Diaspora

Diaspora (pronounced dahy-as-per-uh or dee-as-per-uh)

(1) The scattering of the Jews among the Gentiles living beyond Palestine after the sixth century BC Babylonian captivity and the later Roman conquests of Palestine (the historic origin; usually capitalized).

(2) The body of Jews living in countries outside Israel.

(3) In the New Testament, the those Christians living outside Palestine

(4) Any group which involuntarily has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland.

(5) Any group migration or from a country or region.

(6) Any religious group living as a minority among people of the prevailing religion (not a definition accepted by all).

(7) By extension, the spread or dissemination of something originally confined to a local, homogeneous group (language, cuisine, an economic system etc).

(8) A collective of niche social media communities, run under the auspices of diasporafoundation.org.

1690-1700: From the Ancient Greek διασπορά (diasporá) (scattering; dispersion), from διασπείρω (diaspeírō) (I spread about; I scatter), derived from διά (diá) (between, through, across) + σπείρω (speírō) (I sow), the modern construct being diaspeirein (dia + speirein) (to scatter about, disperse) and διασπορά (diaspora) was thus understood as “a scattering".  Diaspora & diasporite are nouns, diasporan & diasporal are nouns & adjectives, diasporic is an adjective; the noun plural is diasporae, diasporai or diasporas.

The word diaspora must be lexicographically sexy because it has over many years attracted much interest from historians and etymologists, the conclusion of many that there may be “missing links” (ie, lost texts), this accounting for the murkiness of the transition from the verb of Antiquity to the idea of “diaspora” as it came to be understood.  There is confusion over the exact process of derivation from these old verbs to the contemporary concept(s) and although the Athenian historian and general Thucydides (circa 460–circa 400 BC) was for a long time cited as the first to use the word, this later was found to be a medieval misunderstanding (something not unusual) of his use of the verb σπείρω (speíro) (to sow).  The Greek word does appear in the Septuagint (the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew):

ἔσῃ ἐν διασπορᾷ ἐν πάσαις ταῖς βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς, esē en diaspora en pasais tais basileiais tēs gēs ("thou shalt be a dispersion in all kingdoms of the earth"). (Deuteronomy 28:25).  The word in the Hebrew was galuth (exile) although the translation in the King James edition of the Bible (KJV 1611) read: “The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth”.

οἰκοδομῶν Ἰερουσαλὴμ ὁ Kύριος καὶ τὰς διασπορὰς τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ ἐπισυνάξει, oikodomōn Ierousalēm ho Kyrios kai tas diasporas tou Israēl episynaxē ("The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel"). (Psalms 147.2)

When the Bible was translated into Greek, the word was used of (1) the Kingdom of Samaria, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians between 740-722 BC, (2) Jews, Benjaminites and Levites exiled from the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians (587 BC) and (3) Jews exiled by the empire from Roman Judea (72 AD).  From that use can be traced the development of the word to its modern form when it can be used not only of populations of one land living in another but linguistic novelties such the “diasporic capitalism” which found it’s natural home under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and “diasporic cuisine” (such as the ubiquitous sushi which has colonized takeaway outlets east & west).  In the English-speaking world, the convention is that when capitalized, Diaspora refers specifically to the Jews (no longer does there seem to be a faction which insists it can be only of the event in 72 AD) while the word is un-capitalized for all other purposes.  Even then, controversy remains.  Because of the origins in which exile and expulsion were central to the experience, it is by some held that properly to be thought a diasporic, one must have been forced from one’s homeland but that seems now a minority position, someone in self-imposed exile, an economic migrant or a “mail order” bride all able to be included.  The foreign element does though remain essential; a refugee can be part of a diaspora whereas an IDP (internally displaced person) cannot, even if geographically, religiously or ethnically segregated, if in their homeland, they remain (an unfortunate) part of that community.  The first known instance of “diaspora” in an English text is thought to appear in 1594 in John Stockwood's (circa 1545-1610) translation of Commentarius in XII prophetas minores (Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets (1594)) by French theologian. Lambert Daneau Lambert Daneau (circa 1530-1595): “This scattering abrode of the Iewes, as it were an heauenly sowing, fell out after their returne from the captiuitie of Babylon. Wherevpon both Acts. 2. and also 1. Pet. 1. and 1. Iam. ver. 1. [sic] they are called Diaspora, that is, a scattering or sowing abrode.”  The word was used in 1825 in reference to Moravian protestants and in 1869 in reference to the dispersion of the Jews although in English, the word earlier used to convey the concept was the late fourteenth century Latinate dispersion.

