Punishable by a fine of $1
By Peter DeMarco | August 6, 2006
Bostonians jaywalk about as often as they visit Dunkin' Donuts. Is it any wonder, then, that the word ''jaywalker'' was supposedly coined in Boston?
``The Bostonian . . . has reduced a pedestrian who crosses streets in disregard of traffic signals to the compact `jaywalker,' " reads a 1917 Harper's Magazine article, according to Random House's dictionary division. Back then the word jay was used to describe someone who was unsophisticated, naive , or foolish -- something we still might call a jaywalker today.
But my favorite part of Random House's entry on jaywalking (I found it on their website) is the following line: ``Although jaywalkers have been called aggressive, city officials are equally aggressive against them -- and not only in Boston."
Aggressive enforcement? Now that's funny. When was the last time you heard of anyone getting a ticket for jaywalking? I mean, does the officer ask for your shoe size?
OK, I'll leave the jokes to Random House. But the question remains: Can you get a ticket for jaywalking?
What's the legal definition?
And if a pedestrian disobeys a crosswalk signal or simply dashes across the road, does he -- or you the driver -- have the right of way?
The law says
``Last time I checked, jaywalking was against the law, punishable by a fine," writes reader Morris Norvin of Mission Hill. Well, Morris, you are correct.
Jaywalking is against the law.
And it's punishable by a fine.
Of $1.
Yep. A single dollar.
``To stop a pedestrian -- it's kind of a joke," says Lieutenant Jack Albert, traffic commander for the Cambridge Police Department. ``Do you know what it would cost the community to prosecute that violation? It's like $75 or $80 to prosecute. But there is a law on the books."
The fine is spelled out in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90, Section 18A, which states that communities can punish pedestrians who break local jaywalking rules ``by a fine of one dollar for the first, second or third such offense . . . and by a fine of two dollars for the fourth or subsequent such offense so committed in such calendar year."
Why are the fines so low? Albert couldn't say for sure, but it stands to reason that legislators have been loath to raise the fine lest they spark a voter uprising.
Face it: As hazardous as jaywalking can be, just about everybody does it. According to a 1999 survey by the Boston Public Health Commission (there hasn't been a follow-up survey), only 12 percent of pedestrians obey ``Walk" signals at crosswalks , while a third of pedestrians disregard crosswalks entirely.
State law allows individual communities to decide what is or isn't jaywalking, but most communities follow this simple standard: If you are within 300 feet of a crosswalk, you must use it. If you're not, you can legally cross the street.
The bad news for drivers, of course, is that pedestrians maintain the right of way even when they walk against the light or dash anywhere across an open road.
``Yeah, the pedestrian is at fault," says Sergeant Larry Fitzgerald of the Brookline Police Department, which hasn't issued a jaywalking ticket in years. ``But if you run over the pedestrian, the judge is going to say shame on you. And that person's family is going to be living in your house."
If you as a driver ``don't stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk , it's a $200 fine," says Albert. ``If our officers are sitting there , they'll get the occasional violation. But there are always hundreds of pedestrians walking all over the street. We've just got to shake our heads."
The Public Health Commission launched a citywide campaign to get Boston residents to stop jaywalking after its 1999 survey, and a year later pedestrian traffic injuries reportedly had dropped 11 percent. Though the campaign is long over, officials from the commission's Childhood Injury Prevention Program continue to visit Boston public schools each fall to teach crosswalk safety.
If police can't curb jaywalking, maybe educators can.
``There's other cities I read about in the Northwest, like Seattle, where you have people waiting to go across the crosswalk," says Erin Christiansen, prevention program director. ``I don't think anyone has the key as to why we got started on our bad habits in Boston."
What drives you crazy about local drivers? Is there a traffic rule you've always wondered about, or a pet peeve that never fails to annoy you? Send us a message about it: ciweek@globe.com. We'll check it out.
Breaking News! Brad Pitt Is Familiar With The Transitory Nature Of Life!
