Housekeeping - Ursula K. Le Guin

As I've been using the word "truth" in the sense of "trying hard not to lie," so I use the words "literature," "art," in the sense of "living well, living with skill, grace, energy" - like carrying a basket of bread and smelling it and eating as you go. I don't mean only certain special products made by specially gifted people living in specially privileged garrets, studios, and ivory towers - "High" Art; I mean also all the low arts, the ones men don't want. For instance, the art of making order where people live. In our culture this activity is not considered an art, it is not even considered work. "Do you work?" - and she, having stopped mopping the kitchen and picked up the baby to come answer the door, says, "No, I don't work. People who make order where people live are by doing so stigmatized as unfit for "higher" pursuits; so women mostly do it, and among women, poor, uneducated, or old women more often than rich, educated, and young ones. Even so, many people want very much to keep house but can't, because they're poor and haven't got a house to keep, or the time and money it takes, or even the experience of ever having seen a decent house, a clean room, except on TV. Most men are prevented from housework by intense cultural bias; many women actually hire another woman to do it for them because they're scared of getting trapped in it, ending up like the woman they hire, or like that woman we all know who's been pushed so far over by cultural bias that she can't stand up, and crawls around the house scrubbing and waxing and spraying germ killer on the kids. But even on her kneebones, where you and I will never join her, even she has been practicing as best she knows how a great, ancient, complex, and necessary art. That our society devalues it is evidence of the barbarity, the aesthetic and ethical bankruptcy, of our society. As housekeeping is an art, so is cooking and all it involves - it involves, after all, agriculture, hunting, herding.... So is the making of clothing and all it involves.... And so on; you see how I want to revalue the word "art" so that when I come back as I do now to talking about words it is in the context of the great arts of living, of the woman carrying the basket of bread, bearing gifts, goods. Art not as some ejaculative act of ego but as a way, a skillful and powerful way of being in the world. I come back to words because words are my way of being in the world. I come back to words because words are my way of being in the world, but meaning by language as art a matter infinitely larger than the so-called High forms. -Ursula K. le Guin

Thoughts on describing bird sounds and sound search

Screen pics copyright earbirding.com

Wow, omg, earlier in his blog post he explains how people DO sort of use vowel sounds in a standardized way to describe bird sounds.  It absolutely made sense to me.

Then in the comments, there is the discussion shown below about being able to Sound search using standardized vowel sounds and dipthongs to search tags or descriptions, patterns of, I am assuming.  Yes, could work.  As Nathan points out, this would be affected by the person's first language.

Yes! I was just previously thinking how difficult it is for english-mother-tongues / anglophones, to remember sequences of vowels. Well, I do anyway.  Just like sequences of numbers. Like, it's hard to describe a location or name it, using only the lat long co-ordinates. And it is difficult to remember words with different patterns of consonants and vowels like many Japanese words that seem to be various combinations of consonant-vowel syllables all mixed up together.  Like, was that ka ta no be, or ka to na be or whatever, don't know if those are real japanese words, forgive me, japanese speakers. This is meant just as an example.

But, perhaps any search method could be made using a sort of multiple choice building of the sound using the above standarized sounds to create a pattern to use in the search?  I dunno how Siri works - voice recognition. I heard there is an app for recording and searching bird songs, but this would be different, and maybe also a learning experience and way to standardize a bit. 

So, the searcher would choose various sounds provided, string them together, and place them temporally.  The sounds provided would be chosen by selecting from playable sounds. You know what 

I mean. Hehe.