Google Ngram for diaspora.  Google’s Ngrams are not wholly reliable as a record in the trend-line of a word’s use because (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI might improve).  Despite that, the trend of disapora’s increasing use in the post-war years seems solid.  In the nineteenth and into the twentieth century the word was used in theological and academic writing and there doesn’t appear to have been a great volume of argument about whether it exclusively should be of Jews and nor was that aspect of the history controversial in the post-war years when use of the word spiked, a product presumably of (1) the vast increase in migration from European nations, both within the area and to countries beyond and (2) the rapid expansion of the university sector in the West, a new cohort of academics suddenly available (and anxious) to study these populations and the effects, both on their homelands and the places in which they became resident.

The classical etymology and the idea of something leaving its original site and travelling to other places meant “diaspora” appealed to scientists coining technical terms.   In geology, the noun diaspore describes a natural hydrate of aluminium (also as diasporite, tanatarite, empholite or kayserite) which in addition to its other properties is famed for its stalactites and in crystal form, it exists as a gemstone.  Diaspore is a major component in the ore bauxite which is smelted into aluminium and the name was chosen to suggest “scatter”, an allusion to its decrepitation when heated.  In petrology (the study of certain rocks and their transformative processes), the related noun diasporite refers to the metamorphic rock containing diaspore.  In botany, diaspore is used to refer to seeds and fruit which operate in unison as a dispersal unit.

A very modern diasporic: Living in the United Arab Emirates, island designer Lindsay Lohan (pictured here in an empire line dress), is part of the western diaspora in Dubai.

A diasporite is a member of a diaspora (although the adjective diasporic has been used as a (non-standard) noun, the usual plural in English being diasporas, the alternatives diasporae & diasporai.  It’s certainly a loaded word, something perhaps based in the idea of exile in some form, a particular form of migration, displacement, scattering, exodus or dispersal although one also associated with the “escape” of the refugee.  In use, the connotation seems to be different from “expatriate” (often clipped to “expat”), another example of someone living in a foreign land and it’s hard to escape the impression the modern “diaspora” has become a Western construct and one which applies (almost) exclusively to religious, cultural or ethnic minorities and although diasporites increasingly are where they are by choice rather than an act of expulsion, the distinction remains and sometimes there are ethnic-specific adaptations such as Afrodiaspora (those of African extraction (and not necessarily birth)) living in other places.

Although the irregular immigration northward from South & Central America is trending up, the Indian diaspora remains the largest. 

By implication too, a disapora, sharing a common origin, culture or ethnicity tends to be thought a group which maintains a strong connection to the “homeland”, its culture and heritage. They may engage in cultural, social, or economic activities that tie them back to their original community.  By contrast, an expat seems almost always to be white and in some well-paid job, there perhaps for the long-term but probably still temporarily; the British lawyers and accountants in Hong Kong before the handover (1997) were “expats” whereas the workers from the Philippines employed as domestic help were a “diaspora”.  It’s a distinction which would have seemed both understandable and unremarkable under the Raj and it's hard to see its origin as based in anything but racialism.

Ashplant

Ashplant (pronounced ash-plahnt (U) or ash-plant (non-U))

(1) A walking stick made from an ash sapling (mostly Irish)

(2) An ash sapling.

(3) A stick kept for administering corporal punishment, a cane.

