Bobbasheely

A few years ago as I began perusing the first volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE–for short) 1985, I fell in love with the word “bobbasheely” meaning “a close friend.”  Just saying the word conjures up the comfort and easy rhythm between good friends.  Don’t get me wrong, I love words, but I don’t ordinarily spend my spare time flipping through the pages of dictionaries, but the DARE is different.  I was first introduced to DARE when I took a lexicography course with Audrey Duckert at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the 1980s; she was helping to edit both the DARE and the OED.  I was fascinated by the story of dictionary field workers riding through the country in their “Word Wagons” collecting regional words and definitions.  It wasn’t until a few years ago, however, that DARE and all it’s magic wove its way into my daily life as it found itself a true character in the middle grade novel I was writing, Sweet Blueberry Pie!  Since then I’ve become an avid fan of their website where I can read about the fascinating stories behind the making of a 5 volume dictionary.  I especially enjoy reading their newsletter which is where I discovered that Joan Houston Hall’s favorite word is also bobbasheely!  Joan is the current editor of DARE (following in the notorious footsteps of the original editor Frederic G. Cassidy), and we’ve been in email contact a few times over the past few months, as she helps me find just the right word for my book and sharpen a few of the details about the making of the dictionary.  She’s been a true bobbasheely!                                            

Where did they find the word “bobbasheely”?  You can read about the story those at DARE took in discovering the definition and origin of the word in Joan’s words in the DARE 2004 Winter Newsletter.  In a nutshell, when people were asked for “expressions to say that people are very friendly toward each other” they discovered the word “bobbasheely” in several states: Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.  In further research, they discovered the word in Faulkner’s The Reivers.  Finally, digging deeply, they found what they determined to be the true origin of the word in the Choctaw culture growing out of the word itibapishili meaning “my brother with whom I was suckled.”  They also discovered that the word was used as a verb in some regions, meaning: to sashay or saunter.  Love that!  Ah, what a fascinating world, the world of words.

Feeling adventurous.  Try a quiz on words from DARE’s first three volumes.  Match up the terms in the two columns.

Click here to see the answers.  And check out the entries in the actual volumes.  Many of these terms have additional senses.

Technology Autobiography

I’m in a workshop called ”Blogging and Podcasting” with Kevin, our technology liaison at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.  And although I’ve already started blogging, I know I have a lot to learn!  Kevin has asked us to write our Technology Autobiography.  So, here it goes!  You can listen to an audiocast of my Technology Autobiography by clicking on the tech at the end of this post.

During graduate school, my job in Harvard’s African American Studies Department  brought me in contact with my first computer.  Thank goodness!  I can’t tell you how many late nights I snuck into my office to use the computer to transcribe all the interviews I was conducting and write all my thesis papers.  It quickly became hard to imagine all those undergraduate English papers I wrote on the typewriter–talk about a hindrance to revision! 

Over the next ten years, it seemed like every new teaching job brought with it a new wave of technology in computers.  Sounds like a great thing, and it was in many ways, but it also meant that all the teacher files I had created over the years were no longer accessible–stuck on floppy disks (real floppy) or on software that could not be transferred to the newest and latest technology.  Frustrating!  I still have all those old files on floppy disks and I wonder what they say?  One set even contains half of a book I started to write one summer.

While teaching in Seattle, I remember getting a computer from the school!  And it was portable, if you call stuffing a Mac into a 2 x 3 foot suit case (without wheels), throwing it over your shoulder and toting it back and forth to work, portable.  Of course, this was before laptops!  It certainly did help free me from those late nights and Saturdays holed up in my classroom.

Taking the next few years off from teaching proved to be a lifetime in the world of technological advances.  When I returned to Massachusetts from Washington and New Mexico, I returned to a world of email and internet.  Wow, did I have a lot of catching up to do.  I’m a pokey learner–but I’m learning.  Having adolescent children helps!  But my most important mentor in the world of technology is the National Writing Project.  Look at me now I’m blogging!  What next?!

tech

Tapped! Reflection on a word.

The trees are tapped.  Sap drips, slipping silently into the silver-lined buckets.  Soon there’ll be sweetness steaming through the house.  I was tapped recently by the National Writing Project to lead a facilitation team in a pilot program that will help sites strategically think through the devleopment of their local site web presence.  Spring break is just days away and I catch this glip of conversation as I stroll across campus, “Friday night?  I’m so tapped.  Rock on.”  The New England Writing Project’s account at “Tapped In” was just permanently archived due to lack of use.  I’m hoping we return to using the discussion list on the NWP website; it works so much better for me.  I’m tapped–overwhelmed–this surly month of March with new grants with two week turn around times, long distance planning conference calls, a sudden surge of inservice requests, calls to Massachusetts state representatives to support the refunding of the National Writing Project, and my own kid’s registration forms for summer camp, middle school, and high school.  Hmm . . . when will I get the chance to tap away at the key board and edit the final draft of my book?

Tap on!