Tag: Traditions

Regional differences in America’s sweet tooth

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While Reese’s will probably still be the favorite., followed by M&Ms, when it comes to trick or treaters, other top choices may vary depending on where you live.

For instance:

  1. Twizzlers have a special popularity along the East Coast. (Guess I’ll have to look closer.)
  2. Starburst is tops in Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Iowa, and North Dakota.
  3. Airheads rule in Florida and Colorado.
  4. Blow pops, in Ohio, Maryland, and Tennessee.
  5. Dum Dums, Indiana.
  6. Runts, Arkansas.
  7. Hot Tamales, New Mexico. (Not to be confused with a traditional Central American dish that’s sometimes spicy.)
  8. Whoppers, Kansas.
  9. Smarties, Alaska.
  10. Is Crunch bar even a brand – popular in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and California? Oh, I see, it’s what we’ve always called Nestle’s Crunch! Kinda like Kit Kat.

The rest of the country goes for more traditional brands – at least ones I’m familiar with.

I’m still not sure about that candy corn, which is supposed to be universally loved this time of year.

Reclaiming Passamaquoddy

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Living adjacent to the tribe’s Sipayik reservation opens new perspectives in my awareness. It’s not quite osmosis, but perhaps a willingness to listen.

One of the big breakthroughs for the tribe has involved access to 36 wax cylinders from 1890, the first field recordings ever made, when anthropologist Walter Jesse Fewkes came to Maine to test the Edison equipment before he headed off to Navajo and Hopi lands.

For decades, the recordings were kept in museum vaults, unknown to the tribe. And then, slowly, they came into consciousness, first through taped copies full of scratchy static and more recently cleaned up into digitalized files that tribe historians are carefully gleaning.

As a writer, I believe in the power of stories and the importance of language itself.

Here are some of the insights I’m hearing from my neighbors.

  1. Dwayne Tomah’s reaction on hearing the recordings the first time: “I wept. These were my ancestors speaking and singing to me.”
  2. The language has only two genders – animate and inanimate.
  3. Its wider family, Algonquian, features prenouns, a form shared only with Japanese and Korean.
  4. Translations from a tribal side, rather than a nontribal institution, can be revealing. For instance, rather than “Trading Song,” it’s more accurately “Let’s Trade.”
  5. The recordings preserve more than the language itself. There are also the stories, songs, and advices, sometimes with context.
  6. The Tides Institute’s latest map of our region portion of Maine and New Brunswick includes the Passamaquoddy place names. Tribal historian Donald Soctomah has used that to explain hard-to-translate subtleties, such as those describing qualities of water encountered in canoeing in a specific location.
  7. A Passamaquoddy-English dictionary, still growing, is available online. It has a range of expressions for anger that are totally missing in English.
  8. The language is being taught in elementary schools. (For generations, it was banned, even in homes.)
  9. The recordings are helping the tribe’s branch in neighboring Canada in its quest to gain First Nations status. One song, for instance, refers to what’s now the location of Saint Andrews.
  10. Even a few commonly understood words spoken among the tribe are rebuilding identity and pride, even when the rest of us watch on.

What’s love got to do with it?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In research for my novel What’s Left, I wound up learning about the people we now call Roma. I won’t say how it applied, but it was an eyeful.

For instance.

  1. All Roma are expected to marry – and to another Roma, not an outsider.
  2. In many tribes, the parents arrange the marriage.
  3. Rejection of a formal proposal is considered a disgrace.
  4. Acceptance leads to the negotiation of a bride price to compensate her parents for their loss.
  5. A festive ceremony may follow a few days later, signifying the engagement.
  6. No formal ritual is required as a wedding itself, though some tribes turn the occasion into a multiday celebration.
  7. Wedding gifts almost always consist of money.
  8. After the wedding, the bride is never seen in public without wearing her headscarf.
  9. They settled into the groom’s parents’ home, and cannot move to a place of their own until after the birth of their first child.
  10. The couple cannot refer to each other as husband and wife until their first child is born. Up to that point, it’s only their first names when speaking to each other or about the other in public.

Gee, we haven’t even touched on the death customs and rituals.

Drawn from Gypsy at larp.com.

 

Take up a new activity means learning words that go with it

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My week on a schooner enlarged my vocabulary.

For instance.

  1. A quarterboard proclaims the name of the ship at the bow.
  2. Quarterdeck, the little raised house behind the main mast, where the wheel is. The forecastle is the one at the other end, up by the bow.
  3. Dropping the hook, meaning anchor.
  4. Gaff, the more or less horizontal spar at the top of the mainsail and foresail. It makes those sheets irregular quadrilaterals in shape rather than triangular.
  5. Beam, the width. Crown, the roll of the deck for water to roll off. Sheer is the cut of the profile, usually voiced with aesthetic appreciation or disproval.
  6. Hatch, with the ladders down into the hold.
  7. Stern, the back, where we steer.
  8. Transom, the flat back of the boat , or, as you know now, at the stern.
  9. Yawl. It can be a kind of auxiliary sail, but in a schooner’s case, usually refers to the yawl boat riding at the stern when it’s not off somewhere on its own.
  10. Windward, meaning the direction the wind’s coming from, and leeward, the direction the wind’s headed. In a heavy wind, the windward side of the ship’s higher, while the leeward one dips toward the water. (When it’s really touching the water, the ship’s “running the rail,” meaning ripping along.)

I also like the term “running on one screw,” meaning propeller, except we didn’t have one.

We won’t even start talking tonnage, which seems to mean a lot for insiders.

Balkan voices

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Eastern European music features low bass notes prominently. I listened to this group with envy. They were doing an all-Ukraine program.

The Maine Balkan Choir international music and dance ensemble performs at the annual Common Ground Fair during hour-long breaks in the big contradance tent. The choir rehearses in three subgroups across the state and then comes together for events like this.

Their closest location to me is Ellsworth, two -and-a-half hours away.