People's got the scoopSome late nights you'll find yourself tossing and turning, unable to quiet that low, nagging voice that is always whining in some corner of your brain. During the day it's easy enough to drown out with other, more immediate thoughts, and most nights you can ignore it long enough to fall asleep. But some restless nights, the voice is just unrelenting—digging into your thought processes like a knuckle pressing directly into your brain tissue, until you can't take any more. You throw the sheets off, get out of bed, walk over to the open window and shout out the question that the voice in your head endlessly asks: "Is Brad Pitt aware of his own mortality?"You wait for an answer, but especially considering that there are much more efficient means of both inquiry and communication besides shouting out of windows in the middle of the night, there isn't one. You return to bed, question unanswered, inner voice unquieted, and consider maybe next time googling it or something.But now, at last, People has given you relief. They have found the answer to your question:You can finally sleep tonight!Personally, I would have gone with "Brad Pitt Has Heard Of This Thing Called 'Death'" or "Brad Pitt Knows That He Is Mortal" or "Brad Pitt Knows That His Childhood Dog, Snappy, Wasn't Given Away To A Nice Family With A Big Backyard For Him To Run Around In." Or I would have eschewed the entire "time is fleeting" thing and gone with Huffington Post's headline about the same interview:
Always lead with grotto sex (ALWGS). It's the first rule of journalism.
Brad Pitt: I'm Aware That 'Time Is Fleeting'
By Stephen M. Silverman
Originally posted Wednesday August 05, 2009 03:45 PM EDT
Brad Pitt
Photo by: Michael Muller / PARADE
Even though he's only 45, Brad Pitt is starting to feel his own mortality.
"As I've gotten older I've become aware that time is fleeting," the leading man tells Parade.com. "I don't want to waste whatever I have left. I want to spend it with the people I love, and I want to do things that really mean something."
And while he happily acknowledges that he enjoys being a family man with Angelina Jolie, Pitt views the relationship as follows: "I have love in my life, a soul mate – absolutely." As for marriage, he sticks by a response he gave some time ago: "Maybe we'll get married when it's legal for everyone else."
That stance, he says, has not proved popular in all quarters. "I took a lot of flak for saying it – hate mail from religious groups," Pitt says. "Just the other night, I heard this TV reverend say that Angie and I were setting a bad example because we were living out of wedlock, and people should not be duped by us! It made me laugh. What damn right does anyone have to tell someone else how to live if they're not hurting anyone?"
In his mind, "I believe everyone should have the same rights. They say gay marriage ruins families and hurts kids. Well, I've had the privilege of seeing my gay friends being parents and watching their kids grow up in a loving environment."
As for his own kids, they "are a dominant value in my life now, and they weren't before. They were always something I thought I'd get around to having when the time was right … In a way, I think I had to go and exhaust me before I could be good at being a parent."
Dog Days
Definition: These are the hottest and most unhealthy days of the year. Also known as Canicular Days, the name derives from the Dog Star, Sirius. The traditional timing of Dog Days is the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the heliacal (at sunrise) rising of Sirius.
