Creek Running North

OK, rather unrelated, but yesterday my mother sent me two photos of a fossil she picked up in Arizona.  She was hoping I might be able to dig up something about it.  Which I can’t.  But I was hopeful someone might drop by who could hazard a guess.

http://www.idyllopuspress.com/meanwhile/?p=1587

And on a related note, for a number of years I have done volunteer website construction and upkeep for a linguist who has been attempting to preserve the language of his nation.  Plus my husband, a musician, was able to hook him up with some friends in the industry who have been able to take old reel-to-reel recordings, and transfer them over to digital, a very delicate business, again, these individuals working on a volunteer basis.  You can imagine how nervous we all are, receiving these old tapes and working with them.  I mean, they have to be transferred, it is imperative.  But it is nerve wracking. From the time they are put in the mail to when they are received and finally transferred, we are in a state of suspense.

The last of the fluent speakers passed away in the 90s and there are only about half a dozen speakers remaining who are semi-fluent.

Funding so that the person could devote time to the project has been insanely difficult to come by, though he had produced a dictionary and several language books. Finally, some grants have come through (as you know, grant writing itself is hell and takes a good bit of time), but not what it will take for full immersion education for a few individuals who could then carry the language home, which would be the optimum.  Plus, there are so many who no longer live on the reservations concerned who would like to learn the language but there hasn’t been the money or time to develop materials.  Which is too bad because the internet and computers have pretty much revolutionized the ability to disseminate this knowledge to far flung tribal members and other concerned individuals. 

I have a couple of the language books that have been produced and have tried to learn some that I could pass along to my son but without audio assistance it turned out to be pretty impossible for me.  Though we’re not tribal members, it is the language of a branch of our ancestors, and I would like my son to know it.  My hope is eventually digital audio materials will be produced that can be made available over the website. 

Anyway, I know something about this.  And it is indeed disheartening.

You sappy sod romantic fool.

Nice coccolithophores in that video.

Idyllopus: kinda blurry but it looks like a, um, coyote turd to me.