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What was difficult was snapping it on my cameraphone without making the gentleman sitting next to it nervous.

Sign alterers took the “If you see something, say something,” slogan and altered it with two neat cut-out replacements:

If you see something,
Run like hell.
Bush does.

Scots has been a written language since medieval times, but it lost much of its social prestige as a written language after the Act of Union (1707), when it became fashionable for young, upper middle class, trend-setting Scottish people to speak English as if they were from the newly reinforced center of political and economic power, London (and I don’t mean they spoke Cockney, either). The language of London trickled down to the middle class, until there was a quite the social bias against speaking Scots.

And so Scots became, for a long time, the language of home and hearth, street and field. But not the language of books, school, academics, politics, or finance. There was an institutional bias against Scots, and it was not used formally in politics or education. Children were scolded– beaten even– for using Scots words and grammar in school. It never died out, but with some notable exceptions, it wasn’t much of a publishing medium for a few hundred years. Many Scots speakers do not think of Scots as a language; it’s quite common for them to describe it as “bad English.” It doesn’t help that some linguists still do too.

Now, however, as you may know, especially if I’ve bent your ear on the subject, Scots is flourishing, and so its prestige is rising again. It’s been building for decades. And to ring in the 21st Century, there is a spate of fiction, poetry and drama writing, a slew of new childrens’ books (indeed, childrens’ presses), language learning materials, and so on.

There’s still room for growth, though; the Scottish Parliament has a Cross Pairty Group on the Scots Leid which has written a document called “Scots: a Statement o Principles” that you can download here; and there’s a link to the SCPB Leid Policy here, which outlines which languages are used in the Scottish Parliament, and when. The language of the Scottish Parliament is mainly English, though debate is allowed in Scots as well as English, and in other languages (for example, Gaelic or British Sign Language, in which case translators are provided).

All this is progress. The day the Scottish Parliament re-convened on 12 May 1999 (the previous meeting adjourned on 25 March 1707), Dr. Winnie Ewing greeted the Parliament in English and Gaelic. Scots, spoken by more people in Scotland than Gaelic, was not officially used in this address. According to the documents above, Scots has some limited role in the new Parliament, and given the way things are going for Scots, it is bound to grow, as it should. On the other hand, the European Parliament, which has many official languages, does not give official status to many minority or regional languages, especially those that aren’t official languages of the various nations; Scots is one of those.

But now, there is a Scots-language Wikipedia at http://sco.wikipedia.org. There are other wikipedias besides the one English speakers are most familiar with. The Scots one differs from some of the wikipedias in other languages, because its the first Encyclopedia in the Scots language in the world. It also differs from these other wikipedias because Scots is not yet a codified language. Scots speakers aren’t in 100% agreement about how to represent their language in writing. (This may sound strange to you, but look at books written just a few hundred years ago in English, and you’ll see more than a little variety in how words are spelled, for example.)

Despite any minor disagreements, though, communication is flourishing. And it’s braw.

Glossary:
braw: a. Fine, elegant, beautiful, excellent
ken: v. know
leid: n. language

The American Friends Service Committee were exhibiting the New York and New Jersey sections of the travelling exhibit Eyes Wide Open, which you can read about here. A pair of combat boots represents each soldier who has died in the current war in Iraq. (They have a pair of boots for every soldier from every state — labelled with name, age, hometown — but since this was a conference of local Quakers, they brought just NY and NJ).

There were also shoes to represent a small number of Iraqi victims of the war. A small percentage indeed, since there have been many more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died.

I am trying to think of the size of field that an exhibit of well over 100,000 pairs of shoes would require.

I can’t.

You can see more of my Eyes Wide Open photos here.

Here, courtesy of Tuesday’s Scotsman, a lovely transcript of his chat yesterday with Tony Blair, which was unknowingly and unwittingly broadcast over a G8 microphone:

The transcript

Bush: Yo, Blair. How are you doing?

Blair: I’m just…

Bush: You’re leaving?

Blair: No, no, no, not yet. On this trade thingy… (inaudible)

Bush: Yeah, I told that to the man.

Blair: Are you planning to say that here or not?

Bush: If you want me to.

Blair: Well, it’s just that if the discussion arises…

Bush: I just want some movement.

Blair: Yeah.

Bush: Yesterday we didn’t see much movement.

Blair: No, no, it may be that it’s not, it may be that it’s impossible.

Bush: I am prepared to say it.

Blair: But it’s just I think that we need to be an opposition…

Bush: Who is introducing the trade?

Blair: Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

Bush: Tell her to call ’em.

Blair: Yes.

Bush: Tell her to put him on, them on the spot. Thanks for [inaudible] it’s awfully thoughtful of you.

Blair: It’s a pleasure.

Bush: I know you picked it out yourself.

Blair: Oh, absolutely, in fact [inaudible].

Bush: What about Kofi? [inaudible] His attitude to ceasefire and everything else … happens.

Blair: Yeah, no I think the [inaudible] is really difficult. We can’t stop this unless you get this international business agreed.

Bush: Yeah.

Blair: I don’t know what you guys have talked about, but as I say I am perfectly happy to try and see what the lie of the land is, but you need that done quickly because otherwise it will spiral.

Bush: I think Condi is going to go pretty soon.

Blair: But that’s, that’s, that’s all that matters. But if you… you see it will take some time to get that together.

Bush: Yeah, yeah.

Blair: But at least it gives people…

Bush: It’s a process, I agree. I told her your offer to…

Blair: Well…it’s only if I mean… you know. If she’s got a…, or if she needs the ground prepared as it were… Because obviously if she goes out, she’s got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.

