The Brooklyn Alphabet

According to Robin Williams, the Brooklyn alphabet is
"F***ing A, f***ing B, f***ing C......

Here is a link to a man speaking Brooklynese asking a woman out for a date, which I think is funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcnhyQnukYI&feature=related

For the record, Steve didn't ask me out for a date in the way that this man on the video asks out his date. He doesn't use the Brooklyn alphabet often. The only traces of Brooklyn is the bizarre way he pronounces water and Florida and his insistence that Marry, Mary and Merry are pronounced differently from each other. Oh, he also refuses to say the midwest term 'pop' for soda. He hates the way we say it.

Emergency!

Naomi woke up to a medical emergency yesterday. Her boyfriend had already gone to work but his sister had spent the night. She seemed to be in terrible pain. Naomi was not sure what was going on but knew the sister had a few medical conditions that might explain her distress. She has been in and out of hospitals despite being younger than Naomi. Naomi called 911 as she didn't think she could get the sister to the ER herself and Maya was still sleeping. As it turned out, the sister arrived at the hospital right before something was going to burst; any more of a delay and Naomi would truly have a life threatening situation on her hands. She had to have a surgical intervention and still is in the hospital.

We made pizzelles yesterday. I will bring some over to Shanna's MIL who has been thoughtfully providing me with hummus and Syrian rice pudding. I have decided not to put up a tree this year as most of my children will not be here for X-mas. Naomi did get a tree and she will borrow some of my many ornaments so that will be 'our' tree. Next year, maybe we all could be together.

We had a Mom's night out. First stop: Happy Hour followed by a movie, Burlesque. Predictable and inane  plot and so-so acting but great music and dancing. Very entertaining and I had no idea that Christina could sing. All and all, a very enjoyable evening! Usually I zip from place to place on the freeways but I drove through town last night admiring all the X-mas lights.

Ugh! More snow. In a few hours, assuming the snow hasn't gotten worse, I will visit my Italian roommate: la mia compagna di stanza. In our first lesson in Italian 110, we were to describe our roommates in italiano, per favore.We all had roommates, even those of us who haven't had ones in 35 years although I guess you could call Steve a roommate. La mia compagna di stanza è molto gentile e bassa. Ha gli occhi e capelli castani.We all said stuff like that.

I had wanted to run before going there but too slippery. It will be warm later is I have time. I probably need a break anyway.

Age of majority

Recently I was asked by a Quebecois step relative whether Naomi was a major. Huh? He assumed the opposite of a minor was a major and was unclear at what age that occurs in Michigan.

In the year that I was turning 19, the age of majority suddenly shifted to 18 down from 21. The thinking was at the time was that that if we could be shipped off to Viet Nam at 18, we should at least have some privileges. By we, I mean the men my age though as it turned out, no men exactly my age were drafted. Men a year older than me were the last ones: my high school boyfriend who had the lottery number 200 or so based on his birthday must have been the last one. He was shipped to Germany.

Suddenly it was legal to drink although I don't know if that changed my life much. At some point, the law was modified (maybe 10 years later) such that at 18, you are an adult with MOST of its rights and privileges but drinking will not be one of them. This keeps the local police busy as our town has a big lump of population in that 18-21 age range and a big source of revenue. A ticket for 'minor in possession' costs more than possession of marijuana. If one is 19 and wants to drink legally, Canada is not that far away.

Presumably in countries with no drinking ages or ones hovering around 16, there is much less alcohol abuse among the young. I am not sure if there are hard numbers on that. To me, there seemed to be more public drunkenness among the young in England than here making my train rides at night scary. And in Italy where drinking wine starts at a very young age, the students we had from L'Aquila seemed to lose control with alcohol just as often as the American students. As none of them were 'quiet' drunks, this impacted my sleep.

At any rate, if things were up to me, driving would not be allowed until 18 saving much heartache and the age of majority would be shifted back to 21. Turning 18 doesn't automatically imbue the traits one needs to be an adult.

At our cancer cooking class last night (Cooking for Survival), we made holiday food: a colorful broccoli and red pepper salad, mulled cider, black-eyed pea soup, ginger-pear crisp and stuffed spinach mushrooms. The class is becoming quite popular. I was happy to see a lady I made friends with early on in the class. We have missed each other for the past 7 classes. At home I have made several of the recipes that we've made in class. If I was a good cancer survivor really serious about doing everything I could to prevent recurrences, I should adopt all these recipes exclusively but......

IgE antibodies

New guidelines were issued this week concerning diagnosing and treating food allergies in children. Childhood food allergies are on the rise with 4% of children appearing to have them. If a child has eczema, it is recommended that his/her blood is tested for IgE antibodies against the common culprits and then further confirmed with skin prick tests. Both of my grandsons seem to have these allergies to peanuts, treenuts, and eggs (I forget who has what allergies..must keep all those foods away from them). These tests however cast a wide net  (lots of false positives) and now they're recommending food challenge tests to pinpoint what the child really is allergic to. Shanna has an epi pen on hand if somehow the kids ingest allergens accidentally. She was very careful to introduce new foods gradually yet her kids have these sensitivities. I wasn't nearly as careful as her. I have Shanna sucking on a bagel at 5 months (eggs?wheat?). If Steve's mother is correct, he seemed to be downing hamburgers at a month (I guess moms in those days had competitions to see what foods they could get their very young babies to eat).

