In the Tlingit & Haida cultures, there are many stories involving the kushtaka (also spelled kooshdakhaa, kushtahkah, and kooshdaa kaa, and stressed on the final syllable), a being associated with the land otter. The name shows up in several place names in Alaska, including Kushtaka Lake, Kushtaka Mountain, Kushtaka Ridge, Kushtaka Glacier. For more about traditions involving the kushtaka, see these works edited by Sergei Kan: Symbolic Immortality: The Tlingit Potlatch of the Nineteenth Century (Bookshop|Amazon) and Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Kooshdakhaa: The Land Otter Man”
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I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
You know how if you’re in a supermarket and you’re looking in the meat case, you’ll often see what looks like fake grass or green fringe tucked between the steaks and the chops?
Yes, and I always think to myself, you’re not fooling anyone. That’s not real.
But yeah, it’s got a zigzag pattern on it, right? And a vertical line’s in parallel.
Yeah, yeah, or a grid sort of.
A grid.
Yeah, and it sort of looks like, you know, fringy or, you know, like banking grass.
Like thinking shears have been taken to some green plastic.
Perfect, yes, yes.
Well, there is a name for those green strips, and they’re not just there for decoration.
The story goes that in the 1950s, a grocery store chain had a problem, and under their bright lights, those cuts of meat looked washed out and pale.
So the company brought in a color consultant who suggested that they paint the back of their meat case green.
And that’s because green and red are complementary colors, so when they’re next to each other, the color of the meat pops visually and looks fresher.
And sure enough, it worked.
And actually, for the same reason, butchers have been garnishing with parsley for years.
And in supermarkets today, the parsley has been replaced by these artificial parsley runners.
That’s what they’re called.
Parsley runners.
That sounds like somebody’s like stage name or like drag name, parsley runner.
Right.
Or their club that goes jogging on Saturdays.
Yeah, exactly.
And I learned about the work of that color consultant from a new book about the history of how dictionaries have come to define colors.
The book is called True Color and is by a dictionary editor whom we both know, Corey Stamper.
Yeah, Corey’s been a lexicographer that is a maker of dictionaries for decades, and she comes to the subject with a lot of wit and charm.
But she also gets down deep into the details of just how these magical books called dictionaries are put together.
Yeah, and I want to talk about that later on in the show.
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