word of the day - 15 december 2010

untalkaboutable v. indescribable by words; unable to be expressed, much less analyzed or debated.

i made this one up. naturally...

just some thoughts

my favourite phrase today: the best of all possible worlds.

also;

heroin, the drug, is named by the bayer pharmaceutical company (of aspirin fame), which developed and sold it (heroin) as a cough suppressant. they derived the name (unsurprisingly, i suppose) from the greek word with which we are all familiar: hero!

word of the day - 1 november 2010

soliloquy n. from latin solus, the root of today's sole (as in only or alone, not as in foot) and loqui, to speak (see also colloquial, loquacious).


ps. elegance + loqui = eloquance

poetry break!

while i was cleaning today, i found a stack of index cards that mr. andrew and i had done a long time ago. i wanted to share some:



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Yes, you are quite beautiful STOP
But i find that besides the point STOP
I am writing to tell you that i am not coming to your mother's this thanksgiving, or next STOP

I am staying here in the mountains STOP
please rent out my room END TRANSMISSION


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Oh God, what am i doing here?

I don't know my lines.


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It felt like rain was coming down on me

but there had not been rai n here for several years
you
you cannot know

the way it rolls your spirit through God's great
fingers.

I was in the hands of God that day
When the rains fell.


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word of the day - 16 october 2010

beard n. probably from proto-indo-european bhar-dha, which begat the germanic offshoots of west germanic barthaz and latin barba (see also: barber; consider also: barbarian (from latin barbarus)).

the interesting thing is that all of these words aren't composites of other words, with roots and prefixes and such - beard is such a basic, close-to-nature thing that it is very fully its own word.

words of the day - 10 October 2010

these words are not my own musings, but mr. andrew showed me this wonderful article on words from other languages that have no english translation (ie. schadenfreude, wabi-sabi, toska). very cool.

jason wire's '20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world'.

"Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: 'No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.'"

word of the day - 3 october 2010

mag.na.ni.mi.ty n. from latin (surprise!) magnus, meaning 'great', root of mega (see also: magnum opus, magnum p.i.), and animus, meaning 'soul' or 'mind', but finding its roots in ane-, 'to breathe' or, more specifically, 'to exhale'. animus is also the root word of animal, so, at least in latin, animals do have souls!

h'm!

words of the day - 27 September 2010 (wow it's been a while)

can.na.bis sa.ti.va n. a latin adaptation of the greek kannabis meaning 'hemp', coupled with the also-latin sativus, meaning 'to cultivate'; cultivated hemp.

can.na.bis in.di.ca n. from indicus, latin for 'india'; indian hemp.

word of the day - 31 august 2010

cun.ni.lin.gus n. Derived from a vulgar Latin word for the vulva (cunnus) and the Latin word for tongue (lingua).

see also: cunnilingual.

i love that the latter half of this word is the root of the modern word "language". it's interesting to me that this form of the word would catch on as opposed to, say, cunnoralis, focusing on the tongue and the connotations thereof instead of the entire mouth. hm!

word of the day - 26th of august 2010

mi.ser n.

i've only just realized that "miser" is the root word of "miserable"!

it's funny when these things hit you.

word(s) of the day - 25th of august, 2010

rep.i.ti.tion n. a better way to spell "repetition".


when spelled "repitition", this word really comes alive. embodying in itself, a repitition of not only i's and t's, but also of vertical lines (some fonts more than others), AND of letters which require an extra stroke, EVEN in cursive script. after all, if you can throw the A out of 'repeat', who's protecting the E?

so this blog thing isn't working, so let's try this instead:

I've started a fresh Flickr account specifically for Photographic Arts + Trade and the photos that are and will be for sale. To your right, you can see a sampling, which you can follow to view more. If you see photos on that stream that aren't yet for sale, watch for them in the weeks to come! If you're especially interested in one or another, ask me about it!

Coming soon: BONNAROO.

love, miki.

