‘Those vegans’ and nonveganism advocacy

An Elephant in the Room is a coherent and valuable resource for vegans who join in solidarity with all sentient beings on this shared planet. We speak a truth that vanquishes denial — one argument at a time.
Look into the eyes of the billions sentenced to death for the crime of being edible, for sating crazy appetites, for sturdy hide, the whim of fashion, for savvy consumers, enterprising marketers and future futures markets.
Examine the banner at the top of this blog. Look into the those five eyes and realize that you gaze into a complex ocular system that arose during the Cambrian explosion. When you look into the eyes of a fellow sentient being you are looking at a fellow soul.

There's an Elephant in the Room's avatarThere's an Elephant in the Room blog

chick-1890774_960_720There’s a perception of veganism, and of many vegans too, as vociferous and/or challenging. We’ve all seen comments that go, ‘thank goodness you’re not one of ‘those vegans’ and no doubt this is intended as a compliment by those who are not vegan themselves.

This ‘compliment’ sits alongside a nonvegan perception of themselves as passive, just quietly minding their own business, not wanting to be challenged about their ‘choices’ in the same way that they consider themselves to be tolerant of the ‘choices’ of others.

I’ve seen posts shared humbly, even apologetically by vegans, aware they will be viewed by those who aren’t vegan, knowing that they are likely to be subjected to some form of retaliation for disturbing the tranquillity.

And it occurs to me that although not being vegan is the default state for the vast majority of us, it is VERY far from being a passive…

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Sometimes that Happen

Sometimes you feel like a song, sometimes you don’t.

sometimes

Yahoo Answers received a question five years ago. A query that gnaws at the craw:

I'm looking for a song with the word 'sometimes' as the
first word of the chorus?
Like I said, the chorus starts with the word ‘sometimes’ or ‘sometime’ I think. I know it’s sung by a group (men). I know how the melody goes, but that’s kind of hard to type. I will check every suggestion for possibility.
Update: So far not the song I am looking for. I think the song is from the late 90’s, or early 00’s. And a group of men, definitely sung by more men together.
Let’s try to help that searcher find the group (men)!
Salient points — ‘sometimes .or. sometime‘, group (men), late 90‘s .or. early 00‘s. Surf’s up! Happy searching!
I found a useful website that might provide clues:
A useful site
earworm
Source
What if the search term is not the first word of a song? Well, there is help — Song Facts. I just visited Song Facts and discovered the six (6) song titles “Sometimes.”
I write this post in the waning hours of Valentine 2017. Perhaps you’ll find a sometime song that you can warm over for Valentine 2018. ❤
sweetheart-candy-hearts
How Sweetheart Candies are Made
Excess didn’t end on Super Bowl Sunday. Check the clearance aisle for half-priced red-foil spoil.

everytime

Consider the word “word”. Is  bird a word? Here is an ear worm from 1963 for your viewing and listening measure.
trashmen
The Trashmen
Borrowing again from John Ciardi — Good words to you!
Thanks for reading.

A SaFaRi into the SaHaRa

My last detour took us to a Picnic (pique-nique in French) in 1934 Grange, Pennsylvania. Here is a footnote to that previous post has ended up in the opening paragraph for this post. You may not have wondered about the Yiddish word shtick . It’s from the German noun Stück (a piece).  

What’s your shtick, Bill?

Yakking  on about different ways to yak away. 

There is just something exhilarating about learning languages. aha-momentHere are three (3) remarkable benefits: 

  1. remove barriers,
  2. erase borders and, if fortune favors,
  3. become less baffled

We’re glad that you are taking a safari into the Sahara. Please tell us less.

Root letters in Arabic do something quite curious. They occur in an ordained order. Here is a root you may have noticed in the title  — SFR. Arabic dictionaries segment meaning through a root system. Grab that Arabic dictionary over there and flip away until you’ve encounter SFR,  see below.

2-%d8%b3%d9%81%d8%b1-sfr

Don’t forget to read from right to left.

