Gosh - Eileen, Anne, and I going to be in good company!
Don't get nervous.....
August 2005 Archives
The term "index" was first used by Peirce, who defines it as the connection between a sign and its object, i.e., the sign points to its object. According to Levinson (1983, p. 57), Peirce "argued that they determined a referent by an existential relation between sign and referent (see Burks, 1949)," however they "have not been put to much effective use in linguistic pragmatics"[thanks Tatjana!]. Enter Michael! Who "created a
framework in which this concept could usefully become central
to understanding how language and other communicative codes
are contextualized/contextualizing" (personal correspondence).
"There's nowhere else to go to create honest conversation about the working world."
So says Jeremy Blachman, writing an opinion piece for the NYTimes about the lack of legal protection for bloggers.
Sam says this used to be one of his nicknames. He's not that skinny now! Not as solid as he was when he could get around on his own legs though. He's been feeling better the past two days. I saw him last night and he was feeling good, tonight too. He got some sad news yesterday from the Vecchiatti's, so we've been doing a bit of sad together. :-(
Right now he's working Sue the nurse over to sign his guestbook. The advantage of having a laptop here is I can post directly! We'll see - he's thinking of keeping it . . . I need to do some negotiating with the staff though to really help him with it once in awhile. We were lucky to have some kind souls come in from the outside to do it this summer while I was gone.
Thanks for the comments from Wes, Cicely, Bea and Jennifer. Sam also got emails from David and Nona. Sam says, "Keep 'em coming!"
SocialText has got me way jazzed. Which I could go to Amsterdam for Democracies Online.
The good thing about being among friends when one begins to interpret after a long absence is that they tend to just be entertained by one's mistakes. The best one was "poop" instead of "gas" but I thought "elevator" instead of "emergency" was also amusing. %-/
My team was great. She caught me using 'abuse' instead of 'discipline' and that was an error that could have slipped by in context. And I don't recall the sentence but there was something she helped me clarify at the end - I asked her, was I not clear? She said, "You signed exactly what the presenter said but what she said wasn't all that clear." Ah yes, now there/s an interpreter decision that matters!
has taken up the viol da gamba. I'm trying not to be jealous. Not that I could play (!), but that I could engage in such pure entertainment! I do squeeze some in, occasionally, really! Honest I do! ;-)
Todd's new band has some CD's if you wangle and beg for 'em. His site, by the way, is shaping up quite nicely: onlineanthology.
My blog was compared today to eat22 and also to the blogger in the Doonesbury strip for pure banality.
yeah baby, bring on the fame! (As if!)
The photographs of his mutilation by white racists helped to galvanize the civil rights movement in the US.
Now, a documentary: The Murder of Emmitt Till.
The violence done then ripples out in waves of emotional and psychic pain. And then we wonder why people are as warped as we often are. Trying to grow straight again Lillian Smith), impossible as its ultimate achievement be, must remain among our highest priorities.
"This is one of the worries i have about being a mental patient. When I'm in this state, I feel more like my true self than I ever felt ... That's the thing that scares me the most about this being crazy stuff. If you don't watch out you start to like the feeling" (75).
Poor Sam. He was all huddled up in blankets, coughing and feeling all-around miserable when I saw him yesterday. :-( (He did brighten up a bit seeing me, grin.) He must have got sick right after Lee visited. But he sure enjoyed gallivanting all over town with you! Saw your comment, Lee, when you were with him last time. Jennifer posted there too, so you should all catch up on the news!
He asked about folks, and says hi to everyone, and so loves it when you do write. It is tough for him to say much back. I know it might be frustrating for those of you who want a specific response. All I can say is Sam loves you and it means the world to him to hear from you. He wishes each of you the very best.
This Vermont (!) writer discusses parallels between animals and humans referring to "the sleeper hit of the summer" "March of the Penguins".
"Functionally, I suspect love is an often temporary chemical imbalance of the brain induced by sensory stimuli that causes us to maintain focus on something that carries an adaptive agenda.
