Tag Archives: Community

Turkish Fortune Telling

Informant C is 20 year old and studies Journalism. She is half Turkish and speaks Turkish as well. Her mom is Turkish and is from the Eastern Turkey area, about 200 miles west of Syria. Her entire family is scattered over Turkey and have resided in Turkey for many generations. Many of them are involved in agriculture.

Fortune telling is actually a big deal in Turkey. They do it with Turkish coffee, which is really like fine ground black coffee and its very dark. You get in a little tiny cup and you have a saucer and you flip the cup over onto the saucer and all the little grounds trickle out of the cup and you can read the different things. My mom and my grandmother can do it really well, like everything my grandmother says comes true. She said that I’ll find a tall blonde guy whom I’ll really like, which is true, and then that there’s one class I’ll really like and one that I’ll have to work really hard in. And she said about water she said something you love like the ocean could turn dangerous for you but then it’ll come back and be really good for you. So me and my little brother were surfing over Presidents Day weekend and he actually got caught in a rip current which was kind of scary and luckily he got out but he’s like 14 so he’s pretty little. But then after all that happened we ended up having a really good day surfing and he actually just got his lifeguard certification which is really cool. And I kinda think a lot of it is made up but I don’t know I’m actually starting to believe in it a bit more. And my family really believes in it.

 

Analysis:

Informant C tells here of a traditional Turkish custom and folk belief that her family participates in. The fortune telling is an entertaining way to bring the community together and connect generations all over Turkey, while for many providing an insightful view into the future. H says she may have participated in the fortune telling just to bond with her grandmother and mother, but then she adds that she is starting to believe in it more.  For many, knowledge of the future is valuable, and something like the more chance based way the coffee grounds are running down the cup provide a good medium for this fortune telling.

3 Greek Proverbs

Informant A is a 17-year-old Sophomore at USC studying Biomedical Engineering with an emphasis on Neuroscience. She is ¼ Greek Cypriote, ¼ German and ¼ Argentinian but she strongly identifies with the Greek side of her. She spent 9 years in Greek school and goes to Greece every summer. She speaks Greek with her grandparents.

“So when I was younger my grandparents wanted to stress on me, not only my ancient Greek heritage, but also the important Greek proverbs that everyone learned in school. So one of the big ones you actually hear a lot in English is

En eetha otee uu then ee eetha

which is Socrates when he was pronounced the smartest man in the world. It actually means ‘I know that I know nothing, which is why I’m the smartest man’. He knew that there was so much more that he needed to learn. So that was basically their way of saying ‘Don’t let your head get too big’. Like even though you may know a lot there’s still so much more to explore so don’t treat this world like you’ve done everything it has to offer because there’s always so much more. I learned this when Grandfather sat me down and started talking about the history of Greece and he told me to remember that. You know everyone has an opinion on everything even if they know nothing. This proverb was like a self-reminder for me. A lot of the proverbs my grandparents told me were supposed to be for you internally, they’re something you think of when you’re struggling. Another proverb my grandparents told me is ‘Nothing easy is worth it’. So when I was telling them how hard my Physics class was last semester, they actually told me this. They asked me, ‘Do you think it’s worth it, are you learning a lot? Because that’s what’s meaningful and it’s good you’re working hard. If it were easy you probably wouldn’t actually like it and that you like the challenge.’ I think this proverb was from one of the ancient Greek philosophers like way back when. This last proverb is definitely one you’ve heard in English. But the original Greek is not what the actual translation is in English. The original Greek is

Pan metron ariston

which means “always measure absolutely perfectly” but what you’ve heard in English is “Everything in moderation”, that’s what that was translated from. It says you can have everything you want, but make sure you measure it well. Make sure you understand what’s moderation and what’s excess. A lot of these proverbs they’ve said have been for my physical and mental strength. And a lot of these proverbs have been passed down to the people who lived in Cypress and Greece. When some of these people came to America, some tried to teach the lessons and morals rather than the myths and the proverbs. That may be why there’s this divide between Greek-American culture and traditional Greek culture. Most of my friends and family in Greece though would definitely recognize these proverbs. They actually teach them in the Greek schools. These proverbs really shape the Greek culture and unite us in our values of work hard, be kind to strangers… You don’t see the kind of similarity in values in the US because there are so many different cultures here. I think something is lost when you move away from the land and aren’t surrounded by the people who share the same history and the same values. You’re not in the community anymore.