(4) The construct was ash +‎ plant

Ash was from the pre-900 Middle English asshe, from the Old English æsc.  It was cognate with the Frisian esk, the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch asch, the Old Saxon & Old High German asc (the German Esche, with an altered vowel from the adjective derivative eschen (the Middle High German eschîn) and the Old Norse askr (akin to the Latin ornus, the Welsh onnen, the Russian yáseń, the Polish jesion, the Czech jasan, the Lithuanian úosis, the Armenian hatshi, the Albanian ah (beech), from the unattested primitive Indo-European ōs & os (ash (tree).  The rare plural axen was from the Middle English axen & axnen, from the Old English axan & asċan (ashes) (the plural of the Old English axe & æsċe (ash)).  Ash in the sense of (residue after burning; remains) was from the circa 950 Middle English aisshe & asshe, from the Old English asce& æsċe, from the Proto-West Germanic askā, from the Proto-Germanic askǭ (related to the Frisian esk, the West Frisian jiske, the Dutch asch & as, the Old Norse & Old High German aska (source of the modern German Asche), the Low German Asch, the Danish aske, the Swedish aska and the Norwegian ask), from the primitive Indo-European hehs.  The Gothic azgo, although apparently from the unattested Germanic askōn-, remain mysterious.  The European forms were akin to the Latin ārēre (to be dry) (related to the modern “arid”) & āra (altar), the Oscan aasaí (on the altar), the Tocharian ās- (to get dry; to dry out), the Sanskrit ā́sa- (ashes), the Hittite hassi (on the hearth), from the unattested primitive Indo-European root as- (to burn, glow).  Plant was from the Middle English plante, from the Old English plante (young tree or shrub, herb newly planted), from the Latin planta (sprout, shoot, cutting).  The extended sense of "vegetable life, vegetation " was from the Old French plante.  Plant was a doublet of clan, borrowed from Celtic languages.  The verb was from the Middle English planten, from the Old English plantian (to plant), from the Latin plantāre (later influenced by the Old French planter).  It was related to the Dutch planten (to plant), the German pflanzen (to plant), the Swedish plantera (to plant) and the Icelandic planta (to plant).

An Irish ashplant.

Except in Ireland and within the Irish diaspora, ashplant is an unfamiliar word and rarely heard except among the Joycians because it’s so memorably a part of James Joyce’s (1882-1941) Ulysses (1922).  In Ulysses, the ashplant is of course a walking stick fashioned from an ash sapling but Joyce uses it to symbolize the holder’s divinity by linking him to the natural and supernatural.  A simple growth from the a tree uprooted from the soil, it’s used both to provide a balance to that ground and as a kind of wand used in religious and quasi-religious rituals; certainly, it’s owner believes it vested with magical powers.  Beyond that, the Joycians have made much of it as an allegorical device but in this, opinions vary, one Joycian often able to find a meaning hidden to others.

The ashplant is probably best remembered for its place in the brothel scene in “Circe” where it’s part of the “dance of death” after which it’s used to smash a chandelier in an act of rebellion against God.  Joyce uses the ashplant also in the literary and historical allusion with which the work is peppered.  In “Proteus” it becomes a Roman "augur's rod of ash" (a curved stick with powers of divination delivered by interpreting the will of the gods by observing the flight of birds) while in the brothel scene it transforms into Nothung, Siegfried's magical sword from the Norse myths familiar from Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) Ring cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) (1869-1876)).  Permeating the entire text is the idea of the ashplant representing the cross carried by Christ but, more practically, the author notes it’s handy to have to protect one against the attacks of wild dogs.

Phony

Phony (pronounced foh-nee)

(1) Not real or genuine; fake; counterfeit; imitation; hoax.

(2) An insincere or pretentious person.

1890s:  Phony is thought a US vernacular alteration of the British fawney, the word for a gilded brass ring used in a confidence trick called the "fawney rig".  In this scam, the trickster drops a ring (or a purse containing some valuables) and runs to pick the item up at the same time as the victim who spies it on the ground.  The trickster asserts that the found treasure should be split between them and the victim who "found" the item, convinced now of its value, is persuaded give the con artist some money in order to keep the phony item.  The alternative (mostly UK) spelling is phoney.  Actual origin of fawney seems to be a descriptor of a finger-ring, a word brought to England by the Irish, derived from the Irish fáinne (ring) and it’s likely the Irish Diaspora which introduced it to the United States.  Although it’s a bit murky, fáinne may be derived from the same Indo-European root (hehno) as the Latin ānus (ring) which existed also in Old French and first noted in English in 1658.

