The Jazz Singer
11/27/2008 0040 hrs.
Has any jazz singer ever exhibited greater clarity and diction than Dinah Washington? She made every syllable of every word distinct and unmistakable. Have a listen.
Your YouTube link here . . .
To Assimilate
11/25/2008 1715 hrs.
Today I heard an interesting part of an interview on NPR's Morning Edition. The program featured a discussion with Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of short fiction. She also wrote a novel, The Namesake, which Mira Nair made into an excellent movie. Her latest work of fiction is Unaccustomed Earth, another work of short fiction.
Ms. Lahiri's themes have centered around Bengali/American immigration and assimilation. She was born in India, lived in England, and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents as a child. They are all naturalized citizens. She speaks American/English with a very slight New York/Rhode Island accent; her parents have full comprehension of English and speak with a Bengali accent. Her heritage and writings give her a relevant background for the topic at hand, which was the struggle to feel American when your parents' culture is directly from another country.
She related one issue that I had not considered much, but one with which she would be imminently familiar. Picture the three of them in a department store, an older immigrant couple, mother dressed in sari, both parents revealing a heavy accent, and a young daughter who pronounces everything in the local idiom flawlessly. To whom is the sales clerk likely to turn as the main communicator in the Indian group: the father whom he would assume has the money? the mother who would mainly use the appliance? or the daughter, who has revealed a northeastern U.S. accent?
I'll bet that most would guess the daughter. There is some logic to that assumption, given our preconceptions about the comprehension of people who speak differently and look different. And this, in fact, was the usual experience with Ms. Lahiri and her family.
Her most interesting point, however, is the effect such experiences have on the individual family member's likelihood of assimilation. Being ignored or being superceded by their child as the focus in a social interchange brought about feelings of isolation within the parents, isolation that discouraged assimilation and provoked retreat into the confines of a familiar culture, which was readily accessible to them in that part of the country.
This, along with many similar experiences and in spite of U.S. citizenship, which they sought without hesitation, the elder Lahiri's have never felt prominently American, even though both acknowledge that they would never plan to return to India to live out the remainder of their days and have lived more than half their lives here. Ms. Lahiri, herself felt some of that isolation because of her realization that she looked different from her peers and was a primary target for the usual childhood teasing about those differences. And yet, she considers herself primarily American, although not 100% assimilated.
I don't recall confronting such a social situation with non-native speakers. If I do encounter that, I hope I am quick enough to check myself from relying on the family member most fluent in my own language, and instead try to grasp who most rightly should have the focus of my attention and, at least, engage them in some way.
Your NPR link to this interview is here . . .
Discuss here . . .
Insomnia
11/25/2008 0430 hrs.
Arrrgh . . .
If you have WiFi at home, when you boot up and see that little message at the bottom telling you that your connection is very good, does it give you a more positive outlook than when it just says "Good" or "Poor"?
All is better with the world, is it not, when you see that not only are you Connnnnnected, but that your status is Verrrrrry Good? 
On occasion, it has identified signal strength as "Excellent". No holding me back then.
This morning my signal strength is "Very Good". Bring it, World. Bring it all.
Freshly Baked Bread
11/24/2008 1710 hrs.
Just got back from the store and I wonder:
Truly, can there be a reasonable basis for insisting that a husband return home from a good bakery with a loaf of bread intact and unsampled when the bread is still warm and exudes that incredible, yeasty aroma?
I submit that there is not; that, in fact, to expect this restraint from anyone with functioning olfactory senses is to deny us our place among bipedal, ambulatory, sentient beings. But I welcome other thoughts on this.
It was Pugliese, and anyway, I got most of it home.
Discuss here . . .