Fantastic Tradition.

Fantastic tradition. 👍👍👍

The Navajo have a unique tradition. When a baby is born, it is regarded as the ultimate, precious gift and must never be abused. From the moment of birth, the child is watched over continuously by family and friends, who patiently wait for the child’s first…laugh.

“Has your baby laughed?” is common question posed to parents who have infants around the age of three months. The first laugh of a Navajo child is a very significant event. It marks the child’s final passing from the spirit world to the physical world, meaning he or she is now fully human. This milestone warrants a party, and what a party it is!

Whichever brother, sister, parent, cousin, aunt, uncle, or passing acquaintance is present at the first laugh is deemed to have caused it.  The laughter instigator then receives the honored privilege of preparing a special ceremony to welcome the child into society.

Once a baby has laughed, training in generosity begins immediately—a value held in high regard among the Navajo people. At the party, where the baby is considered the host, the parents or person responsible for the first laugh help hold the baby’s hand as he or she ceremonially gives the rock salt, food, and gifts to each guest. There are also bags of candy, money, and other presents that the child “gives” along with the food. [x]

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well. it’s been a week back at school teaching in person, and i figured i’d share some thoughts on the subject. i’d like to start with a few things i’ve learned this past week.

1. your face can get sweaty in ways you never knew it could when you’re teaching with a mask on for 3 hours straight.

2. you don’t need to find time for a pee break during the day if you’re so dehydrated your head starts to hurt.

3. there is an exhaustion deeper than “first-week-back-at-school-teacher-tired,” and it’s “first-week-back-at-school-during-a-global-pandemic-teacher-tired.”

seriously, i’m more exhausted than i ever was while i was when i was interning during grad school. i come home and immediately want to collapse into bed. my eyes are bloodshot. i went to bed at 8:30 once this week, and i was still tired when i got up.

and i’m not the only one. it’s the same story with all of my fellow teachers. our conversations are consumed with nothing but covid talk- from our fears to the bone-deep exhaustion we’re all feeling. we aren’t taking care of ourselves enough. my group chat is full of pictures of what my teacher friends are drinking when they get home. the question of “i don’t know how long i can do this” is rapidly turning into the answer of “i CAN’T do this anymore” for a lot of my fellow teachers.

it’s been a week.

as if the physical aspect weren’t bad enough, it’s taking a huge toll on everyone’s mental health, too. more than one teacher i’ve talked to after going back has shared a story of sudden, intense chest pain, of the fear of a heart attack that turned out to be anxiety. i’ve noticed it in myself, too. my heart races more easily than it did before. i have trouble sleeping. i’ve scratched scabs into my scalp out of sheer nervous energy. but i’m in school, and i’m teaching, and i’m going to keep teaching. i love my job. i love my students.

but god, am i tired. it’s been a week, and i’m tired.

the worst part is reading some of the awful shit people are saying about teachers who don’t want to go back. that we should be grateful that we still have jobs, that we’re selfish for not wanting to take students back when their parents need to go to work, that someone will replace us in a heartbeat if we quit.

i’d like to pose two questions to these kinds of people. the first is, who do you want teaching your kids- me, who loved teaching enough to spend a year struggling through an unpaid internship while paying for night classes at grad school, who worked 9 and 10 and 11 hour days to figure out the best way to teach your child over zoom, or someone scooped up in a desperation to fill positions, whose idea of teaching is reading to your kids from a textbook?

the second is, what else do you want us to sacrifice? is it not enough that some of us spend our own money providing for students in need? is it not enough that some of us teach in buildings full of mold with textbooks that have been out of date for years? is it not enough that some of us have said that, if put in an active shooter situation, we would die to protect your children?

of course, i already know the answer to that second set of questions. it’s always been no. we learned that after sandy hook and parkland, when students’ and teachers’ demands for a safe learning environment were met with hostility and threats. we learned that after continuous budget cuts to public education have left teachers and students in school buildings that should be condemned. we learned that when parents took their children on trips to beaches and brought a deadly virus back with them, only to send them to school immediately after.

and so i am back at school, and i am tired.

