Our Thanksgiving Politics: How You Say 'Pecan'

A lot of news channels before Thanksgiving featured some expert advising how to avoid dinner table fights coming out of this contentious election season. Since my family is like-minded, political debate wasn't a problem--but we did quickly divide over other deep and stubbornly held habits: how to pronounce common words in American English. It started with the pecan pie. Is it pick-AHN, pee-Kahn, PEE-can, or PEE-kahn? Well, I've always pronounced it as pick-AHN, and a national linguistic survey shows that's because my family roots are in Louisiana and Texas. From the pecan pie, the argument moved to other words, although we could agree that one person's "carml" (for caramel) tasted as sweet as another's "carramel." So we are a nation divided not just by what we say but how we say it. For example, as a child, I called every sweet carbonated beverage a "coke," which most people in Texas understood, but this led to confusion when I lived in Virginia and California, where more people say "soda," and raised eyebrows when I was in college in Michigan, where people prefer "pop" (and "coke" refers to an illegal substance). So I've stopped saying "coke" and sometimes even offer "soda pop" just to make it clear to a range of speakers. Other childhood linguistic habits persist, of course, and I've been surprised how quickly speech experts pick up on the slight tells in my pronunciation to pinpoint regional origin and ancestry. With mobility and the standardization of mass media and entertainment, our regional linguistic divisions are dwindling. And luckily, those trivial verbal differences that still separate us can be debated without hurt feelings, and perhaps can even encourage acceptance.  Check out a national survey at http://dialect.redlog.net/ to see maps of our American linguistic divides and where your pronunciation may fit. For an article with quick highlights, go to http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6/

Some Musings on Music and Politics

With the shock waves of the presidential election still spreading, I got to thinking about an artistic phenomenon that occurs in times of great change. Let me start with last Friday, when we had over some friends who were saddened by the election of Donald Trump. The conversation soon turned from politics to Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter who died the day before the election, and his amazing song "Hallelujah." We listened to various versions, from Jeff Buckley's well-known performance to an Israeli army choir interpretation in Hebrew. Then, the next evening, "Saturday Night Live" opened with Kate McKinnon, known for her satiric portrayal of defeated presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, singing "Hallelujah." The song ends with Cohen's verse: "I did my best; it wasn't much. I couldn't feel so I tried to touch. I've told the truth; I didn't come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!" The song is seen by many as sorrowful, but Cohen himself felt it was a "rather joyous song" and explained, "This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'" In that more positive spirit, McKinnon/Hillary followed the song's conclusion with an exhortation to those disappointed in the election outcome (the majority in terms of popular vote): "I'm not giving up and neither should you." All that got me thinking of the historic convergence of music and politics. After all, Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter and five-decade cultural influence, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Dylan is well-known for a musical opus that includes "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," which became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Looking for an exploration of politics in music, and vice versa, I found books such as Politics in Music: Music and Political Transformation from Beethoven to Hip-Hop by Courtney Brown, Music and Politics by John Street, Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America by Dick Weissman, and 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by music critic Dorian Lynskey. And as far as Cohen's song is concerned, there is The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of 'Hallelujah' by Alan Light. But I note that none of these histories go past 2013. The defining songs of the next generation of political protest have yet to emerge. Watch and listen in 2017. I'm betting new rallying music is in the offing. In the meantime, for fans of "Hallelujah," see https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Broken-Leonard-Unlikely-Hallelujah/dp/1451657854

After the Election, My Mystery Shopping Deluge

I'm not much of a holiday shopping fanatic, but I need something pleasant to anticipate after the end of this awful election season. So I'm beginning to put together my holiday book list for mystery lovers. Courtesy of Publishers Weekly, here are some ideas: I like the look of Steven Price's By Gaslight, about two men combing London's 1885 underworld to find the master criminal responsible for a woman's dismembered body; you can't beat foggy streets, smoky opium dens, and Victorian seance halls described with "literary sophistication." For anyone who likes the moody mystery of Edward Hopper's paintings, In Sunlight or in Shadow is a fascinating idea for a crime fiction anthology, with top authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Stephen King, and Joyce Carol Oates each penning stories inspired by Hopper's art. I'm a big fan of Canadian Louise Penny, and the 12th mystery in her Armand Gamache series, titled A Great Reckoning, has the former Quebec Chief of Homicide back in the village of Three Pines and following an old map into a dangerous web involving police cadets, a murdered professor and a stained glass window with terrible secrets. I'm also a fan of Caleb Carr's The Alienist about a psychologist investigating crime in 19th century New York City, so I'm piqued by a new entry from Carr called Surrender, New York, about a psychologist and a DNA expert solving present-day crimes in upstate New York. Also set in New York City is best-seller J.D. Robb's 43rd Eve Dallas thriller, Apprentice in Death, which starts with three ice skaters shot dead on Wollman Rink in Central Park. Plus, best-selling favorite Karin Slaughter has debuted another novel featuring Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent and medical examiner Dr. Sara Litton; in The Kept Woman, the pair of lovers investigate the death of a dirty retired Atlanta cop. For more fiction and nonfiction options, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/71628-holiday-gift-guide-2016-all-our-coverage.html