Bad Maine Accents

I’ve always been interested in language and how differently folks from different parts of our big country use the English language. As a writer, I try not to use too much local language in my Maine stories, because I find it bogs down the story. Not everyone who reads my work is a Maineiac after all. Therefore, using ah for words ending in er, i.e., suppah instead of supper, would get rather cumbersome.

I have never tried to mask my Maine accent for the 30 plus years I’ve lived here in Georgia. Usually people think I’m from Boston. That’s how much they know, right. I have however, picked up some Southern phrases along the way, like “mash the window” which means, “open the window.” The article below, which  I borrowed from the internet, will explain further.

Never is our Downeast accent murdered more than it is by Hollywood. The proof is below also.

This article comes from tvtrope.org. A trope is described as a figure of speech that is used in a figurative way, usually for rhetorical effect. Similarly, idioms are a natural way of using language that comes naturally to its native speakers, i.e. “wicked good” or ayuh.

Hollywood New England

Ah, New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Cradle of The American Revolution, home of Plymouth Rock, Ben and Jerry's, Walden Pond and the Red Sox, and chock full of fish.

In media, by contrast, New England gets Flanderized into...well, there's kind of a duality here.

On one side, we have the highbrow intellectuals who go to Ivy League universities, write books, dabble in philosophy and end up as magnificent eccentrics. Many of these are scions of the "Codfish Aristocracy," uber-exclusive old families who can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower passenger list (none of whom were named Kennedy, incidentally; that family is famously Irish Catholic and made their money in Prohibition-era bootlegging). All this snootiness comes in very handy when a producer requires a Black Sheep... or just wants an excuse to film in and around Kennebunkport, Hyannisport, or Martha's Vineyard.

On the other side of the coin, we have the tough immigrant laborers, folksy down-home farmers, and of course the crusty flannel-wearing fishermen who give us the seafood we so crave. All of these people will be veritable founts of down-to-earth wisdom, generally dispensed using as many goofily inscrutable metaphors as possible ("Cold enough to freeze the skin off a beanpole!")

Come to think of it, fish is brain food, so maybe it all fits together after all...

In reality, New England is one of the oldest regions of the United States: six separate states with a mountain range up the middle and the Gulf Stream just offshore, meaning the climate and geography are all a lot more variable than that found in most other regions of the country. (If you don't like it, just wait five minutes.) Seacoast Massachusetts is a very different place from the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, the "Northern Plantations" of Maine or the Green Mountains of Vermont, and each region has its own variations of culture, accent and traditions. A fact which is pretty much lost on Hollywood.

The standard protocol is for the lowly, regardless of region, to be given a generic Down East accent. The grand get the Boston-specific version, as quoted above and otherwise heavily popularized by JFK and family. The irony here is that no other person in New England actually speaks like the Kennedys. Their infamous accent actually has a touch of the Queen's English mixed in, because the founding generation spent a fair amount of time in the UK while growing up (family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., was Ambassador to the Court of St. James's 1938-1940 and had other business there as well).

Their ubiquitousness on the cultural scene, meanwhile, has resulted in 95% of Hollywood having no idea how to use a Boston accent, thus bolstering the careers of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and brothers Mark and Donnie Wahlberg. For that matter, non-New Englanders generally don't realize that there are in fact four versions of the "Boston" accent, only one of which is the stereotypical version — and in real life, it's hardly as exaggerated as depicted.

This trope mostly covers Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts (Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod, and the islands). When Connecticut appears, it tends to be depicted as a bunch of rich suburbs of New York City filled with insufferable geniuses who are/were educated at posh universities like Yale. Western Massachusetts ("west'a Woostah"), for all intents and purposes, does not exist (if you ask a lot of people from West Mass, Boston in particular, this is truth in television). As anyone from Boston will tell you, it's a wicked good city. In addition, there's a new competitor in the cliché-stakes: "Southie", home of the Southies, which (as depicted in media) is not so much South Boston as it is a crime-ridden, extremely northerly borough of New York. Whaya they tawk funny.

