"like the memory of a mistreated dog...I don't understand what happened, but it frightens me"

From Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

"Mom,
when you think of it,
we're ALL rescue puppies"

from Amy

Old Fashion vs Old-Fashioned

I saw it again today, this time on a website I really like; the wrong hyphened adjective.
The correct use is old-fashioned
But once recorded wrong in the memory it stays that way in the memory.
I guess.

Make a mental note:
old-fashioned.

Another Hyphenated Adjective

"...it's not much of a park.  Just this sloping-down grass place by the old millpond, with a statue of a guy on a horse.  Some civil war general, and he's pointing his sword at the pond like he's going to chase the ducks away."

From Max the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick

photo from wikipedia, (though it is of Lafayette, and not a civil war general)

Hyphenated Adjectives from MAX THE MIGHTY, and I FUNNY

When you were in grade school, you learned that adjectives were describing words and always preceded the noun.  red car

Now, you write more complex adjectives and find that just one isn't sufficient.
A well worn copy of a book with battered cover and curled corners to its pages becomes:
a "dog-eared copy of the book"
the book is not a dog ear, nor just a plain copy, so we hyphenate the adjectives making the imagery more concise and indeed, more visual.

From Max the Mightly by Rodman Philbrick we get:

"chain-link fence"
"quick-talking voice"
"boarded-up windows"
"rolled-up jacket"

We also get triple adjectives like
11-year-old girl"
"mom-and-pop deal"
"no-good, lying creep"
"out-of-control locomotive"

We can play with the order of adjectives like
"she moves slow-footed"

and how about this for conjuring an image:
"filled-to-the-brim dumpster"

I have noticed that recent books seem to use hyphenated adjectives more and more.
In I Funny by James Patterson we find
"the family's road-hogging, gas guzzling, DVD-playing SUV"
"dinner is usually something like tuna noodle casserole made with cream-of-wallpaper soup"

delightful

EXCEPTION you don't need hyphens with LY-adverbs working as adjectives
 like previously mentioned article
Grammar girl has an excellent article on hyphens here:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-a-hyphen

A Short History of Buffalo Soldiers (not the movie)

photo from wikipedia

According to the Texas State Historical Society, more than 180,000 African Americans fought in segregated units during the Civil War.   After the civil war ended , the peace-time forces retained 6 infantry regiments, (which were later consolidated to 2), and 2 cavalry regiments.

These regiments fought during the Indian Wars, which ended in the 1890s, where the Plains Indians called them Buffalo Soldiers.  Stationed in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and the Dakotas during the Indian Wars, they fought renegades, bank robbers, and horse and cattle thieves.  They protected stage coaches, payrolls, railroad workers and small towns. 1  These regiments also served in  the Spanish American War, including Battles in Cuba. http://www.history.army.mil/documents/spanam/BSSJH/Shbrt-BSSJH.htm ,  saw service in the Philippines, and Pershing's incursion into Mexico during the Mexican American war.

During World War 1 racial tensions in the US military actually worsened and US white troops fighting in France refused to fight with their Black counterparts.  Segregated Black battalions were limited to supporting roles, even though African Americans were willing to fight on the front lines.  Although African Americans were awarded honours for valor during the war, they returned to a high level of discrimination and the new NAACP was active in defending the rights of returning veterans with limited success.

With Jim Crow law pervading every aspect of US society, it must have been difficult for African Americans to serve in World War 2.  Newspapers in the US proclaimed there was racial harmony as part of war propaganda, yet African Americans who enlisted continued to be segregated.
Black newspapers urged their readers to support the war effort, while still calling on the government to apply Equal Rights to all of its citizens.  Many African Americans served faithfully and well, though they were still often relegated to support roles.

The severe shortage of troops in the most desperate fighting of the Battle of the Bulge caused General Eisenhower to send armed African American troops to fight with White troops in the same units.  It was an important step in the integration of the US military which occurred 1948, though the last segregated units were not disbanded until 6 years later.

don't confuse this with the movie by that name from 2003 which is an unrelated satire of the military

1) Buffalo Soldiers in Italy: Black Americans in World War 2 by Hondon B Hargrove, McFarland 2003

Also, be sure to listen to Buffalo Soldiers by Bob Marley "stolen from Africa...in the heart of America"

Langston Hughes was not "denied passage" as such. Why do we recirculate the same phrase?

