African short stories and the Internet

As I browsed the Melbourne City Library recently, I saw a book facing out, probably placed by a librarian who recommended it. The book was The Granta Book of the African Short Story. That sure looked interesting, but I didn't want to carry a book on public transport because I had my hands full already.

Next day, I wandered into my local library, and there, facing out on the 'recent returns and new books' display, was the same book. Obviously I was meant to borrow it.

So I'm reading it.

In the introduction, Helon Habila says:

With the coming of the Internet to many parts of urban Africa in the late 1990s, a new avenue for publishing was discovered and the African short story finally began to get its long-overdue moment of recognition. [This follows a discussion of the emphasis on novels at the expense of short stories.] The traditional publishing landscape, with its excessive restrictions, was suddenly superseded. The Internet is today doing what the newspapers and magazines did to the development of the short story in Europe and America at the start of the industrial age. It is worth pointing out that the Internet, due to its own peculiar restrictions, seems actually to favour short stories over novels, thereby reversing the restrictions that traditional publishing had placed on African fiction.

Food for thought. Is the Internet giving the short story new life everywhere in the world? I hope so.

In my opinion, eReaders also favour short stories. It seems ages since I bought a BeBook Neo. I didn't use it for a long time, until I had the bright idea of transferring to it the stories I download from my subscription to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now I can sit comfortably at the table with my eReader propped up on my Book Seat, or lie in bed and take in a short fantasy or sci-fi story.

squirrels and bowerbirds garden

In researching yesterday's post  about the word sidespies, coined by Dylan Thomas in his radio play Under Milkwood,  I came across a page on a site called WordSpy where Paul McFedries posts neologisms he has coined. He invented the expression squirrel gardening:

squirrel gardening, adj.

The accidental "gardening" that occurs when squirrels transfer seeds and bulbs from one one part of a garden to another, or even between gardens.

This word wouldn't work for us in Australia, but I think we have a synonym, bowerbird gardening.

Here's a link to an article about male bowerbirds in Oceania 'accidentally' growing plants when they build their intricate bowers  to attract a mate.

birth of a neologism

I've never read Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, but recently I came across an extract from it and fell in love with one word - sidespies. Where has this expression been all my life? (Hiding in an unread book, obviously.)

Since I saw the word, I often want to use it, because it so exactly expresses a certain look that side glance doesn't even come close to defining.

But is it mine to use? If I were to use it in my own writing, would I be a plagiarist? When does a word become common property? When is a neologism available for use? Macquarie Online Dictionary defines a neologism:

noun 1. a new word or phrase:

2. the introduction or use of new words, or new senses of words.

By the way, Macquarie doesn't have sidespy, and neither did any online dictionary I looked at. The only place I came across an online reference to the word is on a thread at Wordreference.com.

We all use many words coined by Shakespeare. I think it's time to get Thomas' great little verb out into the general world.

Here's the extract I read:

        FIRST VOICE

In the blind-drawn dark dining-room of School House, dusty
and echoing as a dining-room in a vault, Mr and Mrs Pugh
are silent over cold grey cottage pie. Mr Pugh reads, as
he forks the shroud meat in, from Lives of the Great
Poisoners. He has bound a plain brown-paper cover round
the book. Slyly, between slow mouthfuls, he sidespies up
at Mrs Pugh, poisons her with his eye, then goes on
reading. He underlines certain passages and smiles in
secret.

        MRS PUGH

Persons with manners do not read at table,

        FIRST VOICE

says Mrs Pugh. She swallows a digestive tablet as big as a
horse-pill, washing it down with clouded peasoup water.

                                                     [Pause

        MRS PUGH

Some persons were brought up in pigsties.

        MR PUGH

Pigs don't read at table, dear.

        FIRST VOICE

Bitterly she flicks dust from the broken cruet. It settles
on the pie in a thin gnat-rain.

        MR PUGH

Pigs can't read, my dear.

