HAPPY NEW WEEK!
Last week's Chat Thread is here.
In the U.S., we change to Daylight Saving Time tonight. I shared this link on my Facebook page, and I thought I'd include it here. This is Shades State Park (Forest), which is just down the road from me. My grandfather was a park ranger there for many years. It's one of my favorite places in the world. I'm so ready for spring weather.
Everyone have a wonderful week!
Heather B said: Likewise, BRENDA, I had to look up Hoosiers! Several different theories, I wonder which one DIANE goes with?
Likewise, BRENDA, I had to look up Hoosiers! Several different theories, I wonder which one DIANE goes with?
LOL Lots of theories and no one really knows for sure.
The northern half of Indiana is flat prairie, but the southern half of the state has tall hills and is quite mountainous in places. Many settlers travelled down the Ohio River and spread into the hilly south. I think the word Hoosier derives from the old Saxon word hoo, which meant a high place, hill, or ridge. Hoo was followed by the British word shire or the older version scir. So Hoo Scir or Hoo Shire was the hill country or mountain region. And Hooscirs or Hooshires -- which became Hoosiers -- were the mountain or hill people. Historian Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr. traced the word back to hoozer, from the Cumberland dialect of England. In that dialect, hoozer (again from the old Saxon word hoo) meant anything unusually large -- like a hill, ridge, or mountain -- and the word became attached to any hill dweller or highlander. Immigrants from Cumberland, England, settled in the mountains of the U.S. south and could have brought the term with them when they spread into the hills of southern Indiana. Dunn documented that hoosier was a derogatory term used in the 19th-century U.S. south to refer to rural people.
Thanks Diane. I have now read so many theories. American maize / corn, to an Indian tribe. I must agree that your shire/ scir makes sense. Hence Hooshires. A very interesting exercise. Keeps the grey cells working. LOL
Mowing has started! It is a really good day, and several more to come, and no frost, so all systems are go! Visiting preacher this morning (well, one of our own, a retired minister) and an excellent service – feeling revitalised! (Too many exclamations, sorry).
J is feeling better now, and ate a good lunch – actually we all remarked what a good meal it was. We eat a main dinner at 1;30 on Sunday, cooking it after church. We have been discussing plans for a couple of outings for the Easter hols – also made a further attempt to arrange to see Dau#1, but she is still blocking us – don’t know what we have done wrong.
Enjoyed this morning’s conversations about the Hoosiers and the beautiful Forest Parks around where Diane lives.
Now must shake myself up and find something productive to do!
Ospreys Rule OK, but Goldfinches come a close second!
Margo rang me a little earlier. She has asked me to say that she is ' recovering'. Friday was a very long day for her. She had three bags of blood and each bag takes 2.5 hrs. A slow process. She also then had to have her chemo. She will have more blood tests on Tuesday and, hopefully her bone marrow results on Wednesday.
She will probably post after she has her results. It has been and is, a worrying time for both herself and her husband and I admire how they are coping.
BRENDA - thanks for the update on MARGO. Another big week ahead for her.
Yes, BRENDA an awful time for them both. Sadly, this is a club which we all will join at some point. My late OH was unwell for five years before he died and my OH's first wife had only ten weeks between diagnosis and death. It is not something that we are prepared for despite knowing it will happen at some point.I know that MARGO knows that we all love and support her xx
Unknown said:Margo rang me a little earlier. She has asked me to say that she is ' recovering'. Friday was a very long day for her. She had three bags of blood and each bag takes 2.5 hrs. A slow process. She also then had to have her chemo. She will have more blood tests on Tuesday and, hopefully her bone marrow results on Wednesday. She will probably post after she has her results. It has been and is, a worrying time for both herself and her husband and I admire how they are coping.nbsp;
She will probably post after she has her results. It has been and is, a worrying time for both herself and her husband and I admire how they are coping.nbsp;
OG- so sorry to read of difficulties with Daughter#1. I'm sure you will find out, eventually, why she is maybe in a 'huff'. Sometimes my daughters take exception to something that I have said but they usually tell me. Then I have to decide whether to eat humble pie or stick to my guns :-)
Hi all just been catching up and saw the query re Hoosier. Well I subscribe to a website called World Wide Words run by Michael Quinion which I thoroughly recommend and here is his response to someone asking what the word means - hope it helps!
Q From Jolene Gurrola: I am interested in finding out where the term Hoosier comes from, as a term for people who come from or live in the state of Indiana.
A I’ve been dodging this question for several years but it seems inescapable. There are four good reasons why I’ve been reluctant to get involved: a) it’s an iconic American term that perhaps I ought not to be meddling with from this side of the Atlantic; b) the origin is uncertain; c) it generates more controversy than any other American demographic term; and d) lots of vociferous people in Indiana believe they know the answer and won’t be afraid to tell me so.
Facts first. This term for the inhabitants of Indiana is recorded for the first time in a letter of 1831 that wasn’t published until much later (the Oxford English Dictionary’s first entry, from a letter of 1826 that was reproduced in the Chicago Tribune in 1949, has since been shown actually to date from 1846). Its first public sighting was in a poem called The Hoosier’s Nest by John Finley that was printed in the Indianapolis Journal on 1 January 1833.
The inhabitants of Indiana have been upset in the past to learn that the word is also known in other states with the meaning (I quote the Dictionary of American Regional English) “A hillbilly or rustic; an unmannerly or objectionable person”. The same work also records it among black speakers as a “white person considered to be objectionable, especially because of racial prejudice” and as a term for someone inexperienced or incompetent. By a splendid exhibition of inverted self-regard, the inhabitants of Indiana proudly continue to use the name for themselves. The efforts of Dan Quayle in 1987 to persuade the editors of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary to change the meaning to “someone who is smart, resourceful, skilful, a winner, unique and brilliant” got a polite but uncompromising refusal.
More people have had a go at finding its source than you can easily count. It has variously been explained as hoozer, a dialect word from Cumberland that means something large or a dweller in the hills; from a canal foreman named Samuel Hoosier who would only hire men from Indiana; from the family name Hooser; from “Black Harry” Hoosier, an African-American Methodist evangelist of the early 19th century; from the exclamation huzza! after some victory; from Hussars, European cavalry; from hoosa, an Indian word for corn; from hoose, a British term for a disease of cattle; from husher, a bullying vigilante, a roughneck river bargeman, or anybody who could outfight his opponents (and so “hush” them). Others argue that it derives from the days when ear-biting was all the rage; when torn-off ears were found on a bar-room floor after a brawl, people would ask “whose ears?”. It’s also asserted that when a visitor knocked on a cabin door Indiana people would say, “Who’s there?” in a rustic accent that sounded like Hoosier. Or Indiana people would stand on the riverbank and shout to people on boats, “Who is ya?”
There are excellent objections to all of these, which I will spare you. I hate to end on a downbeat note, but the Oxford English Dictionary’s cautious “origin unknown” just about sums it up. Don’t write to me about it, please, unless you have copper-bottomed evidence to back up your beliefs!
HARELADY- thank you!
Diane - I hope none of these versions offend you or anyone else in your State!