The scientists trying to prove that the ivory-billed woodpecker is miraculously not extinct are being conservative, but I heard the audio comparison of its call this morning - a verified one from 1935 and one captured on a remote recorder deep in the Arkansas woods last year. It convinced me!
And what glorious evidence that (at least some) rare and beautiful things still manage to survive humanity's worst effects. It's as good as a phoenix!
Shemaya and I are hard at work on this article due in a week. We've been prepping (research, discussion) for six months but now it's time to write. We had a glaring weakness and needed a miracle. I put out a call on the AoIR listserv and Lauren sends along her paper that is, without a doubt, the missing link. :-)
Turns out she keeps a blog, too. Here's an entry from a few days ago that is sortof related to our paper topic, Taking your social life with you (and keeping it to yourself), about how to juggle multimedia relationships.
Shemaya reminded me today of an incident from way back - a decade or more ago (probably more). It was a gathering at Mary Frances' place on the lake in Pelham. I was distressed about some situation or other. A woman who hadn't met me before observed my trying to deal with the emotions: "You look like Spock."
Upon relaying this story to Raz and another bud (who totally cracked up), Raz quipped that "ten years later you became Worf." From Vulcanism to Klingonism, now that's something! Raz has seen me rage a few times. His observation of me today was that I'm "quieter." Is this indicative of a real change or merely jetlag? We'll find out. Can anyone who's known me imagine me as "soft-spoken"? :-)
I kinda like the notion myself.
One of these years I'll get to attend this conference. I hear great things about it every time.
In the meantime, I'll catch up with Eileen there.
Eileen's and my proposal for ASLTA's conference this fall was accepted. Hopefully Anne is gonna be able to join us because it's time. :-)
Here's what we said we were gonna do:
Language-in-Action: The Shape of Deaf Discourse about Interpreters
From a European Parliament interpreter (via email):
"I'm happy that "we" behaved decently towards you and that you've been
able to see for yourself that Europeans still don't eat innocent
Americans with hot milk for breakfast....one more "homo Bushiens"
elected to become US-president, and who knows, though....;-))
Actually you did bring home to me again that we interpreters are still
this one big international family."
I also got a hot tip on a new film about interpreters, called The Whisperers, will premiere in Berlin soon.
I'm sitting in the Tegel Airport. This is it! Busy. My mind - and entire being, for that matter - has spun a lot this summer. It's been good and I feel good. :-)
I'm particularly grateful to all the friends I've made, and those who took care of me in various ways - a meal here or there, housing (bless you all!), a stimulating conversation, a supportive ear. There is a lot of love in the world. I don't mean the romanticized hollywood version; I mean basic kindness and caring.
The visual image that summarizes this entire summer for me was leaving the Dexus conference yesterday. I had to leave early because of travel constraints. Everyone waved: a warm sea of hands.
Someone was right - full moon tonight not last night. A Full Sturgeon Moon:
"The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon."
Certainly appropriate for my last night in Denmark!
A free MA program for refugees to become interpreters at Cardiff University! (Still have to hunt for the specifics.)
Nikolas Rose (1999), Powers of Freedom.
"...commenting on a set of papers is itself an intertextual exercise. To point out connections among the papers, and tie them in various ways to one's own text, is a metalevel intertextual task that - if (as one hopes) one is perspicacious or just lucky - is to co-construct the papers' cumulative effect. It is an interdiscursive task [...] intertextualit -, or interdiscursivity - as a specific semiotic effect must be created in practice" (Commentary: Knots and Tears in the Discursive Fabric Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol 15, No 1, June 2005, p. 72).
Carole suggests "the summer of 42" as a theme for this year's fieldwork and assorted adventures in "Europe". (I was caught last night in the extremely american act of saying I'd been "here" since May 7, here meaning "Europe" - not Aalborg, Denmark.)
I'm not sure if the movie of this title is apt but of course now I'll have to watch it. :-)
Dexus has been an extraordinary culmination; I can't imagine a better group of people or a more wonderful opportunity. Really!
