We used always to have a January thaw in upstate New York. After two weeks when temperatures were -40 or below every morning and school was often cancelled because the buses couldn’t start, the Sun would show us a little love. The snow piles would recede and long-silenced birds would reanimate a cryogenically frozen earth. For a week or two, we could shed a layer, and air hovering around thirty effs felt downright Summery.

Here in Ess Eff, we’ve had diluvian rains since a couple weeks before Christmas. Face and feet wet, no number of layers sufficient, and the laundromat always a little too far away. But the past three days, the city’s seemed blessed. The light is everywhere perfect and the buildings glow. The hills sigh-smile with satisfied dust coronas in the East and South. The sky’s just too blue; I don’t remember its ever being like this. I think I’m in love. Absence makes the heart…

I picked up a new job a little earlier this month: the ideal job. At least, ideal for my situation. I can work as many hours as I want, and it seems like I should be able to save enough for tuition by September. SOAS is real. The problem, of course, is that I’ve been unable to ditch my other three jobs sufficiently quickly, so I’ve been working some insane weeks. Obviously, my blog has suffered, but so has my studying. I had hoped to cover the major texts of classical political economy this month (prélude to Marx), but a recent review has made me realise that I’ve only made it through thirty pages of Adam Smith this past week. I’ll be lucky if I finish The Wealth of Nations by February.

In addition to an insane work schedule negotiated between four jobs, I’ve had an insane weekend. Thirty-two miles’ walking, a whiskey, a whiskey sour, a porter, and a mai tai, have combined to make my body feel like an emo bean bag. In a good way.

However, the job situation is slowly changing, and I should have a little more control over my life soon. I just looked through my half-started pile, and I’ve eleven posts for this blog that I never finished. I’ve two or three others on Smith & Sons coming together in my head.

But. Right now, I must head to work: Figuring out when to hold them, when to fold them, and all that.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful day, and my body aches in the right ways.

I created two Akan keyboard layouts for Mac OS X the day before yesterday, corresponding to the layouts from kasahorow and Nyalasi for Windows. I should probably write up documentation for these, but the Keyboard Viewer should be good enough for most people’s purposes. These are open source: Do with them what you will. This was done with the neat Mac app Ukelele.

Akan - Kasahorow.keylayout (76 Kb)
Akan - Nyalasi.keylayout (76 Kb)

To install, simply drop the .keylayout file into ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ on your own computer. (There are, of course, multiple levels of Library directories. If you know what you’re doing, choose the one that fits. If you don’t know what you’re doing, go with the Library in your root directory.)

I’m also working on a bundle version that has the two layouts together, along with pretty icons. I have thus far been unsuccessful with the bundling. If you think you can help, check out:

Akan.bundle.zip (108 Kb)

I just installed WordPress 2.0 after being made aware of the update through Alex Golub’s blog. So far, all seems good. If there’s any funkiness, however, over the next week or so, that may be the cause.

Also, as one of my New Year’s resolutions (this is my first year of doing them since the age of ten), I’m studying the Twi Bible. I like WordPress as a journalling format, and am not doing anything particularly private, so I decided to create a new blog for my notes. Heck, someone else might even find this stuff useful. I goofed, however, and asked my hosting service to delete everything in my main directory. Luckily, DreamHost was smart enough to realise that this was not a good idea. Thank you, DreamHost.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been deleting upwards of a dozen comments re: various bodily organs. Unfortunately, the program that’s been harassing me is more patient than I am, and I’ve finally had to put the kibosh on it. I’ll be experimenting with various means of restriction. Once the current flood subsides, I’ll open things up again, but until then, don’t be surprised if a comment doesn’t appear immediately after posting.

Ghana’s predominantly Christian, and Christmas is a major holiday, but in the Asanteman, at least, the pre-Christian New Year’s greetings still win out over any direct translation of ‘Merry Christmas.’ Afe nhyia paa! is the greeting: May the year meet (you/us) well! And the reply, Afe nkɔ mmɛto yɛn!: May the year go (out) and return to meet us! My first December in Ghana, I had a dickens of a time remembering the response properly, so I was careful, every time I met someone, to blurt out ‘Afe nhyia paa-oo!‘.

