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| One of my favorite xanga bloggers wrote about some girls' voices being hopelessly
small and hard to hear. It put me in mind of the voices of the old ladies among the
the Vietnamese emigrés who settled here in the Late seventies and eighties. They
had what I came to call a country voice. These ladies had come from families in
villages in the countryside. I associated it with communicating from field to field. It
does not sound very loud to one standing near but it carries a long distance. When
I went To Việt Nam I heard it from the fields.
It seems to my ears to come from pushing the voice simultaneously into the throat
and into the nose. Here in the USA where they are not farmers anymore, it is used in
church in chants and litanies before and after mass. There are only two ladies left who
can do it and they aren't teaching anyone. Bà Trần says it isn't taught, but rather
absorbed by the girls growing up. The young boys can do it, too, until their
voices change. The later emigrés are mostly urban in origin and the ladies never
developed that voice.
I once thought that it must be unique to the Việts but then remembered yodeling, the
Swiss technique originally used to make neat echoes and to communicate from
mountain to mountain in the Alps which has been incorporated into the music of
several other cultures.
And recently I have read about other techniques for accomplishing relatively long
distance communication without technological enhancement such as in at least one
highly tonal East African language that can be partially replicated by whistling and
the whistling is audible over much greater distances than a city person can span
by merely yelling.
In our own rural South there is a fading genre of traditional music called field hollers
that were used a century and a half ago for both work rhythms in the cotton fields and
for field to field communication.
It must be a common thing in cultures that are rural and pre cell-phone. The shared
feature is that people make their voices carry for long distances without seeming to
make a large effort.
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| President Obama has said that he experienced eating dog in his visit to Kenya. This
being an election year a lot of political hay is being made of it. There are many loud
cries of, "Shame!"
Much as I am in disagreement with Obama's politics and his aspirations, I can't fault
the man on this. He was visiting his father's family in their own culture.
In Southeast Asia and surely in other parts of the world the dog has not developed the
relationship with humans that it has in European derived cultures.
My experience is with Việt Nam.
Until the turn of this century the dog has had no use to humans other than as food.
Hunting in the rainforest is not enhanced by dogs and as protection in a very poor
society the dog is just too expensive. Feeding a dog means less food for the
humans. In the villages the water buffalo serves many of the protective functions that
the dog provides to Americans and works productively. Dogs are no protection
against tigers. Con trâu (water buffalo) can kill tigers. They protect the village as well
as perform useful and necessary work.
Keeping pets larger than crickets is a luxury of a rich society. Feeding a dog in a
traditional and poor culture means your children will have less to eat. With all that,
things are changing in Việt Nam re dogs. Thịt cho(dog meat) has fallen out of
fashion throughout most of the country and is indulged in by a few old folks,
mostly in the north. Consumption of dog has declined rapidly at least in part
because Americans are horrified at the idea of canine recipes. Vietnamese look
to America as the definer of modernity and wish to emulate Americans and
distance themselves from the Chinese who are now reviled as dog-eaters
(among other sins).
At the same time Việt Nam is becoming a richer country and people have their own
yards that are not part of the village common. People have possessions to protect
now.
In 2003 yard dogs were few and emaciated. Dog was still on the menu in many
city restaurants. Dogs raised for the table were/are fed only rice and their meat is
in the same class of flavor and consistency as that of the creatures we Americans
are more used to eating.
In 2007 there were far more yard dogs and they appeared healthier. All dogs
were still fed only rice because chickens had the run of the village and any dog
that showed a carnivorous interest was dealt with by whoever noted that interest.
In 2011 there were canine pets in some households and many yard dogs. The
towns had made rules that chickens had to be penned so everywhere yards have
large chickenwire enclosures to keep the birds (which look plumper and have
more feathers). Dogs are now fed table scraps that include meat. People are rich
enough that there are table scraps and families can keep dogs as pets.
The rapid change in the status of dogs in Việt Nam is an indication of the rapid
rise of the standard of living.
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| In 2001 my son accompanied me with my Frog, a children's carnival ride, on my circuit
of the state fairs in the Midwest. Bud was born in Florida and grew up entirely in the
South but somehow had developed a disdain for southern speech, thinking of it as
indicative of ignorance and what he thought of as a redneck outlook. He said the
accents in Illinois were so much more "educated" sounding. I thought that a bit ironic as
the northern folks experienced at the fair in DuQuoin, Illinois, the only truly Northern
show we did, had seemed to me to be inbred and generally lower on the IQ scale than
in other places, not stupid, mind you, just not particularly smart and no standouts.
