Some things are simply impossible, or the next thing to it, like nailing jello to the wall.  Cursory research didn’t reveal who originated the simile “like nailing jello,” but it did unearth an online posting from 2005 by Graham Cole titled “Nailing Jelly to a Wall: Is It Possible?”  Cole decided to test it, but he’s British and in his land their jelly is our jello.  His first attempt was wildly successful; it stuck even without nails.  However, unlike our “gelatin dessert usually with the flavor and color of fruit” (Webster’s Dictionary) that comes in powder form, the British version comes in dense, rubbery cubes that can stick to walls.  By using the condensed cubes, his “first attempt being somewhat against the spirit of the proverb,” so Cole mixed a cube with water and made “cold sweet transparent food, made from gelatin, sugar and fruit juice, that shakes when it is moved” (Oxford Dictionaries).  He tested this form in multiple ways – thicker portions, more nails, etc.) and concluded, “Given some jelly mixed according to standard procedures and a vertical wall, it is not possible to nail the former to the latter and have it stay there for any significant amount of time.”        

Another impossibility is trying to nail words down to a particular meaning.  A case in point comes from “The ‘Hard Yakka’ of Defining Australian English’s Many Quirks,” a NYTimes article by Damien Cave.  The Australian National Dictionary (AND) “includes only words and phrases that have originated in Australia, that have a greater currency in the country, or that have a special significance in Australian history” and sifting through Australian literature of all descriptions to find them in hard work, or in Australian, “hard yakka.”  Part of the problem is how the meanings of words wiggle about and morph over time.  In Australia in the 1980s “bogan,” was “an extremely Australian word” that described working-class suburbanites and meant “a boorish or uncouth person … Now it’s become a badge of honor,” like “red-neck” in this country, and “fauxgan,” (fake bogan)  is “the bigger insult, while finding your ‘inner bogan’ [is] an honorable goal.”

Language confusion between Ukrainian and Russian was rife well before the 2014 invasion of Crimea.  They share much of the Cyrillic alphabet, but use a few different letters, and as noted in an optilingo.com article, “Are Russian and Ukrainian Basically the Same Language?,” the “two languages only share about 60 percent of the same vocabulary. In fact, Ukrainian is closer to Belarusian than it is to Russia concerning vocabulary. In other words, there is a greater difference between Russian and Ukrainian in terms of vocabulary than there is between most of the Romance languages.”  Soviet laws had long banned Ukraine’s language and culture, consequently, many Ukrainians speak Russian, but since the Russian invasion of 2022 that’s plummeted.  In fact, now there’s a parade of new pejoratives.  Last year Politico published “An English Language Guide to Ukrainian Slang.”  Russian soldiers are called “orcs” since in “J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ novels, orcs are the vicious foot-soldiers who serve the Dark Lord Sauron in his quest to rule Middle-earth.”  Russians in general are referred to as “rashists, “a portmanteau of ‘Russian,’ ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’,” and “Koloradi.”  This is “slang for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, who at times wear orange-and-black-striped paraphernalia in a nod to the Order of St. George, one of Russia’s highest military honors.”  It’s also the coloring of the invasive Colorado potato beetles.

Considering how words are constantly popping up and changing their meanings, mandating that certain language cannot be used is a mighty slippery slope that the wise avoid since, like mandating books that shouldn’t be read, it’s a sure-fire way to arouse interest in them.  For example, Merriam-Webster says that “sick” has a number of meanings beyond the usual “affected with disease or ill health,” such as “spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt” and “filled with disgust or chagrin,” but it’s also current slang for “outstandingly or amazingly good or impressive.”  So, perhaps it’s wise to not jump on the multitude of acceptable “inclusive language” bandwagons that have recently emerged.  Words can hurt feelings, but they can also mean different things to diverse people, and their meanings are often in flux.

