & replace them with often fanciful Germanic words. And if the Nazis couldn’t get their way, probably nobody can.
Nothing but Buffalo comes to mind in the way of a corrupted name, but sometimes just the very names are priceless in themselves. I grew up in southern Ontario with places like Drumbo, Dogs Nest & Punkiedoodles Corners not far away. Canada has lots of good place names (Flin Flon, Medicine Hat, Kamloops, Mushaboom), especially the province of Newfoundland (Come By Chance, Witless Bay, Blow Me Down, Dildo). My favourite is the Quebec town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! (only town in the world with two exclamation marks in its name).
Somehow I feel another Bryson quote coming on:
“There is almost no area of British life that isn’t touched with a kind of genius for names. (…) Nowhere, of course, are the British more gifted than with place names. Of the thirty thousand named places in Britain a good half, I would guess, are notable or arresting in some way. There are villages that seem to hide some ancient and possibly dark secret (Husbands Bosworth, Rime Intrinseca, Whiteladies Aston) and villages that sound like characters from a bad nineteenth-century novel (Bradford Peverell, Compton Valence, Langton Herring, Wootton Fitzpaine). There are villages that sound like fertilizers (Hastigrow), shoe deodorizers (Powfoot), breath fresheners (Minto), dog food (Whelpo), toilet cleansers (Potto, Sanahole, Durno), skin complaints (Whiterashes, Sockburn), and even a Scottish spot remover (Sootywells). There are villages that have an attitude problem (Seething, Mockbeggar, Wrangle) and villages of strange phenomena (Meathop, Wigtwizzle, Blubberhouses). There are villages without number whose very names summon forth an image of lazy summer afternoons and butterflies darting in meadows (Winterbourne Abbas, Weston Lullingfields, Theddlethorpe All Saints, Little Missenden). Above all, there are villages almost without number whose names are just endearingly inane — Prittlewell, Little Rollright, Chew Magna, Titsey, Woodstock Slop, Lickey End, Stragglethorpe, Yonder Bognie, Nether Wallop, and the practically unbeatable Thornton-le-Beans.”
Another synchronistic occurrence listening to the podcast yesterday. About a month ago I had an opportunity to participate in a group psychedelic experience...that was synchronistic in itself as i was turned on to it by a friend i had lost touch with but reconnected with after 18 years. He certainly wasnt someone I would have ever expected to have participated in such things. He made an introduction and in July I participated in a ceremony (interestingly at 56 years of age i was amongst the youngest participants).
During the experience I believe I had an encounter with my grandfather who had died in World War II and whom I never met. He was a medic and the report of his death indicated that he had courageously attended to a wounded soldier when he heard an incoming shell and coveedr up the soldier, giving is life and saving the other. The report indicated he died instantly. During my trip and my encounter with him I got the feeling he didn't die instantly, that he heard the 'thundering sound" coming to take him down. And that for however long he had before he passed he was "grabbing at the earth, holding on tight, wishing for [his] momma and [his] sweet heart's delight (perhaps my grandmother and my mother).
The family narrative was always that my grandfather was a hero and died instantly. And certainly, there is a truth to that. But this encounter with him allowed me to see there was likely way more going on. He himself never experienced any sense of heroism. He regretted his decision to enlist and leave his mother, wife and daughter. Im not a believer in life after death, reincarnation or speaking to the dead in any way and I can only describe the experience and wont try to explain what happened.
The song Border Country very much illustrates what was communicated to me during this experience.. The shadows in both directions describing the towering trees in the impenetrable, treacherous Hurtgen Forest. The thunder, the shelling.
Thanks for sharing the song.
Loved this episode. Pete- It was like the good ol' days of sitting at the Bliss Cafe and enjoying a cold brew with ya. I've always loved your stories, poetry and inspiration. Miss ya buddy.
I hope you do have Peter on the podcast again, what a prize this guy is.
I enjoy the juxtaposition of being heavily involved in the quaker community, but not liking fantasy books because they’re not real. Humans are complicated haha
👍👍
Bill Bryson on visiting Cairo, Illinois (1987)
>>I was headed for Cairo, which is pronounced “Kay-ro.” I don't know why. They do this a lot in the South and Midwest. In Kentucky, Athens is pronounced “AY-thens” and Versailles is pronounced “Vur-SAYLES.” Bolivar, Missouri, is “BAW-liv-er.” Madrid, Iowa, is “MAD-rid.” I don't know whether the people in these towns pronounce them that way because they are backward, undereducated shitkickers who don't know any better or whether they know better but don't care that everybody thinks they are backward undereducated shitkickers. It's not really the sort of question you can ask them, is it? At Cairo I stopped for gas and in fact I did ask the old guy who doddered out to fill my tank why they pronounced Cairo as they did.
