Codeswitching valentines

At dinner last night, the couple next to us kept speaking different languages, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Their conversation flowed in and out of English so smoothly that whenever I tried to listen, it was English again, I thought I was going crazy. I thought it sounded like Arabic, but not quite. And then I thought it sounded like something else entirely. Maybe Eastern European? And then it was lightly accented English again. You could tell they have been together for many years.

I finally overcame my shyness and asked. They were very nice and cheerfully explained their weird language situation. He is Albanian, she is Iraqi Assyrian (or should I say Assyrian Iraqi?). They don’t have a common language, so they use a mixture. They speak Arabic (with an accent) together, along with English (which they speak with their kids). He speaks Albanian, her what? Akkadian?

And it fascinates me that we, who speak no Arabic, can still hear an accent in Arabic. I suppose it’s in the realm of something ‘sounding’ Eastern European, or Chinese. I think we ‘get’ a phonology on a broad scale at some intuitive level, even with very little exposure. And without any hope of pronouncing it.

We will look back and think, “We were so rich. And we didn’t even know it.”

“It was really gross; it was like inhaling herpes or something!”

When sound becomes words

It’s harder than you expect. You head into the jungle or the bush or the wilds of Northern California armed with recorder, microphone, notebooks. You have intricate puzzles, theoretical questions, bright ideas and high hopes. And the first wave of sound is so foreign, so strange, not just incomprehensible but not even parseable, that you despair. How am I ever going to be able to figure anything out?

But there is a magic moment — it comes much later — when you realize you are understanding. Not everything, but enough. The stream of sound is miraculously arriving at your brain as language. Last summer it came when I was listening to old recordings of one of the last truly fluent speakers of the language were were documenting, who, unfortunately had died just before we got there to begin our fieldwork the previous year. We had transcribed the stories he’d recorded with another speaker, that first summer, but they were confusing and confused. Some of the sentences just didn’t make sense in context. I suspected the speaker wasn’t understanding the recording, but I couldn’t do any better. Now, I was sitting crosslegged on my bed safe inside my mosquito net one evening. The generator was already off and I was sitting in the glow of my laptop screen and playing the recording through my headphones, trying to drown out my neighbor’s radio. Suddenly I noticed I was just listening to this old man tell a story. I wasn’t trying to identify the words, I was hearing the story.

It’s the moment when, after about six months at your Peace Corps site, you stop picking out the words you know in a stream of speech, and start picking out the words you don’t know. Which then, of course, you can ask about – a wonderful tool that was not available before.

***

Being able to speak, on the other hand, is another story. I have an uncanny ability to understand what people are talking about, even when I don’t know what they are saying, which helps in comprehension. But my production is not great. I suppose the shyness and general dislike of talking has something to do with that.