And here's the song:
"This too shall pass" (Hebrew: גם זה יעבור, gam zeh yaavor) is a phrase occurring in a Jewish wisdom folktale involving King Solomon. The phrase is commonly engraved on silver rings.Many versions of the folktale have been recorded by the Israel Folklore Archive at the University of Haifa. Heda Jason recorded this version told by David Franko from Turkey:
“ One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah Ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find it." "If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty," replied Benaiah, "I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?" "It has magic powers," answered the king. "If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy." Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility. Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?" asked Benaiah. He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile. That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. "Well, my friend," said Solomon, "have you found what I sent you after?" All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled. To everyone's surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, "Here it is, your majesty!" As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: gimel, zayin, yud, which began the words "Gam zeh ya'avor" -- "This too shall pass." At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing but dust. ” The phrase "This too shall pass" and the associated ring story were made popular by Abraham Lincoln in his 'Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin' on September 30, 1859:
“ It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
Best Songwriter: Conor Oberst
From Rolling Stone's Best of Rock 2008
Posted May 01, 2008 11:00 AM
Finishing a song is still my singular favorite feeling in the world," Conor Oberst says, "more than records or shows. The creation of a song is what drives me."Such passion shows throughout Oberst's songbook, which he began creating as a frail, spectral thirteen-year-old in Omaha, Nebraska. Visceral documents of self-unraveling like "Padraic My Prince," "We Are Nowhere and It's Now" and "Lover I Don't Have to Love" — the last featuring lyrics like "Love's an excuse to get hurt/And to hurt" — deliver an emotional wallop in part because they seem at once offhand and unbearably intense. In Oberst's vision, death, loneliness and social decay are themes at the heart of every day; he doesn't need to look far to find them — or to channel them. "Everything has been done by intuition and happenstance," he explains. "I still have no idea what I'm doing, or why I'm doing it. It just kind of keeps happening. For me, at this point, it's about accepting it all, letting it all go and moving forward."
As rendered by Bright Eyes, the name under which he records both solo and with a band of ever-shifting personnel, Oberst captures the sound of things falling apart — whether it's a love affair ("Lua"), the life of an itinerant musician ("Soul Singer in a Session Band") or the country at large ("Four Winds"). Sonically, he ranges far as well. On albums such as Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002), I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005) and last year's Cassadaga, he fashions a jittery, open-ended folk rock that admits strings, horns, electronica, country music and found sounds, all in the interest of immediacy and surprise. The free-for-all arrangements often communicate a giddy sense of hope, however dark the topic at hand might be.
"At one point, I lost interest in writing about personal things," Oberst says. "You can only write so many songs about feeling lost, which is the way I feel most of the time. But I don't think there's a very deep line in the sand between writing about myself and writing about other people." In "Bowl of Oranges," on Lifted,, he tosses off a lovely metaphor: "But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall/Then I think we would see the beauty." But he can also be fiercely direct, as in "When the President Talks to God," a song about President Bush's confusion of divine will and his own stubbornness. "Does he ever smell his own bullshit/When the president talks to God?" the song asks, before concluding, "I doubt it."
The quality and breadth of Oberst's songwriting have provoked comparisons to Bob Dylan — an IED of a compliment that exploded the careers of many promising artists before him. Oberst is flattered but not fazed. Now twenty-eight, he pauses for a full ten seconds when asked how his songwriting has changed since adolescence. "It's strange how similar it is," he says with a laugh. "It's still mysterious to me."
I was trying for quite a while to find a song about summer but not surprisingly almost everything I found was "oh isn't summer so great and amazing" or "oh no summer's about to end" but I did find two songs that I find are fittingly less than cheerful about things that may accompany consistently uncomfortable temperatures.
Reflections: Why I hate summer
by Mary Weir