There are many things I'd like to be able to record about today. In addition to the intentional (required) group work, there are the other conversations - about discourse and quantum physics with Jussi and Elin, about (in)sensitivity to invisible cultural boundaries, about the (un)exportability of american models, my own naivete/lack of education about world history...
This list is inevitably incomplete.
I have been busy in the SocialText webspace for the Dexus Conference. It's pretty wicked cool. :-) Learning a lot, making some friends - hope they last!
the team I'm on is gonna work on Blommaert's notion of polycentricity - figure out how to operationalize it.
Here's an article that links a notion of polycentricity (not Jan's) and part of Terry's asylum discourse data: Does polycentricity aid social cohesion?
Paul L posted a note to Sam, with the email address back to iputney.com. Check it out!
and Karen dropped a note that her mom, fondly known as Omi, was born in Mannheim, 1911, right where I was last week! She adds, "My grandfather was the town planner and architect in Ludwigshafen," which is right next door.
museumfreak posted the link to this awesome discussion of potential isms in Rowling's series. I haven't read the recent one yet, and a few hints are given that one may not wish to know in advance, but the discussion is instructive, to say the least.
Dexus officially starts tomorrow but the wiki space has been going for a couple of weeks. I'm relieved to see I'm not the TOP user (hats off to Tatjana for that!), but I made more changes than anyone else (except the Head Honcho, Paul) by at least a power of ten. gulp Kristina, Jessica, and Karin are also up there with the hit volume, not to mention Jussi, Elin, and Carina. Irene, Kris, Ehya, jbk, and air are also in triple digits.
But, the fact remains, I did "talk" alot. This could be relevant to feedback I recently received on 'being overwhelming.' A friend emailed in response: "When you are overwhelming, bursting at the seams, it is you, not being an American. The sometimes dramatic energy is lifegiving, so don’t ever be ashamed of it." I agree that shame is extreme. But it can be embarrassing!
A well qualified candidate was passed over in the search for a new Superintendent of the Indiana Deaf School for reasons that are hard to fathom.
A graduate of ISD, David Geeslin has fulfilled various positions within the school over the past decade while pursuing advanced academic studies. I met David in 1991, the year before I left ISD to further my own education. He was an enthusiastic new member of the faculty and the bilingual-bicultural committee - a mixed group of Deaf and non-deaf teachers, administrators, and support staff who had worked through the often difficult and troubling historical issues of prejudice, discrimination, and distrust that unfortunately are endemic in many residential schools for the deaf.
The most obvious factor in Turkish language acquisition and maintenance in Germany is that the original guestworkers were not intended to stay, and if they did, they were supposed to learn German, period. It is a very recent phenomenon for persons of Turkish descent to realize that they have the right to speak Turkish (using interpreters), and the general German population (even in education!) has not yet realized that this is a multilingual asset.
I'm not sure if/how this youth protest movement might intersect with interpreting, but I it's definitely worth checking out. the movement was apparently tiggered by the book, Kanak Sprak, which doesn't seem to have been translated into English. YEt? :-( by Feridun Zaimoglu. More on Zaimoglu.
There's a film, an album, participation in a conference (sorry I missed it!), Fadaiat 2005:
"Fadaiat - which means "through spaces" in arabic - is a political, technological and artistic laboratory that takes place from 17th to 26th of June 2005 in Tanger (Spain) & Tarifa (Morocco) on both sides of the tense frontier dividing Europe from Africa.
What for? To advance in the construction of social, collaborative networks, local and transnational, connecting cognitarians, migrants and precarious, to research and develop tools, to exchange and share knowledge, to discuss common strategies and projects... within the reference framework of the new borders."