As I searched information about Langston Hughes for the my recent short posts,
I kept finding the phrased "denied passage on a ship because of his colour"  or "denied ship"

This tidbit is posted and reposted as though they are all borrowing from each other.

It doesn't take much searching to find an actual source.  
In The Collected Works of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes he says:
"if I had to work for low wages at dull jobs, I might  just as well see the world, so I began to look for work on a ship."  he signed to a ship in New York only to find this particular ship was tied up all winter, leaving him lots of time to write.  "I was the only Negro in the whole fleet" he wrote. 2

 Eventually he travelled to the Western coast of Africa and his travels in those ports make interesting reading.  Hughes returned "with a better understanding of the complexities of race and Africa's colonial rule..." according to Langston Hughes edited by Harold Bloom 1

In 1924 Hughes worked on a ship leaving New York for Europe.  He jumped ship in Rotterdam, Holland, and went to Paris where it seems he found a love for Jazz.  (Remember I mentioned there was another Renaissance among the Black intellectuals in Paris?)
Alain Locke joined him in Paris and the two set off to tour Italy.  Hughes' passport and money were stolen on the train, and he had neither money nor papers to book passage.  Locke left him a little money and continued on the tour. Langston Hughes thought working on a ship  would be the best way to get back to new York, "but none of the ships were hiring Blacks." 1

Hughes lived by his wits (and that's another interesting story) until finding a job on a ship with an all-black crew, finally returning to New York to find he was now well known for his poetry.

All day long at school I tell students this:  "don't just look for re-posts of something--go find the original source."

Sources (NOT MLA)
1) Langston Hughes, by Howard Bloom, New York, Broomhall, PA, Chelsea House, Northam, Roundhouse, 2003

2) The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, vol 13, University of Missouri, September 2002,

Originally named POEM, later renamed YOUTH, by Langston Hughes Also MY PEOPLE

Statue created in 1975, in Lawrence Kansas, portraying Langston Hughes as a boy holding a book by W.E.B. DuBois, delivering the Saturday Evening Post  

We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame

Yesterday, a night-gone thing
A sun-down name

And dawn today
Broad arch above the road we came
We march!

published as Poem in 1924, and as Youth in 1932

photo of Tuskegee Airmen from Wikipedia.org

My People

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people. 

I, TOO, SING AMERICA with a Little History of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes lived in Harlem 1928-1930 and was an important voice during the Harlem Renaissance. 

When he expressed interest in the principles of social equality of communism, he was investigated by Senator McCarthy's Committee during the communist scare of the 1950s.  

(Please remember that McCarthy was known for ignoring due process of law and investigated or intimidated a lot of people)  

By the 1960s Hughes was recognized for his literary contributions and was named cultural representative to Europe and Africa for the US State Department, travelling around Europe, China, Japan, Russia and Western Africa. 

According Legacy: Treasures of Black History edited by Thomas C Battle, Hughes was robbed of his papers and money after falling asleep on the train from Genoa, Italy to Paris, France.  When he tried to get a job on a freighter to return to the US he was refused work, watching white sailors get jobs instead. Discouraged, he wrote I, Too, Sing America on the back of a letter to Alain Locke

Hughes finally returned on a steamer with an all-black crew in exchange for passage with no pay, and his poem was published in 1925 

 

photo from NPR.org

photo from operationhope.org

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

One More Quote from Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

"...the coloured man looked at everything through the prism of his relationship to society as a coloured man, ....bounded by his rights and his wrongs, it has to be wondered at that he has progressed so broadly as he has.  The same may be said of the white man of the south...in this respect I consider the conditions of the whites more to be deplored than that of the blacks...a truly great people..that produced great historic Americans from Washington to Lincoln, now forced to use up its energies in a conflict as lamentable as it is violent.

The coloured people....cherish a sullen hatred for all white men...[but] the race has been a world influence; all the Indians between Alaska and Patagonia haven't done as much."

From Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson

More quotes form "Ex-Coloured Man"

"The main difficulty of the race question does not lie so much in the actual condition of the blacks as it does in the mental attitude of the whites..."

"The burden of the question is not that the whites are struggling to save 10 million despondent... people from sinking into ...poverty ...in their very midst, but that they are unwilling to open certain doors of opportunity and to accord certain treatment to 10 million aspiring... people."

"Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst."

From Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson

Extracts from "Autobiogaphy of an Ex-Coloured Man"

First published anonymously in 1912, then later with James Weldon Johnson as author,
it is not, as the title suggests, an autobiography, but rather fiction fashioned as an autobiography which allows the author to talk about controversial subjects.

"Do you know, I don't object to anyone's having prejudices so long as those prejudices don't interfere with my personal liberty."

"can you name a single one of the great fundamental ..achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon?  The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of painting, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals, and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker....races.  We [Anglo Saxons] may have carried many of these to ..perfection, but the foundation was laid by others.  Do you know the only original contribution ...we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly?...we are a great race...but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races ....  We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it.  After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history."

A Good Outline on Harlem Renaissance Leading to Civil Rights

The Harlem Renaissance laid the foundations for the Civil rights movements of the 1960s

1)    unprecedented black creativity in the United States concentrated in one area
2)    affirmation of black folklore and culture
3)    emerging educated black middle class
4)    One of the goals of the Harlem Renaissance was to form a new society to meet the needs of  the distinct cultural identity and serve their interests
5)    Points 1-4  began to break the stereotype of the uneducated rural black to one of an independent and confident professional
6)    black soldiers who served in the World Wars saw the integration of the races, and the love of jazz musicand ragtime in other countries.  This formed a model for change they desired in the US.
7)    white audiences and publishers began to patronize and publish black talent.
8)   Harlem quickly became a major attraction during prohibition leading to more white people appreciating black music and society.
9)    The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was formed in response to the continued (illegal) practice of lynching, and to race riots.  The NAACP was established  in 1909 by a group of 60 people, seven of whom were Black to protect rights guaranteed by the 13th,14th, and 15th amendments and ensure social, economic, political, and educational equality.
10)    The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was the first union led by blacks organized in 1925.  The first presidents and vice presidents became civil rights leaders and the union continued to play a significant role of eradicating segregation
10) the topic of civil rights had a forum, and people heard various thoughts on the matter through the voices of Marcus Garvey (who led a Back to Africa movement)  W.E. B Dubois, Langston Hughes
11) Don't Buy Where You Can't Work movement of 1928 (after the depression) was one of the first attempts to use consumer pressure to gain economic quality

The differences were
1) Harlem Renaissance was in the North, Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was in the south
2) The goal of the Harlem Renaissance was a distinct society, even autonomy, maintained separately from the white society, but Civil Rights wanted integration

The Harlem Renaissance = Great Thinkers

An educated Black middle class began to emerge in the early 20th century, and not only in Harlem.   A similar renaissance occurred in Chicago, and on the international community of Caribbeans and Africans in Paris. The explosion of creativity produced by highly productive artists and musicians in the early 20th Century is now referred to as the Harlem Renaissance.  While Black theatre, dance, music, and all mediums of art , fascinated America who could not get enough of its irresistible jazz and ragtime, Harlem also produced great thinkers.

In 1925, Harvard University professor Alaine Locke, (sometimes called The Father of The Harlem Renaissance) argued that African Americans should shake off their past as slaves and embrace their unique culture.

Langston Hughes made us laugh with his witty writing, but also drew attention to the
"Other America" that Black Americans experienced.
His poems A Dream Deferred and   I, Too, Sing America, are on every high high school curriculum.

Countee Cullen, and Sterling Brown (who wrote in both Standard English and Vernacular), turned their experiences into poetry.  W.E B DuBois wrote about "twoness"  the dilemma of being Black and American.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, travelled to Russia and London, and ended up in Harlem.  He also wrote about the African experience in the Americas and his response to intense racial violence was to explore the philosophies of radical groups.