As you may already know, I've been spending some time in southern Virginia lately, and I've been learning a great deal.

the other day, the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, declared April to be "Confederate History Month". He also blatantly left out of his proclamation any mention of the south's history of slavery, much to the protest of - well, most people.

And that is justified. It is wrong to deny that slavery was a major part of the Civil War, and the Southern way of life during that time period. HOWEVER, this has brought on an absolute onslaught of poorly-educated anti-southern name calling. Most people don't know anything about the Civil War beyond what they were taught in elementary-middle school history class, and most are seemingly oblivious to the fact that history books are written by the victors. Mr. Andrew just finished writing a paper on this subject, and I'd like to paraphrase just a bit-

So here are some of the major myths about the American Civil War, from the understanding of someone who is not American to begin with, yet still knows a few things more than most on the subject:

1. The South Had Slaves, The North Did Not

The economies between the north and south were drastically different, with the south being very agrarian, producing and exporting large cash crops such as hemp, wheat, tobacco, and cotton, and bringing in huge money for the United States. The north was primarily industrial, an economy where large scale slavery simply wasn't useful. However, if you went to a rich man's home in Pennsylvania in 1850, he had slaves - the cook, the butler, the maid, the gardener, the man who tended the horses, etc, etc. They were called the "indentured servants" but they were the same thing. Slavery was a problem for America as a whole. In FACT, Ulysses S. Grant, the most prominent Union general, was a slaveholder until well after the war ended, and was the last President of the United States to own slaves. Robert E. Lee, the highest Confederate military authority, held no slaves at all, and thought of the system of slavery as an abomination unto God.

2. The Emancipation Proclamation Freed Slaves.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. In the north, slavery already wasn't legal (though it still went on), and in the South, no one held the US government as any kind of authority. It was issued half way through the war, only when it looked as though Britain and France were going to acknowledge the Confederacy as an independent nation. It was politically motivated, and only in the way of international politics, because, myth number three:

3. The North Was Fighting, in Any Capacity, to Free the Slaves.

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, riots broke out all over the Northern states. Black churches, schools, and orphanages were burned to the ground in New York. Enrollment in the Union Army dropped dramatically (many soldiers deserted). It was generally accepted, at the time, that Lincoln would not win a second term as president. He had sworn up and down since the beginning that the war was for the Union of all the States, for Manifest Destiny, and was in no way for slavery. He only ever went as far as to say that his goal was to halt the expansion of slavery into the newly forming West, which was unclaimed territory wanted fiercely by both North and South. When Northerners heard that they, their sons, their husbands had been dying in droves for the deliverance of the African race, they were pissed.

4. The Men who Fought in the Confederate Army were Fighting for the Preservation of Slavery.

The real soldiers themselves, the men (and sometimes women) who laid their lives down, were simple, most often poor people. The rich slaveholders never had to go to war. The poor didn't care any more than they would now for the preservation of a rich man's way of life. Yes, they depended day-to-day on slavery, and if asked would more than likely prefer to keep it in place, in the interests of not decimating their families' livelihoods. More importantly, though, they fought for freedom from what they felt was an oppressive Northern government who didn't care for the South or the people within it. If we didn't watch so much damn TV, we might be seeing the exact same sentiment today. We already do, in a certain capacity. There are secessionist movements in California, Oregon, and Texas, to name a few.

5. Secession is Un-American

Thomas Jefferson shuddered at the thought of an America that would go 20, 30 years without a revolution. The United States was built on a bloody revolution, based on the prevailing feeling that their governing body (at the time, Great Britain) was not listening to them, or valuing them as citizens. The second amendment is almost always interpreted as the right of the people to own and carry a gun. In fact, the second amendment was introduced as the right of the people to bear arms against their own government, so that if the ruling party ever collected too much power and became tyrannical, the people could, by force, tear down that government and institute a new one. You don't keep the government in check with a second tier of government - in a democracy, in a republic, the people are charged with keeping their own government in line. Secession, it seems, is the pacifist's way around that. The South wasn't happy within the Union of the United States, they declared that they were leaving. They drove the Northern Government out of Fort Sumter, within the borders of South Carolina, with no casualties except for one Confederate horse. It was Lincoln's government that marched 70,000 troops past the Mason-Dixon line, into a state where it was unwelcome, to suppress the people's natural, constitutional right to secede.