After the season's last fair in Tulsa we headed home to Florida and did not stop at any
motel and had to minimize the time spent out of sight of the Frog. It was what the Law
calls an attractive nuisance. It drew children to play on it and teenagers to
vandalize it.
In southern Mississippi I felt I really had to stop for breakfast and coffee but we drove
a long ways without seeing a place that was open at 3:30 AM and had parking space
for my rig. Bud saw the Waffle House first and told me to stop. It was a standard Waffle
House, that descendant of and replacement for the classic roadside diners of yore, and it
sat next to the large empty parking lot of a shopping mall so I pulled in and we parked it.
We were the only customers in the place and the waitress brought us coffee as we sat
down. Then she went back to the counter for menus. Both of us were tired and Bud was
just a tad irritable but at least we were off the road for a few minutes.
Tonya was black, perhaps 20 years old and quite pretty. She set the menus down in
front of us then, with pencil poised above her ticket pad and said in the finest honeyed
Mississippi tone, "Are yall ready for breakfast, sugar?
The effect on Bud was immediate. He slumped down a little with a half smile on his face.
We ordered and Tonya went back to see to the preparation of breakfast. Bud, still smiling,
said, "We're home." The irritability had all washed away with the soft comfort of Tonya's
voice.
Bud never again had anything contrary to say about southern accents.
My own view is that there are certain accents in English that do for the language what
is natural to Vietnamese, Northern and Southern and in between. Vietnamese is a
language that was surely created by God for women's voices and men's ears. For English
that effect seems to come with accents among people in a portion of Mississippi, part of
Alabama, and in Ireland.
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| A writer of posts on Xanga asked for people to write about any "near death experiences"
they might have had. I remembered this incident that happened a few years ago.
In the summer of 72 I set out on my Honda Humpback 450, that I had brought back
from the war, on a 360 mile trip to NW Florida. At Cross City an oncoming fellow with
a load of whiskey in him turned left immediately in front of me. I have no recollection of
the meeting but the fellow who saw it said I went straight up in the air and came down
(helmeted) head first on the pavement. He said I was going pretty fast and the fellow in
the car didn't seem to slow down much when he turned. The EMT fellows (did they
have EMTs then?) carried me to Shands in Gainesville, a university connected
teaching hospital.
Well, Shands had just received multiple severe injuries from a couple of auto wrecks and
whoever was on duty judged that I was Dead-On-Arrival and a colored card attesting
to that judgment was placed on my chest. Others who could be saved needed the scarce
resources so the gurney on which I was a passenger was pushed over against the wall in
the hall and lifesaving attentions were focused on the other broken bodies that had a
chance to live.
A couple of Medical students were walking in the hallway and saw the stiff unattended.
One of them said, "Let's practice some lifesaving techniques."
They did that and in the process the body commenced to breathe, so I wound up in the
emergency room, anyway.
My first memory is of being flat on my back and unable to move anything and there was
a doctor in a chair far away across the room who was talking somberly to my wife.
There were two med students standing near. The doctor was saying something about my
jaw. Presently all three med types approached me and the doctor grasped my upper
front teeth and pulled. My maxilla (I learned that word right then) came forward a full 2
inches. I felt nothing and was too groggy to render an opinion on the procedure right at
that moment. The doc was demonstrating to the students that my upper jaw was in pieces
and not well connected. Then I got my voice back and said,
"HEYwhatthef**kleemealone!!!!" The doc said "well he seems conscious," and a med
student reached out his hand and repeated the trick with the maxilla. I yelled weakly,
"Dammitol! Can't you take his word for it?" The other med student did it all over again and
I said, "What is with you guys? He wasn't lying! can't you believe him!?"
My wife said, "I think he's going to be okay."
This is likely not the sort of near death experience the Xanga poster meant but I was near
dead and it was quite an experience. I was not then a Christian but, in retrospect, I think I
was protected. I thank the Lord now for medical students.
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| This morning my vicarious niece, Nguyêt, in Khánh Hòa Việt Nam
set up a three way Skype call between her and her family, me in
Florida, and my daughter's husband in Lima Peru. It was not really
three way because Peru doesn't afford enough bandwidth for
that, but he and I were both connected to Nguyệt. Son-in-law
had not met any foreigners before going to Peru and talking to a
Vietnamese while in Peru is a new experience. I have a two week
old grandson now in Peru so daughter was engaged with him and
did not participate in the call. I will put up grandkid pictures when
I receive some.
Maybe we can arrange a four way hookup to involve also my son
in Germany. I have a brand new one week old granđaughter in
Darmstadt.
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