sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2017-07-03 12:29 am

Our ship danced like a moth in the firelight

I saw Jean Renoir's The River (1951) at the HFA tonight with my mother and [personal profile] nineweaving. I have loved that movie since the first time I saw it in 2011, and I have never written properly about it. Have this highly disparate collection of links instead.

1. The long-persecuted, fiercely endogamous Yazidi religion has changed its traditions to welcome back Yazidi women trafficked by ISIS/Daesh. The current wave of persecution has been recognized by the UN as genocide. If you are interested in supporting survivors or the Yazidi community at large, Yazda looks like the place to start.

2. Eric K. Ward of the Southern Poverty Law Center writes on a subject I have been thinking a lot about lately: "Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism."

3. For reasons both fun and deadly serious, John le Carré recommends learning German: "You can make up crazy adjectives like 'my-recently-by-my-parents-thrown-out-of-the-window PlayStation' . . . Those who teach language, those who cherish its accuracy and meaning and beauty, are the custodians of truth in a dangerous age."

4. Double-checking that I had transcribed its lyrics correctly from the recording I have by Bellowhead, I found a fantastic page about the origins and variants of the nautical folk song "Across the Line."

5. This dialect quiz from the New York Times placed me, by regional English, in New York City, Yonkers, or Jersey City. Back to the drawing board, Henry Higgins. [edit: It correctly located [personal profile] spatch in western Massachusetts and also Boston. "Weirdly prescient." But also Yonkers. We're not sure what's up with Yonkers. "Maybe there's a bunch of expatriates."]

Following the whole adventure with RKO's Girl of the Port (1930) and John Russell's "The Fire-Walker" (1929), I really feel I should read some actual indigenous Pacific writers. Any recommendations?
gwynnega: (Leslie Howard mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2017-07-03 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
The dialect quiz situated me in Fresno, Oakland, and Long Beach. At least it figured out I'm in California?
gwynnega: (Default)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2017-07-03 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
The word "firefly" and not knowing the concept of a drive-through liquor store are apparently distinctively Californian. (I have heard of drive-through liquor stores, but we don't have them here, much less have a special name for them.)
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2017-07-04 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
New Mexico had some of the first drive-thru liquor stores, but I never knew what to call them other than "horrible ideas." (Highest DWI rate in the nation! Great planning.)