A preliminary death notice for David Stampe, an old friend and hugely influential colleague in my work in linguistics. A first pass, deficient in many of the customary details about academic careers, reproducing the death notice on Facebook from David’s son John (with some amendments in square brackets):
Archive for the ‘Linguists’ Category
David Stampe
June 26, 2020
Raw, firm, and tasty
June 22, 2020Back in the early days of the lockdown, there were bizarre runs on things in grocery stores — fabled shortages of toilet paper, paper towels, bleach — all more or less explicable — but also in certain stores at certain times, eggs, all the chicken, bean thread, all the pasta, and one memorable friday, at the local Safeway (where Kim Darnell shops for me once a week), all the cheese, of any kind (plain commercial cheese but fancy cheeses as well), except for some commercial smoked cheese in blocks, which apparently is not highly favored locally.
For complex reasons you really don’t want to hear about, I’m on a high-cheese diet — a while ago I had some mid-morning sharp cheddar and Stone Ground Wheat Crackers — and luckily I’m happy with chunks of smoked gouda, but not as my only cheese, day in, day out. I complained on Facebook, and my cry was heard. Astonishingly, by my old friend the excellent linguist Stephen R. Anderson, who wrote with brotherly concern (from Asheville NC, where he and his wife Janine have retired):
No Swiss person should have to survive on smoked cheese from the Safeway
Steve then conspired with his cheese specialist at the Asheville Whole Foods to send me an emergency cheese relief package, of five raw milk cheeses, all firm to hard in texture, four from Switzerland, one a Swiss-style cheese from France.
They arrived on April 22nd. There would have been volleys of sounding trumpets, but, well, we were in lockdown.
The ceramic grocery store
May 23, 2020NOTE: The beginning of this posting is perfectly fine, but it turns out to be about not Stanford’s Steph Shih, but instead about a New York-based ceramic artist Stephanie H. Shih. From her website:
STEPHANIE H. SHIH explores concepts of home —— not just as a physical place, but also as cultural, generational, and emotional spaces we inhabit —— through the lens of Asian-American identity. Her work has been shown at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA), Wieden+Kennedy (Portland, OR), and Hashimoto Contemporary (San Francisco, CA) and featured by NPR, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn.
(Rueful thanks to Patrick Callier for exposing my error to me.)
I will now attempt to reorganize the previous material to preserve the discussion of the ceramic art, which I find moving; and to preserve a celebration of Stanford graduate Steph Shih, for her multifarious academic and artistic talents
The rainbow penguin of regard
April 25, 2020I’ve been getting more gifts conveying regard and affection. I’m an old man who has for some years now felt brushed aside, treated as already academically dead, while I write extremely quirky, relentlessly analytic, highly personal, and often outrageously sexually open material for a tiny coterie of readers, but now in a time of constant death — so these gestures of friendship and respect (some quiet and plainspoken, some effusive) are a great balm. Today’s surprise was a tossed-off rainbow penguin drawing for me, accompanied by impossibly sweet thanks (which I won’t expose here) for my linguistic work and also my writings about my life. The penguin:
Quick shot: the SGT penguin doodle
April 16, 2020In a rambling on-line discussion involving Sally Thomason (Sarah Grey Thomason), someone mentioned Sally’s famous doodles, and I remarked that the penguin doodle she’d done for me had — pout — faded terribly in its frame over 30 years or so. So she committed to producing a new, bright (and, as it turned out, differently styled) version for me. Which arrived today, and now awaits my finding a frame for it. Spheniscid art day on Ramona St.!
The original penguin, improved by digital manipulations as much as I could:
(#1) Old Pingo; my recollection was that he was drawn in dark purple (purple being one of my colors), but the framed drawing now suggests black faded to dark gray
Stanko Day?
April 2, 2020Yesterday was, as always on 4/1, April Fool’s Day, and just for this year, Census Day; but also Leonard Bloomfield’s birthday, an occasion with meaning for linguists. Yesterday was the 123rd anniversary of his birth.
On Facebook, I said of the occasion, “That ought to be some specially named anniversary” — and got two different proposals: one for naming a 123rd anniversary, one for re-naming Bloomfield’s birthday.
The first two days of Christmas
December 26, 2019On the first day of Christmas, in a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, Jesus seeks therapy for a life that has gotten out of his control. On the second day of Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day, Daily Jocks enlists a hugely overstuffed musclehunk to memorialize St. Stephen of the Sacred Box.
(Note: a certain amount of male flesh, crude wordplay on package and box, and lots of sacrilege. Use your judgment.)
OUTiL: a historical note
October 23, 2019For LGBT History Month, some notes on a little piece of that history in linguistics, in the loose network of academic acquaintanceship that formed at the Linguistic Institute at UC Santa Cruz in the summer of 1991: OUT in Linguistics, OUTiL, OUTIL (the abbreviation pronounced /áwtǝl/, through some wags joked about its being French outil /uti/ ‘tool’, with the expected sexual slang use). A notice went out on the Institute mailing list for an informal social gathering of the new group, with a characterization that then varied, from occasion to occasion, in its list of invitees; a version from several years later:
The group is open to lesbian, gay, bisexual, dyke, queer, homosexual, trans, etc. linguists and their friends. The only requirement is that you be willing to be out to everyone on the list as lgbt(-friendly); it’s sort of like wearing a pink triangle.
This was at a Linguistic Institute, so no one was fussy about who counted as a linguist; if you wanted to hang out with rest of us for the summer, you were welcome. Just so with OUTiL; if you wanted to hang out with the rest of us for an hour or two, you were welcome. OUTiL, however, was primarily social, and that was an excellent thing, especially at the time.
The C.L. Baker Award
July 24, 2019On March 6th, the Linguistic Society of America announced the creation of the C.L. Baker Award (named in memory of Carl Leroy Baker, known as Lee), and on July 12th put out the call for nominations.
Lee, who died in 1997, was my first Ph.D., the first person to finish a Ph.D. under my direction, with the excellent 1968 dissertation Indirect Questions in English (at the Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Also a friend and a fine person (modest, gently humorous, earnestly principled, and humane).
