Perigee Bookmarks

Cracking Teeth and Sipping Zeese

Posted by author Mim Harrison

So there we were, my husband and I, on the island of Barbados on the Fourth of July (where it was simply 4 July), and there I was, touring the George Washington house. Yes, he had slept there, too. He and his brother had lived on this easternmost Caribbean island for a while in pre-Revolutionary days.  And while Washington traveled far from America, some of the local dialect of the Barbadians—or Bajans, as they call themselves—traveled back to America.

In the cadence and the grammar and even some of the words, you can hear a whisper of Bajan in the Gullah dialect of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.

What connects Gullah and Bajan is their shared West African heritage. Sadly, it’s a vestige of the slave trade. Some of the captives were taken to the British outpost of Barbados before being brought to the American colonies.

Gullah is one of several nearly-lost lexicons that you can still hear, if you listen hard enough, in tiny pockets of America. These expressions are more than a curious manner of speaking. They’re a way of preserving a people’s history. And they can add some spice to how the rest of us talk. Here’s an earful for you to try.

Cracking teeth. This Gullah expression may conjure up thoughts of painful dentistry, but it’s actually a way of saying that someone talks a lot. Just as you crack open a door, here you crack open your mouth.

Basket name. Another Gullah expression, it means nickname. Before a newborn is christened with a formal name, family members give the little one a nickname. This ensures that no evil spirits can steal the child’s soul from the baby basket.

Clabbering up. If you’re in Appalachia when this happens, there’s a chance it might rain. Clabbering up means the sky is clouding over. “Clabber” is close to the Gaelic word for “churn,” which suggests a thickening—like a thickening of clouds. And now you know why that brand of cornstarch (a thickener) is called Clabber Girl.

Fetch up.  If you’re a Banker or an O’Cocker—in other words, from the Outer Banks of North Carolina or the neighboring island of Ocracoke—you don’t show up. You fetch up. Sometimes it’s to go for a scud—a car ride.

Clean the tide out. If you do this, it means you’re the last one to leave the party—especially if it’s held on Long Island. The Bonackers are the ones who will make the comment. They represent the last gasps of the original European settlers of the area, and they still cling to a life of the sea. Their name derives from the Native American Accabonac of the area.

Eat yourself done.  Finish eating, in Pennsylvania Dutch parlance. This Dutch is actually Deutsch, or German. The folks who settled the parts of Pennsylvania where horse and buggy still ply the road were originally German, and it shows in the arrangement of the words in this phrase.

My off is on.  Another Pennsylvania Dutch expression, it means you’re about to take off. Think of it this way: when you’re on vacation, you’re taking time off. So your off is on. (Best just to go with this one and not get hung on it up.)

Sipping Zeese. In a tiny speck of Northern California, where a few faithful folks still speak Boontling, sipping Zeese is their way of drinking coffee. The “Boon” in Boontling is from Boonville, one of the towns where this private language developed in the late 1800s. “Ling” is lingo. Boontling was a way for the locals to speak in code so that visitors couldn’t catch on—a sort of California-style Pig Latin.

Lots of expressions were named after fellow Bootlingers. Charlie meant to embarrass—because you could easily embarrass Charlie Ball. Walter was the telephone, named after the first Boonvillean to have one.

(What would your name mean in Boontling? My husband would say that “Mim” would mean bossy. I have no idea where he gets that from.)

Another Bootlinger, Z.C. Blevens, loved his coffee. Say “Z.C.” fast and it sounds like Zeese. Thus, Zeese is coffee. Just don’t try asking for a Zeese grande at your local Starbucks. It might send the barista running to the Walter for help.

 

Mim Harrison is the author of Wicked Good Words, a linguistic road trip of some of America’s most intriguing regional expressions.

A True Labor of Love

Posted by Marian Lizzi

The term “labor of love” gets thrown around a lot in publishing circles. It can mean anything from “the advance orders are disappointing” to “the editor who acquired this book has left, and the rest of us don’t quite get it.” It can be a euphemism, a battle cry, or a way to flag an unlikely seller for special attention.

But as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I’m very proud to be part of a project that is a true labor of love—written from the heart, filled with emotion, and benefitting a very worthy cause.

The book, The Legacy Letters, collects the voices and remembrances of one hundred 9/11 family members, sharing not just their pain and sorrow, but their deeply held hopes for the future. The letter-writers are adolescents, teens, and young adults; they are spouses, sons and daughters, parents, siblings, and grandchildren. They are first-generation Americans, citizens of other nations, and lifelong New Yorkers. 

