Dreams and Rants
Two more days till school starts. Since yesterday, I'm excited about that prospect. School is far more energizing to me than moving and its accompanying chaos, and I'm seeing approaching deliverance. Actually, I think this will give me more motivation to finish moving tasks, although almost certainly no more time.
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Here's a little Facebook exchange under a picture of a sign in a western state advertising something mango-flavored:
Before this morning, I never quite knew what to call the above system of vowel pronunciations. Hiromi had described it to me as an international pronunciation system. I saw many evidences that it is indeed the system used almost everywhere when knowledgeable people use English letters to show how a foreign word should be pronounced. I saw it again last Wednesday evening when my double-first-cousin Marvin, who has a doctorate in linguistics and who has spent many years in Bible translation work, gave a presentation. Many of the people he introduced us to via photographs have African names, some of them names from a language that was not a written language until Marvin and his helpers created it. Every time those names appeared on the screen with the pictures, Marvin pronounced them according to the above rules for vowel sounds.
Most assuredly, such words are regularly mangled when people look only at the spelling and try to wing it without knowledge of how the pronunciation/writing system works.
Pronouncing names as they are likely pronounced in the foreign language can be awkward, but I'm like Amber. I feel irritated when the "rules" are trampled--especially when this is done smugly, instead of merely ignorantly.
I don't really expect the American world to switch to saying Ee-rock instead of Eye-rack for Iraq, and Ee-ron instead of Eye-ran for Iran (the latter sounds like a line straight out of the Tip and Mitten books from first grade), but a person can always dream--and rant.
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It's been 50 years since the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King (MLK) delivered his eloquent "I Have a Dream" speech. The event galvanized the country to get on board with civil rights legislation that, in retrospect, can be cited as the beginning of the end for legal racial discrimination in America.
Time published a special edition to commemorate the event. I was 11 years old at the time, and don't remember the march as clearly as some of the other racial discrimination challenges and tragedies around that time: James Meredith's bravery in enrolling at the University of Mississippi--the first black to try to join the all-white campus; the three young men (civil rights workers) who were murdered and their bodies concealed in a massive earth works barrier being constructed to form a dam; the little girls who were killed when a bomb ripped through the church they had gone to.
Kennedy is the president usually most clearly linked to great leaps forward in civil right matters, but I learned from Time that Truman and Eisenhower had both exercised helpful leadership in this area. Truman was the first president to address the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and Eisenhower sent Army troops to escort nine black children into a formerly segregated school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1953 when Brown v Board of Education (from Topeka, KS), the landmark school integration case, was still a year away.
Kennedy was very worried that the March would turn violent, and was cautious in supporting it in advance. After King's speech, however, he was clearly awed and said simply, "He's d______d good." Time says King . . . reset every standard for political oratory. Presidents ever since have been trying to match his words, power and moral authority." Kennedy met with King in the Oval Office after the March concluded, and Kennedy greeted Martin with "I have a dream . . . " thereby giving tribute both to King's eloquence and his own identification with King's dream.
Johnson acted heroically after Kennedy's assassination. The Civil Rights Act was passed on Johnson's watch, and his public comments in support of 600 blacks who had gathered peacefully to demand equal access to the voting booth moved MLK to tears, and clearly and publicly "explained us to ourselves" as Time stated it. Many among the 600 had been clubbed and tear-gassed by local police and state troopers, and Johnson stated firmly to a joint session of Congress afterward that "we shall overcome" "the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice." (Brilliant reference to the song "We Shall Overcome"--the anthem of the civil rights protest movement.)
I loved hearing the back story of King's speech. He departed from his prepared script after Mahalia Jackson (gospel singer and performer at the March) called out "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin. Tell 'em about the dream." Martin did, and the extemporaneous speech made history.
MLK's moral authority proved to be more durable in his public life than in his intimate life, and that is regrettable. I can't help, however, contrasting his message of peaceful protest and visionary thinking with the strident "Christian" voices so prominent today. Weapons, immigrants, voting rights, and social services are often shrilly-spoken buzz words when these voices are heard.