 

Analysis:

Informant A mentions 3 proverbs here and how they are important to her. She emphasizes how she thinks of them in times when she is struggling and uses them as bits of advice. The Greeks seem to stress learning these proverbs, they actually teach them in their schools, and A explains how they are less emphasized in the US. The Greek people value working hard, self sufficiency, and humbleness, as most of their workforce depends on agriculture which requires hard work and determination.  The informants family also primarily works in agriculture.  She talks about how the US not emphasizing proverbs makes some of the values that these proverbs teach less prominent in US communities because the people are in such a mixed environment.  Generally people in the US want the shortened version and just the lesson rather than the long story, even if this may be less effective at communicating the lesson.

Gloria I

You can talk to G about this, and M.I. and M. So, first or second year of the co-op, so like 2007, 2008, N lived at the co-op and we were at the old house on orchard street back then. And um, there were a lot…well, there were a lot of people sleeping with each other in the house. (laughs) Not like that’s strange or anything, but umm, there was constantly this joke about how given that so many people are sleeping with each other in the house, why don’t we just have an orgy? Since that’s an experience we all seem to want to have. And N coined the name ‘Gloria’ as like the name of the orgy. So in her mind she was thinking like we’re gonna have this orgy and it’s gonna be epic and all these people from the house are gonna be in it and it’s gonna go down in history and we’re going to call it Gloria. So that was like 2008. Now it’s 2012. And there have been two…people refer to them as Gloria I and Gloria II. Neither of them were like what people think of when they think of an orgy- a sexual orgy. Yeah, I wasn’t really part of Gloria II, but Gloria I is alternatively called The Acid Orgy. Um, and yeah, that was the one where like 15 to 20 people ate acid and we ended up in that one room just like lying on top of each other listening to Air… for like twenty hours. We weren’t actually in that room for twenty hours, but we all tripped for a really long time. But yeah, it’s interesting the way people use the word orgy, because usually you think of orgy as like four plus people having sex. And I think what we realized that night – cause we realized it was Gloria I, at the time it was just Gloria – that night, and called it that that night. We realized that instead of four plus people having sex and bonding in a sexual way, it was a whole bunch of people bonding in the way that people bond with each other when they feel comfortable tripping on acid together, which is like it’s own little bonding thing. So that’s why we called it Gloria. (laughs) But yeah, you should ask G about it too.

 

This is a piece of group lore that the members of that group reflect on fondly and I’ve heard variations on the story from numerous people who have told it to people outside of the group. Without intending to, the experience redefined a term that usually has taboo connotations that make people uncomfortable. Instead, it was a deep bonding experience within a community. Also, I shortened names to the first letter or first two letters for the sake of privacy.

 

Fight On!

My informant for this folk term is a student and tour-guide at USC, and told me a bit of history and context of the saying:

“Fight On!”

He tells me that it’s been a term for the University of Southern California ever since the early 1900’s, when USC came back from behind in a football game and the next day a sports writer proclaimed that the USC football team “fought like Trojans” to come back. After that, the saying was commonplace; meaning that no matter whether you are behind, or the odds are stacked against you, fight on until you succeed.

This mantra has caught on heavily here at USC, and has lasted the test of time and is still a vital internal and promotional term for USC. My informant told me that he says it on every school tour that he gives to prospective students and parents, and feels that it is a special thing that sets USC apart from other universities. “It bonds us together as a community. It’s something we all know and is a part of our lives here,” he said.

Now, the term is applicable in many different areas of university-life, including academics, athletics, and social life. “Whenever I’m on my tour, my friends will see me and yell “Fight On Curt!” with their two fingers in the air making the fight on symbol”. Both the symbol and phrase are equally well known, he says. Recently, USC has launched a campaign that reads “Fight On For a Cure”, in reference to finding a cure for women’s breast cancer. My informant said that it was “cool” to see how it has progressed from just being derived from the wording of a sportswriter to such a vital part of the Trojan community. It is one of the first things you learn on your tours and orientations, and it is one of those things that you will remember about your college experience in the future after graduation, he says.

Being a USC student, I had heard that story on my own tour as a prospective student when I was on my tour around campus. I believe that it is a phenomenal symbolic message to the USC community, and that it is an important piece of folklore that not only has a plethora of different applicable meanings, but also joins us all together as the Trojan community.