I don't want to sound like I spent a few months in the South and now I'm anti-Yankee. That's not the case. I also don't want to give the impression that I am justifying or in any way excusing the practice of slavery. I couldn't be prouder that I come from Canada, a country that was seen as a haven of freedom for escaped slaves. I do realize, though, that due to our climate and conditions, slavery would never have been useful to our economy. Had that been different, I'm sure England would have brought slaves to Canada just as she brought slaves to America, and then we would have our own sins to answer for. But I am against folks acting morally righteous and looking down their noses at an entire culture, an entire population of people, an entire section of history that they simply do not understand, but refuse to admit that they don't understand. If you grow up in Massachusetts, you learn that the South was a conglomeration of ass-backwards states that needed to be set straight by the heroic North, and were. You learn that Plymouth Rock was the first landing. You don't learn about Jamestown, at least not that it came first. You learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Virginians, owned slaves, and John Adams, a Massachusetts man, did not, but you'll never delve deep into the context of the times.

One of the most important things to me about this whole issue, is the way men, real people who lived, loved, had families, and died far too soon - great-grandfathers of people living today, are mushed together with these backwards ideals associated with the Confederacy, and the entire stew is condemned on the whole as something inherently evil. I'm hearing over and over that the Confederates don't deserve a history month because we don't agree with what we feel they represent. It is for exactly this reason that we doneed a Confederate History Month. Should we say, too, that Hitler was a bad guy, so we shouldn't learn about him? It's kind of like spitting on the soldiers returning home from Iraq. You don't have to support the war, but if you don't support the people who are brave enough the fight it, well - you're kind of an asshole. Every man with the courage to lay his life down for what he believes is the good of his people and his country deserved to be honoured, and it is no man's business to judge him on his morality. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

I could go on for hours about "What would you do if you were in their shoes?", but that's not the point. If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: Please, for the love of God, of YHWH, of Buddha, of Krishna, of light, love, and the Universe in which all these things exist; please, just learn what you're talking about before you condemn it, and never, ever think that you have all the answers, because no one does (this means you, New York Times).

I can't believe the US media.

As you may have heard, a normal, middle-aged, middle-class, well-educated, white man flew a small plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas yesterday morning in a fit of rage with the government, killing himself and one federal employee, and wounding one other. Or maybe you haven't, because nobody is talking about it.

HOWEVER, after listening to and watching the news today, here is what they ARE talking about:

1) The Christmas Day Bomber. This man failed miserably. Nothing at all came of the incident, except that now airports feel they have the right to put all travelers through an ADDITIONAL screening process, the full body scanner - in which they see the naked body of all who pass through it - men, women, CHILDREN, the religiously orthodox - there have even been incidents of TSA employees printing scans of celebrities and passing them around the office. This was essentially a non-issue, but - BUT - he was an Arab, and he had a funny name, and so he's still talked about on the news, two months later, because he is a justification.

2) Tiger Woods. Words cannot express how profoundly I do not care about Tiger Woods. It's the same issue I had with the Bill Clinton scandal - if he cheated on his wife, that's between him and his wife. It has nothing to do with the public, it makes no compromise in his relationship to us, or his ability to serve the public in whatever way is his duty. It is not our business, and the media needs to stay out of people's private bedrooms and private lives.

