Poison

Okay, so who hasn’t been told “leaves of three let them be?”  I grew up with that saying and had to remember it while walking around in my own back yard.  It was knowledge passed through oral communication, and it’s knowledge I will never forget.  Along with the saying comes the precautions.  Now that you know the saying, heed it.  You are less likely to get poison oak, if you don’t touch it.  If you seen around, even if your sure you didn’t touch it, take a cold shower afterwards and its probably best to take a few cold showers afterward.  We take cold showers because hot showers open up your pores and allow the irritating oil into your skin, which can result in icky bumps or disgusting oozing messes.

All cultures have poisonous plants that they need to avoid, but I will concentrate on the Native American tribes from what is now northern California.  These people knew how to use poison oak.  The used the plant to make die, the stems to make baskets and the roots for food.  They obviously understood something that we don't, or built up immunity.  Those who made their home in this area before the arrival of Europeans, and even after the arrival of Europeans, were able to survive by living off acorns.  However, the acorns could not be eaten raw, and had to be put through a process to become edible.  The acorns of the area contain a poison called tannic acid that makes acorns bitter and, if eaten in large quantities, can cause death.  The knowledge of how to “leach” acorns, remove the tannic acid, is domestic knowledge.  This knowledge was maintained through oral explanation and constant practice.

Scattered thoughts on Oral Communication

Sarcasm is definitely in between oral and domestic knowledge.  If you don't grow up with it, you will probably have a hard time understanding it, but you learn it purely to listening to others speak.  My family uses a certain intonation when we are being sarcastic.  I could demonstrate what it sounds like in person, but its impossible to communicate without inflections of speech.  Just as Shuan demonstrated in class, Chinese is a language not only made up of the sounds made by consonants and vowels, but the meanings of words are also determined by the inflection used.  In Chinese, a word may change from mother to horse, and in Sarcasm a statement usually becomes the exact opposite of what the vowels and consonants imply.

The INDIVIDUAL communication of oral knowledge

In this post, I'll respond to Professor Burton's description of oral knowledge as "communal."

Friendly debate

Dive In!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been learning to dive from Coach Keith Russell. This week I had a chance to interview him, and I asked him more about how he learned to dive.

The biggest relief came when Coach Russell told me how terrified he was when he first learned to dive. He decided to take up diving to earn more points for the swim team when he was about six years old. His coach (diving legend Dick Smith) had him stand on the top of the high dive and fall straight back into the water to learn a backwards dive. Unfortunately, Russell did just that... and landed straight on his back. From 3 meters (about ten feet). OUCH!

My first day in diving class, I landed on my back after a mighty jump from a one meter diving board. The next two weeks I was scared to go to class. I'm twenty-one years old. When Coach Keith had his "happy landing," he was six. That he stuck with it is a miracle. Especially after smacking his head on the diving board while attempting a reverse dive.

The big change came when he realized that he didn't need to be afraid of diving. He learned that if he followed certain principles, the "laws of diving," as he refers to it now, then he would have nothing to fear. He went on to compete throughout his life, including in the Olympics. 

Coach Russell is 100% confident that if his students will do what he says they will be safe and successful. He resonates an attitude that dispels fear. I imagined that he had always been that way: that diving had been to him as effortless and nerve-wrenching as falling asleep. So often we see people do something seemingly effortlessly, but we forget that effortlessness follows years and years of effort, of work, of being afraid, of falling flat on your back, of getting hurt, of getting up, and of diving right back into the best that life has to offer.

Everybody can barter, right?

Remember the days when the biggest bartering you did was trading fruit roll-up for your friends pack of gushers snacks across the lunch table? It seems that as long as there's something we want and something that we can give up, there will always be bartering. Experience growing up with my brothers has taught me most of my trading techniques, skills acquired as you trade and learn how they respond to the trade and if you are satisfied. Is this a type of folk knowledge? How do these skills affect daily life? Am I worse off than a car salesman at the grocery counter or playing a game of Monopoly ?

My Favorite Thing

Some foods are good. Some foods are great. Some foods are life changing.
My mother's chocolate chip cookies are life changing.

My chocolate chip cookies

When Holland posted about her experience teaching the members of our blog group to make chocolate chip cookies, it reminded me of my experience learning to make chocolate chip cookies. As one of the few recipes I have memorized, chocolate chip cookies have come to mean more to me than simply being calorie-loaded, guilt-enducing, waiste-line-ruining, sugar vessels. To me, chocolate chip cookies mean memories. They mean people. They mean tradition.