How it feels

We enter a huge room with vaulted, glass ceilings. The line snakes several folds of the nylon version of velvet ropes. We keep chatting loudly and jovially about conferences, but the closer we get to the front of the line, it gets quieter and quieter. A self-conscious feeling begins to set in as we approach the overly friendly man checking IDs. No one wants to joke or make eye contact with their fellow passengers because it might look suspicious. At the same time, no one wants to appear serious, or angry, in case that would arouse suspicion too.
It is a short distance to the other side, but it doesn’t seem that way. I try to stay calm, but I can feel a nervous feeling rising inside. I know what I am going to do, and that I am legally allowed to do it, but I still feel like I am about to do something wrong. The inappropriate thing. I take my time putting all my bits and pieces into the plastic bins, unzipping my knee-high boots. I am sorry to hold anyone up, but I cannot partially undress, remove my computer and toiletries from my bags, and keep track of my documents in one swift motion.
I feed my bags gently into the maw of the X-ray machine and my face flushes as I tell the woman “I don’t want to go through the scanner.” But she is not unfriendly nor does she look at me funny. She calls for a “female assist”. I wait in my socks on the dirty carpet as my bags and precious computer drift further and further away, to where anyone could walk away with it if they were so inclined. I wait. She calls out again. Finally a guard beckons me through the metal detector. I try to look relaxed and like I’m definitely not hiding anything — but also not show off the fact that I am still wearing a sweater that could technically be removed and is covering a belt that I know will not set off the alarm. The sweater is apparently tight enough to pass muster and I advance.
My belongings must be carried to the screening podium by someone other than me, and may not be reassembled into portable packages, so naturally they need to call in backup. I suppose the idea is to prevent me from taking anything from my person and putting it in my bag at that point, but my not being allowed to touch my computer case (while it has been sitting there for anyone else to handle) feels condescending.
Then the real fun begins. I am actually more relaxed at this point, because I am on the other side of the barrier, reunited with my untouchable cargo, and I know I will pass the final test. The woman asks me matterofactly if I have any medical devices or sensitive areas (!) she should be aware of. It is hard to suppress a chuckle – just how intimate of a search is this going to be? The patdown is socially bizarre and awkward, to be sure, but it doesn’t really bother me all that much. Maybe because I’m just not that squeamish about the human touch of a stranger of my gender, or maybe I get a perverse sense of amusement out of the absurdity of it all.
It seems clear that she does not really consider me a threat, but we have to go through this ridiculous dance because that’s her job. Exposing the farce for what it is. It can’t be about stopping sketchy people. I assume they do that when the opportunity presents itself, but that isn’t what this is about. It must be about what the vast majority of time, money and effort is spent on: and from here that looks like intimidation, training a populace to follow orders, to conform.
The body scanner is, of course, the path of least resistance. When you’re made to march through a creepy machine it all seems very high tech and beyond our understanding and control so we just have to hold our breath lift our feet and hope it doesn’t give us cancer. Being herded through such a gateway feels scifi, Orwellian, fascist. But it’s also over with more quickly, and it’s easier to pretend that our privacy is not being violated, pretend everything is fine, nothing strange is happening.
With the patdown you can’t ignore what is going on. You have to look the guard in the eye, exchange words. Acknowledge the weird power dynamic. It is unavoidably and appropriately uncomfortable. This must be why most opt in. Which is counted on, because it would just be infeasible to physically check everyone. Just imagine the same masses of people raising their arms (no not that way the other way) to get felt up by an equal number of other people employed for this purpose. Going this way, feels like a quiet form of protest. A refusal to be dishonest, to ignore the discomfort.
Finally I am given the nod. I hurriedly re-dress and re-assemble my things. I feel a slightly giddy sense of relief. I want to get away from the inspection site as quickly as I can (in case they change their minds?) so I wander over to the airport map a short distance away as I wait for my companion.

“Every time she gets pregnant, he puts on the same weight that she does! But she loses it…”

Why I’m (Finally) Leaving Facebook

I will miss the feeling of being in touch, the procrastination, the commiseration, the instant answers to Malagasy grammar questions, the news, and my snarky comments being appreciated. But it’s not worth it anymore.

It’s not about the targeted advertising. That is merely irritating.

The first thing that really bothered me was having no control over who could download images I posted. It made me not want to post anything decent, because I still have pretentions of being a real photographer and want to retain copyright for my pictures.

Then, the fact that this company has a gigantic facial recognition database of everyone, is deeply disturbing, for reasons of privacy which ought to be obvious but probably aren’t. And of course the fact that they created this without users’ explicit consent is problematic.

But the last straw was the recent change to tagging. You cannot opt out of people tagging you at geo-referenced locations. Nor of people tagging you in photos (which then builds the facial recognition database). Facebook tries to make us feel like we are in control by letting us decide which of those things are visible to various of our friends when they look at our page. But that isn’t the problem.

I don’t much care whether my friends can see what I’m tagged in. I care that I don’t have veto power over what other people tag me in (accurately, inaccurately, accidentally, inappropriately, or even maliciously – imagine the possibilities!). I care that other random people can see that stuff. While I have control over what my friends can see on my page, I have no control over what random strangers can see about me. Would you want people to be able to tag you at locations if you had a stalker? If you were an activist in a politically repressive regime? If someone wanted to destroy your reputation? If you mistrusted a) people trying to make money off of you any way possible, or b) your government? I care that that data is being collected and stored at all.

And the whole thing with Salman Rushdie was just icing on the cake (if Facebook didn’t make people use their real names, the tagging problem wouldn’t be so bad). Yeah, sure you can make groups of people who see different things you do and say, which I do (mainly just so people I don’t care to interact with don’t comment on things). But I don’t want to have to jump through all these hoops, and most people just don’t even bother. And more importantly, there is a database out there that knows all the things you say, who you want to say it to and who you don’t. I believe this knowledge should only be in one’s own head. This is why it’s so annoying to have to think about it and teach the computer. These filters we have depending on the context we are speaking in are subconscious, automatic. To make them explicit is difficult, a little bit painful, and contrary to the subjective experience of speaking one’s mind in a given context.