Rural Hollywood New England is where you usually find picturesque snowy winter landscapes. Keep in mind, of course, that this is also Lovecraft Country.

Will always find a way to say "Pahk my cah in Hahvad Yahd". Ask a New Englander to say it, and they'll send you to the hospital. ESPECIALLY if they're a Southie. AND the car'll get towed.

Contrast Like Gag Me With A Spoon! Note that some Cali/Valley speak, like, migrated over to the northeast, found it wicked awesome, and stayed.

Here are a few examples of how Hollywood treats our Downeast accent. This information also comes from tvtropes.

From Jaws:

Ellen: "In Amity you say yahd."
Martin: "They're out in the yahd, not too fah from the cah. How was that?"
Ellen: "Like you're from New York."

Roy Scheider makes a rookie mistake in saying "yadd" instead of "yahd." I'm not sure if that's "like you're from New York," but it definitely isn't like you're down the Cape. Of course, since Martin isn't actually from the Cape...

If memory serves then the location of Amity is never actually specified in any of the films themselves, although the first film (and maybe the sequels too?) was filmed at Martha's Vineyard.

M.A.S.H

The character, Hawkeye Pierce is supposedly from Crabapple Cove, Maine. But wisely neither Donald Sutherland in the movie, nor Alan Alda in the TV series, attempted to used a Maine accent.

Murder, She Wrote

set in small-town Maine. Featuring William Windom, Tom Bosley and a slew of random extras using phony Down East accents thick enough that they may qualify as the network-TV version of Dick van Dyke doing Cockney in Mary Poppins. Bosley's attempts were particularly egregious.

My comments:

Angela Lansbury supposedly was not actually from Maine, but merely lived there most of the time, so she got away with not trying to do a Downeast accent. I think Tom’s efforts were the worst I’ve ever heard on TV.

By the way, this series was actually filmed in California. Don’t you think they could have found at least one Maineiac in California to consult with or flown in one of our fishermen for a while?

My favorite TV game star who comes from Maine is Brett Summers. She was one of the panelists on the long-running Match Game. Every once in a while, especially when she used the idiom, or maybe trope, “good gravy, Marie,” her Maine accent would shine through and bring a smile to my face. I miss her.

Truth be told, and I’m sure Brett would agree if she were still with us, unless you’re a native of Coastal Maine, there’s no way you’re going to be able to fake it. Many have tried and many have failed as you’ve seen here.

Finally, God bless our Maine comedian, Bob Marley, for attempting to explain Maine accents and idioms to his audiences. I recently heard him explaining the phrase, “I’m telling you,” on Sirius radio.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this analysis. I for one will continue to explain to people that our accent is the truest to the mother country, namely, England, because we were isolated so long up here in the Northeast corner of the nation. We therefore kept truer to the mother tongue. Agree?

Thanks for listening.


Note: If you miss our Brett as much as I do, see a video of Match Game with Brett on my FB page or South End Stories page. Just click that link on the right. Enjoy.

A Maine Garden

If you would like a last look at Maine's summer gardens, take a look at the summer garden of my friend Pat Pendleton.

Pat Pendleton

Happy Birthday, Stephen King

I "borrowed" this link from Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors which was on Facebook. The story was written by Kathy Ceceri, who writes for Geek Dads online. Read to the end of the story for a special surprise. Don't cheat now.

Image Pinguino (via Wikipedia)

I see that GeekDad’s Matt Blum is again wishing Stephen King a happy birthday, along with many other notables. But I think Blum is giving King short shrift by describing him as “one of the most successful authors of all time” — the implication being “he’s popular but not my cup of tea.” I’d like to offer my own take on King’s accomplishments.

For a long time, I was a literary snob. When I realized I was never going to be able to read everything I wanted to, I decided to cut out the junk and only read “good books.” And I have read a lot of great books in the years since.

But around about the time my boys got old enough to be interested in scary stories, I made a startling discovery about myself — I’ve read an AWFUL lot of Stephen King.

