Started Day In Bainbridge, Ending In Anchorage

The day began on Bainbridge Island walking my granddaughter to school.  She had on a backpack and a yam (rising tone, like you're asking a question).  That's the Thai name for the shoulder bags you see on the left.  Those are from a blog post in 2008.  I told my granddaughter I'd bought the yam for her mother long ago.  

She said I sounded like I was asking a question and I responded that in Thai each word, actually each syllable has its own tone and yan is rising town.  In English the tone goes with the sentence, so that's why you think it sounds like a question.  When I was studying Thai, at the very beginning, we were just being taught how hear the different tones and then repeat them.  The teacher would say "mea" very flat tone and we would say it adding an English question to the word and changing the tone to a rising tone, which meant dog instead of to come.  

She was quiet for a while and then she said, "Grampa, if Thai words all have tones, how to they make songs?"    She's eight, going on nine.  Good question.  I wonder how much her piano lessons helped trigger that question.  

Then we got a ride to the ferry.  Actually, it was balmy, if cloudy, about 60˚ F.  We'd usually walk, but our daughter offered us a ride.  

I did walk around the deck, but it was very windy.  Here's a picture just as the ferry was leaving Bainbridge.  Downtown Seattle is in the middle, just to the right of the trees.  I thought about it.  Why do we think of the tall cluster of skyscrapers as an image of Seattle.  It's just a tiny fraction of the city.  

COVID and warnings about jammed TSA lines at SEATAC put us into a taxi instead of the train to the airport.  It's really fast that way - about 20 minutes instead of over an hour.  Because of the long lines, they've set up a system where you can make a reservation for a spot in the line.  Ours was for 11:15 (you get 15 minutes period).  Turned out there was no line whatsoever.  And we were in the terminal waiting for our flight.  

I thought this was an interesting sign.  Not sure where they store all the water.  Do they collect it from the roofs of the terminal buildings?  

Our flight was uneventful - the best kind - and were in Anchorage a little early.  We had a great Somali cab driver.  Hope to see him again.  You know, maybe people are afraid of immigrants because they know they are smarter and willing to worker harder than they are.  

And here's the back yard.  

I'll shovel tomorrow.  Nice to be back and to be greeted by much warmer temperatures that we were hearing about.  Our outdoor thermometer says 20˚F.    Didn't feel cold at all.  But we didn't spend that much time outside.  But not the shock that it sometimes can be when it's below 0.

Michael Chabon and the Names of Yiddish Sitka

When my book group picked The Yiddish Police Union by Michael Chabon, I was excited. I loved his Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Then I heard that Title Wave was having him up for a talk and book signing. So we got the book and free tickets for the talk (unlike the Sedaris talk.) I won't go into the book much - there's been plenty of press on it: in the New York Times   (I guess it's a lot easier for New Yorker Michiko Kakutani to imagine that "Mr. Chabon has so thoroughly conjured the fictional world of Sitka" than it is for this Alaskan living in the state's largest city of 260,000 people, nearly half the state's population, to imagine an urban center of over 2 million people in Sitka);  in The Jerusalem Post (no, Mr. Freeman, Sitka is not in the tundra), or on Terry Gross' Fresh Air.  I'll just focus on a part that intrigued me that I haven't seen covered elsewhere - the names of people, places, and things in this fictional Sitka. So you need to know that the book's basic premise is that Sitka, Alaska was designated as a temporary homeland for post-Holocaust Jews.

Last night was Chabon's talk - at Loussac Library's Marston Theater because Title Wave wasn't big enough for all the people who wanted to attend. I got to ask Chabon how he came up with all the various names of streets, buildings, places, and characters. A few I could already figure out. Bina Gelbfish (Goldfish), for example, always wore a bright orange parka outside. Others I could work out through google. Max Nordau (the book opens in the Zamenhof Hotel on Max Nordau Street) was an early Zionist who argued for a homeland for the Jews. On page 3, we read,

Landsman puts his hand on Tenenboym's shoulder, and they go down to take stock of the deceased, squeezing into the Zamenhof's lone elevator, or ELEVATORO, as a small brass plate over the door would have it. When the hotel was built fifty years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices, and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperanto. Most of them are long gone, victims of neglect, vandalism, or the fire code.

And the fact that Yiddish became the language of Chabon's Sitka. Google quickly tells us that Zamenhof was the originator of Esperanto, the language that was supposed to become an easy to learn universal language. The Dnyeper Building overlooks the Schvartsn Yam, just like the actual Dnieper River flows into the Black Sea. And when you read the book, the last name of Shemets (shame, scornful whispering, according to the Yiddish dictionary online) makes sense for both Hertz Shemets and his son Berko.

