Words of the Week*

or, Similar Words, Very Different Origins
*Compliments of the OED

ginger |ˈjinjər|
noun
1) a hot fragrant spice made from the rhizome of a plant. It is chopped or powdered for cooking, preserved in syrup, or candied.
2) a Southeast Asian plant, which resembles bamboo in appearance, from which this rhizome is taken. • Zingiber officinale, family Zingiberaceae.
3) a light reddish-yellow color.
adjective
(chiefly of hair or fur) of a light reddish-yellow color.

ORIGIN late Old English gingifer, conflated in Middle English with Old French gingimbre, from medieval Latin gingiber, from Greek zingiberis, from Pali siṅgivera, of Dravidian origin.

An Encounter

[I'm tired of my NaNoWriMo story already and so procrastinating. This is the first paragraph of an old NaNo novel, heavily edited.]

Arnold’s intention had been not to step on the lowly leaf, but to avoid the left front paw of a shaggy, black-and-white Australian shepherd, who had strayed from her owner.  The dog looked up at Arnold with clear, blue eyes as if to ask for directions, yet the animal’s gaze pierced the human’s soul as if to prove to both that they were not such distant relatives.  The dog’s owner, a woman in her twenties of medium height and a thin, yet awkward frame, walked sternly with the indignation of a parent whose teenager had just defied her.  She moved her arms briskly but made no extra effort with her legs and the effect was, thought Arnold, probably not far off from that of a windmill, although the purpose and placement of windmills always eluded Arnold.  “Lily!” shouted the woman, her voice loud yet restrained.  The dog looked over at its owner, and then back at Arnold, pleadingly.  Arnold didn’t budge, temporarily taking guardianship of the dog, though he had the keen foresight to know that the woman’s ire was probably to befall upon both parties.  And so it was.  “Excuse me, sir, that’s my dog,” said the woman possessively, avoiding Arnold’s eyes.  She was three inches shorter than him, and although that was rather tall for a woman, Arnold noticed that she had a rather shorter than average torso.  Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was wearing Converse sneakers with blue jeans and a purple long-sleeved shirt.  She had a brown purse over one shoulder, throwing her entire lanky body slightly off-balance.  “I was just making sure she didn’t stray,” he said with a smile.  She looked up at him.  She did not smile.  A few strands of hair fell in front of her face and she quickly put them in their place, just behind her right ear.  “Thanks,” she mentioned quickly and then said, “Lily, come.”  The dog suddenly remembered which of the two was the master and left her foster parent without even a goodbye, trotting off happily into the descending late afternoon sunset.

My favorite local musician is releasing his second album

Want to preserve the sanctity of marriage? Ban divorce.

sanctity |ˈsa ng (k)titē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
 

the state or quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly : the site of the tomb was a place of sanctity for the ancient Egyptians.
• ultimate importance and inviolability : the sanctity of human life.
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [saintliness] ): from Old French sainctite, reinforced by Latin sanctitas, from sanctus ‘holy.’

So this gay marriage debate/debacle has me thinking. Personally, I don't get marriage. I think it's one of those silly social things that people do simply because that's what people do. I'm sure we all know the history of marriage as an economic contract and have come to our own conclusions about its evolution for humans and blah blah blah...but I'm not going to sit here and talk about why I think marriage is stupid. Because even though I think it's a stupid social convention, I think it's a stupid social convention everyone should be allowed to follow if they please.

Most secular folks who are cool with gay people also seem to be cool with gay marriage. My guess is that for those of us who do not affiliate with a religion, a "civil union" and a marriage are synonymous, and if gay people can have civil unions, then why can't they have marriages? But there are many religious folks who are cool with gay people and not cool with gay marriage, because of this one little word: sanctity. There is, according to them, a special feature to marriage that can only exist if there is one man and one woman present.

It's strange that there's this idea that if gay people could get married, it would disrupt the sanctity of straight people's marriages. Now, I'm willing to accept that for some people a gay marriage will never truly be holy or official, but how does this affect others' marriages? I dunno, maybe someone can enlightenment me about this. In addition, you'd think that people who love marriage enough to donate to the preservation of its sanctity would want there to be more marriages, not less. Spread the marriage around, man.

