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Non-Violent Protests Are American
We have the Constitutional right to peacefully assemble, to petition the Government to listen to and respond to our grievances, and the right to say what we will without prohibition. (James Madison, primary author of the First Amendment
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It’s Finally Here: Fieldnotes on Fortitude
It’s finally done and published. Whew! This summer, along with my other activities, I helped edit a book of essays about staying resilient in times of great chaos and galloping fascism. Truly a labor of love from the writers, editors, and publisher, Fieldnotes on Fortitude: Resilience in Resistance contains sixteen essays by a wide variety of authors with their unique insights into understanding of our current condition. It will eventually be available in both online and retail stores, but for now, it’s available on Amazon. Fieldnotes on Fortitude: Resilience in Resistance Enjoy!
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On the Existence of Black Folk
We just do not allow Black people in America to just exist. To be. To be learning and growing. To make mistakes and then figure out the way forward. To be children who are innocent and who love fun, who are mischievous and scared and reluctant to admit they’re scared. To boast and exaggerate, to hide and crawl away. To try new things and even reject them. Or to discover their talents and pursue their interests to become fulfilled in life.
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When We Hide the Past in Plain Sight
Jim Crow is an evil, yes, and many of us have a social response of “that’s so terrible.” But we do not want to admit how terrible it was and is again. We are a country of people proud to be Americans but so ashamed of our actual history that we erase it and suppress it from being taught and learned and seen.
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Black and White; Truth and Lies
Some seventeen years ago now a man I didn’t much know but with whom I sparred asked a question of me that changed the course of my life: “You do know that I’m Black?”
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Language and Memory
Yesterday I was talking with my Haitian friends in Haitian Creole for about an hour as we were planning how to set up our class to teach Haitians how to speak American English. Per my request, they talked a little more slowly and with fewer idioms than usual (although they did throw in an idiom that I got right away with my brain rapidly connecting the imagery with cultural aspects of Haiti, and man did that feel good that I did that!).
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M toujou ap aprann – I’m still learning
One day I’ll be good enough to interact with native speakers who don’t know me and who don’t give me grace for my mistakes.
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Thoughts on My Last Day at Work
I had my retirement lunch today with my team, along with a few people who showed up unexpectedly from past, and it was really wonderful. I am just myself at work the same as I am in life. I put people first, mentor people and coach them, treat them as unique and wonderful and worth loving. I’ve done my job as a technical editor as a job that I loved, but still, it was a job. It used my passions and skills and talents. But the more important part was helping other people improve their skills, find their passions, and be released into what made them who they were. Not…
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When We See Them
I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary, which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique word play I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning.
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Chèmèt chèmètrès
Adventures in translation This was my “wrapped the chain around the axle” moment today. My assignment this month is to read a long-form essay, understand it, and then read it out loud & record it for my professor. It’s not a terribly difficult essay, but it taxes my brain because it’s a lot of content to read with comprehension well enough to explain it. Then I came across this word: “chèmètchè-mètrès”. Having no clue what this might be, I looked it up in my dictionaries (plural). No entry. I used Google to search the web. In all the world, this essay is the only place where it occurs. I have…
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Two Things
Back in July or August of 2023 my left thigh started bothering me. Certain kinds of clothing irritated the heck out of it, but even without anything touching it, I’d have this numb-prickliness
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My Year So Far
My previous post was in January of this year. It's just turned June. Where did the time go?
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Great Unexpectations
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
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What I’ve Learned in 2023
I wanted to reflect upon what I learned this year, and also think of how my knowledge will affect my choices and behaviors in the new year…
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My First Foray into the Field
I had already decided to make my order entirely in Haitian Creole. Which was a good choice, because the staff at the restaurant were not speaking English.
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When the Pot Gets It Wrong About the Kettle
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
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Eighteen Months In
Well, I will continue my journey. It’s been a wonderful adventure that not only has helped open up a language and a culture and a people I never knew before, but also has changed me in how I see the world and understand those who live in.
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Seeing with a New Tongue
in those decades of following Jesus, I’ve listened to uncountable sermons and Bible studies, often led by people with great earnestness, who have said “oh, if you only knew the Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic you’d see stuff in the scriptures that are hidden to you because you only know English.”
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Ki kote m ye?