I hate summer. I make no apologies for that, but over the years it has become clear that not only am I in the minority, but folks who embrace scorching temperatures accompanied by breathtaking humidity actually view me as some sort of enemy. It's as if they believe my adversity to heat will rob them of the summer season sooner than it would otherwise normally disappear.Let me take this time to reassure you sun worshippers that for me, summer is an unwelcome guest that has no intention of leaving until it is darn good and ready, despite my complaints and visible discomfort in its presence. In fact, the more I object, the more it seems to intensify my discomfort by inspiring the mercury to climb to heights that would make a trapeze artist dizzy.It is simply a matter of preference, really. I have friends I visit in the south who shudder when they ask how I can tolerate winters in Michigan. Absentmindedly, because I am more focused on detaching my sweat-soaked clothing from parts of my body screaming for air, I answer their question with a question of my own. I want to know how they can tolerate the mind numbing heat and humidity of their region. Their answer is the same as mine, that it's something to which they've become accustomed, so they don't really think about it. It's not that I embrace winter and dance around every snowflake that falls. However, I find that layering clothing to keep out the cold is easier than stripping down to what is barely publicly acceptable and still being hot enough to want to inhale Freon.I don't begrudge anyone their love of summer. I have wonderful memories of it myself from when I was a child, and I confess to enjoying a little less structure when my kids are out of school. There are many resources available for my relief, not the least of which is the pool at my neighbor's house across the street. I have been known, however, to forego the refreshing swim in favor of being planted right inside my air conditioned abode, thereby avoiding that uncomfortable few moments in the sun to get to the pool in the first place.As silly as this all seems, there are methods to my madness. First of all, I'm a pale Irish girl who burns easily, and I have given birth to at least one child who has that same talent. Sunscreen is expensive. Mosquito repellant, the kind that actually works, is also expensive. So not only am I avoiding the risk of skin cancer and West Nile Virus, I am relieving myself of the extra expense of products that cannot guarantee preventing either disease.Then there are the bugs that emerge from their long hibernation in the crevices of my home to terrorize my children and me indoors. Trying to fall asleep to the hum of a yellow jacket in your room is quite the experience. Now whether or not yellow jackets actually hibernate or just become reborn in the warm temperatures to wriggle through the cracks of my safe haven is still not something I know for sure. I just know that summer brings them and all their little bee friends buzzing right into my comfort zone, and I don't like that. The carpenter ants definitely resent sharing their space, that's for sure. Those guys love to hang out in my bathroom, watching me do my hair and hoping I don't go after them with the hairspray again.It would be easy to wonder at this point if there is anything at all I appreciate about the warm weather seasons. Of course there is. The trees and flowers in bloom are beautiful, even through the haze of my allergy medication I take to combat the pollen count. On days when it isn't too hot to breathe, I like to eat outdoors on the deck with my family. Then we all go inside and pick the ants out of our teeth. Seasonal traditions are wonderful.For the most part, however, summer is something to be endured, tolerated to the best of my ability and accepted as something I cannot change. I simply do what I can to get through each scorching day as I embrace visions of autumn leaves dancing in my head. Fear not, however. Now that I've shared this little commentary, I have no doubt I'll be wearing a tank top to Thanksgiving dinner.
Biography by Mark Deming
Metric are a band who have embraced an eclectic and adventurous outlook -- the group's music encompasses elements of synth pop, new wave, dance rock, and electronic, while the group has collectively been based in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, and London over the course of their existence. Metric's story began when vocalist and keyboard player Emily Haines met guitarist James Shaw in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Haines, the daughter Paul Haines (a poet who has collaborated with jazz artist Carla Bley), was born in New Delhi in 1974 but moved to Toronto with her family when she was three. While studying at the Etobicoke School of the Arts, a high school for aspiring artists in Toronto, Haines formed her first band with fellow student Amy Millan. Haines and Millan would go on to form a group called Stars, which also included Torquil Campbell and Chris Seligman. Through Campbell, Haines was introduced to British-born and Canadian-raised Shaw in 1998, not long after he had relocated to Toronto following three years of study at the Julliard School of Music in New York City. Haines and Shaw discovered they were musically simpatico and began writing songs together. During a sojourn in Montreal, Haines and Shaw began recording demos of their new material that would become Metric's debut EP, Mainstream, released in 1998. Later that same year, Haines and Shaw relocated to Brooklyn, New York, and after cutting more demos using synths and a drum machine, they