“Because that's its name,” he explained as if I were kind of stupid.
“But the one in Egypt is pronounced 'Ki-ro.'”
“So I've heard,” agreed the man.
“And so most people, when they see the name, think 'Ki-ro,' don't they?”
“Not in Kay-ro they don't,” he said, a little hotly.
There didn't see to be much to be gained by pursuing the point.<<
Bryson himself grew up in Des Moines.
Doesn't seem fair to expect people to pronounce correctly words from a language they don't know. But Spanish vowels are so Easy, so regular.
You know the origin story of Buffalo, New York? The place was founded by the French. Since it's at the point where the Niagara River flows out of Lake Erie, they called it Beau Fleuve. When the Brits took over, they learned its name from the local Indians. But the Brits couldn't pronounce it properly & it degenerated into "buffalo". Of course there were no buffalo within many hundreds of miles.
This story has been contested, but it sounds very plausible.
Just to be equitable, the Spanish word for moustache (which is a French word...) is "bigote". The story there is that the fashion caught on in Spain during the Peninsular War after they saw British soldiers wearing them. The soldiers used to stroke their moustaches & said "By God!" a lot.
Who knows how true this is, but it makes a colourful story.
"It seems like so many place names are mistakes in translation but in that, a richer story forms."
Exactly. Language is anarchic, which is creative & fun. Also, it's a living thing, changes all the time. And hard rules are never that hard — if the consensus changes away from what you or I think is correct, too bad for us. Language refuses to be policed.
Well, English does, but French and Spanish actually have a "policing" policy on their language, though I don't know how well it works. My favorite weird word thing is the town of Coalinga, CA (pronounced ko-ah-ling-ah). It was originally the first coaling station on the railroad, thus "coaling A."
France & Spain both have official bodies — the Académie française & the Real Academia Española — whose task it is to regulate the language. This is a laughable notion, but it’s tradition.
The Académie française has become a vehicle for bestowing honours on literary figures & bigshot statesmen. It’s true that it publishes a dictionary considered the final say on usage, & this supposedly determines what’s taught in the schools. But nobody gives a damn what the Académie thinks. For example, it has repeatedly tried to exorcise English terms from French, but nobody pays attention.
I don’t know Spain or Spanish, but imagine the same is true there. I was once told by someone who lived thru it that even the Nazis failed in their attempt to eradicate Latin-based words that had crept into German, & replace them with often fanciful Germanic words. And if the Nazis couldn’t get their way, probably nobody can.
Nothing but Buffalo comes to mind in the way of a corrupted name, but sometimes just the very names are priceless in themselves. I grew up in southern Ontario with places like Drumbo, Dogs Nest & Punkiedoodles Corners not far away. Canada has lots of good place names (Flin Flon, Medicine Hat, Kamloops, Mushaboom), especially the province of Newfoundland (Come By Chance, Witless Bay, Blow Me Down, Dildo). My favourite is the Quebec town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! (only town in the world with two exclamation marks in its name).
Somehow I feel another Bryson quote coming on:
“There is almost no area of British life that isn’t touched with a kind of genius for names. (…) Nowhere, of course, are the British more gifted than with place names. Of the thirty thousand named places in Britain a good half, I would guess, are notable or arresting in some way. There are villages that seem to hide some ancient and possibly dark secret (Husbands Bosworth, Rime Intrinseca, Whiteladies Aston) and villages that sound like characters from a bad nineteenth-century novel (Bradford Peverell, Compton Valence, Langton Herring, Wootton Fitzpaine). There are villages that sound like fertilizers (Hastigrow), shoe deodorizers (Powfoot), breath fresheners (Minto), dog food (Whelpo), toilet cleansers (Potto, Sanahole, Durno), skin complaints (Whiterashes, Sockburn), and even a Scottish spot remover (Sootywells). There are villages that have an attitude problem (Seething, Mockbeggar, Wrangle) and villages of strange phenomena (Meathop, Wigtwizzle, Blubberhouses). There are villages without number whose very names summon forth an image of lazy summer afternoons and butterflies darting in meadows (Winterbourne Abbas, Weston Lullingfields, Theddlethorpe All Saints, Little Missenden). Above all, there are villages almost without number whose names are just endearingly inane — Prittlewell, Little Rollright, Chew Magna, Titsey, Woodstock Slop, Lickey End, Stragglethorpe, Yonder Bognie, Nether Wallop, and the practically unbeatable Thornton-le-Beans.”