Furthermore, there is no shame in taking on a different persona in writing. Look at all the pen names over the centuries. It has been the only way a woman could be taken seriously, or a radical could put forth new ideas, or a public figure could lead a quiet literary life, or an insider could be a whistleblower without losing their job or life. When an idea has been tested and celebrated, more often than not, the actual person comes forward to stand in his or her persona. When an idea fizzles, the person behind it can carry on, losing nothing. In this way anonymity fosters creativity.

Privacy Infographic

Dangerous Days

I went to the screening of ‘V for Vendetta’ last night, a benefit for Occupy. One of the questions on a little sheet of ‘thought experiments’ handed out by someone there was “What music speaks most directly to your personal political philospophy?”
I thought, I have no idea. I’m not sure I even have a personal political philosophy. But then this morning in the shower, a line from ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’ popped into my head. I haven’t heard this song in probably 15 years. Maybe it was provoked by our discussing last night whether Natalie Portman, with or without a shaved head, looked like Sinéad. But as I gradually remembered more of the lyrics, it dawned on me that not only was this song political, it was the first political song I ever (knowingly) listened to. I was just a kid, I didn’t know a thing about Thatcherian England. But I got it, in my gut. I knew what the song was about, without really understanding it. If there are no coincidences… this album and V for Vendetta came from the same time and place in history, so why shouldn’t one remind us of the other? And could this song feel any more relevant today?

here’s the song on youtube

The lyrics online are all bolloxed up; this is correct as far as I can remember:

SINEAD O'CONNOR
"Black Boys On Mopeds"

Margaret Thatcher on TV

Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing

It seems strange that she should be offended

The same orders are given by her


I've said this before now

You said I was childish and you'll say it now

"Remember what I told you

If they hated me they will hate you"


England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses

It's the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds

And I love my boy and that's why I'm leaving

I don't want him to be aware that there's

Any such thing as grieving


Young mother down at Smithfield

5 am, looking for food for her kids

In her arms she holds three cold babies

And the first word that they learned was "please"


These are dangerous days

To say what you feel is to dig your own grave

"Remember what I told you

If you were of the world they would love you"


England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses

It's the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds

And I love my boy and that's why I'm leaving

I don't want him to be aware that there's

Any such thing as grieving.

Sproul appears deoccupied – except for a lone violinist dressed in a hospital gown and matching kelly green knit hat and scarf. Playing auld lang syne by the fountain. There is a cat in his violin case. His performance is followed by a chorus of howling dogs.

Occupy Veterans Day

"If that's restraint, I don't want to see when they get aggressive"
- vet in march this evening in front of OPD (interviewed on KPFA)

This movement has nothing to do with veterans, what? Listen, this is the veterans day of all veterans days – 11-11-11 – and what are the veterans doing? They are here, marching against police brutality in their own land, marching against war.

Recall that when enlisted, U.S. military (and Peace Corps Volunteers, for that matter) take an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That clause always mystified me a little. I wasn’t sure what it meant to defend – not the citizens or the government or the laws of the United States – but the constitution. How could the constitution have enemies? And how does one defend it against them while stationed overseas?

I am no longer mystified. While the individual people and laws that make up the government are always changing; it is the constitution that is at the core. And it is the essence of our identity as a country, without it there wouldn’t be a citizenry to defend. Now soldiers have seen that their country, as defined by the constitution, the one they were willing to give their lives to defend, is threatened: not by the bogey-man terrorist foreigner, but quietly, by forces at work from within. They know that a U.S. where democracy is a farce, where money controls every inch of government, where police brutalize people for actually exercising their first-amendment rights, is not the U.S. they swore to protect. And since they swore to defend the constitution, not whoever may be in power at the moment, they will fight here at home to protect the essence of our democracy from those who would turn it into a charade in service of their greed.

If this interpretation is uncomfortable, re-read the oath and do a thought experiment: What does it mean to defend the constitution as opposed to the government or the nation? What would it look like if there were a foreign threat to the constitution? A domestic threat? How different would that be from the situation we currently find ourselves in?

 ***

On another note, I find the fact that the Bonus Army had remarkable racial integration very telling. It shows that race really is a part of this. It is part of the history of this country not only that the powers that be are in the racially dominant class and want to stay there, but that the people, the rest of us, are one. These people were vets, true, and the situation is different. But hearing the stories of these camps with people living, eating, and playing music together feels so familiar, it sounds like Occupy Oakland. In both cases, the same system which keeps the powerful people in power dislikes the idea of integration and cooperation among the common people. And in both cases when people are beat down, they realize they have a lot more in common than not. We know racism is learned. And if it is taught by those who would wish to keep us apart, this gives me hope.