Soundings (8/2/11)

Bucks in the Bay

• Eddie and family went out to the Islands over the weekend in his boat, and it turned into a very "mechanically-challenged" outing. Welcome to boat ownership, Eddie!
• Phil X says business is busy, Brewers was fantastic, he is unfortunately expecting a few more missed Rotary meetings in the coming weeks;
• Steve Spitzer says son working as guide now in Europe, recently scaled Mount Blanc with a client;
• Marla Sanger's daughter was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson fellow!
• Duane McNett helped produce the "Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald" movie project, says they have had sellout crowds, but it will be showing at Pickford again this weekend during matinees;
• Bill Gorman for missed meetings, mother and father in law celebrated 63rd wedding anniversary;
• Henry Koss for wife's birthday, played golf with son, dad and wife in Chilliwack, and expressed compassion for Eddie's boat troubles;
• Tim Krell's wife back in Detroit visiting family, and he told a funny story.
• Brent Walker's second granddaughter has arrived!
• Lisa Schork had a funny story about crabbing off of the Chuckanut/Edgemoor bluff;
• Leena Kirschman another plug for B&G Club golf tourney later this week;
• Doug Wight embarrassed that he arrived late and his phone rang, plus a plus for upcoming Hospice Pro-Am golf tourney;

Sergeant at Arms by Patti Imhof

Program Dennis introduced Eddie Vajda, professor of Russian at WWU.

Eddie is a specialist in the disappearing indigenous languages of Central Siberia.  North Central Siberia is considered by linguists as a "hot spot" of hundreds of languages and dialects, most of which have become extinct over the past few hundred years because of migrations and cultural assimilation.  

Eddie recently went to the remote section of the Yenisei River to study a group called the "Ket" people, of whom only about 30 remaining native Ket speakers.  He documents and learns the language for posterity. Most of the remaining speakers are the older generation, and at some point Eddie himself may become the only remaining Ket speaker on earth!

Eddie has documented his theory (backed up by archeological evidence as well), that the Ket people may actually be genetically related to the Native American tribes of BC and SE Alaska, but separated by perhaps thousands of years.  The similarity of the Ket language to the Dine-Yeniseik languages of the BC tribes is the clue.   Ket people even look like Native Americans (the Russians even call them "Siberian indians"), and less like Eskimos or Asians. 

It is almost a fluke that the language is still alive.  The reason the Ket people remained isolated and the language intact is that the other native Siberian groups were reindeer breeders, and the area of the Yenisei River was too choked with mosquitos during the summer for reindeer to survive.  Later, in the period of Russian colonization, the Russians never found any mineral reserves there so they left the area (and its peoples) largely untouched. 

During his recent trip there to visit the Ket people, Eddie said he flew from Seattle to Moscow, train to Tomsk, boat two days up the Yenisei, then a four-hour helicopter ride to the village!  He met with many Ket who had had no contact with North Americans.  He joined them for a canoe trip deep into the taiga.  The younger people increasingly don't speak the indigenous language.    

Lesa Boxx wins the lottery. 

Respectfully submitted,

Stowe Talbot