Watching for winter-wet season

I’ve been reading Gary Snyder’s most recent book of essays, Back on Fire (2007). In a couple of the essays, Snyder talks about the two seasons in the Mediterranean-type climate of much of California: there’s the summer-dry season, and the winter-wet season.

It has been odd for me, having recently moved from the south coast of Massachusetts, to hear people in California talk about seasons. We had a cool day a couple of days ago, and I overheard someone in the supermarket say to the cashier, “Fall is finally here.” It doesn’t feel like autumn to me. Autumn means a killing frost, and a changing weather pattern that includes more rain storms, and wide variations between warm and cold. We have not had a killing frost here, nor an increased incidence of rain storms; the earth, where it hasn’t been watered by in-ground irrigation systems, is still hard and parched and cracked dry, and the grasses are still dry and crisp, and the fire danger (as it is every summer in California) is still very high. We are not experiencing autumn here yet; we are still in the summer-dry season.

Somewhere in one of the essays in Back on Fire, Snyder says people living in California should abandon the kind of lawns and landscapes that require heavy water usage in the summer — practices that have been imported from the “Atlantic coast,” says Snyder; although these practices are really indigenous to the English climate, because even on the Atlantic coast lawns need heavy irrigation in the summer in order to stay green. But as a poet, Snyder also gives us new language, so that we can start thinking and acting in new ways. The English language has names for four seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn or fall; these words come from the land where the English language began. In New England, most years have five seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall, Indian summer; we had to invent a new term for that season between fall and winter when the leaves have all fallen and weather gets warm again and there is still plenty of fresh food for humans and other animals to eat. In this bioregion of California, west of the crest of the Sierras, there are just two seasons, which Snyder calls summer-dry and winter-wet; to try to impose the old English terms for the four English seasons is a kind of self-delusion.

So it does not feel like autumn yet, because there is no autumn here, not really. Winter-wet has not yet begun; the hills are still brown, the trees are dull and faded green; we are still waiting for the first big rain storm of the new season. Yet here near the Pacific coast, we can feel that the weather pattern is changing; the fog is not reliable as it is in the middle of the summer-dry season. (And maybe here we need to add a third season to Snyder’s two, because Snyder lives up in the foothills of the Sierras where there is no summer fog. Maybe we need to talk about a summer-fog season which precedes the real summer-dry season; but I haven’t lived here long enough to be able to say.) We’re still in summer-dry season, but winter-wet season is just around the corner.

More on Eastern New England accents

In an earlier post, I spoke about how I’ve been teaching children in Sunday school how to speak with an Eastern New England accent. That has gotten me thinking about Eastern New England accents — for there is more than one accent indigenous to the region.

Wikipedia has a fairly good article on Boston English, and they do recognize that different socio-economic classes in the region have different accents (alas, their article on the upper class “Boston Brahmin” accent is barely a stub). In addition to explaining non-rhoticity, the Wikipedists point out some pronunciation peculiarities that I didn’t know I had, such as the caught-cot merger. But they don’t include one key phonological characteristic that I have noticed over they years: the presence of the glottal stop as a consonant. Thus, for example, people from certain parts of the Boston area pronounce “metal” with a glottal stop in place of a “t.” Similarly, many of us pronounce “yup” with a glottal stop in place of the “p.”

There used to be fairly strong class and regional differences within Eastern New England. When I was working as a salesman twenty years ago, I could almost tell what town someone came from by their accent — if, that is, they were working class. Middle class accents differed from working class accents, and had less regional differentiation within the broader Eastern New England region, but there were still broad distinctions in the Boston area between North Shore, urban, and South Shore accents. I did not come into contact with many upper class accents, but they were clearly distinct from working class and middle class accents.

While the distinctive Eastern New England accent has been changing in recent years, and fading with the onslaught of people migrating in from out of state, it still exists. There are still some regional differences within Eastern New England — I certainly noticed a distinct difference in accent when I moved to New Bedford five years ago. Providence and Boston still have their distinctive accents, as does the coast of Maine.

I would love to hear from my readers about your experiences with the Eastern New England accent (whether you’re a native speaker or an outsider). What regional differences have you noticed within the Eastern New England accent? How about some good regional vocabulary I can teach the kids (e.g., Marybeth has already suggested “bubblah”)?