and it’s not as if i don’t want my kids back in school with me. remote teaching felt like it was draining the soul out of my classes. but i want my students to be safe. and i want myself to be safe. and yet people are telling teachers that that is too much to ask. we are told to suck it up and get back into our classrooms. some of us do. but i wonder how long it’s going to be before we stop coming.

in some ways i really shouldn’t be surprised. it’s just another form of the same question we get asked every time something terrible happens in a school: would you die for our children?

my answer to that isn’t going to change. yes, i would die for your children. yes, i would put myself between your children and an intruder. yes, i will keep teaching your children through this pandemic, which half of you don’t even seem to be taking seriously. yes, i will keep coming in to school, even as the number of cases and deaths rises every day.

yes, i would die for your children. but i wish you would stop fucking asking me to. 

I HAVE formally studied Japanese and have directly experienced some of the culture, and I feel this answer deserves an A+. :) If I may, I will add that Japanese pronouns are so complicated/fraught that most formal instruction that I’ve experienced discourages beginners from using them AT ALL. Which, as previously noted, happens a lot anyway. One thing that I’ve noticed is that in Japanese culture, oftentimes indirectness = politeness. The more direct you are (say, if you’re using specific pronouns and directly indicating the person you’re speaking to,) the stronger your language is and the more impolite it can be. This can lead to confusion for lots of Americans, as our culture tends to prize direct and forceful speaking...

Now I saw your post about honorifics, made me think of how Japanese language has a lot of "You" as well like kimi, temee, omae , kisama, anta and so on. But maybe it is because I am watching Naruto too much and didn't think some of them are actually rude to say them to Japanese people. I always thought "kimi" sounds really beautiful but it is apparently rude as well. I am sad. When I first learned English, I thought having only to say "you" to say is suck cuz it put everyone on the same level.

Japanese politeness registers are really complicated, and I am far from an expert. Basically I know enough to know how much I don’t know.

One thing that I think can be difficult for people from a (supposedly, but we won’t get into that) rankless society like the US or Australia is that the politeness of an utterance within a highly heirarchical society like Japan is not absolute but rather dependant on the relative rank of both the speaker and the listener.

In English speaking culture, “I’m so sorry sir, it won’t happen again” is deferential and polite and “oops, my bad” is casual and flippant and “watch it, I’m walking here” is rude. We can kind of see how the “oops, my bad” might be more or less appropriate depending on how bad the offence was and how close the speaker is to the wronged party, but English doesn’t really have a situation where a lower ranked person saying something to a similar ranked person is rude but to a higher ranked person it’s polite or so on to the way that Japanese might.

A great example because it comes up a lot is gomen ne vs gomen nasai vs sumimasen. Sumimasen can be as casual and rote as “oops, my bad” or “’scuse me” in some contexts and as humble and deferential as “I’m so sorry sir, it won’t happen again” in others. And “gomen nasai” can be as sincere and apologetic as “I’m really sorry, please forgive me” in some contexts and as whiny and inappropriately cutesy as “I’m so sowwy, pwease forgive me” in others.

So “omae” vs “anata” vs “kisama” and all these other choices of pronouns, it’s not as easy as saying “omae is rude.” “Omae” is rude when the speaker doesn’t have the right to address the other person that way. A boy refusing to use “omae” with another boy of the same age may be seen as prissy, fussy, etc. And “omae” is commonly used from husband to wife, and therefore from a male to a female lover generally… now this coincides with a lot of historically sexist stuff about Japanese marital relationships, but there’s no denying that there are plenty of people who sincerely find it romantic.

And Japanese gets more complicated than that because it’s not just pronouns but also how verbs are conjugated that modifies this politeness.

It’s also worth noting that since Japanese frequently drops pronouns altogether, even their use is often a deliberate stylistic choice!

^^^^ me trying to understand politeness registers in a language I’ve never even formally studied

First the Bardcore trend and now this? I really like the direction viral music is taking these days.

so i’ve seen this around a lot and i always felt like the version i listened to just. didn’t have everything? sO! i edited together my three favourite versions of the tik tok sea shanty! enjoy!!

(listen with headphones if possible!)

(yes i know the ending is bad oKaY-)

HOW?!

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I thought these were PLUSHIES. How does a real animal look like it’s ADORABLY CROCHETED?

Today I learned about the Valais Blacknose sheep. I think I’m dead of cute.