I’m not even counting just the stories I know from the movie versions. Turns out, I’ve managed to read those in book form too. Without ever meaning too, I have become a Stephen King fan. Here’s just a sampling of the King works I’ve read:

• Carrie
• The Shining
• The Stand
• Night Shift
• Lisey’s Story
• Ur
• The Dead Zone

Now, in order to save my reputation, I am going to pull that old excuse: it’s educational for the kids. We listen to a lot of audiobooks in the car. And I’ve found that Stephen King books work for me (not too involved or flowery to understand with only half an ear) and the kids (not too babyish or boring). King’s book On Writing is widely admired by aspiring authors as a guide to what it really takes to create books for a living. But beyond that, we also listen to A LOT of King’s short stories. For the car, they’re perfect, because we don’t have to worry that we’ll reach our destination with several hours to go on the story. By now, we’ve listened to so many that we have started to become scholarly experts on the short fiction of Stephen King.

I’ve always said that I became a journalist by reading the (now defunct) New York Newsday. Every day, they ran an update on the top story of the moment (at the time, the Central Park Jogger). And after a while, without meaning too, I began to see how a news story is put together, by noticing what changed (and how) and what stayed the same, day after day. The same process is at work with my family’s critical analysis of Stephen King. Whether consciously or not, King can be counted on to pace his stories in a similar way. Here’s where the rescuer gets killed (think Scatman Crothers in The Shining); and here’s where we think the story’s over, but one more scare is still to come (think Carrie’s hand in the graveyard).

In a nutshell, this is our analysis: King’s earliest stories are shining examples of pulp fiction — short, suspenseful, and great at sucking the reader in. At the start of his career King still felt that he had something to prove. More recently, King has been dabbling in short works — except that he’s gotten a little flabby. His stories go on and on, well past the point where there’s any suspense left. That woman who left her husband, went out for a run from her dad’s beach house, and is now duct-taped to a crazy neighbor’s kitchen chair? Let her go already, she’s suffered enough. (And so have we.) If you’re sitting in the car listening to them (and hence can’t easily skip ahead), it’s like being stuck in traffic when you can see your destination up ahead. We suspect that, famous as he is, no one wants to edit his stuff anymore. (At least, that’s our theory; I thought the same about J.K Rowling halfway through the Harry Potter series as well.)

There are other Language Arts lessons to be learned from King’s fiction as well. Although he certainly has the street cred, he has never really been able to render everyday dialogue convincingly. It’s almost deliberate, the way he makes up sayings that are always just a little off. His little details, meant to convey verisimilitude (about the only thing I remember from high school English), instead gets trapped in its own kind of “uncanny valley” — just right enough to make you uncomfortably aware of how wrong it is.

For the kids and me, the work of Stephen King isn’t just a terrific way to pass the time; they’re great lessons in how to write fiction. So Happy Birthday, Stephen King! Your fans, unwitting or not, salute you!

Me several years ago sitting in front of King's house in Bangor.

 I hear he has a home in Florida now.

How Much Stuff Do We Really Need?

Have you ever watched a show on A&E called “Hoarders?” There is a similar show on the Discovery Channel too. The people on these shows are compulsive hoarders. Maybe they started out “collecting” certain objects; but at some point it just turned into a mental compulsion to surround them with “stuff.”

Some of the houses are so stuffed that ceilings are caving in and mold has developed to a toxic level. Children have been taken away from parents because of the unhealthy condition of their living space.

What mindset is it that values “stuff” more than your own children? The answers given have never satisfied me. The only thing I’ve come to understand is that these people are truly mentally ill and may never be cured of their hoarding tendencies.

If I have any tendencies, it is to throw stuff away, not keep it. After I see one of these shows I want to clean my house and throw stuff out. Nancy and I remark that we know of a good way to get rid of unneeded “stuff” that is cluttering up your house…it’s called a FLOOD. That cleaned stuff out for us in a hurry.

The only thing I really hoard are letters. I wrote a blog about them before. I found from the flood experience that I keep too much paper; and therefore have rethought my system of paper saving such as bill receipts. I only keep about 2 or 3 months worth now instead of the boxes of paper I had before.

I also have opted in some cases to receive digital statements which are now stored on my computer, saving space that the paper took up before. They are there whenever I want to look at them.

