Back in the 80’s, my word hobby received a weekly boost when National Public Radio aired a series with wordsmith and poet, the late John Ciardi. If you’re interested, a few podcasts from the series have been reposted on the NPR website. No matter what I was doing on Fridays, I found time to listen in on him to get my weekly fix. Some of those sessions hold a prominent place in memory, continuing to inspire. For me, the older the origin, the truer the meaning. Discovering the origins of a word is like archeology or time-travel. However, I don’t ‘need no’ fedora like Indiana Jones or an imagination like H.G. Wells, just pajamas (where does that come from?…oh it’s Persian!), a fast Net connection and Wikipedia, Google or the OED online (Oxford English Dictionary). By the way the word ‘fedora’ comes from ‘Fédora’, a popular French play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) that opened 1882, in which the heroine, a Russian princess named Fédora Romanoff, was originally performed by Sarah Bernhardt, actress and notorious cross-dresser.

Here are a few discoveries:

Copacetic, (or copasetic or sometimes, as in Black vernacular, ‘copastetic’) meaning ‘very acceptable’, ‘just fine’. ‘Everything is copacetic’.

According to Ciardi, copacetic originates in the Hebrew phrase ‘(ha) kol beseder’, (literally ‘all in [the] order’) meaning ‘everything is alright’. The Seder or ‘order’ is the ritualistic retelling of the Exodus annually for Pesach (Passover).

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Ignite, meaning to ’set on fire’. Virtually every dictionary will tell you that ignite and its derivations originate in the Latin ‘ignis’ or ‘fire’.

However it actually comes from PIE or the Proto-Indo-European language and cultures associated with it. The root of ignite emerges from the Vedic culture of India, thousands of years older than Rome. In the Indian classical language, Sanskrit, ‘agni’ or ‘fire’ is both a noun and a deity. Agni is the god of fire, lightning and the sun.

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Lufthansa, the German airline, is a combination of two words from the Sanskrit, ‘lupth’ meaning ‘air’ or ‘invisible’ (’luft’ is ‘air’ in German) and ‘hansa’ meaning ’swan’. When the air service first started, the aircraft they employed were pure white, resembling huge white swans as they disappeared into the distance.

Lufthansa Airlines logo

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Abracadabra (sometimes spelled Abrakadabra) is a word used as an incantation or theatrically by stage magicians.

The original Hebrew and later Aramaic was either ‘avda kedavra’, which means, “what was said has been done,” or ‘avra kedavra’, which means “what was said has come to pass.” Over time, it was corrupted to its current pronunciation with the replacement of both “v” sounds with “b” sounds (b and v can be interchangeable in Aramaic).

More recently, it was an incantation to be used as a cure for fevers and inflammations. The first known European mention was in the 2nd century CE (Common Era) in a poem called ‘De Medicina Praecepta’ by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of an inverted cone.

Abracadabra as an amulet

Of late, we hear ‘Avra Kedavra’ in the Harry Potter series of books as a killing curse, but this is a gross debasement of its original intent. The original Hebrew ‘avara kedavara’, in a religious context, describes the matter-producing, life-giving utterance of G-d that created the Universe.

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We are inundated with words of African origins, but true to form, etymologists that study the roots of Indo-European languages typically overlook them, assuming that little of African origin is of real substance. So we are left with commodity words like banjo (Bantu), banana (Wolof), coffee (Amharic), jazz (Mandinke), jamboree (Swahili), mojo (Fulani), okra (Igbo) and many others.

In my research, I found one extraordinary African concept marginalized to a criminal degree. Before being sullied by Europeans, the word nigger (originally pronounced ‘en-jer’) was revered as the ‘divine epithet’ of the ancient Egyptians, who called themselves Kemites and their land ‘Kemet’, the ‘Black Land’ or ‘Ta-Merri’, the ‘Beloved Land’. N-G-R (’en-jer’), a word without vowels like many classical languages such as ancient Egyptian or biblical Hebrew, was the word for G-d. In Kemetic society, the word for ‘nature’ which is interchangeable with deity, was ‘N-Y-T-R’ (’net-jer’). Pronounce ‘net-jer’ then ‘nigger’ and one hears a clear, but problematic connection.