Christmas is Buronya. The etymology of the term is not clear. The popular origin is that it comes from oburoni (”white person” — this is a somewhat difficult term to translate exactly, as it applies equally to Margaret Thatcher, Jet Li, Salman Khan, and Cheb Mami, but ‘white’ will do for the present purposes) nya (to acquire): White-man-get-something, in Pidgin. J.G. Christaller, whose 1881 dictionary sadly remains the best, gives the etymology as ‘boró-wò-nyã’:

Ɔkrãnni bi kyerɛɛ ase sɛ: Kaŋ wɔŋ a wɔsom Bŏrɔfo Ŋkraŋ no yɛ Bŏrɔfo no ŋkoa, na afe du so na wɔrebɛyɛ ŋkoa no ayɛ a, wɔboro wɔŋ ansã-na wɔamã wɔŋ ntama nè ade no. Enti na ŋkoa no too saa afe no Boróònyã (= wɔboro wo a, ɛnna wunyã)[.]

The above is a little obscure to me, due not to Christaller (whose antique spelling is only a small hurdle), but to my three years’ leave-taking from the Twi language. I believe that it says:

A Gã explained: When first those who served European Accra became the Europeans’ servants, and a [new] year arrived, they would come to the servants as if [?] to beat them before giving them cloths and stuff [possibly, but improbably, 'yams']. That’s why the servants called that year “Buronya” (= if they beat you, you’ll get [something])[.]

A single Gã explanation of a Twi term apparently already more than a century old is rather weak etymology (though given the extent of his endeavour, and the resources available to him, Christaller may be forgiven for cutting a few corners). The term could also originally have meant something like ‘augment what you’ve got’, or it could have an all-together different origin — the term oburoni has the human suffix -ni affixed to the root borɔ, which may just mean ‘Europe’ or ‘European’ (Christaller goes no further), or may have some earlier meaning. A pre-Christian origin is not out of the question, but until someone gets a chance to review mission archives, White-Man-Get-Somet’ing seems the best bet.

That Christmas in Kumase, I joked rather uncharitably that a more appropriate term would be Bibinya: Black-Man-Get-Somet’ing. Most of the Asantes I dealt with in my daily life asked me all through the month ‘Me buronyadeɛ wɔ henfa? Where’s my Christmas present?’ I didn’t really get what was going on, at the time. I didn’t get Ghanaian Big Man-Small Boy relationships. I’d not yet read Marcel Mauss’ Essay on the Gift. It didn’t occur to me that this was anything other than raw acquisitiveness — that it might be a request for a material cementation of a social relationship. I submitted to social pressures and followed the example of Asante Big Men: I bought a jumbo pack of biscuits, and gave out individual small packs to children I knew and children of people I knew. A few friends gave reciprocal gifts: mostly plantains.
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A couple dozen cops, directed by Officer Andrew Cohen of Bayview Station, produced a number of skits for a DVD to be shown at the station’s Christmas party. On 7 December, a copy of this DVD was brought to Police Chief Heather Fong’s attention. She, in turn, brought the DVD to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who considered the skits to be ‘the most offensive, egregious skits that I’ve seen [in] San Francisco.’ These are skits ‘that mock the African American community, that mock the Asian community, that mock the transgendered community, and mock women in general.’ Two dozen police officers were immediately suspended. As of yesterday the fifteenth (hot-damn, it’s late!), they were reinstated, though the City may yet take disciplinary measures.

You can watch the clips that have been made public here. I’m very leery of cops, but I’m having a hard time getting offended by these clips. Am I missing the point?

In fact, I’m far more annoyed by having having -gate tagged onto every minor scandal that makes the news. If perchance, dear reader, you are a journalist who has ever referred in print or on air to any post-1974 scandal as whatevergate, please do contact me: We have certain business to settle.

Interestingly, I haven’t seen any comparisons drawn in the press, yet, to the far more offensive 49ers video scandal of June. (Footage here.)

One last kvetchery: What the Hell is wrong with this city? We have one newspaper that actually covers news on a daily basis, and the Associated Press regularly gets to San Francisco stories a day earlier. When a homeless man was burned alive a block away from Market Street at the beginning of November, the Chronicle ran its first story on the matter from the AP. Now, again, with the “Videogate” reinstatements, the AP is twenty-four hours ahead of the Chronicle. This is what happens when you allow media monopolies. I’ve half a mind to leave flaming bags of the Examiner on the Hearst and Fang doorsteps.

I saw Brokeback Mountain, the other night, with housemates Shauna and Dax. It wasn’t the film I wanted it to be at any point. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t touching (there’s only one seen between Jack Twist [Jake Gyllenhaal] and Ennis Del Mar [Heath Ledger] where any affection came through), and after the first twenty minutes it wasn’t even majestic… If, like most of San Francisco was, you were hoping for sweaty rodeo action or Hollywood romantic lacrimancy, forget it.

But, in addition to staying out of the expected territory, the film also went places I didn’t expect it to. Places like Mexico.

The plot, in broad strokes, is: Scrappers Twist and Del Mar work together for a season herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in early 1960s Wyoming. They awkwardly approach friendship, and then plow into some lust-heavy approximation of love. Though both men marry and have children, they meet back together regularly on Brokeback, and carry on an affair that lasts nearly two decades. Twist yearns, throughout, to start a life with Del Mar, living together on their own ranch, but Del Mar’s very valid (and several times throughout the film realised) fear of homophobic persecution prevents this from happening. It also regularly interferes with their relationship.

It is in one of the rough periods in their relationship that we see Twist (now residing in Texas) drive South to Mexico. He stumbles out of a border saloon and walks down a shaded street where man after man asks, ‘¿Señor?’ He selects one, and the two disappear.
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I wasn’t able to make it to San Quentin for the protest/vigil. Yesterday was a revisitation of that nightmarish feeling of guilt by impotence — the same feeling I felt during the lead-up to the war in Iraq: You know that you’re about to be party to something truly horrific, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Sometimes, those in power seek to silence. Most of the time, silencing is simply a side effect of the various practices that sustain and glorify power. I believe it’s important to reject these silences. So, a reminder of the anti-violence work that was the focus of Tookie’s last years — the final note from his 2004 Protocol for Peace:

…As you move in this direction, you will learn to construct a peace policy that will meet the necessities for peace in your neighborhood, in your city, in your nation. There is much serious work ahead, and the entire community will depend upon each and every one of you. Keep in mind that even the warring souls of gang members yearn for peace but are blind to its path. Your faith, wisdom, concern, and guidance can help show them the way. Never allow yourself to be distracted or discouraged by detractors and dissenters whose views are counterproductive.

…I call upon the pure energy of human beings and institutions gangs, criminals, ex-cons, parents, churches or mosques, schools and universities, youth centers, think tanks, university professors and other educators, entrepreneurs, entertainers, human rights agencies, social organizations, politicians, newspapers, media broadcast outlets, the employed and unemployed, the wealthy and the poor, the young and the elderly, and anyone else who is interested in promoting street peace – to help create a new community of safety and well-being.

This peace protocol is not the solution. Look in the mirror. There is the solution!

Amani (Peace),
Stanley “Tookie” Williams

I don’t even know what to do with this stuff… It’s late — not that late, but I’ve been working (in various sense of the word) straight for two weeks. And I will work again tomorrow.

A couple months back, when my friend Emily was visiting, I told her about my fears concerning the quality of material in my blog. Emily had good advice: ‘You should just write, “I am an idiot. You are probably an idiot, too. Don’t take us so seriously!” at the top.’

In that spirit:
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This is a long entry, and the suggested action comes at the end. Here it is in brief: Call Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at (916)445-2841 to ask that he grant Stan Tookie Williams clemency. I’d meant to trim this down, but this is pressing business, and I have a lot on my plate. I hope to come back to clean this up later.

I came out of that meeting of the Food Security Task Force (held in City Hall) into a rally to save Stanley Tookie Williams. Most of the speakers were members of the United Playaz, but the Nation of Islam and the Revolutionary Communist Party were also present. Those of y’all outside of California might not know this story.

The most prominent gangs in Los Angeles history are the Bloods and the Crips. These are messy alliances, more than well-defined kingdoms, but the historic enmity between the two has been of great importance in street politics throughout the state, reaching across ethnic and racial borders: Even in San Francisco — the only city in the country (except New Orleans?) where the black population is shrinking — the Blood-Crip rivalry has been felt through alliances with the Mexican Sureños and Norteños, themselves statewide gangs.

Tookie Williams co-founded the Crips in 1969. Twelve years later, Williams was convicted of four cold robbery murders: those of Albert Owens, Yen-Yi Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang, and Yee-Chen Lin. Williams was sentenced to death. That sentence is set to be carried through on 13 December. Williams professes innocence. I’m not sure whether or not to believe him, but the evidence does seem to point to his having had an unfair trial. (See the Save Tookie Website.)

Whether or not Williams is guilty of those four crimes, he has ruined many lives: National media have given less attention to the Crips’ reign of terror in the poorer parts of Los Angeles (which perhaps says something about the comparative value we place on white, Asian, and black lives in America). Jervey Tervalon has a great op-ed in the LA Times about what it was like growing up in Williams’ LA. Williams is not unaware of the evil he has done. A Friday New York Times article:

“I have a despicable background… I was a criminal. I was a co-founder of the Crips. I was a nihilist.”

“But people forget,” he added, chewing on a turkey sandwich, “that redemption is tailor-made for the wretched.”

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