I don’t collect things anymore because I know this apartment is not going to be a permanent living space for us. I don’t want to have to move all that “stuff” when I leave this place. Some of the stuff I saved is stored in closets to be used when I have the room to use them again.

I have moved quite a lot in the 30 years I’ve lived here in Georgia and even before up in Connecticut. Every time I moved I set up a throw box while I was packing. For everything I packed, I tried to throw something into the throw box. Some of that box went to Goodwill and some into the trash.

Yesterday I gave a whole box of diabetic testing supplies to my doctor. He will give them to patients in need. My supplier always sends me too much stuff and it was cluttering up my space for medical things, so rather than throw them out I gave them to him. You always feel better when you can do something like that. Try it.

I blame the American obsession with collecting more and more stuff on the advertising companies and the fact that there are so many places now to buy “stuff.”

Catalogs. How many do you get in the mail with “stuff” you don’t really need, but they still pull you in somehow? If you google “gadget catalogs” you’ll get hooked up with anything you could ever want to buy. Add to that sites like EBay and Amazon and you can see how easy it is for hoarders to add to their piles.

In a Miles Kimball catalog I came upon this turkey hat. Don’t you just have to have this hat for the holiday? In the same catalog there are decorations for every conceivable holiday and special day: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, July 4^th.

I had a friend in Georgia who must have purchased holiday stuff from several catalogs. You could not get through her living room without stepping over some holiday decoration. I don’t think she ever actually displayed the correct decoration on the specific holiday it was intended for. They just all sat there together.

These catalogs are a hoot just to look through. One catalog I got recently actually had a Mr. Potato Head made like Elvis in his white stage outfit. Miles Kimball covers every category you can think of: Home & Pets; Office & Books; Gardening & Outdoor; Automotive; Apparel/Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Children’s’ Entertainment & Leisure.” You never have to leave your home. If you can find a place to sit down in your “hoarded” house, and if you can find a place to set up a computer; you’re all set. They even have personal “toys” if you know what I mean.

Here’s another product maybe you cannot live without:

These machines create a "soothing whooshing sound" which induces sleep presumably.

If it is too noisy where you live, you need to move. On second thought, maybe I do need one here in this noisy apartment complex. Hmmm.

Please don’t become a hoarder. Your health depends on it. The relations you have with your spouse and children may also suffer. I’ve seen some spouses on the hoarder shows leave because they couldn’t stand to live in the mess anymore. No singular item in the world is worth the loss of a loved one that way.

Thanks for listening.

Whoppie Pie Cookbooks?

Everywhere I look lately I see something about whoopie pies. I may have to start a special Whoppie Pie blog. Here's the latest. A cookbook that was advertised in AARP magazine. They also had a whoopie pie pan for sale. Chose either one for just $6.95.

I decided to investigate further and discovered that there are indeed several sites on the web where you can buy whoopie pie pans with which to make the cake part of the pies. The best one can be found at:

www.nextag.com/whoopie-pie-pan/shop 

Here you will find pans in every shape and size from pumpkin shape to funny faces to hearts. Prices vary from $12 to $26.

I also noticed that one description still insists that the pie came from Pennsylvania Dutch country, saying that the mothers used to make them and put them in their child's lunch bag so that when they opened them they shouted "whoppie."

So the debate continues I guess. 

This cookbook can be found at www.cookingenthusiast.com/whoopie-pie-cookbook. 

Here's their description of the book. I only have a phone number if you want to order from here: 1-847-615-7366. I think your best bet is the web sites I gave you above if you are interested.

What will be the next Whoppie Pie innovation? I can't wait to find out.

More Drum Corps Pictures

These pictures were submitted by Jean Rowling Monroe on Facebook. Verna Studley Bramhall brought them to our latest class breakfast at the Brown Bag.

Port O Rockland Junior Drum and Bugle Corps drummers.These were the first uniforms we had. I was not a drummer yet. This is lower Main Street, see Central Maine Power Company store in background.