were scouted by representatives of a major music publisher who flew them to London to work with producer Stephen Hague. Haines and Shaw combined the London-recorded tracks with material they cut in Brooklyn, and the results formed Metric's first album, Grow Up and Blow Away. In 2000, Metric signed a deal with Restless Records, but shortly before the album was scheduled for release in 2001, Restless was bought out by Rykodisc, and under the new ownership the Metric album went onto the back burner. Around this time, Haines and Shaw met drummer Joules Scott-Key, who was born in Michigan but had relocated to Brooklyn after studying at a music school in Texas; Scott-Key was soon invited to join Metric, and before long his friend Joshua Winstead, who attended the same school in Texas, came aboard as bassist. Metric had moved to Los Angeles while trying to sort out their deal with Restless, with Haines and Shaw returning to Toronto for a spell to work with their old friends Amy Millan and Kevin Drew in the group Broken Social Scene, and once they began working with the new rhythm section, Metric decided the pop-oriented electronic sound of Grow Up and Blow Away was no longer representative of their music. Metric parted ways with Restless and took the masters for Grow Up with them; in the fall of 2003, the Canadian independent label Everloving Records released Metric's second "debut" album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?. The album (later picked up by Last Gang Records) was a major critical and commercial success, especially in Canada, and in 2005 Metric issued Live It Out, another success which was followed by a lengthy international tour. Metric took a hiatus after touring behind Live It Out. Haines went on an extended vacation in Argentina and made guest appearances on albums by the Stills and Jason Collett in addition to releasing two records with her solo project Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton. Scott-Key and Winstead moved to Oakland, CA and formed the band Bang Lime. Shaw headed back to Toronto and opened a recording facility, Giant Studio. A revised edition of Grow Up and Blow Away received a belated release in 2007. In 2008, after Haines decided she'd had enough of the downbeat music she'd composed with the Soft Skeleton, Metric regrouped in Toronto and began work on their next album; Fantasies was scheduled for international release in April 2009.
Lonesome for no one when
The room was empty and
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
All we do is talk, sit, switch screens
As the homeland plans enemies
All we do is talk, static split screens
As the homeland plans enemies
Invasion's so succexy
Let's drink to the military
The glass is empty
Faces to fill and cars to feed
Nothing could beat complete denial
All we do is talk, sit, switch screens
As the homeland plans enemies
All we do is talk, static split screens
As the homeland plans enemies
Invasion's so succexy
Passive attraction, programmed reaction
Passive attraction, programmed reaction
Action distraction, more information
Flesh saturation, lips on a napkin
Ass ass ass
Where does the time go?
We're waking up so slowly
Days are horizontal lately
Out of body, watched from above
Out of body, watched from above
Passive attraction, programmed reaction
More information, cash masturbation
Follow the pattern- the hemlines, the headlines
Action distraction, faster than fashion
Faster than fashion, faster than fashion
Lonesome for no one when
The room was empty and
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat denial
Tonight On Lanarama: Bunny Hug?
Posted by Lana Gay on Mar 19, 2008
24 comments | » Post a Comment
Since Easter is quickly approaching I thought, "You know, I really need to go hug the most giant rabbit in the universe, while wearing a Cosby sweater."
On Lanarama I take pride in knowing I promote deep and political conversation. Past profound topics include "Which greasy spoon is the best in Canada?" and "What is your favourite song that incorporates animals?", well tonight on Lanarama, another in-depth discussion incorporating an infamous Canadian debate:
Is a hooded sweatshirt a "Hoodie" or a "Bunny Hug"?
I don't know where this Bunny Hug fiasco began, but according to R3 host, Amanda Putz, it began in Saskatchewan. R3 Graphics superstar, Ahmed, added that his girlfriend, Deanna, thinks that "calling a hooded sweatshirt a hoodie is a ridiculous affectation." Might I also add she is from Saskatoon, and apparently has street cred.
In addition to Saskatewanians, my friend from Winnipeg has been known to use both terms. I, on the other hand, think that calling it a bunny hug may lead children to think hugging a rabbit is a smart idea. It is not, as I learned in 1988 at Colasanti's Petting Zoo. I almost lost my left eye to a rabbit's claw of fate. Bunny's aren't noisy for a reason, they are secretly plotting their revenge against your retinas.
What is your verdict? Let the bunny hug versus hoodie battle begin!
Where did the origin of Bunny Hug come from? Do you think it dates back to the fur trade? (According to Wikipedia, it's a dance move)
To help us out Carbon Dating Service will attempt to provide the answers with Canadian Dictionary: Bunny Hug. As well, songs from The Local Rabbits, Handsome Furs and the Phonemes "Easter Suit".