In many African languages particularly the Niger-Congo language family, words that connect with people, gods and groups often begin with ‘n’. For instance, the word ‘Nkosi’ in Xhosa (South Africa) is ‘god’. The word ‘Ndaba’ in Zulu (South Africa) is ‘council or gathering of elders’. ‘Negus’ in Amharic (Ethiopia) is ‘emperor’.

In this context, the study of word origins becomes significant. By knowing who I am, racist remarks and racial epithets become impotent. Every time someone uses ‘nigger’ to refer to a Black person, they are actually calling that person ‘god’.

Teach this to your children. It makes a difference.

Even though I’m in between hand-washing dishes, writing and assessing employees, it took only moments to produce the grids below. To see an individual photograph, just click an image you like from the grid to view it on Flickr.

search results using primary red

selected photo from the red grid

combination of light green, red, lavender and an orange-brown

selected photo from the combination grid

This is cool stuff for graphic designers, photographers, editors and those who appreciate the technology. Idée Labs provides a secondary application that allows you to upload and color search your own photos. Now what would be really cool is if I could apply this to my own subset of…say, a million photos of Africa!

The preeminence we enjoy as Americans is neither a divine right nor a gift. We earned it. We became a great nation because our great grandparents, grandparents and parents answered the call and accomplished what no nation had done before.

Now the call is upon us again, but the landscape is very different. China and India both are hungrier for preeminence than we are. And, based on sheer numbers alone, their opportunities for success are greater. For example, China graduates 250,000 engineers a year, compared with 50,000 in the U.S. To recharge our dwindling lead, we must educate ourselves better than they do. We must create new opportunities for this great nation and KEEP those opportunities HERE rather than selling them to our national competition.

I have a very small job with UPS, currently the greatest shipping company on the planet. Every night I see the results of exported American technology when planeloads of PCs built with our manufacturing, design and software know-how arrive here in Louisville. Dell and H-P ship tens of thousands of their products daily from China. In my two years at UPS Freight, I’ve watched the volume of imports from Asia and Latin America increase significantly. During that time, our American shipping volume has remained essentially flat. America is producing less at home, opting instead to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and relocate them to Mexico or China.

In this context, I see in this report my opportunity to do something about guaranteeing American preeminence. I can provide superior service to my customers. If given the opportunity to ship early, I can take it. When a shipment is due tomorrow and we still have the opportunity to make flight or truck it, I can take it…even if it means exhorting my employees to stay a few more minutes. And why? Not because FedEx has its Louisville operations down the street. It’s because I know that there is a younger person in China, with more energy and better grades, who has to make the same decision.

Now is the time to demonstrate that we are the greatest nation in the world. We have much work to do. As a nation, we have to become hungrier, leaner and more competitive. As a necessary first step, we must become less divisive and learn again to be a nation.

Next, take nothing for granted. Asian economies are strong and growing partly because workers there realize there is always someone waiting in line for the opportunity to replace them. Unfortunately, we too often assume that our livelihoods and current national preeminence is a birthright. Wrong.

Finally, replace rhetoric with action. We can no longer afford to sit back and tell each other how great America is. That lip service falls on deaf ears in Asia anyway. Regardless of predicted trends of waning American influence, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Whatever work that is, do your very best. It has implications that are greater than yourself…it has the potential of keeping our nation great.

Miniature Magen David, Taketomi Island, Okinawa (mag. 75x)

As poet William Blake wrote,

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

The creation provides us with miracles ‘morning, noon and night’ to quote the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Seek them out, embrace them and open the doors to awe and humility.

http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art

Bhopal protest - 2008

In the photo above, victims of the gas tragedy and other protesters carry an effigy of Warren Anderson, former Chairman of Union Carbide, to mark the 24th anniversary of the chemical disaster.

However, recently, the Malagasy government signed an agreement with Daewoo, the Korean electronics, automotive and food conglomerate, to hand over of 1.2 million hectares of cultivatable land for 99 years. This is nearly half the cultivatable land in the country (2.5 million hectares) and worse of all, it’s for free.

