Country First

As we approach the election of 2008, an unprecedented election in many ways, it is good to consider what we mean by “land” or “country” or “nation,” or “homeland”or “patriotism.”

The word “country” comes, surprisingly to me, from Latin. The original term seems to have been “terra contrata” or “contra(ta) terra,” meaning, roughly “that land over yonder” or “the land opposite where one is standing.” This came into old French as “cuntree” or “contree” and is recorded in English from about 1300, which would put it right in line with the avalanche of words that came into Anglo-Saxon with the Norman Conquest (see “History of English” on my website at emturnerenglish.com) and culminated about 1300 with the language we now know as English. The “u” of “country” really ought not to be in this word. Who knows where it drifted from?

But “country” feels like an English word, as does “land.” And in fact, “Land” is a German word, too, meaning exactly the same thing. We have an emotional attachment to the land of our birth, more I think than to the political boundary that encloses our “country.” For example, to me the most beautiful place in the world is one of the middle Tennessee valleys lying in the arms of the tableland (plateau) where I was born. This is the rich valley land below Green’s View, in Sewanee, Tennessee (Google it and you will see). Although I own none of the land there, I would take up arms to defend it if I were called upon to do so, it is that valuable to me. Perhaps I associate my own genetic heritage with the land. I don’t know. But it is precious to me.

The word “nation,” unlike its related word “native,”is a concept more of the head than the heart.
A “nation” is an agreement, first of all, among people to live together and adhere to certain rules of conduct. The rules governing our co-existence as Americans are called the Constitution, and while the Constitution is a very, very important document, I think most people in America today do not have a deep emotional understanding of how important it is. Not having experienced unfreedom, they do not understand freedom. Not having experienced torture, they are not bothered when their government engages in it (as long as the victim is out of sight). Not having known a servile and fettered press, they don’t understand the importance of a free journalism.

In this sense, I think some modern Americans have conflated the ideas of “native” and “nation.” They think that if you are a born citizen of this country, you must support every decision of its leaders regardless of whether that decision contravenes common sense, morality, or wisdom.

In the last eight years, the misguided US government has reacted in the worst possible ways to the trauma of 9/11. We have shunned any contact with our enemies beyond simply killing them. We have tortured (a thing never practiced as a policy by our country or advocated by its leaders until now). We have had stolen elections and voter suppression. We have invaded the wrong country and torn it apart, neglecting the country that was most responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We have witnessed the rise of spittle-flecked hate talk radio as some form of acceptable political discourse. We have dawdled and delayed rebuilding one of our most beautiful cities, destroyed after Hurricane Katrina. We have tolerated the placement of political partisans throughout the apparatus of government. And we have become a small, fearful, shrunken version of the ideals embodied in the Constitution, our national blueprint.

A symptom of this is the recent use of the term “homeland,” which is not a term common in English. Indeed, it suggests the German “Heimland,” and thus it does not have happy associations for Americans who fought against the Third Reich in World War II. Yet here we have a Department of Homeland Security,” a vast bureaucracy intent on data-mining information about us all. In this “homeland,” thingie, we all are supposed to show our patriotism (father-land-love) by wearing little flag lapel pins and putting our hands over our hearts and mouthing words in chorus and going off to fight in other countries that we just happen to be occupying for no discernible reason and dying quietly if we are so inferior as not to have health-care insurance. That is the patriotism of the Bush years: submission, conformity, sacrifice, and silence.

But all isn’t lost. Yet. I think the tide is turning. I think that the idea of a nation’s being fundamentally an agreement among people to live in peace with each other--as opposed to a series of warring little groups intent on telling the other groups what to do--is coming back into fashion. And the person who is bringing that idea back is the Democratic candidate for the presidency. That’s why Barack Obama’s campaign logo is at the top of this page.