Speculative alternatives have been suggested.  An early twentieth-century notion thought it from a use of a telephone to lure victims to false appointments in order that a criminal operation might be carried out, further conjecturing connections either with phoo, a term of contempt, or funny.  No etymological evidence was offered.  Another origin, widely circulated by the popular press, says the word is derived from the name of a manufacturer of cheap jewellery, a Mr Forney and it’s likely the authors mistook fawney for the sadly maligned chap.  The OED agrees phony originates in colloquial American English, but dates it from an 1893 reference to the horse-racing slang, “phony bookmakers,” quoting The Chicago Tribune.  The OED defines them as “unofficial bookmakers issuing betting slips on which they do not intend to pay out.” 

Most interesting (and least likely) is the pondered derivation from Ancient Greek via Latin with an origin said to date from the Punic Wars.  During these wars, the Romans used the phrase “Punic Faith” which implied treacherousness and dishonesty and Poeni is the Latin word from which is derived Punic, itself from the Ancient Greek Phoeni.  While it seems the Phoenicians were regarded by the Romans as an untrustworthy lot, two-thousand-odd years passed before phony emerged in English and there’s no support for the theory.  Apparently unrelated too is the linguistic coincidence that in Welsh, poeni means “to hurt, to ail, to pain, to worry, to fret, to pester, to plague, to bother or to nag”.

Fake, phony and truthful hyperbole

The Trump presidency saw a spike in the use of phony.  Donald Trump (b 1946; US President 2017-2021) liked the word, using it to against both opponents and any news outlet at all critical, taking alliterative delight in describing Elizabeth Warren (b 1949, United States Senator for Massachusetts since 2013) as “a phony Pocahontas…” after her DNA test revealed the Native American bloodline she’d claimed was less than a small fraction of one percent.  In general use, he prefers the punchier fake news but also uses phony, often as a synonym but also as an analogue for negative.  In his 1978 book The Art of the Deal (which if Trump didn’t entirely write, he at least influenced), he noted the effectiveness of “…an innocent form of exaggeration…” which he called “…truthful hyperbole”, something his many critics noted was well suited to the age of social media and claimed was but a variation of the Nazis’ rule of propaganda that small lies are ineffective but big lies work well.  That’s most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945) but is actually from the first volume of Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945; German Chancellor 1933-1945) Mein Kampf, Goebbels memorably using the phrase years later in a critique of British wartime propaganda.  Goebbels was however well aware of the limitations of the use of untruths and in The Art of the Deal, Trump also cautioned there were limits to what can be done with variations of the phony, not so much what but for how long:  “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

Others like it too.  Mitt Romney (b 1947, US senator (Republican) for Utah since 2019), thinking Trump had no chance of winning the presidency, labelled him “…a phony and a fraud” adding “…his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.''  They did (briefly) make up, apparently without “multiple choice” Mitt having to drop to his knees (although that was never confirmed or denied), the former president endorsing Romney’s successful 2018 mid-term campaign to replace Orrin Hatch (1934-2022) as a senator for Utah. 

Donald Trump and "multiple choice" Mitt Romney, Jean-Georges Restaurant, Trump International Hotel & Tower, New York, 2016.

Trump’s endorsement for the Senate seat was however little more than a pat on the head for a well-behaved vassal.  A little after Trump won the 2016 election, Romney, rather as King Henry IV (1050–1106; King of Germany from 1054-1105, Holy Roman Emperor from 1084-1105) made his pilgrimage to Canossa to seek forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States 1073-1085), turned up at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York to pay homage and, essentially, beg for a job.  “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump” Romney gushed after dinner with Trump at the hotel’s Jean-Georges restaurant.  “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”  Clearly Romney wanted to be secretary of state, the US’s chief diplomat.  That would have been an interesting assignment, given that in decades of public life Romney had shown scant evidence of original thought, so he’d have been Trump’s errand-boy, parroting a foreign policy not of his own creation, most observers concluded his desire for an important job outweighed his dislike for Trump.  What he thought being the international emissary for a man he’d earlier condemned as “neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president” either didn’t cross his mind or didn’t matter because he just wanted an important job.  Trump missed the opportunity to appoint Romney which was a shame because he’d have been a fine addition to a cabinet which might have included Rudy Giuliani as attorney-general, Sarah Palin as treasury secretary, Newt Gingrich as defense secretary (Ted Cruz an obvious choice as CIA director).  Something like that, truly a ministry of all the talents, would have been good to watch.

