Day four: BAH-ston "This is not my town and it will never be..." - Kathleen Edwards

I am fascinated with the way people talk in New England. I think Ohio and most of the midwest have the least amount of dialect or accent anywhere in the U.S. Everything about the midwest is bland: the food, the dialect, the diversity... unless you're of a different ethnicity. But here, the air is rich with sounds of long a's and missing consonant sounds. Except for "w's" which seem to be over-exaggerated.

Take for example the town I am staying in. It's spelled Worcester, which I mistakenly assumed was pronounced WOR-chester. Not the case. It's actually pronounced WO-ster. What, you may ask, happened to the R and the C? It would seem New Englanders have missed a few consonants. That, or as a colleague from New Mexico pointed out to me the other night over a few beers, "perhaps they were drunk when they decided how to pronounce it." Incidentally, we were drinking ourselves when we came up with the theory.

So here's a short glossary of terms, complete with pronounciations, via the infamous New England dialect:

Boston = BAH-ston

Discouraged = disCAHRaged (long a as in "car")

Water = WA-tah

Car = CAH

I guess it's a carry over from London...or is it? I've not met an Englishman who talks like this. In fact, it would seem to me that proper English, as in London, the inflections are even more pronounced. So what happened?

In graduate school, I studied linguistics (not because I wanted to, but because I had to in order to finish my degree). I'm sure there's some explanation for this particular dialect, but I was sleeping half the time in linguistics so I can't tell you! I find it fascinating, nonetheless.

* * * *

Tonight, I wandered through a bookstore looking for a couple certain books that I, of course, could not find. I ended up flipping through a few books on Alaska, and became suddenly homesick -- not for Ohio or my family, but for the cold and the land where I belong. I do not feel at home here in any way. They say Alaska is where you go when you don't fit in anywhere in the lower 48, and I feel that way.

Now, I don't know if Alaska is where I'm "meant" to be. I think there are lots of places I could happily call home, and I know that home is largely what you carry with you inside your heart. But I feel really alienated here. This is not a place I would ever want to vacation or learn about. The people I've met here seem very upity, not the sort of people you could hang out with over a campfire or talk about life with. They seem very materialistic. I saw a person walking yesterday with shorts, a tee shirt and a scarf on! Very "Ivy League."

I am ready to go home. And I will start building my dog box for my truck, building picket lines and outriggers, ordering my winter parka for the upcoming season and send in my entry form for my races. In less than two weeks I will make the trek with Sophie to the U.P. once again for training weekend at the Shaw kennel and then the Stielstras. I'll be out under the stars, in the cold with people I can relate to. And I can't wait.