Booker T Washington was born in slavery and recounts in his autobiography Up From Slavery how remarkable it seemed to him that there was a time and place for eating, and sleeping, and not just as opportunity presented.  His Tuskeegee Institute was highly organized, focusing on order and industry.   He was criticized by some Black activists of his time who thought he should have been more radical in his call for social change, but his institute gave many free Black Americans an opportunity for education, most famously the Tuskeegee Airmen.

Harlem Renaissance Art is Great Art

The Harlem Renaissance is famous for
great artists
great music
great literature

I laughed so much when I discovered Langston Hughes book "The Best of Simple"
and also loved his poems.
I enjoyed Countee Cullens poems, when I found them in high school.
I didn't  know anything about the Harlem Renaissance back then, I liked them because they were good.
These works are not famous because their authors are black, but because they are great literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer of "The Great Gatsby"
named the years between WW1 and WW2
The Jazz Age
because the whole world was in love with Jazz

Jazz players like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were so beloved that it caused the United States
 to think hard about questions like:
"How can you love the music and be afraid of the great artists who play it?"

A Short Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance

You will remember the US Civil War ended in 1865,
and recently freed Black Americans looked for better opportunities,
to put it mildly.

In The Great Migration
thousands of Black Americans from
the Rural South moved to the Urban North
starting as early as the 1890s.

In addition to the devastation caused by the US Civil War
and Union General Sherman's devastating March to the Sea,
this great migration was accelerated by the Boll Weevil Blight
which ruined cotton crops in the 1890s, further depressing the economy of the Southern States.

Are you looking all this up?

The greatest influx of immigrants to the North was during the years 1910 to 1930
with many arriving in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City.
Renovation projects in metropolitan New York pushed additional residents to Harlem.

(See?  Everything is part of some kind of domino effect.  That's why the subject of history is so complex.)

Anyway, this environment brought these great minds together and we still benefit from the tremendous artistic output by Black writers, poets and musicians
The decade of the 1920's  was originally referred to as The New Negro Movement, but we now call it
The Harlem Renaissance

Another Malapropism

...that's the truth, the whole truth.  The unvanquished truth

From Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick

Braggadocio vs Brag

Braggadocio is:

A) a community in Missouri

B) a character in Spencer's play  The Faerie Queen

C) a bragging style of rap music

yep, all of the above

but braggadocio most often means to lie in a cocky way about something that's not true,
giving you a neat way to call someone both a braggart and a liar at the same time

The origin is
1) the word brag (from around the year 1450)
2) Year 1590 - 1596 the name of the character in the play "Faerie Queen" was so named
    from the word brag + occio from the Italian meaning "something large of its kind"

Malapropisms

Malapropisms are so named for Mrs Malaprop in a 1775 play The Rivals
The word malaprop makes a person think of mal=bad and aprop = appropriate

a Malapropism substitutes an incorrect word for another word of similar pronunciation.

sometimes the mistaken word interpreted simultaneously by the brain gives a double meaning:
"you should be careful not to jump to confusions" (instead of conclusions)

Baseball player Yogi Berra was prone to malapropisms, actor Mike Smith (who said "it's got lots of installation in it (instead of insulation) and more recently George Bush, who said
(among other slips) "we need an energy bill that encourages more consumption (instead of conservation)

Also known as Dogberryisms named for the Shakespearean character Dogberry in
Much Ado about Nothing who said such things as
"our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons" (apprehended two suspicious persons)

Solecism

MEANING 1) 

"you is what you is"

is an example of a solecism
using nonstandard grammar,often intended to make a statement of rebellion.

"curiouser and curiouser"  

Is an example of a solecism
spoken by Alice in Wonderland reflecting how absurd she found her situation

MEANING 2)

A solecism is also just a mistake--a slip, faux pas, or oversight

"an artist has got to get acquainted with himself 

just as much as he can. 

It is no easy job 

as it is not a present-day habit of humanity"

From  My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Rembrandt gets the prize for the most (62) self portraits.  

(the ancient equivalent of a selfie.)

But he also painted 600 paintings (plus drawings and etchings)

"A fat mattress of clouds"

from McNally's Secret by Lawrence Sanders