Drum Corps majorettes. This outfit morphed into the Drill Team later on. In front row are left to right: Joan Harjula and Judy Davis Merrifield. In the second row behind Joan is Verna Studley Bramhall. I believe these uniforms were a satin gold color with black trim.

I was a majorette with this troop. I can't tell you which one I was here.Our leader up front was Helen Doherty. Her sister, Sylvia was in my class. The guy on the side with the helmet was probably one of the parents who served as aides during a parade. Anyone know him? I can't quite place us on Main Street. Is this the Sherwin Williams store down near where the Courier was? Or...are we in fact marching from the South End up to the North End?

Where Were You?

Memorial Reflecting Pool  at Ground Zero in Manhattan.

Today I watched the memorial service at Ground Zero in New York City, It was very moving. I hope to see it one day. Ten years have gone by since that terrible day. For the first time ever in American history, we were attacked by terrorists from a foreign land. We were under attack.

Where were you when you first heard the news? I had just started my work day at a printing plant when I first heard that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York City. We thought nothing of it at that time. “Oh a small plane or something has hit the building. It was probably an accident. How much damage can a small plane do to such a huge building?”

As the day progressed and the news changed drastically, we wondered where the next attack would be. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Only on this day, unfortunately, more than one shoe dropped. We felt very vulnerable;  like the whole country was under attack.

Our leadership drew us all together in groups to inform us of what was going on. They gave us the option to leave if we wanted to if we wanted to check in with loved ones. In a disaster situation, we always think of our families first. Mine was hundreds of miles away, so I had to rely on those around me in case of an emergency. We were told that security had been beefed up at the plant and we were reminded where to go in the plant, the safe areas, if necessary.

I stayed at the plant. It seemed to be the safest place to be that day. At lunch time, my friend and co-worker, Belinda, and I thought it was safe enough to go to her nearby  apartment to watch the news on her T.V. It didn’t look good. The news just kept getting worse and worse.

America showed what she is made of that day. People helping people. Patriotism flourished. Home after home showed their colors by flying the flag. Volunteers headed for Ground Zero. Boats answered the call in lower Manhattan and managed to evacuate over 500,000 people who had no other way to get out of the area, now virtually blotted out by smoke and dust.

This year I turned to the poets for solace, guidance, and wisdom. Life goes on and our poets always come through for us. Some of the following is sad and dark, but their words ring true even today.

We start with dear Edna St. Vincent Millay, our local heroine and world-wide respected poet. This is a sonnet, a love story of sorts, but it might be how many of those left behind on 911 felt about the special love they lost that day.

Sonnet iii

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,

And all the flowers that in the springtime grow;

And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow

Rising of the round moon; all throats that sing

The summer through, and each departing wing,

And all the nests that the bared branches show;

And all winds that in any weather blow,

And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

You go no more on your exultant feet

Up paths that only mist and morning knew;

Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat

Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,--

But you were something more than young and sweet

And fair,--and the long year remembers you.

T.S. Eliot from The Waste Land

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Reluctance

Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?          

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

The following poem by Longfellow, about a Civil War soldier, reminds us that many of those in the twin towers were never found. It was the last place they in fact existed on this earth. The memorial site is now, therefore, sacred ground, where they can now rest in peace. The same can be said of the memorials at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

A Nameless Grave

'A soldier of the Union mustered out,'

Is the inscription on an unknown grave
A Nameless Grave

At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
And I can give thee nothing in return.

Finally, here are some quotes from Longfellow we should keep in mind as we go forward in America.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

“Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.”

“That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.”

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Never forget the lessons of 911.

Thanks for listening.

Picture from Jean Rowling Monroe

I'd like to share this photo my friend and classmate, Jean Rowling Monroe recently posted on Facebook. If you look closely, you can see the deer in the woods. She took this picture on a recent trip to Isleboro.

It reminds me of the deer on Cranberry Island, where I have relatives. They walk down the streets like a pet dog would. They do a number on the vegetable gardens and the residents have to put wire fences up around their gardens. These gentle creatures are virtually trapped on these islands. Who knows how they got there to begin with. I hope they know how to duck during hunting season.