Roots and branches we’ve known and loved

Having found out that someone decided July should be Roots and Branches Month, we can’t pass up commenting, that being the name of our blog and all . . .

Roots and Branches Month is meant to celebrate family trees and encourage genealogy. We do enjoy learning about the people we come from. It helps us know more about ourselves and makes history come alive. But we can think of other roots and branches we know and love, too.

Roots Music. We love the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou. Also The Three Pickers, by Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and Ricky Skaggs. Also Another County, which is The Chieftains with various country and bluegrass artists. And lately, 16 Greatest Hits of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, which probably isn’t old enough to technically qualify as roots music, but it’s related (a branch from the root?) and I’m loving it.

The willow tree at the house where I grew up. I was sad when it blew down in a thunderstorm the summer of 1976. I spent lots of my childhood climbing into its lowest branches. My petite and nimble friend Alice could climb 2/3 of the way to the top, which scared my Dad enough that he forbade me to climb it with friends, fearing one of them would fall and we’d be liable. I loved that tree.

Root vegetables. A baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar. Fresh red beets, cooked, pickled, and chilled with eggs in the juice. Mmmm…

Etymology and linguistics. What can I say? We’re word nerds. Art’s studied Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, and Greek. I’ve studied Latin and French. Hence without much trying we see the backstories of many words. When a word, or word family, intrigues me, I tend to dissect it. What is its root, what language did it come from, and what does its progenitor word tell me about its meaning? What prefixes or suffixes change it in what ways? F’rinstance, somewhere in my files I have a whole page on the -fuse family: confuse, profuse, infuse, diffuse, suffuse, etc. This kind of research helps me get to the concepts behind the words. It even sparks new ideas. I’m also fascinated in learning how languages have influenced each other and why. I think this all started in my first weeks of high school Latin classes, when I met pater (father) and mater (mother) and my neurons started forming all kinds of happy linguistic synapses. It’s all about making connections.

 

Merriam-Webster’s updates, and mondegreens

I think Merriam-Webster’s website is fun, but then I’m a word nerd. Today I’m enjoying their article about mondegreens. That’s a new term to me, but I’m happy to have a name for misunderstood phrases such as “There’s a bathroom on the right,” instead of “There’s a bad moon on the rise,” from Creedance Clearwater Revival’s song of that name.

Mondegreen got its name from confusion over the words of a Scottish ballad in which “they laid him on the green.” Seems a writer named Sylvia Wright, as a child, thought they were talking about Lady Mondegreen.

Tales abound about children in Sunday School who thought they were singing “up from the gravy a rose” instead of “up from the grave he arose”  or “gladly the crosseyed bear” instead of “gladly the cross I’d bear.” In fact, years ago when I was into making Teddy bears, one of my creations ended up crosseyed and we’ve called him Gladly every since.

What mondegreens have you heard? Share them here. For that matter, share them with Merriam-Webster.

 

The bones of passion

Everyone from Oprah to high school teachers challenge us to find our passions these days. People are passionate about dance, fishing, even cupcakes. A question arises: If we have to find it, are we passionate about it? If passion is strong emotion, we oughta notice, wouldn’t you think?

 

I know, I know, sometimes we tune out, turn down the volume, lose touch with our own emotions and drives. That’s what the search for passion is all about. That, and learning to trust what we know about ourselves.

 

Me, I’m passionate about words. It has recently dawned on me that we’re diluting the word passion with our overuse of it.

 

Where did we get passion, and what does it tell us from its heritage?

 

Pathos was the name of the ancient Phoenician god of desire. Just across the Aegean Sea in Greece pathos meant suffering. The Romans had a similar word passus, meaning having suffered. (Ever notice how often desire and suffering go together?) From there the word traveled through the French and Old English to become our passion. Today my edition of Webster’s contains six related meanings of passion, from suffering as in the Passion of Christ to the object of fondness. Fondness, mind you. I’m fond of mushroom omelets. Wide range, wouldn’t you say?

 

At its bones, our word passion means a desire for which one would suffer and die, a commitment on which we stake everything. However much I enjoy words and desire to use them truthfully and elegantly, I am not passionate about them.

 

Or am I? Sometimes making words work borders on suffering, yet the desire is still there.

 

Is truth at stake? Are people at stake? Or am I selling a cereal, a car, a website?

 

What’s your passion? What, or whom, are you so committed to that you would suffer and even die?