This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join in to the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.
Our featured speaker will be Ann Norman. Here, in her own words, is a description of Ann’s talk:
“I will talk about the “miracle” of language, a phenomenon we often take for granted. We can appreciate language with fresh eyes by considering Thai, which is spoken on the opposite side of the world (from Toronto or Pittsburgh) and appears to have evolved completely separately from English, until recent times! Those unfamiliar with Asian languages will be surprised at how completely different from English a language can be, from sounds and overall structure to the particular mapping of concepts onto words. (Imagine a language with no exact equivalent of “yes” or “you”!) While my talk may challenge naïve preconceptions of how a language must works, it will highlight the evolved nature of all language, including English. How did early humans bootstrap themselves up from individual sounds to complicated language? I suspect that language is built from metaphor on top of metaphor on top of metaphor.”
Ann learned to speak Thai while working in Thailand for two years in the mid ‘80s. Twenty years later, she relearned the language, and learned to read Thai in order to translate the songs of her favorite band, Carabao, into English. From there she was recruited into the Thai prodemocracy movement, and served as the Executive Director of the Thai Alliance for Human Rights for two years. She is now on the board of Act4Dem (Action for Democracy). She has two websites where she posts her English-language translations of favorite Thai songs (about 440 songs total); has done published translations for Way Magazine, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, iLaw, and Add Carabao; and continues to do translation for various Thai prodemocracy activists. For many years she was an (English-language) assistant editor for AEA Publications and more recently has been a preschool teacher and Amazon worker.
This Sunday we will also be having live music! Our featured musician will be Kathryn Merriam. Described by audiences as ‘other-worldly’ and ‘transcendent’, Kathryn Merriam’s songs interweave melismatic melodies with soaring lyricism, evoking flavours of Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Accompanying herself on the guitar and harp, Kathryn explores the intersections between folk song tradition and mystical music – making subtle observations of the human experience, and musing on reality, perception, meaning, healing, and purpose. You can check out her music here: https://soundcloud.com/kathryn-merriam
Please RSVP on meetup to get access to the Zoom link:
https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/pkdtctyfchblc/
Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!
This meeting has been recorded: GMT20230528-152443_Recording_1920x1080.mp4