It is a definite conversation piece and has gained popularity with being recently seen on "facebook". The front of the bunnyhug quotes and footnotes the Oxford Canadian Dictionary's definition of the "bunnyhug" and on the Left sleeve the title "University of Saskatchewan" appears in white screen print. The men's and women's bunnyhug has a front hand pouch and a shoelace drawstring from the hood. The navy bunnyhug is a fitted female hooded sweatshirt. *(When ordering the ladies' XXLarge you will be shipped the equivalent sizing, a men's medium). It is 80% cotton and 20% polyester. Machine wash in cold water, do not bleach, do not dry clean, tumble dry on low, wash with dark colors, cool iron if required.From other commentary it seems that Saskatchewanians are proud of their mysterious, homegrown, linguistic oddity.
...
This product currently CANNOT be shipped to the following locations: United States of America
Bunny hugs fit province perfectly
Unique moniker for hooded sweatshirt may be Sask.-only term
Janet French
The StarPhoenix
Monday, April 16, 2007
CREDIT: Gord Waldner, The StarPhoenix
Tyler Cottenie, a U of S linguistics student, says using the term bunny hug when referring to a hooded sweatshirt appears to be a uniquely Saskatchewan practice
It shares its name with a dance move from 1912, and was once also called a "cotton popover" and a "kangaroo sweatshirt."
What the majority of the English-speaking world refers to as the hooded sweatshirt, or hoodie, is known in Saskatchewan as the bunny hug. Now, a University of Saskatchewan student has decided to find out where this puzzling term comes from.
Tyler Cottenie, a 21-year-old linguistics major originally from Yorkton, only recently learned his beloved bunny hug was a Saskatchewan-only phenomenon.
He can still remember the first time he heard the term -- at age six, when his mother asked if he'd like to order a bunny hug from a catalogue of apparel his school was selling.
"I remember thinking, 'What is that?' Then she told me, and I thought, 'Bunny hug, man, that really doesn't make any sense at all,' " Cottenie said.
When an opportunity arose this year to research the origin of a word for his History of English Language class, he hopped right on bunny hug.
What he found is that, along with a sprinkling of western Manitobans, bunny hug is recognized and used in lieu of hoodie across much of Saskatchewan, especially by people in their 40s.
But watch out -- the term bunny hug could one day be an endangered species, especially in Moose Jaw and southwestern Saskatchewan.
"With younger people, like high school age, it seems to be losing ground all over the place," Cottenie said.
He surveyed about 50 people across Saskatchewan and outside its borders in Alberta, North Dakota and Manitoba, asking if they knew the word, if they used the word and where their parents came from.
From Estevan to Pierceland, the bunny hug was common currency.
Bunny hug wasn't able to burrow under borders to the west or south, though. One survey respondent from Lloydminster reported people on the Alberta side of the border city say hoodie, while their Saskatchewan neighbours stick with bunny hug. A couple of North Dakota students had never heard the term before.
Then Cottenie turned to the repositories of Canadian fashion history -- dog-eared Eaton's and Sears catalogues from decades ago.
The hooded sweatshirt first surfaced in the 1959-60 fall and winter Eaton's catalogue as a children's fleece-lined hooded sweater, but without a distinctive front pouch, according to Cottenie. The pouch appeared in the following year's catalogue and, by 1964, the sweatshirts were sold for men, girls and boys. A similar garment didn't appear in the Sears catalogue until 1976.
Scanning old U of S and Saskatoon high school yearbooks, Cottenie found no one was wearing bunny hugs to school until the early 1970s.
Where the term bunny hug came from is still open to interpretation, Cottenie said.
The Bunny Hug is also a sultry dance move that originated in the early 1900s.
"It was basically the two dancers grinding together," Cottenie said. "I don't know how that could have a link with this sweatshirt."
It's more likely the shirt's name has a link to the Bunny Hop dance -- a 1950s craze in which people formed a chain by wrapping their arms around the waist of the person in front of them.
