I'm melting...

[magid]

It occurred to me this afternoon that 'melting pot' is a pretty strange sort of phrase. If it parallels things like 'pizza pan', it's a pot for melting things in. I guess I don't melt stuff very much, since this doesn't seem very useful to me. If I start thinking about how it's used to mean society blending into a whole, I can easily hare off into horrid thoughts of nazism... but I'm not going there. I'm not, I tell you. No baldness at all.

I checked dictionary.com; a melting pot is indeed a utensil for melting, aka a crucible. Hmmm... I wonder how far this analogy for a blended society would have come had the wordmeister involved used the word 'crucible'? Not very far, I'd bet, especially after Arthur Miller's play. Though perhaps he'd not have called it that had the word been in use that way.

I know that Canada uses a completely different idea for its kind of blending society. And, yes, dictionary.com includes a quote about it. Score! I'd thought it was a mosaic (the one they cite), but part of me wondered whether salad might not have been used. Both show the idea of the distinct parts making up a whole while keeping their individual characteristics, which is a much more appealing paradigm, really. I look at Canada, and see a place where there's huge numbers of immigrants, but there are not the same issues that there are here. It's not perfect; there's all sorts of questions of language with the Quebecois, for instance. And yet, we ostensibly tout our mantra of individuality, yet really the way to get along is to become like everyone else. Why else the English-only referenda, or the proliferation of skinheads and other separatists (over whatever issue), not to mention a judge not understanding how his statue might violate the divide between church and state. By gum, the 10 commandments are just right, no matter what your religion! Who could argue with them? And so on.

I think it wouldn't bother me so much if America didn't seem to keep on playing the role of a country that's got it together. And it doesn't, on so many fronts. It's a far better country than many (most?), despite the current politics I hate, but there's so much that should be fixed at home before we try to fix the rest of the world into our own image (which scares me for lots of other reasons as well. How arrogant can we be?).


Today an NPR reporter mentioned a 'gas-powered turban'. I don't doubt that 'gas-powered turbine' was meant, but, oh, the visions of Ali Baba flying under his own turban power...

Comments

10 C's/NPR pronunciation

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

1-I saw an entertaining article going off on how there are several different sets of "10 Commandments," and that, depending on how you count, there are rather more than 10.

2-Erm, that's how I'd have pronounced it, too.

Re: 10 C's/NPR pronunciation

[magid.livejournal.com]

1- I tend to think there's around 613 of them, myself :-). Interestingly, Cellio made a post last night about just this topic. I find it odd that some of the statue defenders assume that anyone who'd want to defend the art would necessarily be of their same religion.

2- I think I've heard it pronounced with a long i, or with a short i (though that always sounded strange to me: what's that e doing hanging out at the end if not to make the i long? [1]), but not a drawl that turned it into an a-sound.

[1] Oh, hell, now I have images of E-the-super-hero, with the power to make all vowels long! Behold the mighty E!

Re: 10 C's/NPR pronunciation

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

1- Because _their_ faith is The One True Faith, of course. *rolls eyes* All others are irrelevant.

2. Oh. I'm trying to figure out how the NPR person pronounced it now . . .

[1] There's a song by Tom Lehrer you might like, all about "E" and how it transforms words *grin*

Re: 10 C's/NPR pronunciation

[magid.livejournal.com]

1- How'd I forget that? *smacks forehead* Really, where's my mind these days? Oi.

2- I can't describe it better than I did, but somehow it clearly crossed the short i/ drawled a boundary in my head, though perhaps no one else would've thought that.

[1] Do you have that song? I'd love to hear it (another Tom Lehrer song I'd not heard of. I blush.)

Tom Lehrer song

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

It's not on the one album of his that I have, but I heard it from an album I check out from the BPL: "Revisitied". The song is "Silent E" and was written for The Electric Company (you may suprised to know I actually watched this show! yes - a TV show I saw _as_a_child_!).

Re: Tom Lehrer song

[magid.livejournal.com]

You saw TV as a child?! The shock, the horror! Wait...

That rings some bells, actually. I probably heard that song, ages ago now. I certainly couldn't sing it (not like some of the Schoolhouse Rock stuff!). I hadn't realized that Lehrer wrote songs for the Electric Company, either. Cool.

[volta]

'gas-powered turban'

WANT.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of it, but think I'd be too nervous about having something powered like that on my head....

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention Ali Baba, as I finished reading that story earlier today. No mention of turbans, gas-powered or otherwise. I realized that the story might aptly have been called "Marjana," but then why would Arab tradition name one of it's stories after a woman who is a housekeeper and saves the day and instead of after the men she makes stupid?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if there would be turbans in the version you're reading, but really, the first usable image in my mind was from the illustrations in one of the 1001 Nights books I read when young.

(In other words, mentioning the sky-blue turban one of my cow orkers was wearing when I saw him earlier this week just didn't seem likely to resonate as an image for anyone else...)

Your bits of description make me want to read this book even more...

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Oh, there are Turbans in Arabian Nights. There's no Ali Baba in Arabian Nights, though. I decided to read the second volume of stories translated by Haddawy, which contains the stories of Sindbad the Sailor, 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 'Ala al-Din and the Magic Lamp, and Qamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ah. Clearer now.

I don't recognize 'Qamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons'. I feel ill-read.

So... if you're reading the second volume, can I borrow the first?

crucibles

[gingicat]

I tend to think of a crucible as something used in metalwork, where you force metal to meld together at extremely high heat, and then skim off the impurities. Certainly not an image I want for a country I live in, but may have been a subtext for Arthur Miller.

Re: crucibles

[magid.livejournal.com]

Is melting pot a better image, though, once you think about it?

I assume it was a subtext for Miller, actually, since there was no other reason for choosing that in the title.

Re: crucibles

[gingicat]

I kinda like the image of a salad bowl, myself; all sorts of neat ingredients combining without being subsumed, with the dressing of a common language. I first heard of that metaphor when I was in high school, in the New York Times, and I wish it would have caught on.

Re: crucibles

[queue.livejournal.com]

Of course, some of the squishier bits of the salad get totally disintegrated by the dressing, especially when you put too much dressing on. Yeah, I think the analogy fits. ;-)

Re: crucibles

[magid.livejournal.com]

Of course, the other approach is not to allow any mushrooms in your country.
Er, salad. Yup.

Re: crucibles

[cellio]

I like the salad analogy too.