My bigger problem with this anti-gay marriage nonsense, however, is that some people seem to think that the opposite of a holy marriage is a gay marriage. I disagree. I believe that the opposite of a holy marriage is a divorce, and I'm surprised that more religious groups don't see it this way too. I mean, the Church, that great and holy institution, was vehemently against divorce for many, many years (I believe Henry VIII had a small debate with them over this). Marriage is supposed to be "for better or for worse" right? So why do so many marriages end? It would seem to me that even the notion that a marriage could end in divorce (for example, arrangements of the pre-nuptial kind) should itself be enough to ruin the sanctity of it.

So then, where is the anti-divorce brigade? This would surely preserve the sanctity of marriage by dissuading people who rush into it without thinking seriously, or those who do it for tax or citizenship reasons, and then eventually get divorced. And, of course, it wouldn't just be straight people who would be discouraged from rushing into marriages, but a good number of gay people too would re-consider their desire for marriage if they knew that divorce was not an option. Marriage as a sacred institution, as a lifelong contract between two consenting, loving partners, would therefore be preserved.

My conclusion: I call for a Proposition 8a, a ban on divorce (and a reversal on the ban on gay marriage).

SD, AFT: part 3

On my final day in San Diego I met up with E, C and A. E drove down from Walnut and while C and A, who were driving up (west?) from El Centro, got a flat tire, E and I caught up. We commiserated about moving back home and dealing with parents on a daily basis for the first time in four years.

The four of us headed to Old Town and got lunch at this great Mexican place. I had a burrito bigger than my head, C got some green flautas, and A was chastised by the waiter for drinking too much water. Our bellies full, we went for a walk around this mission-type place to burn a few of the many thousands of calories we'd ingested. As we were looking around an old stable, we were suddenly hit with a conundrum. It was an age old question that had confounded Americans for generations. What was the capital of Kentucky? Seriously, we discussed this for a while, ignoring the lovely exhibits and wax horses and instead racking our geeky brains for the answer. After a little while we came to the consensus that the answer was Louisville. A quick iPhone check told us we were wrong.

It was a perfect day, not too hot, not too cool, and a light breeze ushered us along.

Next we headed to the beach for a stroll (in reality it wasn't so much a stroll as an epic trek that spanned hours and culminated in a much needed IHOP pit stop for various types of lemonade and more water for A). As the four of us walked along the soft sandy beach, we giggled. It was just one of those days. But before long we realized that it was getting very difficult to lift our feet in the sand. It was a workout and although the sidewalk was just feet away, we had an unspoken agreement that the four of us would make it to the other end of the beach in the sand. We did come across an astonishing sand castle, which was a nice distraction, but by the time we reached the end we were exhausted, sweaty, and in need of the aforementioned lemonades (in case you're wondering, I had a cherry lemonade, E had an Arnold Palmer, and C insisted that she have a strawberry lemonade even though IHOP doesn't technically have strawberry lemonades (apparently they put the strawberry goo from the Rooty Tooty Fresh N' Fruity in a regular lemonade which sounds questionable to me, but that's what she wanted and, frankly, what are you gonna do?)). While we sat at our table, giggling, discussing what "guay" meant in Uruguay and Paraguay, and alerting each other of our demises (E "accidentally" said I had died), we also cleaned out our shoes on the floor. And so we left a little part of ourselves as we walked out the door, four small sand mounds just under the table.

In need of caffeine and something chocolatey we decided we'd head to a patisserie or chocolaterie. Indeed. I remembered that N had mentioned a fantastic dessert place called Extraordinary Desserts so a quick Yelp check later and we had an address. We got there and couldn't believe our eyes. I decided right there on the spot that "extraordinary" was apt for once. First of all, the front door was huge and it was a little spectacle watching C march right up and open it by herself. Inside, the most wonderful array of sugary, chocolatey, fruity delights awaited us. It was a sit-down dessert restaurant, I'll have you know, complete with a waitress and beverages. I had the cafe viennese while I marveled at their sugar (crystalline, rather than granular). The four of us shared two pricey slices of cake. They were both chocolate but that didn't bother any of us. We dug in and had no mercy; two empty plates, four empty mugs, and the show was done.

Goodbyes are weird so I'll just say that it was nice to see E, C, and A again, and even nicer to finally visit N in her San Diego. One citrus mint hookah and a Japanese beer later, and I was back in San Jose, where the past three days felt like nothing more than a passing dream.