Chabon's answer to my question about how he came up with the various names offered some extra insights one can't track down on Google. He'd read to us in his talk about a 1997 article he wrote on finding a Yiddish traveler's phrase book and imagining where it might be used. He was alerted to the Yiddish Online Discussion Group Mendele that was discussing his article. While the first post referred to the article as

a delightfully humorous essay regarding Uriel and Beatrice Weinreich's little paperback phrase book "Say It in Yiddish"

other discussants were not as amused. (If you go to the link, search for Weinreich to find the various parts of the thread, which starts at June 24, 1997.) He also got an indignant letter from Beatrice Weinreich, by then the widow of Uriel. He wrote back an apology, but, as he told us, she didn't accept his apology.



So when he started to talk about how he named the characters in the book, he began by saying, Bina (Gelbfish, the ex-wife of the main character) was the nickname of Beatrice Weinreich. Many are names of important Jews as I mentioned earlier with some relationship to this fictional Jewish homeland. And some of the less savory characters in the book are named after people in the Mendele forum who were especially vocal in their displeasure with the original article on the phrasebook. I've now read through a number of the entries in the debate on Chabon's book on Mendele. I trust that Chabon, given his manner at the talk, was giving a friendly nod of recognition to his critics at Mendele. Certainly, contributors like Robboy ('the gaunt giant, Roboy') were thoughtful and respectful in their criticism . And I hope that they appreciate being immortalized in this book by a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Update: I've added three other views of Tuesday night in a later post.

Burma Border Run 5 - A Night in Mae Sai

We got into the Mae Sai bus station about 6:45pm and it was almost dark. Lonely Planet talked about the guest houses lining the river to the left of the border crossing, and their recommended guest house is "about 150 meters beyond what seems like the end of the Th [road]." That didn't seem too appealing in the dark, and the Wang Thong was right in front of us and the border crossing, so we stayed in this giant Chinese hotel all marbled up. It really reminded us in looks and smell (not bad, just distinctive) of mainland Chinese hotels in the 90s. But for 850 Baht (about $28) we got a decent room and breakfast. It even had a nice pool which we never had a chance to use. (The guest houses run 150 - 500 Baht.)




The front desk steered us over to Rabiang Keaw, where these folks from Phrae asked us all sorts of questions and at the end gave us their card and told us to call them when we want to visit Phrae. They also put a new light on the role of this border town that is a funnel for goods coming in from China through Burma. Thais come here to buy Chinese products much cheaper than when they make it to the stores. But these people were here because they made denim shirts and sold them here to be exported to Burma and China.



We ordered Tom Yam Kai and Pineapple chicken Op. Op means roasted and isn't that common and we had no idea what to expect. Well, here's what we got, a pinapple full of chicken and pinapple.



After dinner we strolled down the street a ways. It wasn't too active (nothing like it would be the next day) but I couldn't resist the foot massage for 79 Baht out on the street. Joan wandered off on her own while I got rubbed. I couldn't help taking this picture of a couple of nuns buying a dozen or so bras right in front of me as I was getting my massage. I'm assuming they had come over from Burma. I don't think I've ever seen a picture of or even thought of nuns buying bras.

Yam (rhymes with Tom) for Sale

These Karen shoulder bags were brought into the office just now. They are for sale for between 120 Baht and 150 Baht. I thought I'd put them up here and see if there was anyone who wanted to buy one - I hope for a little more.

They were made by children in the village as a way to raise money for school fees. If someone wants to buy one or more of them - there are three in the office now - let me kow and we can figure out how to work out the payment somehow.

If you can wait, I can get them to you when I get back to the US in May. Or we can could mail them from here, we'll just add shipping charges.

My boss understands the potential power of having a blog - in fact we set one up experimentally. You can see it in my profile. There is only one post. But Bing asked me to help him set one up too. He's put up a poem he wrote for his grandmother who died when I first got here. I'm hoping that as he gets good at it and will be able to write for the organization's post. Go to his blog and leave a comment. Tell him you'd like him to translate the poems into English.

So let's see if there is power here to sell some shoulder bags. Any bidders?






Here are some pictures of village kids. These are not the kids who made the bags, but you get the idea. These are poor kids who live in a fairly traditional hill tribe culture. The bags were made by similar kids.