Most people don’t adopt a new manner of speech in their 40’s, so when my husband recently started using the phrase “y’all” I wondered what was up. It wasn’t like his Swiss parents taught him to use this slang, and he’d grown up in Colorado, where y’all is uttered only by Texas transplants.
After hearing him say y’all for something like the tenth time in a week, I asked him why he’d suddenly adopted this word, which seemed out of place spoken by someone without a southern accent. He explained that he’d started using y’all with the college ski team that he coaches. Most of the skiers are women, and he thought it would be lame to refer to them as “you guys” — the phrase more widely used here in Colorado. “English really needs a plural you,” he says.
He has a point. All of the languages I’ve studied — German, Italian and Spanish — have a plural you, and while that extra pronoun was frustrating to me as a language student, I’ve encountered plenty of times when I’ve wished for a plural you in English that wasn’t gendered or regional.
According to Mental Floss, “y’all” is just one of eight ways to construct the plural “you” in English. Others include “you-uns,” “you guys,” “you lot,” and “yous.” None of the terms on this list roll off my tongue any easier than the others.
Most of the times when I long for a plural you, it’s because I’m greeting a group of friends. My fallbacks are usually “hey guys” or “hello everyone,” but neither feels as satisfying or apt as the Swiss German phrase, “Grüezi Mitenand!” (Hello everyone!)
Why? Mostly, I’m reluctant to adopt a dialect that doesn’t feel like mine. But I long ago decided that “howdy” was a perfectly apt greeting for a stranger encountered in the wilds of the West, so perhaps it’s time I follow Dave’s lead and take up y’all too. So what if I’ve always associated the word with rednecks and cowboys? If y’all is a redneck term, it’s a gender neutral, feminist one. Just ask Tami Taylor.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/vihYkEAQ_DY *Image by mlhradio, via Flickr
This post first ran on December 12, 2013, but it hasn’t stopped being relevant.
This was originally published in 2018, but I’ve been thinking about it for several reasons. First, because Catapult, the publication that ran this essay, is shuttering its delightful online magazine; second, because it was edited by the brilliant Nicole Chung, whose new book is out this week; and third, because I recently saw a venting volcano for the first time!(See above.)I’m still catching up after that trip, so enjoy this in the meantime.
The body of the email was blank, all its content squeezed into one breathless subject line: We had a whole bunch of little earthquakes through the night we might have to evacuate.
I hovered my mouse over the sender, a man named Bruce. His icon, a photo of a poorly docked sailboat, didn’t give me any clues, and neither did his no-nonsense bio: “I’m retired.” I didn’t know any Bruces, retired or not. I figured Bruce’s message was a goof—one of many that have found their way to me because my email address is volcanoes at gmail dot com.
Nearly every time I give a stranger my email address, I have the same conversation. “Volcanoes . . . at gmail?” cashiers ask, typing it into their store’s computer system to email me a receipt. “How’d you get that?”
“Well,” I say, “when I chose a Gmail handle in 2004, I thought volcanoes were pretty cool.”
That’s a half-truth. The full truth is too long-winded for the kind of small talk you’re expected to make with strangers. In 2004, the convention was to use a handle, not your full name, lest the kidnappers your parents warned you about somehow found you through the web. I had a history of choosing decidedly uncool screen names—I was SuGaRHuNNi00 for three years, then aprilstAr1111, after a Something Corporate song. (I thought it was really clever to capitalize the A because it looked more like a star.)
So when my exclusive Gmail invite came during the first weeks of my senior year, I saw a chance to reinvent myself: A single word would be minimalist, sophisticated—reflective of my new personal brand. I landed on “volcanoes” from a Damien Rice song; I liked that volcanoes were also destructive and mysterious, yet beautiful. (Just like me, obviously.) I wish I had a better story, like that I studied volcanology in my spare time, or was inspired after summiting Cotopaxi. I also wish I’d just grabbed my own name, or, at the very least, that I could go back in time and tell myself to use a more professional email address for my college applications.
The unexpected silver lining to owning volcanoes@gmail are emails from strangers like Bruce. Someone named Mariam once sent me photos of volcanoes, and Marisia snapped a photo of a trifold adorned with volcano pictures. Let me know what you think :D, she wrote. I’ve never been sure if these emails were actually meant for me—sending a volcano picture to volcanoes@gmail.com just for kicks seems like something I would’ve done as a bored middle-schooler.