Bill, are you going to tell us about a book that teaches Arabic with aplomb?

Yes.

I want to share how much Sugar Comes from Arabic by Barbara Whitesides helped me master Arabic, and have a rollicking time at the same time. It’s an amazingly beautiful ring-bound volume that is simply delightful. As with all my reviews, I just want to pass on good words for great works. It’s what teachers do.

Calligraphy is one of those hobbies I’ve hobbled through with my left-hand. Now I can’t overestimate the unexpected thrill of gently pulling the pen along my paper — no plowing into the paper, or covering up writing while writing.  You may have noticed that English is written from left-to-right.

Let us consider prefixes, suffixes and diacritical marks. Hey you say, there are bunches of words having such and much to do with “travel” in Arabic — words like safari.Hey I say, the Arabic root for desert is SHR. Technically, the Sahara Desert suggests Desert Desert. Here is a fun web page for those wanting yet another resource on Arabic verb forms.sahara

Well that was breathtakingly tedious, but we needed to yawn in order to dispel stale air. But you were heading into a desert, please proceed.

Interesting innit?

 

Here’s another innit —

arabic-sound-heuristic
Here is a useful diagram for associating alphabet whats and wheres. I’ve found it helpful for distinguishing the “sun and moon” letters in Arabic.

Didn’t you write a toss-off post a while back — just trying to change the subject.

Yes — Sudden solitude in a crowded desert, based on a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion.

Thanks for reading.

 

Teitsch Deitsch

The time has come, the ziegler said, to speak of many things, or perhaps just about Teitsch and Deitsch.

yiddish
Yiddish borrowings — from Teitsch

Yiddish is a rendering of the German word Jewish — ‘Jüdisch‘.  This evening I took another look at it. A German might say ‘Such’ (but pronounce it ‘zook’) – ich suche einen neuen Look (I’m looking for a new look).

Where did you look, Bill? And, by the bye, we despise digression. And we’re easily unamused.

Among the less traveled crannies and nooks, under rocks or falling from trees. The usual haunts.

I’m the kind of person that spends moments thinking about the structure of German language — the gleanings of such squandered moments might help explain the resilience of languages based on German — things that Tiggers do best.

tiggers-do-best

Here’s my tentative thesis: German is so god-awful complicated and rigid that it remains recognizable to the speaker of modern Deutsch, by dint of complexity.

So you posit that it is a durable language — rigorously so. 

The Engländer spoke a form of German brought from Saxony (Sachsen), but the proverbial original German was jostled so thoroughly by the Vikings that all the inflections fell off.

Well at least I’ve anchored that reference to ‘things falling from trees.’

Do you speak Yiddish, Bill?

I can very easily understand the transliterated and the spoken Yiddish, i.e. without the Hebrew letters. It’s as familiar as Swedish or Dutch subtitles for a German film. In fact, Yiddish adopts German sounds and word order. Take a look and listen to the Omniglot site for a timely example.

heimish-101

Profile of an Endangered Language

Might we have a piece of birther cake?

A word from our sponsor:

Beware the big lie, the humorless, the enforcer of arbitrary rules, the racist, maker of rules for jazz performers. In short, never underestimate the threat of fascism. Only 15% of its speakers survived the Holocaust. Of the surviving speakers 10% live in New York, many by way of Ellis Island.

Why doesn’t the current President of the United States ever laugh? Or is that a ludicrous question?

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program, in progress.

Do you speak Pennsylvania Deitsch, Bill?

Those immigrants from the 18th century brought their language of origin.  Deitsch is a spoken language with several transliterations to mime the sound. Yet, the structure, word order and vocabulary survive with amazing fidelity. Interesting stuff

padutch1934picnic

Hiwwe wie Driwwe (a Deitsche newspaper)

On a related topic, what kind of beach books do you read?

Here is an out-of-print volume that I found at a local library discard sale for 50 cents.  

The World’s Writing Systems by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright

the-worlds-writing-systems

Here is that very book on archive.org

Thanks for reading.