I’ve been practicing variations of discovering “bfe” and “bfo.” Neither is complimentary, but one phrase refers to the “boonies” from a US point-of-view, and the other refers to the “boonies” from a European point-of-view. Anyone ever hear of bum-f*ck ohio? :-)
I’ve been well-cared-for, yet again. Besides local connections that promoted my fieldwork, Ruediger and Helke treated me to a scrumptious Thai dinner, introduced me to “SSA” (soy sauce addiction), updated me on German politics (looks like chances are leaning toward the moderate right (Angela Merkel of the CDU?) taking over from the moderate left in upcoming national elections), and generally made me feel welcome.
I learned there was a bit of checking and coordination behind-the-scenes as to my whereabouts. (Surreptitious phone calls, “She got on the train at 9:08 pm” and careful calculations as to when I ought to arrive….with (apparently) a bit of worry when the appointed time passed – kinda sweet, eh?) One might think my reputation had preceded me! I only took the tram in the wrong direction twice! I’m sure I only changed my mind less than half-a-dozen times about when to leavea Berlin/arrive in Mannheim! And I’ve only had two or three alternatives as to when to actually leave for (Berlin or) Aalborg! (It could be the name of good horror film, eh? The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave. :-)
Well, I was assured that given the entire three months of my journey in Europe, being ‘lost’ for mere hours hardly counts. Obviously I had time to make mistakes on the tram. Besides, I got to see more this way. And it hasn’t happened in EVERY city I’ve been in, just Brussels, Antwerpen, and now Mannheim. Not Budapest. Not Berlin. Not Ghent, Amsterdam or Strassbourg. Oh - it did happen in Strassburg when I booked in a room in Kiel (near Hamburg), instead of in Kehl - just across the border! :-) Uh….there was San Antonio,,,,and the pizza expedition in Quedlinburg. Dang. That makes it exactly 6:4, even if I don't get turned around in Aalborg I won't be able to break even! *alas!*
Gosh - I have just been too hectic lately! (In fieldwork they call it the snowball effect.)
Sam and I had a videochat on Sunday evening with James' superb assistance. It was OBVIOUS the very second Sam came into view that he was feeling GREAT! It was pretty cool to see, because his energy has been low most times we've chatted. He said he'd been feeling that good for a few days, had taken a trip, and was just overall doing well.
He did get tired of trying to speak, so James and I would chat intermittently and Sam would eavesdrop. Then we'd chat directly some more. That system seemed to work pretty well. If anyone is in the area and can squeeze in a visit, it might be a very good time! (Of course, you know Sam always enjoys company.
Hugs to all!
Matthias took me for beer on the beach - the imported sand on the edge of the Neckar River. We're in wine country here, where the pace of life is just a tad bit slower and more reasonable.
Of course, Matthias is convinced that the urgency of the north is important for technological inventions, but its easier to live in the south. Much more comfortable. In general, his theory is that people keep moving west - from Poland to Germany, from Germany to France, finally to Italy or Spain. As long as it gets warmer and warmer its ok.
I have experienced some warm and generous Turkish customs - from afternoon cake and coffee to two-cheek greetings and farewells. I have eaten some delicious Turkish food, including yummy doner in Berlin and delicious cheese-and-home-grown herb bureks (sp?) in Mannheim.
If you’re looking for a Turkish restaurant extraordinaire – do yourself a favor and visit Waldesruh in Lampertheim (0 62 06/5 52 01). They have a gorgeous outdoor courtyard, cozy countertop bar, and spacious indoor tables. And The Food!!!! :-)
Homer's 32 Ways to Say "doh". Turn on the audio!
"Der", however, is not in the online Homer lexicon. Does he really say it?
Dexus Nexus is going to use a wiki! I'm trying to contain my excitement. :-) Finally, an intentional web-community that will use a weblog and some software called SocialText.
Mannheim is the place to be!!!
I've already had two interviews and more are on the horizon. Last night friends of the friends I'm staying with invited us to their restaurant (where a family birthday party was in progress!) - I learned a great deal about "family interpreting" in a very short time. The experiences of Turkish children growing up here seems quite similar, in some respects, to that of non-deaf children raised by Deaf parents. In this conversation, I realized an important assumption that I think has been operative in interviews I've had with other interpreters who have criticized the Turkisch language competence of so-called community and even officially "sworn" court interpreters.