The only time I ever responded to a volcanoes email, it was apparent that the sender, John, had just goofed:
Subject: Where do you go to watch volcanic news. Is there a sight dedicated to it you like. I think one went off or is going to in Columbia or something
Body of email: <blank>
volcanoes: personally, I enjoy volcanoes.com.
John: Who is this
volcanoes: volcanoes
John: Did I send you an email somehow
John: I was Emailing someone else and you reply to it. How did you get it
volcanoes: if you email one volcano it goes to all the volcanoes
It seems like John just had volcanoes on the brain when filling in the “mail to” box of his email. But I wonder if other emails I’ve gotten that are more personal—like one from a woman who was very worried about its intended recipient’s pregnancy and high blood pressure—were meant for volcano@gmail, or volcanos@gmail. (I reached out to both, but neither responded.)
Bruce’s email about the earthquakes was harder to figure out. Shouldn’t he have emailed earthquakes@gmail.com? I imagined the terror of “a whole bunch of little earthquakes,” and wondered where he was; I googled recent earthquakes, but no news stories indicated any unusual strings of earthquakes that would trigger an evacuation. I also Googled Bruce’s full name, which led me to a nursing professor’s faculty profile, an obituary, and a murder trial.
A couple of days later, videos of a Hawaiian volcanic eruption dominated my Twitter feed. The ground around Kilauea cracked open with viscous red lava, oozing through neighborhood streets and backyards. I immediately thought of Bruce. I wrote to him saying I wasn’t sure his email was meant for me, but that I guessed he lived on the Big Island and hoped he was okay.
Bruce’s response came five hours later: We’re right on the edge everything is pretty good so far lot of solvers lawn helicopters Lonnie vacuolation where’s it’s in mornings. The first bit was straightforward enough, but I had trouble deciphering the rest. “Vacuolation” looks like an obvious typo for evacuation; a friend theorized that “solvers” could be autocorrect for sulphur, and “Lonnie” for Leilani Estates.
What a strange place the internet is, where we can reach a stranger by the slip of a key or the omission of a character, or get their mail. My husband has been on the other side of errant messages: Emails meant for him have gone to a stranger whose address is two characters off from his. Our friend M recently sent a wedding invitation to that stranger and me, and when I corrected him, he told us he’d been “pouring his heart out” to that stranger for years: “It’s been so cathartic—I would write and write and N would just listen. He never judged, just listened quietly.”
When I searched my email for messages sent to the misspelled address, I was horrified to discover I have gotten my own husband’s email wrong. The only time the other person responded was in 2011, thirteen emails into a long thread offering our friend feedback on a start-up idea. It said, simply: “Don’t know any of you, please get me off this email.” Part of me wants to send him a message apologizing for all the errant emails he’s received over the last decade, but that would be just another unwanted message.
I started asking people for their stories about accidental emails, and have heard so many tales that it’s a wonder any of our emails get to their intended recipients. A common, unsurprising way wires get crossed is when intended recipient and actual recipient share a name. I’ve gotten emails and even a paycheck for another writer named Jane Hu; confusingly, we went to the same university for graduate school, and we’ve struck up a rapport as a result of the messages we’ve gotten for one another.
My friend Ian says his family has accidentally invited a British man with his same name to family gatherings, but that the other Ian has politely declined; on the flip, Kate says she’s received children’s birthday invitations meant for British Kate. Sarah got added to a lease in Australia meant for another Sarah, and got invited to another Sarah’s birthday party. Mike, whose email came from a nickname his students gave him, has gotten so many emails meant for other people that he knows the usual players: a dermatologist, a Seattle psychologist who moved to Sierra Leone, a Bay Area counselor. “I would respond with, I think you wanted Francis, I’ve cc’d him, or So, I make games and live in Guatemala, I’m not a doctor; who were you trying to invite to your party? Was it David or Francis? I have a list of emails to people to forward correspondence to,” he says.
Erin says she’s been treated to “little snippets” of folks with a similar name to her as a result of her email address. She had more foresight than me and snagged her first initial plus last name, so she’s received emails for other E. Lastnames. “Elizabeth in Georgia keeps signing me up for Republican email lists, and I also get her phone bill and consequently know her address,” says Erin. “Emily in New York orders a lot of clothes and Sephora, and also volunteers at the library. And Earl must drive a truck, because I regularly get emails that his shower is ready at various TA truck stops.”