Serial phoney tans on Lindsay Lohan (although it's suspected the magazines and web sites sometimes, deepened the color saturation for a more dramatic look; the preferred term is "fake tan".  In fairness however, the redheads and other freckled folk should avoid the sun and use spray-on and other tanning products in preference to any form of radiation, natural or artificial.  An even more desirable option is to embrace the pale ascetic, and alluring look and one which offers glittering opportunities to contrast with dark fabrics, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.   

Phoney Time: One of the "Time magazine covers" prominently once displayed in several Trump golf courses; wholly phoney, they’ve since been removed.  By 2024, Mr Trump had twice been named Time's "Person of the Year" so the old photo frames from the golf courses can be re-used.

In A Brief History of Time (1988), English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) used the concept of "imaginary time" as a conceptual tool to illustrate certain aspects of his theories but imaginary covers of Time magazine are something different.  Imaginary time has been misunderstood and, given the mysteriousness of much of which it's used to describe, that's perhaps understandable.  What it is is a mathematical representation of time used to build models of the relationship between special relativity and quantum mechanics, expressed using equations written with what mathematicians call imaginary numbers.  For most of us, it replaces one impenetrable idea with another but between consenting mathematicians and cosmologists in the privacy of their labs, it's a hoot.      

Flamingo

Flamingo (pronounced fluh-ming-goh)

(1) Any of several aquatic wading birds of the family Phoenicopteridae (the only extant family in the order Phoenicopteriformes), having very long legs and neck, webbed feet, a bill bent downward at the tip and pinkish to scarlet plumage; they tend to inhabit brackish lakes.

(2) In the color spectrum, a shade of reddish-orange but in commercial use, often various hues of pink.

1555–1565: From the Portuguese flamengo (flamingo) and Spanish flamenco (flamingo), from the Catalan & Old Occitan (Old Provençal) flamenc, (flame colored), the construct being the Latin flamma (flame) + the Germanic suffix -enc (-ing), denoting “descent from or membership of”.  Both the Portuguese flamengo and the Spanish flamengo translate literally as “flame-colored” (the Greek phoinikopteros (flamingo) literally was “red feathered").  The Portuguese, Spanish & Catalan forms were used adjectivally as an ethnonym meaning “Flemish”; Fleming (the Belgium region), seems originally to have been a jocular name, coined because the conventional Romance image of the inhabitants was of “those with a ruddy-complexion”.  Although the term is now uncommon (and rarely heard in commentary), in cricket, “flamingo shot” describes a ball "flicked" from outside off stump through midwicket.  The more serious types among the ornithologists say the collective noun for flamingos is “a stand” but most favor the more evocative “flamboyance” and one suspects the birds would prefer it too.  Flamingo is a noun & adjective and flamingoish is an adjective; the noun plural is flamingos or flamingoes.

In Spanish, flamenco can be used colloquially as an adjective meaning “robust, healthy-looking” and is a type of dance.  In an example of cultural cross-fertilization, flamenca (feminine singular of flamenco) seems to have been the original name for a form of Spanish poetry which came to be called seguidilla (the construct being seguida (sequence) + -illa (the diminutive suffix).  Seguidilla meant “series, sequence, list (a set of related things in an order)” and also described a “lively, triple-time, Spanish tune and dance”, the rhythm of which was the source of the metrical form of the verse.  Although the musical source is uncontested, because of the origins in folk culture (and thus there exists scant documentation), the exact structure of the early verse is uncertain but speculative reconstructions suggest flamenca began as a four-line strophe with alternating long and short lines (seven or eight syllables in the long lines; five or six in the short).  Literary historians are however certain that later (likely in the seventeenth century) three lines were added and the form became codified as a seven-line form, alternating seven and five syllables in the first part, and five, seven, five in the second.  Critics list it as the most elegant of the popular Spanish metrical forms and it’s unique in being the only generalized form of the seven-line verse.

Lindsay Lohan in Dubai in flamingo pink Aeire velour tracksuit with yoga mat, January, 2023.