That’s why I prefer a more measured approach to guidance to proper terminology, like the “Associated Press Stylebook for Alaska,” which is an important book to me for several reasons.  It clarifies things like “Alaskan” being a “noun referring to a person who lives in Alaska.  Never an adjective except in a proper name.”  In other words, Alaskans fish on Alaska lakes.  It also notes that “Interior Alaska” is always capitalized, “ugruk” is Inupiaq for bearded seal (“Do not use oogruk”), and under the “Fur Bearers” section that brown bears “are usually found in coastal areas and grizzlies in the Interior.”  According to its introduction, the 1991 Stylebook emerged serendipitously when UAF journalism professor Dean Gotteher happened to sit next to Alaska AP Bureau Chief Dean Fosdick on a flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks.  “Gotteher, who doubled as a copy editor for the Fairbanks News-Miner, bemoaned the lack of consistency among Alaska newspapers and AP writers,” and the two Deans decided to create an Alaska-specific stylebook to get journalists in sync.  But they are careful to point out that “a stylebook is a subjective matter, a series of decisions, often compromises, hammered out by editors with age lines around their eyes caused by numerous phone calls from English teachers complaining about bad grammar in local or wire copy.”

Another impossibility is spending three decades in Alaska without encountering a great many remarkable people.  The other reason the “AP Stylebook for Alaska” is important to me is where I obtained my copy: the Observatory Bookstore in Juneau that was owned and operated by one of those remarkable Alaskans: Dee Longenbaugh.  She passed away at age 84 in 2018, but, my! how her star still shines in my memory!  Not only a bookwoman, historian, journalist, radio personality, absolute fiend for historical maps, and many good works, such as co-founding the first mental health facility in Sitka.  Hers was a kind-hearted, sparkling personality.  Dee’s bookstore focused on Alaskana books and rare maps, but also contained a wide selection of non-Alaskana reading materials and literary fiction, but the great treat of visiting Observatory Books was Dee.  Her wealth of knowledge about our state was only matched by her relentless cheerfulness.  As her Sitka Sentinel obituary noted, “The store and its knowledgeable and friendly owner became known internationally through travel writers and books (it was featured in Fodor’s travel guides for many years).” And after attending 30 different schools while growing, “Dee made friends easily” and “met thousands of people at the shop and may have occasionally forgotten a face, she never forgot a book she sold.” 

Dee and I bonded over a book by John Cochrane, the nephew to Thomas Cochrane, the greatest British frigate captain during the Napoleonic Wars.  John became a captain at the end of that conflict, and, after their victory over the French, the British navy downsized,  and he was “cast ashore on half-pay” before he could gain any naval glory.  He decided to garner fame by walking across Europe and Russia, over the frozen Bering Straights, and then on across North America.  He set out in 1820 and reached St. Petersburg where he obtained a letter of introduction from the Czar that facilitated his travels across Russia by horse, boat, and foot.  He had loads of adventures that he described in clear, uncluttered prose. and he made it to Kamchatka before learning that the Straits weren’t frozen.  However, he met and married the daughter of Admiral Pyotr Rikord, the Kamchatka governor and took her back to Britain.  John published his travel book and in 1925 and took off for South America that same year to walk the length of the Andes mountains but died after a few months of a fever in Columbia.

I thought I’d lost my first edition of John Cochrane’s “A Pedestrian Journey Through Russia and Siberian Tartary to the Frontiers of China, the Frozen Sea,” but Dee knew the book well – it contains Cochrane’s rare, fold-out maps – and held a modern abridgement she’d found until I returned to Juneau.  Commenting on Cochrane’s Russian admiral father-in-law, she mentioned her map-loving Russian admiral pal who pulled strings enabling her to see some rare maps in St. Petersburg.  After all, as her business card says, Dee was a, F.R.G.S., a Friend of the Royal Geographical Society.  She was also the proud possessor of a British National Library reading card, which allowed her to handle rare items.

Dee’s was a generous soul, as is jelly-hammering Graeme Cole, who ended his report with, “This page is copyright 2005 by Graeme Cole. What are you allowed to do with it? Pfft. Anything within the realms of common sense, really. I don’t want to prescribe rigidly what people can and can’t do with it, so I’ve decided on a benchmark. It’s this: you’re allowed to do with this page anything you wouldn’t mind me doing with your cat.”