Ria Bacon: editor & writer

Linguist with wanderlust,
From the hills of New Guinea to the halls of the Sorbonne,
From the beaches of Bassam to the fields of Friesland,
From the catacombs of Rome to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
From the heather of the Veluwe to the dust of Dakar ...

Currently resident in the Land of Sea with a small tribe of kids and Mr B.

FYI

Stet means "Let it stand" and is used by editors to indicate that the original text should be left untouched.

...in Arcadia ego is a pun on a painting by Poussin.

Contact

Ria[dot]Bacon[at]gmail.com

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Future anterior

Here’s another neologism for you — premem — similar to my previous new word, and also triggered by one of my children. It means “pre-memory”, and while sounding like something out of a Philip K. Dick story, my meaning refers to a more intimate epiphany, one of those “golden moments” when you can already visualize, at

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Postlapsarian PNP: After the fall from grace

The recent general election in Jamaica was a close run between the People’s National Party, in power for 18 years, and the Jamaica Labour Party. While at least one of the sixty seats remains to be decided by the courts, the JLP still managed to squeeze past the incumbents with a four-seat majority.

Politically motivated violence had

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  • Those anagrams are rather interesting. I a m so happy that the damn election season is almost over! Just need to get rid of the post election squabbles, like the recounts and the supporters clash at the opening of parliament.

  • Caribbean Colors

    Are you hopeful for the political future of Haiti? I found your anagrams very clever. We’re less than 6 months from our general here in Belize and things are starting to heat up. They call the big political rallies “Love Fests”. SO much money is thrown around and spent lasciviously that you tend to forget we’re a 3rd world country.

  • Caribbean Colors

    Derrr… I mean are you hopeful for the political future of Jamaica? I must have had my head stuck on the photos below thinking they looked like Haiti in some instances.

  • Oh look, you’re back! Hello, I missed you. Zinnia Cyclamen: Zinnia Man Cycle (oh yeah baby), Mean Zany Clinic (a medical vocation missed), A Nicely Zinc Man (well how do you know I’m a woman anyway?), but I think my favourite is Cynic Inn Ma Zeal. Then again, there’s always Nil In Zany Mecca, but I might be up for a fatwa for that one.

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Two cultures clash

Talk of banning the “dance of death” is still doing the rounds here in Kingston, or at least it was this morning at the hairdresser’s. The dance in question is of course the “Dutty Wine”. In a country where new dance moves pop up every week, the Dutty Wine has shown unusual endurance since its first

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  • Read this article a while ago, have a little blurb on my site. Feel bad for the girls family, but not 100% convinced that her death was caused by a dance. I can just image the Yute she was dancing with, walking around going, don’t make me kill ya with the dutty wine now…(I know, I know bad joke)

  • plk

    PARASIGHTS is a beauty

  • [...] Ria Bacon comments on the clash of cultures taking place in the discussions surrounding the ultra-popular “dutty wine” dance since moves associated with the latter allegedly caused the death of a young woman. She also links to a YouTube video and says that there are 2000+ similar examples to be found on the video-sharing site. Georgia Popplewell [...]

  • there was a story in yesterday’s paper of a bajan girl who went to Jamaica to learn how to do the dutty wine correctly. i don’t think the story deserved 2 pages but obviously the Dutty Wine has a life and energy of it own.

  • Hi, Michele sent me today. I chose “stet” because no-one knows what that term means and I’m such an editing nerd. Thanks for the lesson on the Dutty Wine, I had no idea of the dangerous nature of this dance!

  • kia

    I followed the link from my posting on yours and enjoyed your story.

    What has struck me more in the days since the death is the obvious division in cultures between the middle class, educated newspaper journalists, and the semi-literate dancehall fans. The remove is such that some were not even aware of the song and dance until the recent death.

    Well, one of the reasons is practical. Middle-class people don’t go to the sorts of clubs and events where this dance happens. Not at first, anyway. For one thing, they are likely to assume that such places are dangerous.

    Street culture has been migrating upwards in Jamaica since about the 1960s. Over the years the internal barriers — prejudices, conventions, etc., — to reggae and dancehall culture and all its various forms are much more permeable than they were then. Even before I left Jamaica in my teens in the mid-late 70s I knew, and experienced, a change in Kingston speech, I was speaking a whole new middle-class slang that was full of street lamguage, to the unutterable dismay of my parents.

    But the various social stigma associated with stuff like “dutty wine” are considerably reduced, among the educated middle class, from what they would once have been.

    So now it’s pretty much just the churches that do this sort of moral policing. I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t class barriers still, but these are much less to do with subtle things like syntax and “slackness” than they are to do with material status.

  • I’m reluctant that the Pit bull requirements a particular type of operator…these pet dogs, no matter how ‘trusting’ still have teeth, are still creatures with out moral concepts and when they DO bite, won’t allow go. As in all creatures…some often be more suseptable to instinctual behavior and time and time again, this breed tends to do just that.

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Writing wrongs

Taking a break from the political meltdown here in Jamaica, I got a tip-off from a fellow editor in Rome about a new term for spellcheck mis-corrections: The Cupertino Effect.

The origin of the term, coined at the Language Log, is from the the common mistyping of “cooperation” as “cooperatino”. Bizarrely, certain spellcheckers offer “Cupertino” as a

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Amor vincit omnia fe true

We have 125 channels on TV.

I watch very little and very irregularly: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and, the main advantage of so many channels, reruns of great US comedies such as Seinfeld, Frasier and vintage Cheers. Yet it’s one of the mysteries of the universe that I seem condemned to see the same six

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  • Heard about those movies. Saw my son’s preschool teacher perusing a list of them. Bootleg copies are going around like wildfire.

  • These movies are the hottest thing in Jamaica right now.

  • plk

    I am a bit disappointed that you did not find out in which European coountry the Mercedes was stolen.

  • plk, I am sure there are a few ppl in Nigeria who could actually BUY a Benz, especially an old one like that. Nice little movie clip, Ria. Was the final heartwarmer the “Koldsweat”?

  • plk

    Mad Bull: My comment re stolen cars is based on the fact (as reported in last weeks papers) that legit used car importers on the west coast are going belly-up because they cannot compete with stolen car dealers. The legit people have called on their own and on European government agencies to step up law enforcing.

  • evelyn

    You can believe what the western press wants you to believe. Nigeria is the no. 5 oil producer in the world. There is money in that country and a lot of luxury cars. The problem is that it is in the hands of only 10% of the elite. Yall can keep feeding on white folks propaganda.

  • Ria

    Your point is unclear, Evelyn.

  • Sola

    Her point is actually very clear in relation to plk’s miseducated comments above. Whatever country he lives in may not even have enough luxury cars to rival the ones in Nigeria. Instead of him commenting on the Nigerian movies, he insinuates Nigerians steal cars. If we wanted to steal cars, you think it would be these 20yr old Benz types? Stop swallowing everything they feed you. Conduct your own investigation so you can sound a little informed when you comment in public places.

  • Ria

    I agree that his first comment was misplaced and insensitive; however, he did try to clarify himself in his second comment: Nigerian car importers are complaining to the Nigerian government and the EU about the high number of illegal imports. Nigerians are complaining, with justification, about other Nigerians. Nothing to do with “white folks propaganda”.

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