Why all this sensitivity? I actually was surprised at the 4% rate as it seems higher to me or just my relatives have a lot of food allergies. None of my children have food allergies. Josh and Shanna have seasonal hay fever and Shanna reacts to certain pet dander such as rabbits, guinea pigs and some cats. Are all these new immunizations causing their little bodies to react to everything? Steve and I have none of this though certain cats make me sneeze. I do over react to poison ivy and sulfonamides.

Elizabeth Edwards died of BC yesterday. BC spares no one no matter how much else she had to deal with. It made me sad.

The annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium just started. I hope some useful research is revealed soon.

Although it was cold today, it wasn't too windy and the roads were dry so I did get a nice run in though sometimes I really have to prod myself to get out there.

My Cancer Cooking class is tonight.

Santa Maya

Agita

Maya eating oatmeal for the first time yesterday

When I first arrived in Italy, I had horrible heartburn. I had gobbled up my 6 week rations of Rolaids quickly. Someone lent me some Prilosec but I was going to need some of my own. After a few days, I finally got a ride to the next town (Castelvecchio) where there was a farmacia. I had less than a weeks' Italian under my belt. I was hoping the farmacista spoke English, which he did not. They have the power to write prescriptions. I brought my Italian-American roommate with me for help. I did not know the word for heartburn. My strategy was to repeat American names for heartburn remedies until he got the hint. It would have been useful if I knew the generic names but I didn't. My roommate told him I had agita. Now I knew that word from watching The Sopranos. Everyone was always giving Tony agita, which from the context seemed to mean severe aggravation. I was afraid the farmacista would think I had some mood disorder. No ho agita! Well it turned out that agita in Italian-American does mean heartburn. When Americans are annoyed with a person or a situation, they say they are having a headache; Italian-Americans say they are having heartburn. But the farmacista was Italian, not Italian-American. It is not clear if he knew IA slang. In my huge Italian dictionary I got from the company when they were getting rid of all their real books (to be replaced by virtual books which take up less space), there is no such word as 'agita'. Heartburn is 'bruciore di stomaco'. I did get a drug in the end, which wasn't as effective as Prilosec, but it made my stay much more pleasant.

English is a difficult language to learn in part because there are just so many words. But sometimes one word means so much else: like the word hot. Hot can mean opposite of cold, spicy, attractive, stolen or popular depending on the context. If you feel not so hot, you mean you are getting sick. A co-worker liked to grow unusual vegetables and share them with us. He had some peppers that looked like normal green bell peppers but were very 'spicy'. He gave out samples cautioning that they were hot. To a German exchange worker, he added helpfully the word "heiß". But heiß does not mean spicy and the German took a big bite and needed lots of water.

In Germany, I struggled to find the words for 'free water' meaning water I didn't have to pay for. I knew the word 'frei' from Arbeit macht frei but I wasn't sure it had the same double  meaning. The 200 ml of water ended up costing 7 euros. 500 ml of beer at the same place was 1 euro.

In general, if you want to communicate effectively with non-American English speakers, idioms should be kept to a minimum. Asking them How do they like them apples? is confusing if there are no apples on the table.

My friend in CA has lots of foreign born students who communicate with her via e-mail. One was asking per usual whether he would need to know this and this for an up-coming test (wouldn't want to study anything more than necessary). She replied
You betcha!
Now if this exchange was in person, he could see the smile on her face but from the e-mail, he thought she was calling him a 'bitch' and was very insulted. He thought she was very angry with him even though he had asked a question politely.
And of course there are British idioms vs American ones with the hotel clerk in Canterbury, England asking me how would I like to be knocked-up in the morning?

Lingua franca

Lingua franca is the language that links groups who speak other languages together. What the lingua franca is changes through history and what subset of people that one is discussing.
Once upon a time, it was Greek. Then for many years especially through the church and through academics, it was Latin. Arabic is the lingua franca of the Moslem world uniting cultures with much different languages. Among organic chemists, especially prior to 1980 or so, it was German.  Almost everything written before 1920 (the old Beilstein tomes)was in German. At UM, a reading knowledge of German was required to get a degree even though I had fulfilled the school's language requirement with French.

Now one might say, the lingua franca is English. Learning English now is a requirement in China. Still in Italy, English signs were few and in small village train stations, no one could speak it.
One bit of English I did hear were remakes of American pop songs. I remember going to a trendy store in Sulmona and the music consisted of the F word being repeated loudly to a pulsating beat. I guess swear words don't have the same power when spoken in another language. The F word doesn't even seem to pack the same punch in England where it is used routinely on regular TV. One of the students with me in Gagliano was stationed in Germany during the Korean War and did radio shows for the GIs. In the beginning, he knew no German. The station manager was a German lady who peppered her speech with American expletives. She seemed quite demure aside from that. Well my friend eventually learned German and its expletives and began to use them in front of her. She was shocked. How dare you speak those words in front of me!!! He assumed that it would be OK given her vocabulary. But to her, German swear words sounded so much worse than American ones.

Last night I was internetless as I now learn, so were many of my fellow subscribers to a certain communication giant. It is cold out and I seem to be in the doldrums. I did get out in the 10 degree wind chill trying not to slip on the dusting of snow. Once I got into the rhythm, I felt fine. Ms. Maya and her mom came over and we watched junk movies. Maya tried some baby oatmeal here and loved it. She is so much more alert now and social.

I have not put up a tree. Just can not get into the mood. When I was in Cancerland and sadly thinking that it might be my last X-mas, it was very important for me to have that tree. I had absolutely zero energy. Two of my friends came over to decorate it. It meant so much to me.