Who told me I didn't need reservations for the trains? After hanging out at the Maibach until midnight last night, I made my way to Zoolischer to catch the 00:32 to Mannheim. "Nothing Free!" the conductor yelled at me. And I mean yelled! If he'd just been brusque (like people have warned me Berliners could be) I might have just got on and dealt with sitting in the aisle or whatever. But he looked at me like I was the most insane person he'd ever met. So, there I was. Stranded in Berlin!
I won't call it fate. As Julita said, you can call it coincidence or...
If I can just get there!!!
and here's how to get to the bvg tube schedules: fahrinfo. But - I might just catch an overnight train tonight and "be there" in Mannheim tomorrow. Why not?
Several things fell into place this afternoon - right as I'm getting ready to leave the city. The vagaries of un-institutional fieldwork!
Most importantly, I got access to the Court's list of "sworn interpreters" [a pdf] via a city link that provides official and touristic info.
Rocio writes:
"You can use my name in your blog, if you want to, no problem. As for the entries about Carmen, two things: First, she is the CUTEST baby ever, no exception. Not because it is my daughter, it is completely objective :-) The second thing is you got the spelling of "chupete" wrong: "chupeta" is the portuguese word, and your link is to a web page in Portuguese describing all the bad effects of using a "chupeta" too long. I didn't know that "chupeta" was "chupete" in Portuguese, I learned something."
Links added by moi. Notice the dangers of posting links in languages I don't know! %-/
There are other babies I have at least marginal contact with:
Anna, whose not-so-shy papa has posted just a few photos online.
Sam, the Gangsta (soon to be joined by a baby sister, rumor has it?!!), and Leona.
I was treated to an absolutely scrumptious seafood marinara last night and a ‘last beer’ at Hefner’s, after a hectic day of scurrying between interviews. At least I finally got some interviews! And a few more leads…
Do I stay or do I go? I’m a waffle. Do I stay or do I go? Mannheim? Quedlinberg? Aalborg? I haven’t been so unsure yet this summer, waiting for the chips to fall and inspiration to dawn.
Ok, ok. Yes. I went out on the town. :-) Met some Deaf Germans. :-) It was the opening night of Ladyfest, billed as "a platform of several days' duration to present feminist and queer art, literature and music, bound in a worldwide network." The Kickoff Party was held at Liberacion: Cafe and Kneipe (a saloon or tavern) on Kinzigstrasse. I wandered for a good 30 minutes in a mild, dark drizzle before I found it, having been misled by the well-intentioned efforts of shopkeepers to get me there.
more tourism yesterday. Potsdamer Platz (see it in panorama, scroll down a bit). It's completely dominated by the Sony Center, Quartier Daimler-Chrysler, DB, and Sanofi Aventis. Not to mention two IMAX theatres, a mongo arcade, and bizillions of cafes.
I walked from there past some sections of The Wall, to the Field of Stelae
at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I chose not to go in, but spent awhile in the Field. From there, I walked
to the Brandenburg Tor. It rained, lightly, which fit my mood.
Dude: a lightweight word denoting attention to fashion and a devotion to "cool,".
It's definitely gendered and hence its application to women could be considered sexist.
Hey everyone,
I videochatted with Sam from Berlin last week, he looked good and sounded ok. He was tired (I caught him without warning just as he was getting ready to take a nap), but we had a nice conversation. He wanted to tell me some German word or phrase that Edith always signs her letters with – neither Jess nor I could make it out. Me trying to pronounce German is a bit scary. :-) so we don’t have a translation – anyone wanna help us out?