Freelancer’s Union

I just joined the Freelancer’s Union. This is a non-traditional union — it’s not focused on a single industry, instead of dues it charges fees for services. Yet as a union, it gets directly involved with the political process to fight for rights of workers. So, for example, about 30% of the U.S. workforce can currently be classified as freelance workers, yet our health insurance system is designed so that employers provide health insurance only to workers who are permanent employees. Freelancers (all the way from day laborers to high-priced consultants) may find themselves either unable to get health insurance, or forced to pay far more per individual than big employers do.

I joined the Freelancer’s Union because in many ways clergypeople function as freelancers. Yes, I’m a full-time permanent employee right now, and yes I’m lucky enough to work for a congregation that provides me with adequate health care — but lots of Unitarian Universalist ministers (and clergy of all faith traditions) are not so lucky. In my case, I do belong to a professional association, the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA), but frankly the UUMA useless when it comes to helping me with things like health insurance, and advocating for me in the political arena. Indeed, the only reason I belong to the UUMA is that I am required to do so to stay in fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association — other than that, the UUMA is a useless drag on my professional expenses.

So I’m putting the word out to other clergypeople I know — think about joining the Freelancer’s Union. It’s a national membership organization for independent workers, and we think independent workers should ahve the same rights as traditional workers. We’re a big political constituency, and we can organize around issues, and make politicians listen. It’s all about working together to make all of our lives more secure. Check it out, and see what you think.

The folk process

We’ve been singing a great song in my Labor Heritage Chorus, called “May the Work that I Have Done.” The lyrics that we use go something like this:

May the work that I have done speak for me,
May the work that I have done speak for me,
If I fall short of my goal, someone else will take a hold,
May the work that I have done speak for me.

It’s easy to make up more verses: May the marches I’ve been on speak for me; May the songs that I have sung; etc.

But where did this song come from? Mudcat.org, the indispensable folk music Web site, has a short thread on this song, tracing it back to a 1969 recording by the gospel duo The Consolers; the songwriting credit goes to Sullivan Pugh, one half of that duo. New lyrics (basically what I’ve included above) are attributed to San Franciscan John Fromer.

Now I’d love to be able to share this song with Sunday school volunteers here at church. But the easiest way to share such a song in a Unitarian Universalist church is with sheet music. Unfortunately, the tune we’ve been singing in the Labor Heritage Chorus is somewhat similar to the Consoler’s recorded version, but it has been run through the folk process long enough that it now sounds significantly different — the only sheet music I’ve been able to find uses the Consoler’s version of the tune and words. This probably means I’ll have to transcribe yet another song. Nobody ever told me in seminary that I’d feel the need to transcribe songs as part of being a minister.

Improved communication tools…

Google is trumpeting another revolution: Google Wave, a new online communication tool. This video makes Google Wave look pretty good — the best of email, Facebook, online collaboration, SMS, etc., all rolled into one user-friendly package. But Wave is still in development, and we’ll have to wait and see if it turns out to be the real thing, or just another clunky dead-end.

Even if Google Wave turns out to be crap, I will say we are overdue for some kind of improved communication tool. Here in the Palo Alto church, we do a fair amount of online collaboration and communication, and we’d be hard-pressed to function without it. Non-profit organizations have to make increasingly efficient use of staff time and volunteer time (and I think the Great Recession has accelerated this process), but the tools we currently have available to us feel clunky. Email is essential, but we all know how awkward email can be. Google Docs and other online collaboration tools work well, but they are very limited. Texting works for me, but the only people who text are people my age or younger, and texting does not easily lend itself to conversations involving multiple people. Blogging is another great tool, for those of us who read and/or write blogs. Most of all, I do think it would be nice to have something that integrated all these disparate communication tools, and the real genius of Google Wave might be the idea of having all these different communication tools integrated into one place.

Update 4 August 2010: Google has announced it will no longer continue to support Wave. This comes not long after Facebook passed half a billion users.

Are you a tenner or a twelver?

The big question in certain California circles right now is whether you are a tenner or a twelver; that is, do you think we should try to pass a ballot measure reversing Prop 8 (and restoring the right to same-sex marriage) in 2010, or in 2012?