Beyond the recipient’s handle, the email server itself can also be misspelled. Aly Khalifa found this out the hard way when his website, Gamil.com, kept crashing from the scores of people trying to check their Gmail messages. Reporter Ryan Teague Beckwith, who wrote about Khalifa’s Gamil site for the Raleigh News and Observer in 2006, stumbled upon the story when he was talking with Khalifa for a different story. “I had assumed his gamil.com address was a typo,” he said. Beckwith reported that Khalifa was getting an extra 300,000 monthly visitors to his site, prompting his Internet provider to raise his fees; he began to use the site to advertise his own goods, as well as promote local businesses and even a local pit bull shelter.
As for my accidental correspondent Bruce, I wrote him back asking for more news from “right on the edge,” but never heard back. I hope he evacuated before new fissures opened up in Leilani Estates. I like to imagine he’s safe, and has a comfortable place to stay. Most of all, I hope the rightful recipient of the emails Bruce sent me knows he’s okay, too.
This was first published October 4, 2021. It’s still the case.
In regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no other way of accounting for it… many individuals… have been pursued and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Darwin's Finches
All right, fine, the first few birds
Could not have seen this coming.
They saw only dark shapes—large, lumbering, branch-winged birds
Tipped with tufts of down.
Of course the little birds were curious.
Of course they believed the branch-wings
Were benevolent.
And you’re right:
Once those first birds had been grabbed,
Necks twisted,
No, they couldn’t have gone back
To warn the others.
But the finches just kept coming,
Bird by trusting bird,
And the men kept killing them,
And the flock kept thinning.
You might think at some point
One bird might say to another,
You know, there’s something strange
About that beach—
The birds who go there
Never come back
And maybe
One bird did say this,
And maybe
The warned bird went anyway.
I guess I understand.
*
Image by Flickr user Brian Gratwicke under Creative Commons license
Snow has been heavy this winter and spring where I live in the Southwest, and sunny days are coming, meaning the white is about to turn to water and desert rivers will soon be raging. Whenever water starts to move I get excited. How could I not? It’s like an animal come to life, nosing its way through terrain. Even a car being washed up the street catches my attention as I follow the first finger finding its way down a curb. Even better if it comes out of the sky and roars across the land foaming. With that in mind, this post originally came out in October of 2015 and I hope it makes you want to chase the water, or at least admire it when it suddenly appears.
The picture above I took may look like nothing but chaos and you may be right. It is a flash flood in southern Utah and I was safely standing on a ledge above it. I was absorbed by the galling roar and the smell of the desert funneled by intense rainwater to a single point. Watching this with the naked eye is dizzying, though I could stay for hours and stare at physics folding on itself, fluid dynamics torn up by its roots. But it would not last for hours. Later that day, the flood would have dropped ten feet. The show would be all but over.
In the desert, however, the show never ends.
I was on NPR’s Morning Edition talking about the nature of flash floods after 16 people were killed in two different southern Utah flood events in one day. It’s hard to talk about something you love when it just ended lives. Many of the 16 were children.
Still, I can’t avert my gaze. I can’t help but inch my way closer. During this last wave of floods, I was out with a group of 7th and 8th graders from my children’s school backpacking in the wild, tangled canyons of southern Utah. Hearing of weather alerts and flash flood warnings, some parents were hesitant, to say the least, that we were going ahead. But we were on the other end of the spectrum from those who died. We were looking for floods, not trying to get away from them. We reveled in water, the girls in the group singing songs one morning about it, like prayers, like hymns, not like those who must have been lost in terror wondering what hit them. Continue reading →
When I’m feeling patronized, which happens a fair amount in a few subject areas, I sit in silence. It’s clear the down-talker is not looking for my contribution on the subject, and if I did pipe up with my perspective, some part of me would know I was trying to impress. My pride can’t take the idea of doing that—of managing someone else’s perception of my expertise level—so I rely on the hope that a third party will eventually set the person straight about me.
Velella velella, or by-the-wind-sailor. Credit: Notafly, Wikimedia Commons
Walking south along the beach towards Los Angeles this weekend, my friend and I were talking about all the arbitrary things that can alter a life’s trajectory, like where you’re born or if your parents went to college.
As we walked, we noticed hundreds of tiny sea creatures scattered like dark blue flower petals along the water’s edge. Some were as small as a baby’s fingernail. Others were as big as silver dollars. When we looked at them up close, we saw that each animal had a flat, blue oval disc for a body, joined to a transparent sail.
