Canada geese.

Photo: Melanie (cat_crocodile).

 I was walking home today from having submitted my move-out papers to Riverbay Corporation when I spotted a Canada goose with a yellow neckband marked as RT46, a participant in the North American Bird Banding Program, nibbling grass on a small remaining green area of the huge parking lot that was formerly the Co-op City Greenway. Once home, I reported the sighting online to the U.S.G.S. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Bird Banding Laboratory. The geese are some of the few things I shall miss after leaving the Bronx, although I will not miss their droppings always left behind in the most inconvenient places on the internal paths of Co-op City.

“…[A]ll away from the [B]ronx”

As I organize my move in the next few weeks from the Bronx to Queens, I was nostalgic one night for the Bronx gay community of which I was actively a part in the 1990s and which I will soon leave behind. I was scouring MySpace for evidence of individuals I knew from the various different gay organizations with which I had had contact at the time, but found very little.

I did, however, find a strange quote from someone I don’t believe I ever met: Jenny Toledo, a Puerto Rican Lesbian living in the Bronx. Last month, she posted a comment on the MySpace profile of California-based Lesbian podcasters 2 Homos of whom she is presumably a fan: “Showing love all away from the bronx”. I would think this would count as an eggcorn, but perhaps not, since it could be interpreted as having the opposite meaning than what was intended. Either way, it seems to say a lot about the current Bronx pronunciation that would lead to such an error.

Misheard: The huge Korea fair.

 Almost every multilingual person I encounter exhibits the same trait that is the reverse of my own personal experience: They learn to speak a language more or less fluently but have great difficulty imitating the sounds of the new language and instead choose from the repertoire of sounds of their native tongue. This is of course why people speak with accents, and I am fascinated by it. This week, my painter Pablo, who is Ecuadorean, was describing another client of his, and even with repeated utterances, I could not ascertain whether this client was huge or Jewish. (It turned out to be the latter.)

 I overheard Dan, a Romanian-born member of the faculty of the school where I work, talking about the Korea fair taking place downstairs, and images came to my mind of exotic music and costumes (not to mention cute guys), and I momentarily wondered how I would excuse myself from my desk to attend. I was disappointed to figure out it was actually a career fair.

Well and smoothly.

A voice-mail message from Šəmûʼēl (שמואל) referring to my impending moving: “I hope it’s going well and smoothly. I hope you are well…and smoothly.”