The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry (UULM) recently released a “pastoral letter” outlining their position as twelvers. While certainly UULM’s position will annoy some people who are tenners, if you read the actual letter you’ll find it to be carefully considered. UULM points out that one factor they took into consideration is the changed economic climate, which “has ripped holes in the fabric of essential human services.” I would state this more bluntly: in the middle of the Great Recession, with the unemployment rate rising, would you rather donate money to overriding Prop 8 (knowing that millions and millions of dollars from opponents of same-sex marriage will pour into Caligornia), or would you rather donate your money to food banks and poverty relief programs? UULM offers additional pragmatic reasons why we should wait until 2012, and it’s worth reading their letter.

You will not be surprised to learn that I myself am a reluctant twelver. I call myself a reluctant twelver, because I would prefer to see religious marriage separated from marriage as a civil contract. In the mean time, I hope we can postpone the fight to overturn Prop 8 until 2012. If someone puts it on the ballot for 2010, I guess I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and fight tooth and nail to overturn Prop 8 next year — but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

We play games and make quilt squares

Series of entries in my teaching diary about an experimental Sunday school class. First entry.

During the first fifteen minutes of the worship service this morning before we went off to Sunday school, the children got to hear the church choir sing a delightful arrangement of the folk song “Somos el Barco,” originally written by singer-songwriter Lorre Wyatt. Melissa, one of the teachers in our class, went up to light the chalice with her son Zach, who is in our Sunday school class, and her daughter who is in the high school youth group that meets at the same time as our class. Then it was time for the children to go off to Sunday school, while we all sang “This Little Light of Mine” together. This was a spirited rendition of “This Little Light,” with our music director, Henry, at the piano doing a rocking gospel-style accompaniment, which brought forth full-voiced singing from the choir and congregation. I noticed that a number of the children knew “This Little Light” and were singing it as we gathered together at the back of the church, and some of us kept singing during the last verse as we slipped out one of the back doors to head off to our classroom. Each of these elements of this opening time in the worship service has been planned with Amy, our parish minister: at my request, she chose ten hymns that are kid-friendly and that we will try to teach in Sunday school this fall; she is getting families with children to light the chalice each week so kids can see their peers participating in the worship service; and she is including different elements of the worship service during the first fifteen minutes so that the children can get a sense of the different things that happen during worship.

When we had gathered in our classroom, we had nine children: Dorit, Heather, Zach, Sara, Perry, Monty, Lily, Kerry, and Sid (note that I never use real names for children). Kerry and Sid were new this week; Kerry is friends with Lily, has come to church before, and is friends with Lily; Sid’s family is completely new to the church, and is in (I think) 3rd grade. There were four of us adults today: Susie, Melissa, me, and Sid’s mom who decided to us on Sid’s first Sunday.

“Let’s get the carpet squares in a circle,” I said. That took a while, but the children are beginning to realize that I expect them to help set up the classroom, and more children helped out than did last week. As we were settling in to the circle, I reviewed some of the silly lessons in speaking with a New England accent from previous classes: “What’s this called?” [patting the floor] “The flo-ah!” “And what city did I live in before I came here?” “Nu Befit!” [New Bedford] And so on. It turned out that Sid and his mom had recently moved to California from Massachusetts, so they were amused by my New England accent lessons. While these lessons in speaking with a New England accent are mostly silly fun, I have been thinking that many children are unaware that there are regional accents in the United States; they are fairly aware that people who grew up in another country, or speaking a language other than English, might have an accent, but they are not nearly so aware that people talk differently just because they live in a different part of the country. Continue reading →

Still no Internet at home, confusion reigns

We still haven’t gotten around to getting Internet service at home (what can I say except that moving across the country this time has not gone smoothly). Thus you will not see posts every day, and some posts (such as this one) will be back dated.

The really hard part of not having home Internet access is that I cannot constantly check the Web for answers to questions that pop into my brain at random moments. Sometimes I have to go for days without being able to answer questions like: When did Usenet first start functioning? When did Judith Sargent Murray die? Who wrote the poem that contained the line “a rose-red city, ‘half old as time’,” and who wrote the fantasy story for which that line of poetry provides the denouement? Without Internet access, I am no longer filled with answers to pointless questions like these, and I grieve the loss.