Famous Last Words Week 10

Well, this past week has been the craziest out of all of the crazy weeks. I feel like I write that every time I write a ‘Famous Last Words’ post, but it’s true! This past week I had a big paper due, an exam, the post-lab from Hell, two experimental proposals, and career advisement to try and get my life together. Whew!

The week before last, Spring Break, was mostly spent lounging on the warm sandy beaches of North Miami. Yes, it was glorious. Even though I was still in the United States, it felt at times as if I had traveled to a completely different country. This is because Miami is heavily populated with Cubans and other peoples with Latin American ancestry and almost every shop I walked into had five or more conversations held completely in Spanish.

Probably the most fantastic thing I found there was not the sandy beaches, or the seashells, or even the Keys West salad I discovered at the Publix by our hotel (a delicious combination of shrimp, imitation crab, bell peppers, tomatoes, and mozzarella): it was the Cuban coffee.

Let me tell you about this coffee - it’s not ordinary coffee. It’s the breath of life itself. I went with a total of five people (including myself) and we had to share two beds in a tiny hotel room. It goes without saying that we didn’t sleep comfortably, but we slept hard. 6 hours was the perfect amount to cram a restful night into what we needed to take on the next day.

But still, no matter how well I sleep I will need coffee in the morning. I’ve had to switch over to decaf due to health reasons, but after having a cuppa every morning for the past ten years (I started drinking it regularly when I was 12), it’s hard to give up.

So me and one of my friends would go on the hunt for coffee every morning when we first woke up. Within a block of our hotel was a Latin American Cafe, a Latin American Market, a Peruvian cafe, and down the street was a Publix, a Buenos Aires cafe, and countless other small cafes, bakeries, and restaurants. Each morning we went to a different place and got a shot of Cuban espresso ranging anywhere from 60-80 cents a shot.

A tiny shot of heaven - Cuban espresso. Yum!

Image: The Ground Bean

You might be thinking, “One shot? That’s it?” But trust me - one is all you need.

These little shots of Manna are brewed with with darkest Cuban roast along with two teaspoons of sugar to give a beverage that’s black as night and sweet as sin. Ever since I came back to Norman my heart and taste buds have cried out for something more than what starbucks can offer, but to no avail. I would try to make some myself, but I’d likely screw it up to the point where I’d never be able to have coffee again.

Unfortunately, our hotel had crappy Wi-Fi, so I couldn’t work on anything while we were there, which meant I had to scramble to do stuff on Sunday evening when we got back.

But I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the semester with vigor and drive! Yay for Spring Break, and YAY for almost graduation!

Week 10 Extra Reading: Tales from the Blackfeet

I was going to go with Apache stories this week, but the way they were written was too hard for me to follow. So instead I decided to read tales from the Blackfoot Native Americans. After some brief research on Wikipedia, I’ve found out these people are from British Columbia and Montana, so they’ve survived in harsh territory.

To read more Blackfoot stories, visit the unit here!

The Dog and the Root Digger

In this story, Napi, one of the great chiefs, goes undercover as a dog to discover where all the buffalo have gone by visiting a lone tent in the middle of the plain. A friend goes with him and turns himself into a root digger (a tool) to also disguise himself.

A man, his wife, and their child are the only ones living in the tent. The child takes the dog (the chief in disguise) and root digger as his companion and playthings. Through this way the chief and other man discover that the lone family has been hiding all the game inside a cave and they release them all back onto the plain so that other families can have their meat.

What really struck me in this story was how Napi and the root digger hid themselves as the buffalo were exiting the cave while the man who had put them there watched for the dog and root digger to come out. It was almost exactly like what I had read in the Odyssey when Odysseus and his men escape the cyclops’ cave by latching onto the underbellies of sheep! It’s amazing how similar stories can be even when they’re told in different time periods by completely different cultures.

Buffalo in Yellowstone

Image: Wikipedia

The Camp of Ghosts

I really liked this story just because I’m a sucker for cheesy romance stories where one will do anything to bring their beloved back to them. For example, if anyone has seen ‘The Crow,’ that’s a perfect example of the kind of love stories I’m into.

A man and his wife have a son but she dies soon thereafter. For days he weeps and mourns and, because he can bear it no longer, he goes out in search of his wife who passed away.

He leaves the child with his grandmother and begins his journey.

He enters into the land of ghosts through the direction and counsel of old women he meets in dreams. When he finally comes to the camp of ghosts he stays there for four days on the agreement that his wife will be returned to him on the fourth day and that he can travel home with her.

There are a lot of rules and contingencies on her going back with him. He can’t open his eyes while traveling, he cannot hit her, he must allow her to carry a pipe, etc. etc. He is also instructed to take a sweat as soon as he arrives home because there’s ‘something about the ghosts that is hard to get off.’ Maybe it’s ectoplasm? Bleh.

