My grandmother used to say (frequently) that a day without learning something new is a day wasted. Raised in the foster care system, she left high school during World War II to work as a switchboard operator on Long Island because she was sick of not having enough money for decent clothes. She compensated for her lack of formal education (which she deeply mourned) with an insatiable curiosity. She loved Thomas Jefferson, beating other old people at bridge to pay for her new iPads, and listened to nonfiction audiobooks while keeping up with the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine until she passed away this month at 97. I have known since I was a teenager that I would write about my grandmother. She will be looking down to make sure I actually get it done. In the meantime, from a trip this weekend . .
spume : frothy matter on liquids : FOAM, SCUM
Spume is a word for froth or foam that has been a part of the English lexicon for more than 600 years. An early example is found in a 14th-century quotation from the English poet John Gower: “She set a cauldron on the fire … and let it boil in such a plight, till that she saw the spume [was] white.” “Spume” was borrowed from Anglo-French espume or “spume,” and can be traced further back to Latin spuma. “Spuma” is also akin to Old English “fām,” a word that is the ancestor of the modern English “foam,” a synonym of “spume.” Another relative of “spuma” is “pumex,” the Latin word for pumice, a volcanic rock with a somewhat foamy appearance that is formed from a rapidly cooling, frothy lava.1
There was spume drifting up and down the beach on Friday evening. No trace of it come Saturday morning. Spume transforms the barrier island briefly into a wintery landscape, even at 60º.
pluff : or more specifically, pluff mud : South Carolina Low Country stinky marsh mud. “A unique substance, ranging in texture from a clay-like density to a fluffy chocolate mousse-like consistency, pluff mud is quite literally what the Lowcountry marsh ecosystem is built upon.”2 Also, a delicious porter made by Holy City Brewing in North Charleston. To be clear, spume is way fluffier than pluff mud.
See this article from The Charleston Magazine on the specifics of and the locals’ love of pluff mud at https://charlestonmag.com/features/pluff_mud_0, or read most SC beach novels in which pluff mud features as the true indicator of the protagonist’s low country creds.
mångata (Swedish) : the road-like reflection of the moon in the water.3
And lastly, it appears we are not alone in the universe or at the beach. . .
To my grandmother, Carolyn Langford, who first took me to the South Carolina beaches (and gave me coffee with lots of milk and very sweet wine and made sure I flew on an airplane). You liked to be first. ❤️
💕
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spume ↩︎
- https://www.bluffton.com/pluff-mud-stinky-stuff-lowcountry-marsh/#:~:text=A%20unique%20substance%2C%20ranging%20in,is%20the%20product%20of%20decay. ↩︎
- From Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sangers. Gifted to me by a dear friend who loves words, poetry, and the low country. ↩︎