I actually got out some today. :-) Well, I’ve been out just about everyday, but I had an interview (yeah!), had a scrumptious meal at the Maibach, received some gratis community interpreting services (!) for some technology-related errands, visited Alexanderplatz (it was highly recommended I go in the rain to catch the full effect), and had a yummy dinner (decent company, wink) at papaya: thailändische spezialitäten. And someone got a present. :-)
On my own for dinner, I thought it time to indulge a wurst. The neighborhood kiosk was out of bratwurst (familiar), offering currywurst instead. “Is it good?” I asked – realizing instantly that they weren’t going to diss their own food. “It’s the national meal!” The wurst was ok, even the curry powder liberally dumped on top was tolerable. The half-ton of ketchup did it in. Statler admonished me, “You have to go to the right place!” (That would be Weichenbach (sp?), not Berliner Strasse - unless you want to join the Fat Fleet.)
Hefner’s was more lively, or was that us? :-) Statler may have been trying
I wasn't ready to apply when Carolyn sent out info way way back in September of 2003 (!), but the time's a drawin' near...
National Science Foundation. Search for "Human and Social Dynamics".
One of my ex/outlaw's read the most recent paper on interpreter-deaf discourse(s) and made some crucial observations. Of course, she was struck by the assumption that just because someone is "out" of their own culture that this automatically means you're "in" another one. She also felt there was a contradiction between interrupting a few times being "ok" but too much is "offensive" (these are her terms). Yes, on the one hand it seems like a double standard, but on the other the motivation or cause for the interruption is different. We need to work on making this distinction more clear. It's not the interrupting, per se, but the the frequency of it indicates something else, and that "something else" is what Deaf folk are upset about.
"The best general advice I can give a first-time poster constructor is to describe the circumstance in which a poster will eventually be viewed: a hot, congested room filled with people who are there primarily to socialize, not to look at posters. And, because poster sessions are often concurrent with the "wine and beer" session, chaos is further increased by hundreds of drunk, uninhibited graduate students staggering around hitting on each other. So as you design your poster, keep in mind that it must be informative, brief, and visually slick in order to attract viewers. A good motivational exercise is to imagine that you will be sandwiched between a poster on "Teaching house cats to perform cold fusion" and one on "Mating preferences in sex-starved red pandas." In such a situation, your poster must be great, not just OK, if you hope to attract an audience."
Paul provided the above online resource (Making an Academic Poster Display). If he doesn't shoot me (!), I'm still going to submit for this conference. Been hard to carve out the intellectual space what with leaping from the Parliament to RID to Turkish-German interpreters - (great article by Ebru here, not to mention heavy work on the piece with Shemaya for Information, Communication and Society. Oh, and keeping up the blog, looking for work, various mundane details like that! This is the life of an academic, eh?
I participated in an online survey some months ago, and the results show me in the most common range in almost everything. Some highlights:
46% feel highly valued and appreciated (4 on a scale of 1-5)
53% worked fewer than 20 billable jobs in the three months preceding this survey (makes me wonder if it's parttime work for most - like me?)
90% worked for up to 40 different organizations in the previous 3 month period (I wonder how many only work for a small handful? This is obscured.)
Pay is broadly distributed, but the largest percentage, 36%, earns between $30.00 and 39.99/hour.
Finally, while experience in the field varied widely, the largest percentage of respondents to this survey, 35%, had more than 16 years.
Blog-a-thon tag:
EFF15
If there’d only been one "click moment," I’d be set! I conceived of using a weblog as an attempt to produce an interface between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. My experience teaching online had alerted me to the fact that the conditions of cyberspace enabled thoughtful, more evenly participatory group discourse about the topic at hand. I was enthusiastic – full of inspiration! – and unprepared for the contingencies of a (voluntary) public online space created for an already established (not anonymous) face-to-face group. I openly identified my desire to analyze our discourse in the blog as a means of tracking stages of group development. I was (narcissistically?) surprised, then, when others weren’t as enthusiastic as me (hello!); moreso when there were indications of resistance (especially after everyone had given consent). Funny how I knew, intellectually, that all kinds of things “go on” beneath the surface of what people say, but was (am still?) unable to apply it when my own ambition is at stake!
My professor was blase:
