(no subject)
I had made one New Year's resolution: to update my journal at least once each day. However, yesterday came and went, and today has squirmed and struggled its way towards freedom, so I believe that resolution can be consigned to the recycling bin. I have considered treating the resolution to be as binding as Ramadan-fasting -- i.e., not in effect while travelling -- but I've only gone so far as Michigan and I don't do much but sit in front of the computer anyway.
I had another of my rural Michigan misreadings today. Outside of the Felpausch Food Center, where I had secured the last available New York Times between Jackson and Kalamazoo, a group of local students had erected a table. Painted on the posters wrapped around the front of the table were the words:
MARSHALL MIDDLE SCHOOL
POP CAN DRIVE &
BAKE SALE
This made me immediately think, "My father can drive too, but you don't see me crowing about it."
Now by geography, you'd expect that I'd be more familiar with the term pop as applied to soft drinks, but I've always respected the brand names; Coke to me is just "Coke." Sprite is "Sprite" and Pepsi is just not imbibed in polite society. And while eighty percent of my county calls the stuff "pop," I suspect that my neighborhood was a linguistic outlier. Most of my friends had grandparents in the New York area: solid "soda" territory. For my own part, my mother's home county is over 50% "Coke"-speaking; my father's over 80% "soda." (I may have picked up Coke from my mother, but my y'all is all affectation.)
The link to the map, by the way, was taken from I read the comics so you don't have to; the author uses it to figure out where Snuffy Smith really lives.
See y'all next year!
I had another of my rural Michigan misreadings today. Outside of the Felpausch Food Center, where I had secured the last available New York Times between Jackson and Kalamazoo, a group of local students had erected a table. Painted on the posters wrapped around the front of the table were the words:
MARSHALL MIDDLE SCHOOL
POP CAN DRIVE &
BAKE SALE
This made me immediately think, "My father can drive too, but you don't see me crowing about it."
Now by geography, you'd expect that I'd be more familiar with the term pop as applied to soft drinks, but I've always respected the brand names; Coke to me is just "Coke." Sprite is "Sprite" and Pepsi is just not imbibed in polite society. And while eighty percent of my county calls the stuff "pop," I suspect that my neighborhood was a linguistic outlier. Most of my friends had grandparents in the New York area: solid "soda" territory. For my own part, my mother's home county is over 50% "Coke"-speaking; my father's over 80% "soda." (I may have picked up Coke from my mother, but my y'all is all affectation.)
The link to the map, by the way, was taken from I read the comics so you don't have to; the author uses it to figure out where Snuffy Smith really lives.
See y'all next year!