Glass shattering in flames, our hothouse bed

[sovay]

If left to myself, I don't happen to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it still registers that the first news I saw when I got onto the internet after a separately difficult night was the banning of Art Spiegelman's Maus (1991) by a Tennessee school board on grounds of nudity and inappropriate language. Any impediment to the teaching of the reality of the Holocaust is, I am sure, one hundred percent inadvertent, regrettable, and just to be lived with. Nothing personal. Some people's children must be protected from knowledge that others are never permitted to live without, but then, some people's children are really people.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Thank you--I think I mondegreened something in. selkie's suggestion of "vemen" makes sense for the lines.

I think I'm not wrong about the larger surmise, but I also know I am really apt to generate mondegreens even in English, alas. Sorry for the trouble!

[sovay]

I think I'm not wrong about the larger surmise, but I also know I am really apt to generate mondegreens even in English, alas. Sorry for the trouble!

No worries! ("Vemen" is also the closest for me based on sound, but based on repetition I was just about to ask if you were hearing something in Es shvindn sekundn, minutn un shtundn c. 2:05.) If I can ever confirm the surmise for real, just ask.

[selkie]

Man, I can’t believe I had enough crackers in the box for that. It’s a bit reassuring.

(Other people ask you so courteously for bits of your brain! If I tried that instead of hopping up and down making peeve noises, would I be responsible for the concussion when you fell over in shock?)

[thistleingrey]

Thank you again! And no, with your and selkie's romanized transcriptions, I can see where I misheard. Work does indeed cause time to dwindle incrementally :) but that's not where my kid-ear was stuck earlier.

[sovay]

but that's not where my kid-ear was stuck earlier.

So how much Yiddish did you grow up hearing, filtered in among the German?

[thistleingrey]

My part of Los Angeles ages 4-8ish had a few angles on Yiddish, ambiently--adults coming to pick up kids from school, people chatting near the deli, etc. In third grade only five of us in the room were not Jewish, counting the teacher, who'd emigrated from England. Snapshot of lost time or something. Since I was 30 or so, when I hear people chatting in similar wise, it's invariably Hebrew or Russian, not Yiddish. On the plus side, they now(ish) feel comfortable speaking Hebrew in public, which was not true of my early(ish) childhood. But I think Yiddish is mostly gone from there now.

[sovay]

But I think Yiddish is mostly gone from there now.

Unless there are Yiddishists or Hasidim, probably. That's a neat snapshot, though.

[thistleingrey]

Unless there are Yiddishists or Hasidim

Yes, true.