That Roses on Water Thing in Everyday Ramblings

Although it may seem like I am sitting quietly at my desk on this rainy cold day clicking on things, working, my mind is roving hither and yon…

Thinking about poetry, a line from the Portland food history book came up that said that the word “Multnomah”, which is the name of the county that I live in, means “roses on water” and relates to the fragrant wild Nootka roses that grew all over the big island where the Willamette and Columbia rivers meet that we go birding on all the time.

I know I have taken many pictures of these wild pink roses but I am not sure this is one of them as the ones in the picture are pretty leggy.

I got curious (one of the hallmarks of healthy aging) because I had never heard that before and it is such a beautiful image so I started looking around and every place said that it means “down river”. Which makes sense as the island and the peoples (there were more than one tribe) were called The Multnomah or Multnomas. And the island is most certainly down river.

They were into tattoos, which is a hoot considering how we all have them here. And forehead flattening, which most of us don’t do.

I went back to the book and then found the source material she was drawing on and it turns out only to be a supposition by a fellow named Mr. Fred Saylor who knew some of the myths and lore of these people and Mr. John Kay Gill quoted him in his Dictionary of Chinook Jargon. Chinook is a more general term for the indigenous “affluent foragers” that lived here.

Yesterday morning I also heard a line in a Planet Money podcast about cultures or tribes that may have lived without money and they mentioned that even in ancient Egypt they found lapis lazuli from Azerbaijan in the tombs, (it was added as eyebrows on the funeral mask of Tutankhamen that many of us have seen).

I realized I didn’t know anything about Azerbaijan so I started looking at that and came across a most fascinating female poet from way back named Khurshibanu Natavan. She was quite lovely and a princess. And she wrote ghazals. Mr. Finch wrote them too for a time. They are a lyric form, often about love and were set to music.

Azerbaijan was once ruled by the Scythians, which come up quite a bit in my Barbarians of the Steppes historical lectures and apparently there was a kind of horse, the Karabakh, that is now almost extinct that was known for its speed, elegance, good temper and intelligence. A pony of the Steppes! My ancestor, in a reincarnate sort of way… :)

I was hoping to fictionally place someone like her near the lapis mines and sneak in a reference to the Caspian Sea but the mines are in the mountains on the eastern side of the country in a place called Dizmar. It is beautiful there, wow, near the Aras River. They have a 500 year old Plane tree.

After I got home I went for a walk and listened to my Greek Mythology survey course and got all wrapped up in the Prometheus story. I don’t think I was aware that he was a Titan, and a friend to mankind. In the Creek tribal mythology it was Rabbit who stole fire from the Weasels and gave it to man.

Which brings us back to the Multnomas. If nothing else gets into a poem, wild roses on water will someday…

My first very intense round of dental procedures, (three teeth out and a bone graft and implant) are scheduled for next Thursday. I was thrilled to find out that my insurance is going to pay half the cost of this set of work. So even though it is a big chunk of change, and it is, it isn’t as much as I thought it would be. And he is working on one side at a time so I will sort of be able to eat within a few days…

The Multnomas did not have ponies. They had canoes. And lots and lots of salmon.

Last updated January 31, 2016