We prodded the stranded animals gently to see if they were alive or had any stinging venom, since they looked a lot like jellyfish. When nothing happened, we started arranging them in a line on the damp sand, from small to large. All the sails curved in a shallow S–shape, and were angled slightly to the left. They looked like a fleet of ships waiting for a general’s command to launch. Later, we learned that the strange blue discs were called Velella velella, or by-the-wind-sailors.
Last week I read a delightful story about seed catalogsthat made me remember this 2012 post. And my seed catalogs! Somewhere along the way, I must have gotten off the catalog lists because not a single one has arrived this winter to help me dream of spring. (Where did I go wrong?!) For now, I will enjoy the volunteer tomatoes that still appear years after my original tomatoobsession.
*
I can’t remember why the seed catalogs started showing up, but once they did, I was a goner. If you haven’t ever gotten one, imagine full color photo spreads of produce, like the striped Tigger Melon and and the orange-red lusciousness of the French pumpkin Rouge Vif d’Etampes. I suppose the names don’t have quite the ring of “Miss September,” but compared to some centerfold beauty, these fruits and vegetables are much more alluring — maybe because some September, a new variety might appear in my own garden, one that I could give any name I wanted.
This is how I ended up with at least six different varieties of tomato seeds last year. I’m not quite sure what it is about tomatoes. Even before I had a real garden, I’d buy the plants every year. They always seemed so hopeful, appearing in the nursery in winter, when you can’t even imagine that by fall you’ll be saying ridiculous things like, “Caprese salad, again? I don’t think I can do it.”
Somewhere along the lines, I realized there were more options out there then the plants we could find at our local nursery. I knew I had to grow from seed once I learned that there was a variety named after the writer Michael Pollan. I could even figure out how to crossbreed my own tomatoes (and wondered what I’d call a Black & Brown Boar crossed with a Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye–oh, the possibilities!).
So there I found myself, one morning last winter, in front of a tray of dirt with seeds and Sharpies and labels in hand.
As I planted, I got to thinking about Gregor Mendel and his pea experiments. I’d first learned about them in high school, when the charts showing tall and dwarf pea plants, yellow and green peas, made it all seem so easy. But with seeds in hand, I started to buckle under the logistics. To do anything, first these seeds would have to grow.
Even if they did, I’d then have to do some tricky tweezer work (I read a bit about crossing tomatoes here). Then the tomatoes would have to grow, produce seeds. I’d have to save the seeds, grow the first generation the next winter, and do it all over again. If I was lucky, I’d start seeing crazy new phenotypes two summers from now.
That’s what Brad Gates does. At Wild Boar Farms (the California farm where I bought many of my seeds), he grows and tends thousands of plants each year, always keeping an eye out for novel tomatoes. (Brad’s Black Heart was a result of a random mutation that he spotted).
Gates used to ship some of his seeds off to the Southern Hemisphere, so he could grow two generations of tomatoes and try to speed through the breeding process. But he was never sure what was happening with his tomatoes, if someone was choosing exactly what he would.
Even though I’ll never know exactly what Mendel was thinking every day, when he went out to tend his peas (although Robin Marantz Henig’s A Monk and Two Peas gave me a good idea), but I did ask Gates. When it comes to growing tomatoes, he said, “the fun part is all the Christmas presents I get to open every year,” he said, Whether it’s new flavors, textures, shapes, and sizes—“there are hundreds of surprises.”
And as my tomatoes began to grow, I started to get it. Every day, I watched my little plants unfold. Maybe it’s crazy that I had to set up hundreds of seeds to finally take the time to watch something grow. My curiosity about my future tomatoes grew each day—but at the same time, so did my patience.
What happened next shouldn’t really have surprised someone who once required a hazmat team to descend on her freshman chemistry lab (mercury spill from carelessly placed thermometer). When I set the starts out for hardening, a spring windstorm set all the labels flying. Then friends started to pick up some of my extra seedlings (I couldn’t fit all 144 in our raised beds). By the time I planted, I had a vague idea of which one was which, but then old tomatillos grew up among them and everything became a tangled mass of vine. Even the seeds I tried to save once the season was done got thrown out by accident.
Winter is here again, and so are my seed catalogs. I don’t think I will discover anything that hasn’t already been grown, and it’s unlikely that I will create a variety that will someday lure gardeners from between the pages of a seed catalog. But I do have a new respect for genetics, and for farmers. And I’ve certainly learned one thing already: Michael Pollan is delicious.