They return home safely, have a sweat together, and live together again for a long time, happy and healthy. But this guy screws it all up and makes as if he’s about to hit his wife with a branding iron, so she vanishes forever. Way to go.

Storytelling Week 10: Little Seal-Girl

There was once a man who lived by the sea. He made his living off of whaling and was always able to provide for himself and his wife. They had a modest home and a modest life and were content to live simply and be happy.

Two months into the spring, the wife gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl. The father was beyond proud and doted on her and did his best to make sure she did not go without food, clothes, or toys.

Time passed and she grew into a robust child, full of energy and adventure. Oftentimes she would play outside her house by the shore while her father was away hunting whale. It wasn’t long before she began swimming and diving to collect shells and other trinkets to give to her mother to sew into clothes or to make necklaces with. Her father noticed and returned home one day with a young seal. He skinned it to where the pelt came off entirely and after taking the excess blubber off he presented it to his daughter.

“The days are getting colder, but I know how much you love to swim. Wear this from now on when you’re swimming and keep warm.”

The girl was delighted and every day thereafter she donned the sealskin and continued collecting treasures from the sea.

Many years passed and her father would skin bigger and bigger seals each year so that she could continue to swim in the cold. She was swimming so much that by the time she was a young lady she could pass for a seal herself whenever she was out in the water. When a pack of seals came to roost near their home in the late summer, she would swim with them and play with their pups.

Harbor Seal soaking up the sun

Image: Wikipedia

Her father and mother noticed her fondness for her seal friends and allowed her relationship with them to continue, but worry was never far from their mind. Still the girl would bring home shells and trinkets she found, but one day she came home crying.

Her mother brought her into her lap and soothed her, talking softly while peeling off the seal pelt. “There, there… what’s the matter, little one? Could you not find any shells today?”

Between sobs the girl cried, “A huge whale… he came…. he ate one of my seal friends…”

Terrified, her mother tried her best to remain calm and soothe the girl. “Perhaps then it is better for you to forgo swimming with them for a little while. You look so much like a seal in that skin that the whale could also mistake you for one….”

The girl wept all through the night and went out early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the sea. She had a plan.

When her father was about to leave to go hunt, she asked him, “Papa, where are you going hunting today?”

The father scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Out to the Northwest by those icebergs. I saw a pod of whales there earlier in the week, so hunting should be relatively easy.”

After her father had set out, she assured her mother she was going to go collect late summer greens for supper. Instead, when she was outside of view from the house, she donned her seal skin and swam to her seal friends, which were to the southeast of where her father was going.

She waited a while, scanning the waters, and finally spotted the giant whale. Taking a deep breath, she dove into the water and taunted them, swimming lazily about and splashing. It wasn’t long before the whales noticed and began chasing her.

She swam faster than she had ever swam in her life, weaving through holes in icebergs underwater and resurfacing to take great gulps of air. The whale was gaining, but she only had to go a little further to reach her father.

When she spotted his kayak, she led the whales to the left of it and then scrambled up the iceberg. She felt a tug and looked down to see the monstrously sized whale pulling down on the tail of her seal skin. She looked to her father and cried out, “It’s me, your daughter! Help!”

Recognizing his daughter’s voice, the father wasted no time and harpooned the giant whale, driving the hook deep into it’s thick skin. The whale released her tail and slid from the iceberg back down into the cold sea water.

The father helped his daughter down from the iceberg and cradled her like he did when she was a child to help ease her shock. He then tied the rope connected the harpoon embedded in the whale to his kayak and paddled back home with both daughter and whale in tow.

Since then the seals were not bothered by any whales, be they lone whales or in a pod. They continued to play with the little girl until she grew up to become a fine woman. After that, nobody knows what happened to her. Some say the skin she wore so much became one with her and she joined her seal friends as one of their own.



Author’s Note: This is a very different version of the original tale of Attarsuaq. In the original version, Attarsuaq had a boy whom he taught how to swim from the time he was a baby and when he grew older, Attarsuaq gave him a seal pelt. With this, the boy learned how to dive and hold his breath for a long time underwater. In the original story, the boy didn't make friends with the seals. The original tale was also a tale of revenge, much more serious than the re-telling I did. Attarsuaq was killed by one of the many enemies he had made over the years and his son used his seal pelt to lure his father's enemies out to sea. There, he killed them one by one to exact revenge for his father.

In this story, I left out the killing of people and instead substituted the revenge on an animal - an animal that could also be used for food, so the death wouldn't purely be out of revenge. 

I also thought the original story was an origin story for the selkie, a mythological creature that can take the form of a seal but remove the pelt to become human again. Since that wasn't the case, I decided to make it happen in my own re-telling! Ah, the beauty of creative license.