Here it is, new colonialism in Africa and it flew under the radar of every media outlet I subscribe to. I see this deal as criminal because Malagasy citizens won’t benefit from it and yet another rainforest will be clear-cut for profit. Subsequently I won’t be buying Daewoo products…if I can help it. I suspect that now I’ll have nightmares about bulldozers, displacement of indigenous peoples and trade slavery.

Unfortunately Chinese investment does nothing for Angolan unemployment and promotes widespread corruption. China doesn’t tie investments to human rights, economic stability, good governance or democratic ideals. Its investments target the vast Angolan oil and iron ore resources it needs for now and the future. Moreover, this is happening in Sudan (oil), the Democratic Republic of Congo (copper, cobalt, coltan), Zambia (copper), Mozambique (wood), Equatorial Guinea (oil) and elsewhere.

The new Administration in Washington has the daunting task of finding ways to strengthen its ties to Africa humanely and quickly, before its too late. What is clear is that the old, Western ways of doing business there no longer matter.

This article is important because not all Black people want to live in cities. I, for one, have fond memories of the country life in New England and North Carolina, and hope to own rural property again. Since I consider reliable and fast Internet connectivity part of quality living, perhaps, by the time I can afford my country (or island) estate, options will have improved.

from Signal vs. Noise

Because we have but one TV with a cable feed and because I’m such a nice guy, my usual Fall Saturday evening football viewing has been preempted by episode after episode of melodramas. My sister absolutely loves them as she gets into the spirit of Xmas.

While she gurgles in delight, I sit there quietly folding laundry, waiting for commercials so I can flip over and check on the progress of Texas Tech versus Oklahoma. It isn’t so bad, though. The stories are OK, predictable…a bit sappy but tolerable. That is, until I notice the unbelievable absence of Black people, Hispanic people, even beloved Asians (Gee Becky, they’re so smart! Let’s adopt one!).

Then I get it…the Hallmark Channel is the incarnation of White peoples’ idea of Heaven on Earth, a broadcast version of a circa 1970s country club. Now instead of paying attention to the storyline, I’m looking for people of color anywhere…in the backgrounds, driving cars, even busing tables. No luck so far. But wait! Dammit! They actually did it…there is a Black woman in a maid’s uniform in the woman’s bathroom at the Minneapolis airport having a conversation with the lead actress:

‘Nice photos you have there’.
‘Why thank you. My family is my pride and joy.’
‘And is this your husband? You all look so good together’.
‘Why yes and thank you! Do you have a photo of your family?’.
‘Yes, I carry it with me wherever I go…this is my son, Darius and my husband, Joseph’.
‘Such nice looking men. What does Joseph do for a living?’ (says the White heifer with gleaming predatory teeth).
‘Oh, he’s no longer with us. He was a police officer and was trying to break up a fight when he was shot’.

Who dreams up this shit?! Probably some Rethuglican nee Demokrat producer with the excuse that his shows ‘mirror life’, but who actually is still pissed that he was forced to admit Blacks and Jews to his Long Island country club in 1974. And, y’all know I’m right. How do I know this White man is still pissed? Because during the commercial break, Hallmark previewed a show starring Black actors Chandra Wilson and Ben Vereen as two homeless people who, of course, will be helped and ‘brought together in love’ by White people. Please!

So thanks Hallmark for giving not-so subliminal messages to anyone who stumbles over your channel. You still suggest that, even in 2008, niggas are still marginally visible and can’t take care of themselves. But that’s OK. I ain’t buying your greeting cards until y’all represent for real. Anybody else wanna join my boycott?

Apparently Peter Schiff did…back in 2006. Schiff points to the low savings rate of the United States as its worst malady, citing the transformation from being the world’s largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation by the year 2000.

Fortunately, it appears at least other investments I made will weather the recession we find ourselves in. And yet, I have resumed saving my hard-earned money like my life depends on it. Certainly my quality of living does.

Do yourself a favor and watch this video. A penny saved IS a penny earned.