        MRS PUGH

I know one who can.

        FIRST VOICE

Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh
minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through
spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his
crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs Pugh a venomous
porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and
viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her
toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes
screaming out of her navel.

        MR PUGH

You know best, dear,

        FIRST VOICE

says Mr Pugh, and quick as a flash he ducks her in rat
soup.

        MRS PUGH

What's that book by your trough, Mr Pugh?

        MR PUGH

It's a theological work, my dear. Lives of the Great
Saints.

        FIRST VOICE

Mrs Pugh smiles. An icicle forms in the cold air of the
dining-vault.

Isn't it fantastic? I shiver just reading it.

If you want to read Under Milkwood, you can legally download it here for free.

pareidolia - a word for a common human activity

Last week I was looking at pictures taken by my photography class, and one person showed a shot of some rocks in a pond. The rocks looked like frogs, and we talked about whether we like to 'name' natural features by how they look to us. Some like it, some don't.

I don't find that walking around a beautiful natural place and classifying everything by some arbitrary human-based attribute is a useful exercise, probably because I often can't see what I'm 'supposed' to see. I've sometimes thought this naming of geographical features is like our anthropomorphising of animals.

The Macquarie Dictionary says of anthropomorphise:

(say anthruhpuh'mawfuyz)
verb (anthropomorphised, anthropomorphising)
–verb (t) 1. to ascribe human form or attributes to.
–verb (i) 2. to ascribe human form or attributes to an animal, a god, etc. Also, anthropomorphize.

So I guess if I say a rock looks like a frog, I could be anthropomorphising. But I must confess that this word didn't really describe the phenomenon for me.

But now I've learned a new word, from Slavenka's blog - pareidolia - which she defines as 'a psychological phenomenon where human brains see familiar objects in random shapes'.

In looking for the word on the internet I came across a Flickr site devoted to pareidolia, and so far my favorite is this one.

There's a similar Flickr site devoted to random shapes that look like faces. Here are some:

ruderals in my garden have rights

Today I've come across a word I've been needing for years. But I didn't know I needed it. The word is ruderals.

I'm reading a book, Gardening Philosophy for Everyone, that has literally changed the way I see the world. I enjoyed the first chapter, 'The Virtues of Gardening', because it validates my belief that it is a 'good thing' to garden - more about that another time. However, it's chapter three, 'Escaping Eden - Plant Ethics in a Gardener's World', that has allowed me to realise that plants, too, are living, autonomous beings, entitled to consideration from humans.

I try to live in harmony with the environment, enriching the soil of my garden with natural substances and caring for the soil, but since I've read this chapter it's as if my eyes are open to the life force of the plants around me and I see them more vividly. I'm loving the experience.

What we call weeds are also entitled to our consideration.

In order to overcome exclusion and human mastery of the plant kingdom and the natural world, care, attention, and responsibility need to be extended outwards from our "cultivated" plants towards those plants that keep on coming back into our Edens from the wild lands outside... [This] requires giving over space to those plant lives that make their way into our gardens of their own accord: the wildflowers, grasses, climbers, and ruderals. It requires giving space and being open to the spontaneous arrivals and actions of plants that are not completely under human control. Setting aside space for plants to grow unchecked can help transform Eden from a human orientated space into one that is at the forefront of ethical reparations to the natural world.

Hmm...I will have to think about this. I've certainly got plenty of plants in my garden that arrived of their own accord, and when I recognise a seedling as useful to me, I tend it. But to allow that pesky Blue Periwinkle to spread around my garden is a big ask.

On the other hand, if I just keep it in check and let it have a corner of the yard, maybe I could make life easier for myself.

And what are these ruderals?

After consulting the Online Macquarie Dictionary I discover:

ruderal - adjective - growing near human habitations in waste places. [New Latin rūderālis, from Latin rūder-, rūdus broken stone, rubble]

Definitions.net says:

1. (adj.) ruderal
(of a plant) growing in waste places, along roadsides, or in rubbish.