Blacks who lived fifty years ago will find certain aspects of these conversations familiar. Regrettably, the "Christian" voices don't sound much like Martin Luther King's. Helplessness in the face of injustice. That's the aspect of these current issues that will resonate with them. Certainly, that's not all that is present in these matters, but it's a very real part of what is present, and MLK's response was better than most of what they're hearing now.
************************
Here's a little Facebook exchange under a picture of a sign in a western state advertising something mango-flavored:
Most assuredly, such words are regularly mangled when people look only at the spelling and try to wing it without knowledge of how the pronunciation/writing system works.
Pronouncing names as they are likely pronounced in the foreign language can be awkward, but I'm like Amber. I feel irritated when the "rules" are trampled--especially when this is done smugly, instead of merely ignorantly.
I don't really expect the American world to switch to saying Ee-rock instead of Eye-rack for Iraq, and Ee-ron instead of Eye-ran for Iran (the latter sounds like a line straight out of the Tip and Mitten books from first grade), but a person can always dream--and rant.
********************
It's been 50 years since the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King (MLK) delivered his eloquent "I Have a Dream" speech. The event galvanized the country to get on board with civil rights legislation that, in retrospect, can be cited as the beginning of the end for legal racial discrimination in America.
Time published a special edition to commemorate the event. I was 11 years old at the time, and don't remember the march as clearly as some of the other racial discrimination challenges and tragedies around that time: James Meredith's bravery in enrolling at the University of Mississippi--the first black to try to join the all-white campus; the three young men (civil rights workers) who were murdered and their bodies concealed in a massive earth works barrier being constructed to form a dam; the little girls who were killed when a bomb ripped through the church they had gone to.
Kennedy is the president usually most clearly linked to great leaps forward in civil right matters, but I learned from Time that Truman and Eisenhower had both exercised helpful leadership in this area. Truman was the first president to address the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and Eisenhower sent Army troops to escort nine black children into a formerly segregated school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1953 when Brown v Board of Education (from Topeka, KS), the landmark school integration case, was still a year away.
Kennedy was very worried that the March would turn violent, and was cautious in supporting it in advance. After King's speech, however, he was clearly awed and said simply, "He's d______d good." Time says King . . . reset every standard for political oratory. Presidents ever since have been trying to match his words, power and moral authority." Kennedy met with King in the Oval Office after the March concluded, and Kennedy greeted Martin with "I have a dream . . . " thereby giving tribute both to King's eloquence and his own identification with King's dream.
Johnson acted heroically after Kennedy's assassination. The Civil Rights Act was passed on Johnson's watch, and his public comments in support of 600 blacks who had gathered peacefully to demand equal access to the voting booth moved MLK to tears, and clearly and publicly "explained us to ourselves" as Time stated it. Many among the 600 had been clubbed and tear-gassed by local police and state troopers, and Johnson stated firmly to a joint session of Congress afterward that "we shall overcome" "the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice." (Brilliant reference to the song "We Shall Overcome"--the anthem of the civil rights protest movement.)
I loved hearing the back story of King's speech. He departed from his prepared script after Mahalia Jackson (gospel singer and performer at the March) called out "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin. Tell 'em about the dream." Martin did, and the extemporaneous speech made history.
MLK's moral authority proved to be more durable in his public life than in his intimate life, and that is regrettable. I can't help, however, contrasting his message of peaceful protest and visionary thinking with the strident "Christian" voices so prominent today. Weapons, immigrants, voting rights, and social services are often shrilly-spoken buzz words when these voices are heard.
Blacks who lived fifty years ago will find certain aspects of these conversations familiar. Regrettably, the "Christian" voices don't sound much like Martin Luther King's. Helplessness in the face of injustice. That's the aspect of these current issues that will resonate with them. Certainly, that's not all that is present in these matters, but it's a very real part of what is present, and MLK's response was better than most of what they're hearing now.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
9:50 AM
2 Comments:
I am sure Marvin is honored to have a doctorate bestowed upon him by you. He tells me he has an MA, no doctorate. Thanks anyway.
Don
By
Anonymous, at 8/20/2013
I had a niggling doubt but was pretty sure that's what he was working on the last time he was in school. Thanks for the correction.
Just between us, I think he probably earned it, even if no institution has seen fit so far to bestow such a title.
By
Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige), at 8/22/2013
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