MIAAF IX

Chapter 9: The Main Event

It was a three day weekend and beginning at 8 AM sharp on Saturday morning, about five hundred people gathered in San Francisco (and thousands more around the world online) to participate in the one and only NovNov Write-a-thon. Staff had been there the night before to set up tables, extension cords, snackies, and energy drinks for the writers. There was a wrist masseuse to evade carpal tunnel, caffeine to stave off exhaustion, and inspirational cards (not, like, cards with affirmations or biblical passages, but little slips of paper with random ideas such as, “Suddenly one of your characters loses a limb, write the next scene” or “Incorporate a British alligator into your story” which the interns came up with before the event) to repel even the most dire cases of writer’s block.  Tickets cost $200 and included meals for all three days.   

The stage was set, Jack and Alycia had written short speeches to inspire the writers, and then they were off.  Before long the quiet din of writers conjuring characters from the clack of their keyboards filled the air. Interns were allowed to bring laptops to participate while they weren’t needed keeping a watchful eye on the writers.  Most of these generous and creative individuals were not exactly the type that got out much.  In fact, for some of them, this was the party of the year; they greeted one another by their screen names, often citing their word counts as part of their opening lines.  And occasionally, the NovNov Write-a-thon became a matchmaking event, with likeminded couples meeting and falling for each other over their shared passion of writing, caffeine, and alien werewolves.   

All-in-all it was a quiet and orderly 16 hours. Hushed conversations at the snack table were the only times writers left the bubbles of their own worlds, and made for a fascinating character study. Usually I enjoy people-watching, but with writers it’s more like people-listening. A few overheard conversations at the write-a-thon:

-So what’s your genre?

-Historical erotica.

-So you write erotic stories…that happened in the past?

-No, of course not, It’s a subset of historical fiction. I write erotica that’s set during the American Revolution.

-Oh cool, I’m writing historical fiction too.

-Yeah? What about?

-It’s kind of like my family history. Like a Joy Luck Club but with my mom and grandmother.

-Nice, how’s it going?

-Pretty well, I just wrote a rape scene.

And the two of them went on happily discussing their stories and offering up writerly advice.

-I need a name for my antagonist’s cat.

-How about Fluffy?

-Hmm. No, something less catty.

-Mellifluous?

-No, I already have a character with that name.

-Victor?

-Perfect!

He quickly added his new character name to his “Dramatis Personae” and carried on writing.

-When fighting zombies, do you think it’s better to use a gun or a sword?

-Sword, easy.

-No way, are you kidding? A shotgun would take care of those zombies in an instant, and from a distance.

-Yeah but you’d need a lot of ammo, and ammo is heavy.

-Well, you could flee to a roof and snipe.

-But still, what are the odds that you have enough ammo on you?

-I mean, sure, I’d keep a sword on hand for backup, but the shotgun would be my first grab.

While I kept an ear out for the writers, I wrote my own novel. It was a noir told from the perspective of the femme fatale. Intriguing, I know. Actually, it turned out to be an awful idea. Turns out, when your protagonist is someone you don’t like, you’re not very motivated to keep the story going. Or keep them alive. (On the other hand, the great thing about fiction is that you can just kill off people you don’t like).

It was getting later and as the grey sky turned orange, a chill made its way through the ballroom. The coffee was almost out and the writers were getting ornery.  It was only six o’clock so Alycia sent me out to pick up another urn from a local coffee shop. While I was out, I realized that when you’ve spent ten hours in a room with people doing nothing but writing, you forget that out in the real world people have other things to do. I had an odd conversation with a barista who was convinced I was hosting an art show and wanted to be invited. When I attempted to explain the noveling event, he assumed I meant some sort of publishing house was releasing a book and tried to get invited to that. The perils of living in a literati city, I suppose.

Back at the event, things were starting to wind down and people were getting tired. Some were heading home after the first evening was done and people were massaging their hands and necks. We cleaned up the room and got things ready for the next day. Apparently day two was always when the fun really started.

NaNoWriMo

Partly because I've got writer's block and partly because it's time to pay credit where it's due, I thought I'd explain where "NovNov" came from. It's based on a 30-day writing event called National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) where people all over the world write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. The Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit organization that puts it on, is not and has no affiliation with a publisher, so these NaNo novels are purely for the entertainment of their writers.

There are many reasons why NaNoWriMo is cool, but I think the most important is that it brings people together to do what is almost always a solitary activity. They are an extraordinarily motivated and optimistic people who spend at least 3 hours a day for 30 straight days to accomplish something that really has no prize except a feeling of accomplishment.

[In order to "win" NaNoWriMo, you must write 50,000 words of original fiction. As a 4-time participant (2-time loser, 2-time winner), I can tell you that it's a fantastic use of one's time for a month, winner or not. ]