2. (n.) ruderal
a ruderal plant.

Etymology: (1855–60; < NL rūderālis < L rūder- (s. of rūdus broken stone, rubble)

Aha! Those periwinkles are ruderals. They're creeping under my fence from the untended laneway at the back of our property.

Since I've learned this word I seem to see vacant land everywhere, carpeted with living green. (We've had good rain the last few months, thank goodness.)

It's all in the name, as I've said before about weeds.

Tullamareena and Tullamarine

Recently I visited the historic homestead at Woodlands, home to retired champion race horses.



I was telling my family today what a great place it is to visit, and explaining that it's just beside Tullamarine Airport.



One family member wondered where the name Tullamarine came from. We thought it probably came from a local indigenous language, and it seems it did. eMelbourne says:

Located between Melbourne Airport (formerly called Tullamarine Airport) and Gladstone Park, Tullamarine was a predominantly agricultural township until the 1950s. It now includes both residential and industrial areas, and major manufacturers include Schweppes Cottees, Honda and Caterpillar Australia. Tullamarine is thought to derive its name from Tullamareena, the name of a Wurundjeri boy noted by George Langhorne.

It's news to me that our airport isn't called Tullamarine any more! I wonder when that changed?

I also wondered who that boy was. What brought him to the notice of the invading Europeans?

Wikipedia refers to him as 'a senior man of the Wurundjeri', and notes that at the time he was thought to be 'a steady, industrious man'. In 1838 he was arrested for sheep-stealing and imprisoned. In making his escape, with two other indigenous men, he burned down the gaol.

William Lonsdale, the first Police magistrate of Melbourne wrote in a letter to the colonial secretary on 26 April 1838:
...I was at first apprehensive that some of the blacks had set the gaol on fire...for the purpose of liberating the three who were confined, but to ascertain what I could on this point, I went as soon as I was satisfied that the stores and prisoners were temporarily disposed of after their being taken from the buildings, into the different camps of blacks, of which there were three in the neighbourhood... Describing how the gaol was set fire to, he says that the other black who was confined with him got a long piece of reed which he thrust through an opening in the partition between the place where he was confined in and the guard room, and after lighting the reed by the guard's candle he drew it back and set fire to the thatch roof. The two blacks got off but one was afterwards retaken, viz. Jin Jin. This affair is much to be regretted, keeping up as it undoubtedly will the public alarm and agitation regarding the blacks.

Apparently Tullamareena was later recaptured, sent for trial to Sydney and released without conviction when it became apparent he could not understand English.

He was set free more than 700 kilometres from home. To me that seems to have been cruel and unfair. I hope he found his way back to his own country.

Like all too many Australians, I know little about the history of our own country, so I'm happy that thinking about a familiar word in a different way has opened my eyes just a little to the indigenous history of this area.

the early bird gets the mulch

Every morning the birds get up early and scratch my mulch off the garden bed and onto the only neat path in the whole backyard.



I could find this aggravating. On the other hand, I could take the advice of Mary Horsfall, in The Mulch Book:

congratulate yourself on encouraging biodiversity, smile and push mulch back around plants. Place net over mulch if birds are a real pest.

No, the birds are not a terrible pest. On the contrary, they are pest-eaters. Thus I get to start every day with a smile. And with dirty hands.

The Online Macquarie Dictionary defines pest as:

noun 1. an organism considered harmful, as in agriculture, horticulture, buildings either domestic or commercial, etc.
2. a troublesome thing or person; nuisance.
3. Obsolete a deadly epidemic disease; a pestilence.
4. Obsolete a disease produced by the plague bacillus. [Latin pestis plague, disease]

How could anyone look at something as lovely as a bird and think of it as a plague on the garden?

Well, I'll admit that sometimes, when I see a hole picked in every piece of fruit on the tree, I do think a few bad thoughts about the birds...