The term “flamingo pink” has much commercial appeal because of the charismatic birds so use often is a bit opportunistic given the coloring of flamingos varies widely depending on their diet, many often more of an orange hue than red or pink.  There’s thus much variation on the color charts while garment manufacturers appear mostly to slot in “Flamingo pink” as a shade somewhat toned-down from “hot pink” or “fuchsia”.  Legislation in the UAE (United Arab Emirates, including Dubai) affords individuals significant protection from being photographed without their consent so there the paparazzi are noticeably less active than in most Western jurisdictions.  Thus an image of celebrity in a public place in Dubai can usually be assumed to have been staged or in some way authorized.  As a general principle, those in Dubai are (mostly) free to photograph the built environment, landscapes, tourist attractions and even street scenes but deliberately (or even inadvertently) photographing an identifiable person without their consent can potentially create legal liability.  This is the case especially if the image is deemed to constitute an invasion of privacy or is published or shared electronically.  The mere inclusion of people in photographs may not constitute an offence even if one or more is identifiable, a typical example being a shot of a tourist attraction in which one or more tourist appears; as in the West, this is an aspect of law in which intent is a factor.  Ms Lohan more than once has mentioned one of the attractions of Dubai is the level of protection from paparazzi afforded to public figures.

The revolution: Flamingos doing their bit.

In 2026, the flamingo made a rare appearance in political discourse, the charismatic bird adopted as the symbol of the Albanian protest movement focused on their government’s approval of a luxury tourism development backed by US investor Jared Kushner (b 1981) son-in-law of Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) by virtue of his marriage to Ivana “Ivanka” Trump (b 1981).  The connection between bird & protest lies in flamingos being among the many species inhabiting the Vjosa–Narta wetland ecosystem surrounding Sazan Island and the Zvërnec project site, the concern being the environmental damage that will be a consequence of both the construction and ongoing operation of the proposed resort.  Reflecting a wider discontent, the protests quickly morphed from something about the environment to a general expression of discontent with corruption in government, unlawful conduct by a variety of regulatory authorities and state-based manipulation of the media intended to conceal the impact of the development.

Now a political symbol: A pair of inflatable flamingos.

A localized protest close to the site was met with violence by the security forces, the reaction to that the spread of demonstrations to major cities, supported by the extensive and far-flung Albanian diaspora; props used by the protesters included flamingo cut-outs and inflatable flamingos, mostly in a “hotter” pink to the bird’s usual plumage.  Predictably, the government’s response came from the playbook of comrade Enver Hoxha (1908-1985; dictator of Albanian 1944-1985) with the protesters being accused of being the “tools of foreign interests” and elements in a “misinformation campaign” in a “hybrid war” being waged by “Albania’s enemies”.  Already dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution” (time will tell whether that is premature or prescient), the protests are an example of a general discontent with “the political class” and in Europe, politicians will be paying more than the usual (ie none) attention to Albania, remembering Otto von Bismarck’s (1815-1898; chancellor of the German Empire (the “Second Reich”) 1871-1890) warning that bad things can spread from “some damned fool thing in the Balkans”.

Flamingos in the Air

Safety in numbers: Wildlife photographer Ron Magill's (b 1960) image of flamingos in the Miami Zoo Public Bathroom, sitting (standing) out Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that struck Florida in August 1992.  It remains the most destructive weather event recorded in Florida but all in the flamboyance of flamingos sheltering in the bathroom survived.  Flamingos are omnivores, filter-feeding on brine shrimp and blue-green algae as well as larva, small insects, mollusks and crustaceans, their vivid pink or reddish feathers a product of the beta-carotenoids rich in this diet.  The birds usually stand on one leg with the other tucked beneath and why they do this is not understood.  One theory is that standing on one leg allows them to conserve more body heat, given they spend a significant amount of time wading in cold water, but the behavior is also observed in warm water and among birds ashore.  The alternative theory is that standing on one leg reduces the energy required for the muscular effort to stand and balance and flamingos demonstrate substantially less body sway in a one-legged posture.  The answer thus is “don't know” but it may reasonably be assumed they prefer it because it's easier.

Perhaps the world's only black flamingo.