It is weird to me that I can read these materials and kinda get the gist of them, but golly they are way more complex (to me) as an English-speaking student who has so little comprehension of Haitian culture and idioms.
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Update on the Language Journey
It’s been a while since I last updated what I’m doing as I’ve been on the journey to learn Haitian Creole. I started in March of 2022, just after Duolingo released its course in Haitian Creole, and after a month of daily practice I realized that I was just learning some words and some very simple grammar, but beyond that, the course was not as fully developed as Duolingo’s other, more mature courses. There were no stories, for example, and various other features were just missing. Plus, it didn’t go very far beyond some vocabulary building and some simple grammar. It’s good stuff, believe me, but it’s not going to…
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Pwofesè, tèt mwen chaje
Man, today was rough. My tutor and I talked lasted week about my lessons. (This is my third tutor.) I am okay with reading kreyòl—I can typically read a text and comprehend what I’m reading because I’m translating as I go, and I pick up a lot of context clues. But I’m seeing the words and phrases at a glance, and that helps me translate quickly. So I said to him, we should spend more time with you talking and me listening & then responding. That is, not using a text but instead listening to actual kreyòl being spoken. Now, all three of my tutors are very well educated, all…
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Nou aprann nan kominote nou an
I think I’ve hit another wall. The first wall was after the first month or so of learning kreyòl ayisyen (Haitian Creole, or HC) when I realized that Duolingo wasn’t doing enough for me. It was helping, sure! I gained the essentials of vocabulary and grammar, and as I continue to use Duolingo (I’m on Day 214) my vocabulary continues to increase to the point where I now “know” about 700-800 words. (To be fair, many of them are reusable words that have many meanings, so “pa” and “konnen” and “fè” and “mache” are doing a lot of work to hide a lot of what I know. And don’t get…
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Nou monte ansanm
Another update on my language journey: Last night I was given a text to read that I’d never seen before. I read it out loud to my instructor, then answered questions about the text in the same language. My instructor said it was a pleasure to hear me read out loud. I got most of the questions right—we’re getting into the territory of idioms and figures of speech, and let me tell you, there is no other way to harvest that field without rigorous plowing and tilling—and we ran out of time not because I got stuck but because we were so deep in the conversation. Totally not saying I’m…
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There are so many more mountains
“Dèyè mòn gen mòn.” This is one of the very first phrases I learned in my Haitian Creole book. (In fact, it was on the same page as the other phrase, “Pale kreyòl, aprann kreyòl.”) As is with such sayings, there is the surface meaning (“Behind mountains there are mountains”) and then there are the more subtle meanings. Haiti, “The Land of Mountains,” has a history that is shaped by its physical structure as well as the underlying tectonic movements. Mountains and earthquakes have shaped Haiti, and still do. But it’s more than that. Behind the strong people you see, there are hidden people you don’t see. That’s another meaning.…
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Nou aprann kreyòl ansanm – we learn kreyol together
So I just had a most excellent lesson with my teacher today. We “met” on a Discord server in a group for people who are learning to speak and write kreyòl ayisyen. He was very kind, and suggested that we schedule a time to talk this week. Except for the unfortunately bad connection (there is just a problem with phone lines connecting during rough weather), we had good conversation. Apparently, I’m speaking a bit better than I thought. I want to work on my accent and rhythm, so we’ll spend about an hour a week. doing just that. That makes three teachers, with formal lessons three times a week with…
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Tools for learning Haitian Creole
This is going to be a long post at the behest of some others who want to know what tools I have been using to learn Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen). The first tool I picked up was Duolingo (duolingo.com, duolingo app on Apple/Android). This tool is an easy-to-use app that uses “gamification” to not just help you learn, but to get you to want to learn because you get points for consistency and accuracy, you find yourself in competition with others, and there are silly interludes that can make it feel like it’s fun to learn a new language. Duolingo has been around for a while – I first signed…
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So much more
Listen, this is hard work. Not just the language. That’s hard because it’s new. Learning a new language means learning new sounds and rhythms, learning new ways to think about something because “they don’t say it that way” becomes more and more frequent. You don’t just assemble words and phrases to match English syntax and vocabulary. For example, there isn’t the idea of passive voice, so saying something in kreyòl ayisyen that’s expressed in English in the passive voice means rethinking what it is you’re trying to say. So learning the language is going to be hard the deeper you go because you’re going to have to learn how to…
