Wednesday, October 03, 2018

nocturnal arachnid

Not a bad shot of a Korean orb-weaver that I saw on the Tan Creek path last night (lighting comes to us courtesy of a lamppost). October means spider season, so these ladies are all out in force, one per tree, like guardian demonesses:


Feel free to click on the pic to enlarge, then right-click and hit "open image in new tab" to see full-size. The image might be out of focus at maximum magnification, but if you shrink the pic a bit, it'll look better.



2 comments:

  1. Just throwing this out there, but I like the ring of "Coal Creek." "Tan Creek" makes me think of the color....

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  2. Is that the "tan" meaning "coal"? Ah, so desu nae... I wonder how it got that name.

    I'm never quite sure to which audience I'm writing. I'm tempted to refer to the creek as the "Tan-cheon" or the "Tan Cheon" because I know old Korea hands would understand instantly. Writing "Tan Creek" is a bit of a compromise on behalf of non-Korean-speakers; I've translated "cheon" but not "tan." But there's precedent for that: we call it the "Han River," after all, without translating "Han," and I also refer to the Yangjae Creek without translation.

    That said, "Coal Creek" sounds positively Amurrican (like somewhere in Mississippi), not to mention alliterative. I like the sound of it, too, but unless I write a special note for the next few posts, I think people might get confused if I suddenly switch to calling it "Coal Creek."

    I could also go the Chinese route and call it the "T'an Creek," per the Wade-Giles notation for a hard, aspirated "t" sound. You might be less inclined to read it as "light-brown-colored creek" then.

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