Sounds very similar to the American South, the killing with silence. The
commonality should not be too surprising: the American South is culturally
the most homogenous region of the US--70+% of people in the South are of
English descent. (The next most homogenous area in the US is the Midwest,
where 60+% of people are of German descent.) Go figure.
If you want to hear Elizabethan English spoken today, the people of Harker's
Island in North Carolina (NC) have a dialect remarkably similar. The
dialect has been disintegrating since the construction of a bridge to the
mainland in the 1970s, but there are still some old folks, particularly old
fishermen, that sound like Middle English marble-mouthed pirates on Harker's
Island.
There's a catchphrase here in NC - if you want to describe a location as
remote, in the middle of nowhere, you call it "B. F. E." or "Bum Fuck
England."
North Carolina is named after King Charles I and II.
The English Jamestown settlers in Virginia managed to poison themselves with
their own bodily waste for the forty years they settled here. The waste
water would drift away from the are during the winter months, but then the
tide lines would shift in the Summer months, returning the excrement to the
settlers' drinking water. They did not say much about it. They did not
want to listen to the Native Americans. The settlers just drank the crappy
water, and, more frequently than not, died from dysentery and other waste
water diseases. During those years, less than 25% of the settlers survived.
The survivors brought tobacco to the old world.
Other English settlers had something to say, and they even listened to the
Native Americans. These settlers, originally collectively named "The White
Colony," cut themselves off from England and the White World with one word:
"CROATAN." American history gives the departure of the White Colony the
silent treatment: American history claims that the English settlers of
Roanoke just "disappeared." In the years that followed, blue eyes became a
common trait among Native Americans in the Roanoke region of Virginia. Sure
signs of a peaceful integration, unless Native American women somehow
managed to rape Roanoke men. Before they disappeared, however, the settlers
of Roanoke introduced hemp to the new world.
Senator Jesse Helms, head of the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee,
and North Carolina descendant of England, has been completely silent about
slavery in Mauritania. The Mauritanian Government has methodically silenced
abolitionists. In 1999 Britain established a new ground work for
cooperation with the Mauritanian military. The American South and Britain
together in their silence on slavery in Mauritania, just as they were once
together in their silence on slavery in the US.
Twelve months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence in
Philadelphia, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was drafted and
signed. The citizens of Mecklenburg County North Carolina (where Charlotte
is now located), as represented by several wealthy British landowners, most
with the surnames "Alexander" or "Polk", agreed to secede from England in
May 1775. The document, however, was never delivered to the British
government. The document from B.F.E. North Carolina remained silent until
1818, almost 30 years after the last shots of the American revolution
sounded.
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of david.bircumshaw
Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 6:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Immanent Visitor
Congratulations too, Kent, even if you are a fat bastard!
Here I know all too well about the suppression of vitality, in Britland they
kill people with silence, as it were.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
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