Bibliography:
Title: Attarsuaq
Book: Eskimo Folk-Tales
Author: Knud Rasmussen
Year: 1921

Week 10 Reading B: More Eskimo Stories!

I’ve noticed the Eskimo folk tales focus a lot on vengeance and the consequences of doing wrong by another. These are good morals, but I kinda wish there was more variety to it.

‘Papik, who Killed his Wife’s Brother’, and ‘Pâtussorssuaq, Who Killed His Uncle’

The moral of this story and the one before it is ‘it is wrong to kill’. Of course it is, that’s why we have laws against murder and the like today. It appears the Inuit also had their own form of punishment for murder, though it came about in the way of superstition and evil spirits.

In each story, a man kills another man out of envy of his hunting skill or his wife. One of the family members of the murdered man either dies or kills themselves to exact revenge on the murderer in the form of an evil spirit. And so we see in both stories that the man who murders is torn to pieces by the angry spirit of the victim and THAT is why you shouldn’t kill. Not that it’s immoral and outright rude, but that you’ll be torn apart. Some people just need better incentive, I guess.

The Eagle and the Whale

A group of brothers with two sisters keep trying to get the sisters to marry, but they refuse. Frustrated, they tell their sisters that one will have an eagle for a husband and the other a whale for a husband. Then the sisters are whisked away by their new husbands and live with them for a while. Why is it so bad that women don’t marry?

The sisters (understandably) don’t like their husbands and so begin making rope. One uses hers to get off the eagle husband’s rock, the other uses it to trick her whale husband and escapes. The brothers help their sisters do this because they’ve missed them. The husbands are killed by the brothers and everyone lives happily ever after.

One thing I noticed in this - the eagle husband brings back narwhal and walrus for the girl to eat. How big are eagles in Greenland? They sound frightening. 

The Narwhal, the unicorn of the sea.

Image: Wikipedia

Atarrsuaq

A man named Attarsuaq had many enemies. He bore a son who he taught to swim very well and hold his breath underwater for a long time. His son grows and he continues to teach him how to swim, but one day he does not return because one of his enemies has finally killed him. They come down to the hut to finish the job, but the boy lures them out to sea with his great swimming capabilities and kills them one by one on top of an iceberg. One man is left alive to go back to his village and tell the other men to never come again. The boy grows up in peace without any trouble from his father’s enemies.
Reading this story, I thought it would first take a turn where the son swam so much he eventually turned into a seal and his father one day accidentally killed him. There’s a lot of revenge in this story, though, and it didn’t take the turn I thought it would.

Check out the Eskimo Stories here!

Week 10 Reading A: Eskimo Folk Tales

Many of the blog posts I read last week focused on the Eskimo stories. The Inuit have always fascinated me in that they are able to live in some of the harshest environments in the world and still thrive. I’m curious to see if harsh climates breed harsh folk tales.


The Coming of Men:

This origin story surprised me because it is not like many other origin stories I’ve read. Instead of the Earth coming up from a great body of water, the Earth simply was to be made one day and stones and dirt fell from the sky to create it. Children came up from the Earth and a woman sewed clothes for them and raised them to be men. Nobody knows where this woman comes from. And apparently there was only one woman because every child was male.

There was no sunlight and water was able to burn. The cost of no light meant no death, but then people just grew really old and there were too many people. So a bargain was made for there to be death AND light, but no death without light.

I guess the Inuit also prize dogs, because no other animal is mentioned in this creation story except for dogs. Man wanted dogs so he called for them and they came. I wish this was as easy for me as it was for this old Inuk because I love dogs. I want to roll around in a pile of dogs.


The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster Son:

A little old woman who usually receives shares of meat from young hunters is presented one day with a frozen bear cub. She leaves it to thaw, goes about cooking, and finds that it moves. Thereafter she feeds it and talks to it, helping it to grow strong and smart. The beart plays with the children, with men, and eventually helps the men to hunt seal. The bear is loved by all of the community, but tribes further to the North have other ideas. They want to kill the bear but are met with backlash when the bear kills one of their own and brings it back to his foster mother. She weeps and sends him away to live with his own kind, despite the sadness it brings her.

Cute lil' cub

Image: Huffington Post

Qalagánguasê, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts

I’m beginning to learn that Inuit names are oftentimes pretty long and hard to pronounce. I don’t even know how to pronounce this boy’s name. Anyway, this story is about a boy whose family died and he had to be looked after by strangers because he was lame. When the villagers go out to hunt, ghosts come in and play and talk with him, including his family members. Eventually he decides to go with them into the Land of Ghosts and the story goes that he turned into a woman when he went. I find this interesting as there is so much controversy today about trans-gendered individuals. Did the Inuit believe a person could have been born into the wrong gender? I would like to learn more about their culture.

Check out the Eskimo Stories here!