"That pouch pocket is right where the other person's hands are, so that seems a little more likely there's a connection there," Cottenie said.
His research shows people called the sweaters bunny hugs as early as the 1960s, and the phrase seems to have originated in the Prince Albert-Melfort and Yorkton areas, he said.
Other theories on the origin of the term include the resemblance of the points of the bunny hug hood to bunny ears, and that the warm, fleecy lining feels soft like a bunny and wraps around you like a hug, according to Cottenie's research.
By the 1970s, bunny hug had populated the whole province.
"It's weird that it spread through the entire province so quickly," Cottenie said. "It's almost like it had to be in a catalogue or something that had a lot of currency in the province."
Also compelling is how some Saskatchewan people have embraced the term bunny hug as part of their identity, sparking exchanges of barbs between Saskatchewanians and Albertans, he said.
"It seems like some Albertan people, younger people, when they hear the word . . . they know that it's a Saskatchewanism, and once they find out, they really don't like it," Cottenie said. "I never found that same hostility with Manitobans."
Cottenie said he hopes the bunny hug is here to stay.
"We don't have a lot of things that set us apart in Saskatchewan, really, even from the other Western provinces," he said. "I think it's good to hold on to these things."
He plans to pin down a more precise origin of bunny hug, and is asking people to help by filling out his survey at www.geocities.com/tylercottenie.
jfrench@sp.canwest.com
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007
Thank you for your interest in my research on the origin and spread of the word "bunny hug".
This word (although it is spelt with a space it is in fact a single compound word) first piqued my interest sometime in 2005, when I first heard that it was only used in Saskatchewan. How could this be possible? Was it used anywhere outside the province, in neighbouring Manitoba or Alberta? Was it used everywhere in Saskatchewan or only in parts? Surely its spread would not fit in the perfect rectangle delineated by our borders; or could it? This question is what prompted my initial investigation.
I first did a Google search for all references to the article of clothing (not the dance). Most of them were quite obviously from Saskatchewan sites - from schools, Corner Gas, etc. There were a few exceptions though, and I e-mailed these people to ask them where they had learnt this word. All of them reported having learnt it from a Saskatchewan resident. For example, one person was in L.A. but had gone to school in B.C. and lived with a Saskatchewanian roommate. It was hard to believe, but it seemed upon first glance that it might really be a true Saskatchewanism.
Fast forward to the 2006/7 school year. In my History of the English Language class, ENG390, I had the opportunity to do a "word study" paper. Immediately I remembered my peculiar initial findings about "bunny hug" and I realized that this was my chance to do some more serious research.
My research involved yearbooks, newspapers and catalogues from the '50s to the '70s and consulting with people knowledgeable in the history of fashion and the hooded sweatshirt, but most heavily relied on questionnaires. These questionnaires use people's living memory to ascertain where the word is used now, where it is not, and where in Saskatchewan it seems to have been around the longest, i.e. where it may have originated. It also asks for any ideas as to why it has this name. This latter question is still unanswered.
While the paper is handed in, the research is far from over. I would like to add to my several dozen survey responses. If you are interested, I would appreciate any responses to this questionnaire. This applies to all people, of all ages, wherever you are from, wherever you live now, whether you use/understand the term "bunny hug" or not. The more responses, the more complete the picture!
UPDATE: The question of why it has this name is still unanswered. The research on where it originated has turned up interesting leads. Several people have informed me that they used the word when they were young (in the '60s) in Eastern Canada. This makes me think the word might have appeared in a national publication of some kind - a national newspaper, a national catalogue, or even on CBC radio. I would like to obtain survey responses from Easterners in their late 40s and older, and I would like to do more research in archived catalogues. I searched the Sears and Eaton's catalogues from 1958 onward but found nothing. Perhaps I missed it, or perhaps it's in some other publication. In any case, the research is suspended for now as I'm living in Taiwan and have no access to such things.
Here now is the questionnaire. I left a lot white space just in case, but don't worry - it's short and simple. Thanks for your help!
