i would like to thank, but not humiliate, a certain professor of Archaeology at Oxford for introducing me to "Chap-Hop"...
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Edge-light. That's what Clark told me drove him as a photographer. And he is driven, too. Probably that plus framing, and composition too, but mostly edge-light. Plus being there.
Clark was our photographer during many voyages of exploration on the RV Discoverer. Lately I've been going through images and film from those voyages, trying to compile the skeleton of a retrospective of those voyages. Clarks images and commitment are really striking, and sometimes I wonder if I said thanks. Today I looked at some of his nature photography, which he sells from his gallery in Old Forge New York, and was reminded of how good he is at seeing things. Hey Clark. Thanks. And I'm intimidated by the photography of Melissa Sconyers.
Anybody that knows me knows that I go on and on about the dinosaur that my friend Susan Hendrickson found. So when the Documentary Film about the discovery, called "Dinosaur 13" , came out this August, I couldnt shut-up about that either. Its screening in select theaters world wide, but I was worried that not enough people would get to see this important film.
But then in September, As I was flying home from excavations in Egypt, Dinosaur 13 was playing on all Lufthansa flights, not bad, I thought. And then Last night, while flying home from Bomb Hunting in Laos, I saw that familiar toothy grin on the TV in the Airport Lounge, that the Entire film would be airing on CNN tonight, Dec. 11 at 9 and 11 pm for all of the US to see. And today at 3pm there will be a Q and A with the director and Paleontologist Peter Larson on CNN's facebook page The Los Angeles Times called it " A Rich Story of Discovery and Heartache". So as I explain that I'm flying back from a bomb hunting expedition in the highlands of Southern Laos, an American woman corrects my pronunciation. "It's pronounced "Lao" she says, knowingly. She had been there recently on vacation. I had said "Laos", and pronounced the "s". And she had a valid point, because the Lao people do not add an "s" when saying the name of their country. At least when they are speaking Lao. They refer to it as "Pathet Lao", or "Lao County". In fact the letter s was put there by the French hundreds of years ago during their transliteration of the Lao script, and even they didn't pronounce it. So why do I? My explanation is that in modern English we still say Laos, just like we say Germany and Italy. And for the most part other English speakers know what country we're talking about, even tho that's not how it's pronounced by its nationals. I'm glad she didn't persist on correcting me in the rest of the conversation, because its equally true that "Its pronounced "Deutschland"". And "Frawnce", Because the implication would be that in order to discuss geography or world politics, everybody in the conversation would need to know how the name of every country in the world was pronounced by its own citizens in their own language. And that's assuming there is only one language or cultural group in the country. China has 13 written languages , and "it's pronounced "China" in none of them. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be like some old geezer that can't change with the times, either. Like when President Kennedy was announcing the plan to bomb the heck out of the country, he called it "LAY-os" he sounded really old fashioned, like from 50 years ago. And we all got used to 'Myanmar' fairly easily. But there are a lot of countries that the average person still wouldn't know if offered the real name. Do all of you know where "Soumi" is on the map? And I'm not taking a stand on my choice of pronunciations either. You can pronounce it how you like too, and hopefully I have the good sense not to correct you, because in correcting somebodies pronunciation of a word in a foreign language that neither of us speak, one is letting them know that you understood exactly what they were talking about, and just wanted to point out that they are wrong. So that's why I keep calling it Laos. And refrained from telling her about my trip to "Mehico". (Update Aug 2017: So far this post has become the most visited on my blog, with a lot of interesting comments. But if you want to know what Lao people think of the subject, scroll down to Mattie Do's comment below for an authoritative voice on the subject.) |
My Name is Eric and My Job is Scientific Exploration.
That means I'm lucky enough to join expeditions to excavate sunken cities, climb volcanoes, find missing bombs, and Sail old research vessels, while searching for the mysteries of the natural world. Categories
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