Bush: You see, the … thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s*** and it’s over.

Blair: [inaudible]

Bush: [inaudible]

Blair: Syria.

Bush: Why?

Blair: Because I think this is all part of the same thing.

Bush: Yeah.

Blair: What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way…

Bush: Yeah, yeah, he is sweet.

Blair: He is honey. And that’s what the whole thing is about. It’s the same with Iraq.

Bush: I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to Assad and make something happen.

Blair: Yeah.

Bush: [inaudible]

Blair: [inaudible]

Bush: We are not blaming the Lebanese government.

Blair: Is this…? (At this point Blair taps the microphone in front of him and the sound is cut.)

———————————————————————–

I like the fact that George complimented Tony on his choice of gift, which is in fact a sweater that Tony picked out himself. (Or maybe the inaudible part is Tony admitting to having knit it himself.)

Between you and me, I think that some folks out there are intentionally catching these sorts of things in an attempt to discredit our nation’s leader. But then again, there mustn’t be many of them. After all, he has got to be saying a lot more stupid stuff that we aren’t hearing.

Yo! Way more, dude.

When Wile, a Manhattan grandma of five, heard about the Tucson event, she grew inspired. By then, she had formed Grandmothers Against the War and had organized the Rockefeller Center vigils. Yet the attempted enlistment seemed fresh, provocative, the kind of protest the average person would notice.

“It was obviously the thing to do,” says Corrine Willinger, 78, a local Raging Granny who heard about Tucson through the grapevine and who attended Wile’s vigils.

Willinger and Wile got cracking, sending out word to the Gray Panthers, the Raging Grannies, and Code Pink, calling any activist in their Rolodexes. To grandmas all over, they made their pitch to enlist, thus symbolizing a desire to spare kids—their grandkids—from a senseless war. It wasn’t an especially tough sell.

“I said, ‘Sure, see you there,’ ” recounts Marie Runyon, the oldest of the New York brigade at 91. Runyon is legally blind and walks with two canes, yet she trekked from Harlem to Times Square. “I thought it was a great idea to get the message through to that son of a bitch in the White House,” she explains. “Our men are dying and the Iraqi people are dying and for what—for that idiot Bush!”

Betty Brassell, 76, of the Lower East Side, decided to shuffle uptown with her walker after spotting a leaflet on the enlistment. She didn’t know the grandmas who would become her fellow defendants. Simply put, she says in a soft Southern lilt, “the flyer said Grandmothers Against the War and I’m strongly against this war.”

By October 17, 18 grandmas had committed to enlist. They convened in Times Square across the street from the recruiting center, where they met their attorney, veteran New York civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel, who was serving as a witness, not to mention dozens of senior supporters draped in “RAGING GRANNIES” signs and signature floppy hats.

When the anti-war grannies approached the station, the door was locked. No one appeared inside, though Wile says she saw someone peek from behind a desk. Evidently, the military had foiled the grannies’ plan, so they improvised what occurred next. “I was so angry,” Runyon recalls with a chuckle, “I started banging on the door, singing, ‘If I had a hammmerrrr!’ ”

The grandmas took over a building ramp near the station door and, one by one, crouched to the ground. “That was the hardest part,” Wile confides, “all these old, beat-up broads with arthritic problems getting down on the ground.”

Eventually, a police officer warned the grannies to disperse or face arrest. Minutes later, a half-dozen cops were gingerly escorting them to a midtown precinct, where the grandmas remained for four hours.

I applaud the Grannies. I think it’s ridiculous that they’re being prosecuted (and apparently in such a time-consuming fashion), but I think the publicity from this is all good. Apparently, they have the same idea. People have been packing the courthouse to support them, and Cindy Sheehan was there today, I was told by a Quaker friend who was also there. And what if the worst happens, sentence-wise? Well, Marie Runyon, (yes, I have to repeat this:) the legally blind 91-year-old lady with two canes who walked from Harlem to Times Square for the protest isn’t afraid:

“Oh hell!” says Runyon. “I would go to jail if I had to just to make the goddamn point! You’ve got to make a statement.”

What have you done to protest the war today?

He needed it for a paper for a history class on fascism and totalitarianism. Irony, anyone?

What’s also disturbing is that a second UM-D history professor, Brian Glyn Williams, was considering not teaching a course about terrorism, since it might subject his students to this sort of federal scrutiny:

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.
“My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think,” he said.
Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.
“I shudder to think of all the students I’ve had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that,” he said. “Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless.”

When I was in high school, little revolutionary me went to the local college library to get a copy of the Little Red Book, among other resources, for a paper about Mao. Since the government did not intercept the book, I was able to learn that while Mao had some great ideas, he also had some terrible ones, and subjected a lot of people to a lot of trauma. I am glad I was left alone to read about that for myself.

More on the story above here, from Inside Higher Ed.

And then, an update on the story from the South Coast Today, which broke the story and the subsequent “it’s a hoax” story. Yeah, it’s a hoax. As Williams says in the follow-up piece, “it’s safe to do research” again. Let’s all go and order us a copy of the 1965 Little Red Book from Interlibrary Loan, eh? Thanks to Bicyclemark for pointing out the new developments.

But this, politically-engaged, timely, colorful art, is popping up around New Orleans, where there is apparently a glut of flood-damaged refrigerators being tossed to the curb. Folks are decorating them. I liked the message on this one, courtesy of missbhavens.

Residents of Kansas, are you listening?