Namaste

When I went to bed last night, I hadn't the slightest idea what I'd write about for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Today is N. "No." Maybe "Never." Definitely something "Negative."

I was tired. I'd spent the day in a hospital ER with my aged father. We were under a Winter Storm Warning with the promise of a two- or three-day snow event. Seven to fourteen inches of the white stuff for our Denver suburb. April is the Second Snowiest Month in Colorado.

A good sleep and waking wrapped "in my sweet baby's arms" with that tell-tale white, early morning snow-light seeping through closed blinds and I had a smile and today's N-word.

Namaste. (NAH-məs-tay)  According to Wikipedia, it's a respectful Hindi greeting meaning "I bow to the divine in you."

Yesterday, as my husband and I were heading home, by way of our favorite Mexican restaurant. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. Anyway, there was a Jeepish vehicle ahead of us with all kinds of stickers on its backside. One touting pet adoption, another outdoor recreation, a "native" bumper sticker, one of those ecumenical bumper stickers like so:

              

By using the standard background for a              I've seen this one in several states
       Colorado license plate, the bearer proclaims       and I like it.                                            

their having been born in Colorado, a rarity.                                                               

And there in the middle of the spare-tire was the biggest. It said Namaste. Even without those magnificent Rocky Mountains rising in the near distance ahead of us, I knew I was in Colorado.

Words are my life! The language we speak, where we learned to speak it, and where we speak it now.

I'm from Oklahoma where license plates say "Native America." Native there refers to Native Americans -- Cherokee, Comanche, Cheyenne, Choctaw, and those are just the C-tribes. According to the the U.S. Census Bureau, Oklahoma has the second highest population of Native Americans of any State in the Union. (Behind California, because I know you wondered.)

Namaste is from those other Indians. I don't think I've ever seen "Namaste" stuck on the side of a vehicle in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma's not exactly The South. It's really more the Southwest. But it's definitely South of Colorado. So I say "y'all." I call my father "Daddy." I drink "pop." I jam words together --  at meal time I might ask "Jeet yet?" and a fellow Oklahoman might answer "No. Joo?" And we might have fried chicken or chicken fried steak. Or a burger. (McDonald's and its golden arches are the same everywhere.)

In Colorado, I've discovered green chili. That's a spicy stew of tomatillos, chili peppers, and pork.

When we lived in southeast Arkansas, they greeted everyone with "Hey," and ate the best fried catfish in the world.

I knew that one of our local police officers there in Crossett, Arkansas was originally from central Texas as soon as he talked about a "tank." He meant a body of water that Oklahoman's call a "pond." Here on the Front Range, Coloradans would call it a "lake."

Just thinking about the intricacies of languages and all the cultures across the world makes me happy.

Let it snow! Namaste, y'all.

Bess

Elizabeth  2000 - 2014

 

    Our good Bess. We got her as a pup in August 2000. Her people had taken her to a pet shop in Louisiana for sale along with several of her siblings. Lucky for us, she didn't sell and they gave her to us.

 

    Her working title was Scrunch, no doubt because of all that wrinkledy skin. Basset Hounds, in addition to being a full dog long and half a dog high, have enough extra skin to make an extra little dog. In honor of her breed's English heritage, we named her for Good Queen Bess. And the fact that Elizabeth the First had no offspring went right along with our plans for our Bess.

 

   She had the traditional Basset sad face, but she was the most cheerful dog we've ever had. She was completely oblivious to the vagaries of weather. Be it cold or hot, sun, rain, or snow, she loved the outdoors. She bayed 'possums until they passed out from fright and treed 'coons standing watch at the base of the tree until one of her humans could persuade her to come inside for the night.

 

    She was born in Arkansas, moved to Oklahoma, and then to Colorado. She didn't mind the moves as long as she had her family. Over the years, that family included cats and dogs and birds. And her humans -- a mom and dad and grandpa, two brothers and two sisters, a niece, and two nephews.

 

    We miss our Bess.