3) The Tea Party. For the most part, a group of old, confused republicans - 90% of whom admittedly never followed or had anything to do with politics before now. They don't understand the policies they oppose, and are only upset because their party is no longer in power. They want lower taxes and increased medicare, and fiercely oppose health care reform and support Sarah Palin as their political leader and, eventually, President. They say they're against big government - which is fine! So am I! But why is it that they're only NOW against big government, as opposed to 5 years ago, in the reign of the Biggest Brother-est government in recent memory? Easy - because THAT government grouped themselves with the same party as the people who make up the tea party, and, like they said, they don't follow politics enough to know the difference between what an administration says and what an administration does. Oh, and lets not skirt the fact that the President is now black (not really, but blacker than they), and most of the "Teabaggers" (teehee) grew up when coloured people still had to use different bathrooms and drinking fountains.

In scouring the internet for SOMEONE saying SOMETHING about the willful destruction of the IRS building yesterday, I found a couple of articles, wherein people who call themselves journalists have decided, without any discernible evidence (aside from a distaste for the government and anger over 'taxation without representation'), that Joseph Stack, the late pilot of the unfortunate plane, was a member of the Tea Party - even going so far as to say that, "After months of threats on the United States government, and government institutions, the Anti-Government forces known as the teabaggers have struck with their first 911 inspired terrorist attack". The worst part is, that was from the Daily Kos, which is supposed to be better than that.

When this happened, I thought, "Wow. This is big. This is going to be a really big deal." In his suicide note, Joseph Stack wrote about being repeatedly ignored by his political representatives, being ignored by every government agent he applied to (except IRS agents, who came to take his retirement fund) - about having so much to say and nobody to hear it. So he thinks to himself, "How can I get people to listen? How can I be heard?" And, in a dramatic and fiery show of frustration and hopeless desperation, he helps America raise the bar ever further on just how much important information and free thought they can trivialize and ignore.

adventures are better in the movies.

We're recovering from a large and semi-magical snowfall - the biggest in this part of Virginia in twenty years. It was about the size of the yearly snowfalls we get in Vancouver. Everything shut down - ha!

To be fair though, I wasn't prepared either - I didn't expect to encounter such weather and neglected to bring appropriate clothes, or even boots, with me on my journey. The sudden change in weather (from 16°C to below freezing) hit me hard too, because I was fighting sickness all weekend in the form of aches and pains and intense weariness. But now it is warming up again. I even went out without a coat on today! Crazy weather.

I am mostly sad that I didn't have appropriate clothing to walk to the beach in during the storm. Mr. Andrew recalls to me that the sea mist was freezing in mid-air and blowing every which way, whiting out one's entire field of vision.

I am disappointed that I will likely miss the Winter Olympics in my hometown. What a time to go traveling! It may be a horrible capitalist perversion of a most beautiful city, but damnit - at least it's interesting.

But I, I just laid in Mr. Andrew's apartment all weekend, thinking about my future. And to that I say: at least they have cheap liquor in America.


-- love, miki.

the adventure has already begun..

..We're just coming in partway through the story.

It's the middle of winter (January, specifically), yet the weather is so nice today. Mr. Andrew and I got Subway and ate it on the Beach. I hope to get as much enjoyment out of the beach as is possible before the tourist season starts. I might as well go home then!

As you may have noticed, this blog now officially "exists". This means that I am making good headway on the internet business frontier. You see, I am in the process of carrying my business (Miki Ross Photographic Arts + Trade) from the solid world into the virtual. This opens me up to more travel opportunities, which are so important in the Life of the Young Adult.

For instance, right now I am spending time in the American Southeast (after recently taking a short trip to the Caribbean - my first!). I'm learning about colonial days and the Civil War, of which so many battles were fought on the ground on which we lay our highways. I'm hoping it will turn into a photography project.

I am staying with Mr. Andrew in his beach house in Virginia. It is quiet here in the wintertime and I have the leisure to focus on my thoughts and priorities. I am putting my time into restructuring and expanding my Etsy store (to which I will post a link when it's up and ready).


Look at me ramble on! Is this what the South does to a lady?

-- love, miki

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