Muninn

Tomorrow is May 1st, and the Great American Boycott 2006 (El Gran Paro Americano 2006). It is also being called “The day without an immigrant” (Un dia sin immigrante). I’ll being joining the citywide gathering at Boston Commons at 4pm tomorrow and I hope there will be a big showing from the immigrant community and its supporters. You can find out more about the nationwide movement and links to local events for tomorrow at Nohr4437.org. I hope that recent roundups and rumors of roundups of undocumented immigrants will not dissuade anyone from joining in.

I’ll also be joining the Harvard May Day rally and walk out tomorrow which is to show solidarity with the movement. You can read more about the Harvard coalition here.

The basic positions: 1) against criminalization of undocumented immigrants 2) in demand for a real path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented individuals who reside in our country and want to become U.S. citizens 3) in support for civil rights for immigrant workers 4) in favor of equal access to education for immigrants and/or their children.

To find out more general information about these issues, and ways that you can support the movement, visit the Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Katrina Gulliver is going to be hosting the next Asian History carnival at her weblog Miscellany on May 5th, 2006. If you have read anything good related to Asian history since March 6th, please email her your nominations at hello [at] katrinagulliver.com. You can also submit nominations via this submission page.

Read more about the Asian history carnival and take a look at the three previous editions.

I created a new (Macintosh) computer automated alarm to get me up and about in the morning. Here is what the alarm does:

1. My computer wakes itself up in the morning. At the appropriate time it opens up iTunes and turns the volume all the way down.
2. It randomly chooses one song from a playlist containing very soft and soothing wake up music. While this is happening it downloads the most recent 7 AM summary of the news from NPR.
3. iTunes starts to play the soft song and over the next 30 seconds or so it slowly turns the volume up to full.
4. After the song is finished playing iTunes then plays the 5 minute summary of NPR news for this morning.
5. After the news is finished, it randomly chooses one song from a playlist containing much louder and more lively wake up music which it plays at full volume.
6. The computer then extends a large metal arm and proceeds to beat me really hard with a pillow until I get out of bed. (Ok, maybe I’m still working on this feature).

In case you want to create something similar, read on.
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As often as I can, I check the DPRK’s Korean Central News Service for a bit of news from the other side. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to learn about things like the “disgusting farce” of the “traitorous acts” reported today:

Pyongyang, April 22 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland issued a statement on Friday to denounce the pro-U.S. ultra-right organizations in south Korea for staging such a ridiculous farce as giving bosses of the U.S. ruling machines in south Korea including the U.S. ambassador Korean names. The south Korea-U.S. “Alliance Friendship Society” in March named U.S. Ambassador in Seoul Vershbow “Pak Po U” in the hope that he would be an eternal friend who regards south-Korea U.S. alliance as a jewel.

The former U.S. 8th army commander in south Korea who finished his service on April 11 was named “Kim Han Su” in the hope that he would always defend “south Korea-U.S. alliance”, the U.S. 7th air force commander “Kim Ung Bi” in the meaning that he is a hero flying in the sky, Laporte, U.S. forces commander in south Korea who went back home in February, “Ra Po Thae” in the hope that he would play a role of a jewel in the south Korea-U.S. alliance.

The statement noted that this disgusting farce cannot be construed otherwise than despicable rowdyism staged by pro-U.S. flunkeyists and mentally deranged guys keen to prolong their dirty remaining days by clinging to the coattails of the aggressors, utterly indifferent to the misfortune the Koreans have undergone. Such traitorous acts to serve the U.S. will bring nothing but a catastrophic war disaster to the Korean nation, the statement notes, warning that south Korea can never be safe nor the Korean nation live in peace as long as pro-U.S. traitorous group such as the GNP and the “friendship society” are at large.

Here are two articles from South Korea on the naming. Seriously, though, I think giving Vershbow a name with “treasure friend” (寶友) isn’t all that strange, but I have to say it does near the realm of the farcical when you give someone the name close to being “protector of Korea” (“korea protect” 韓守). Also, according to the Joongang Daily, General Campbell seems to be under the impression that they named him the protector of Korean freedom: “What a tremendous honor to have the Korean name that means great defender of freedom on the Korean Peninsula.” If you wanted to squeeze the name for all its worth, the most you could get was that he was the protector of Korean gold or metal (金).

The most fun lessons so far this semester in my first year classical chinese class were reading the classic tale of the giant snake killing Li Ji（李寄, and her faithful sidekick, a snake-killing dog) and the original ballad of the female warrior Mulan（木蘭） (two versions here and here). Both brave and filial young daughters from Fujian and somewhere along the Yellow river in northern China, respectively. One is out to save her town from the evil miasma of the demonic snake, while the other is trying to save old pappy from conscription.

In one line of the latter story (小弟聞姊來，磨刀霍霍向豬羊) there is a nice little description of the sharpening of knives. In our glossary, 霍 has the following interesting note attached:

“[Onomatopoetic for sharpening of knife]. In ancient Chinese, this word would have ended in a glottal stop, producing something closer to “hwak” – much more appropriate than the modern Mandarin pronunciation.”

So here I am in Madison, Wisconsin, walking back to my motel room after dinner and I stop at a gas station on the side of the road to get some candy. As I open my wallet to pay, the man standing behind the inch of glass in front of me notices that I have an Oklahoma driver’s license and asks what I’m doing in Wisconsin. I said that I actually go to school in Boston and was here attending a conference. He then asked me what kind of conference it was. I said it was a conference on political trauma.

He looked a bit puzzled at the term so I asked him where he was from, India was the answer. I said, “Well, if we were to talk about political trauma in India, we might discuss the experience of the partition in ‘47.” The man then got very excited and said, “Partition? I can tell you all about partition. You know, the only difference between educated and uneducated are the words that you use. You can use all sorts of words that I can’t but the ideas are all the same.” He then asked me if I had a gun, and when I assured him I didn’t, he unlocked the door to his little “office” and invited me in for a chat. What followed as an hourlong discussion and debate on the Indian partition (which I was happy to admit great ignorance about), religious and political violence, the virtues of British empire, racial profiling in America, and the war in Iraq.
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