My hope is that we learn again to abide by our national agreement to live together like civilized people. We have to relearn tolerance. We have to relearn a respect for intelligence and knowledge as opposed to this pervasive prejudice for ignorance that has poisoned the common well. We have to tune out the screaming spitters, starve them with our inattention, meet our neighbors and learn their concerns, care about each other. These are only some of the things we must do to regain our soul as a country and to be worthy of this beautiful land. But they are a beginning, and power-hungry natalists like Sarah Palin and shape-changers like John McCain cannot help us begin. They can only take us back into this terrible dark age we have suffered in the past eight years.

So--all two of you who read this: please vote! I have.

--oon words

The ending -oon is a rather funny feature of English. It doesn’t really sound English at all, and on further investigation, in most cases it is not from English but a mispronunciation of the ending -one (onay) in Italian or another Romance language.

Doubloon: from Spanish doblon, a 17th-century gold coin that was called a doubloon because it was double the value (twice the value) of another gold coin, the pistole.

The “doblon” came from Latin duplus, double. I suppose someone trying to bring “doblon” into English just didn’t know what to do with the second “o” and pronounced it “oo.”

However, there are several instances like this, where English borrowed a Latin word and mispronounced the ending “oon.”

Spittoon

A spittoon is a jar or other receptacle for spit (saliva).
People chewing tobacco (or otherwise just needing
to spit) used to use the spittoon. A spittoon also had a more
classy name, the cuspidor. As it turns out, though, the “spi” part of cuspidor traces back to the same humble roots as “spit” itself: Latin spuere. I was delighted to discover (okay, I’m weird) that “spew” comes from the same word. I had nothing in my mouth at the time, so I was unable to spew with joy, but I would’ve if I could’ve.

Balloon

“Balloon” is another charming mispronunciation from either French “ballon” or (I prefer) Italian “pallone.” Here the “-one” (“onay”) is an additive meaning “big.” So a “balloon” is a big ball. The word “ball” goes all the way back to Proto Indo-European as *bhal, meaning “a swelling.” So you could have asked an Indo-European kid for a ball 10,000 years ago and he would have understood you (if he had a ball).

Maroon

Maroon, again, is a mispronunciation, this time from “marron,” or “brown.” We in English have adopted the word but changed its color to a deep red rather than the brown it still is in French, Spanish, and Italian.
I don’t know about Portuguese or Romanian, though.

Senior Moments

Sometimes I wonder what old people think about at the end of their lives. Do they smile with gentle satisfaction about what they did right with this time on earth? Or do they sit in their wheelchairs racked with regret? Do they think about the good stuff, or the bad stuff, and what went wrong, and how much they may have been to blame, and who they didn’t get to go the prom with, and who they did? Do they think about the money they made or didn’t make? Do they wish they had kissed their cousins that day in the upstairs room when they were playing spin the bottle? Do they think about all the places they saw, or do they think more about the places they didn’t see? Maybe they just think about lunch.

I don’t know yet. But as the silver touches more and more of my hair, I think perhaps I will find out sooner than now seems possible.

The word “senex” in Latin gives us several important words in English: “senior,” of course, means “older.” “Senile” is a not-particularly-kind word meaning “having lost one’s mind from old age.” “Senescence” is the state in which senile people find themselves.

And finally, there is “Senate,” the council of elders or old people--those who are supposed to be wise. Judging from how well the Senate has done in recent years, I’d say we might as well call them Senilators.

The opposite of “senex” is “juvenus,” youth. That one gives us “junior,” “juvenile,” and “juvenilia” (the product of a young artist’s first efforts).

The old man in the photo is my great-great-grandfather, Cornelius McCardell, a newspaper mogul from Middletown, NY. I don't remember a lot about him, or the stories I heard about him from my mother, but I still have some household things from his house. When I sit in my wheelchair, I will regret that I no longer have my mother to remember things for me; luckily my daughter got her memory, and I still have the pieces, so I’m covered. My girl can put a piece of china in my hand and tell me who I was and my son will spin me tales of his imaginary world. I think it will be fine.