Worrying about Hurricane Irene

I don’t know why I worry so much. Currently, as Hurricane Irene is sweeping the upper East Coast of the US, I have many friends to worry about. Vinokur, Rob, Dom, Joe – all are in the striking zone of the hurricane. Vinokur and Rob are in Grade C evacuation zones in the NYC, while Dom isn’t.

I hope they all remain safe and the hurricane doesn’t disrupt their lives.

Dream Sweet Home

I am ashamed about my apartment. And some people, without meaning to be so, make me feel even worse. Most people joke. Some people boast. Some people just make me feel so insecure about my apartment by being where they are in their lives.

I don’t quite know what I can do, with the kind of finances that I have, to upgrade myself to a better apartment where I can proudly invite people over, where I won’t be insecure about what they will think of me. An apartment without infestations, with good ventilations, lighting, and comfortable interiors.

Having said all this, there have been people like Mike, Rob, Bruno, and a couple of others who have visited me in my apartment and said wonderful things about it. I want someone like that now. Someone who will appreciate what is there and how difficult things are to make better.

Drummer, the pariah

I have a new friend from New York. (What’s with me and the Big Apple?) Anyway, he’s a cultured, interesting, funny, intelligent ex-Texan with whom I vastly enjoy interacting with. Here's an example of the interesting things he comes up with. The other day, he came across the etymology of the word pariah.

pariah: 1610s, from Port. paria or directly from Tamil paraiyar, pl. of paraiyan “drummer” (at festivals, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India), from parai “large festival drum.” Especially numerous at Madras, where its members supplied most of the domestics in European service. Applied by Hindus and Europeans to members of any low Hindu caste and even to outcastes. Extended meaning “social outcast” is first attested 1819.

Why are drums associated with lowliness or disgrace? Is it because they are so basic, perhaps the first instrument ever made? Not only is the drummer himself an outcast, drums (not bugles) are used to heighten a soldier’s humiliation in a drumming out ceremony. The OED dates the first usage of “drumming out of the corps” to 1766 in Thomas Amory's “The Life of John Buncle,” 150 years after the first recorded use of pariah.

To explain why drummers were members of the lowest caste -- drumming was an occupation performed by the Dalit or untouchable caste because drums were made from the tanned hides of animals and thus once associated with death. Therefore, the task of beating on them fell to the Dalit caste, who also performed other “unclean” occupations having to do with death and human waste.

To round this post of:

Q: What is the definition of a band?
A: Three musicians and a drummer. (ba-da-boom!)

(Courtesy largely to Robert Geoffrey McMillin)