Collected by Brian Curtis and the nonprofit support organization Tuesday’s Children, the book is a reminder of the human faces behind an event that changed the world—but it’s also a project that has challenged and stretched me as an editor. Selecting the letters (out of several hundred) was the first hurdle. How do you say no to any of them? Editing the letters was another challenge. How do you edit things like private jokes, personal references, and those bits of secret language that only loved ones share? How does an editor approach a letter that starts out “Dear Sweetheart,” or one that ends with “Love, Me”?

Even deciding on the order in which the letters would appear was intense: Should we put all the teenagers together? What about the 9-year-old, who barely missed being held by her father? Or the letter written from one twin sister to another?

It would have been easy to say “no thanks” to this project. Wouldn’t it be simpler to avoid all the emotions, the challenges, the immensity of loss and pain? But the letters themselves made it impossible to turn away. They were too vivid, too honest, too full of love, too forward-looking, too hopeful to put down.

After working on this incredible project, I think I’ll retire the phrase “labor of love.” Unless we decide to publish a sequel.

 
Read an excerpt from The Legacy Letters that ran in Parade magazine, and watch a video from WNBC-NY News. For media updates, visit the book’s Facebook page. For more on Tuesday’s Children, visit their website.

 

Talk to Me

Posted by author Travis Nichols

Writing and illustrating are often solitary endeavors. Sometimes I catch myself not leaving the house for a few days at a time other than walking to a nearby market for one of those vegan noodle box things you can now find all over the city. I sit huddled over my laptop or paper with lo mein hanging out of my mouth and a glazed, expressionless look in my eyes and Dune playing in the background over and over. I mean, I assume my look is glazed and expressionless. Nobody is around to tell me either way.

When words and pictures leave my desk, however, things completely change. Writing and illustrating becomes a collaboration. Editors, marketing and sales people, designers, publicity reps, etc. Everyone has eyes on the work and input to give. There are emails and PDFs and CC'd conversations and quick changes and big decisions. You misspelled exercise (I always do). Is there maybe a better way to phrase the text on page 64? What do we think is the best red for the cover? There's no bleed on page 126. What do you think about this page order? What if this page said something like, "Who's licking Billy?"

I've worked with editors in comics and for other books, but The Monster Doodle Book took things to another level for me. The book started as a zine I gave out to trick-or-treaters in 2008. It was 32 pages long with no words in the interior. When it was acquired by Perigee, I originally figured it would be mostly an expansion of what I had already done. My editor and I starting corresponding by email about adding instructions here and there, and other ideas to make the book more dynamic. I talked with friends and solicited ideas ("How about a tank?", "LOBSTER CLAWS, dude!", etc. - those friends are included in the acknowledgments at the front of the book). It became much more than just something I created alone in my studio.

 
I made a promotional video where I raced around Manhattan and Brooklyn having friends draw pages in a copy of the book. I melted my Metrocard (slight exaggeration) and ate at some of my favorite places along the way. I saw friends that I hadn't seen in almost a year. Books. BOOKS. Am I right?

And since The Monster Doodle Book is a collaboration between me and readers, I wanted to come up with something that I could do at events that would involve attendees AND allow me to see doodling in action (and keep me from having to write and give long book talks). I created blowups of pages from the book and framed them in lightweight poster frames with plexiglass on top. Then I found some AMAZING dry erase markers called AusPens. They're refillable and don't dry out (in the pen or on boards) and wipe clean easily. I took the blowups and markers to my book release at WORD in Greenpoint, and later to a Story Time event for kids at Greenlight Books in Fort Greene (both in Brooklyn). I loved hearing adults defiantly say "No, I can't draw" and then catch them doodling half an hour later. And seeing a young child draw an EPIC PUKE for the first time was a highlight of my career.

Pictured: my friend Nate, one of the most talented artists I know. Not pictured: an adult who said they couldn't draw.

I was then offered a two-month book tie-in gallery show back in my hometown, Abilene, TX. I doubled my number of page blowups and hung the pieces with the markers attached by string. I had an opening and signing full of family, friends, and assorted Abileneans. It will hang until the fall, and it's a show that will change over time. During the opening, there was a phase where every piece had some sort of reference to a giant jelly donut. YES. If you went there now, it would be gone (unless that little girl returned). Evolving, shifting collaboration. Whoooooaaaaaaa.

 
I continue to do events for The Monster Doodle Book, but I'm also working on upcoming and hopefully-upcoming projects. I'm back at my desk in that noodles-hanging-from-my-mouth phase again, and I can't wait to get some new conversations going.