In 2015, during a routine “flamingo count”, a black flamingo was observed on the salt lake at the Akrotiri Environmental Centre on the southern coast of Cyprus, zoologists noting it may be not merely rare but perhaps the only one in existence; it's assumed to be the same bird seen in Israel in 2014 (large flamingo flocks are known regularly to fly long distances).  The black plumage is a result of melanism, a genetic condition in which the pigment melanin is over-produced, turning the feathers black during development.  The opposite of melanism is albinism, when no melanin is made and the animal is colorless except for a faint hue (from red blood vessels) in the eyes.  There are many intermediate stages between melanism & albinism where various pigments partially are missing, resulting the patchy coloration known as leucism but albino and leucistic (partial albino) birds are not uncommon, unlike the genuine rarity of the melanistic flamingo.  Why flamingos are so rarely affected while black owls, woodpeckers, herons and many others often are observed isn't known but the condition appears to be most common in a some hawk species, jaegers and a few seabirds.  Pedants noted the much-travelled black flamingo actually had a few white tail feathers so suggested it should not be classified as a true instance of melanism but specialist ornithologists, while acknowledging there were aberrant white feathers, dismissed their presence with an observation something like “...a few, but then again, too few to mention”.

RAF (Royal Air Force) de Havilland DH.95 Flamingo Mark I.

First flown in 1938 before entering service in 1939, the de Havilland DH.95 Flamingo was a twin-engined, high-wing monoplane airliner, the design reflecting the then current thinking about short-haul civil aviation, the emphasis on passenger comfort and economy of operation, the latter still a consuming interest of carriers.  De Havilland’s designers used the US Douglas DC-3 (the Dakota, then the dominant airframe in civil use), as a model, the Flamingo a little scaled-down better to suit the economics of European operations.  Although never envisaged as a military platform, the Air Ministry placed an order for a small run to be used as transport and communications aircraft but production plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) and the ministry directed de Havilland’s capacity should be re-allocated to manufacturing more urgently-needed machines.  So, only 14 Flamingos were built and those used by the Army and RAF all were struck from the active list before the war was over, some returned to civil use, the last remaining in service until the early 1950s.  The Flamingo is however over-represented in the wartime photographic record because it was a RAF Flamingo that was Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) preferred short-haul transport and in one he made his famous flights to France in May 1940 as he attempted to stiffen the resolve of the French cabinet to remain in the war.

The Flamingo Pose

The flamingo pose, perfected by Gigi Hadid (b 1995).  Note hand braced against wall with fingers spread (both techniques borrowed from structural engineering), a way of “distributing the load”, lowering the centre of gravity, thus enhancing stability.

Among humans, the reason for the flamingo pose is well understood: Instagram.  It’s in the tradition of earlier “duck face”, “fish gape pose”, “T. rex selfie hand”, “Bambi pose”, “resting bitch face”, “ear scratch” and “migraine pose” etc, all of which (at least before becoming clichéd) had visual appeal while some offered functional advantages.  Humans don’t however enjoy the evolutionary heritage of flamingos and the pose can be a technical challenge if attempted while standing; models suggest using a wall or handrail for balance if the photo session is at all protracted.  A better alternative can be to pose while sitting, one leg extended with the other bent or tucked away in some fetching manner.

Flamingos on wheels

1961 Buick Flamingo.

Attendances had been declining at GM’s (General Motors) Motorama so 1961 would prove the final season for the traveling road show that, known originally as Autorama, had since 1949 been an annual event (except in the troubled years 1957-1958) in major cities (Boston, New York, Miami, San Francisco etc).  In those years more than ten million had visited the exhibits but the public’s taste in entertainment had shifted and by the 1960s the cars being displayed were no longer as entertaining, the wild, extravagant exercises which blended automobiles with styling cues from missiles and jet aircraft replaced by what were mostly blinged-up variants of vehicles already in production.  Rather than being a forum to excite the imagination, Motorama had descended into a kind of large-scale focus-group to “test the water”, gauging reaction to innovations or gimmicks that might later appear in showrooms.

Testing the water: 19 members of the Brighton Swimming Club, in their top hats and swim trunks, East Sussex, Brighton, England, 1863, photograph by Benjamin William Botham (1824-1877).  Note chap (fourth from left) adopting flamingo pose: there’s one in every crowd.

Buick’s 1961 Flamingo was very much in the vein of a “test the water” exercise.  It was based on a standard-production Electra 225 convertible but finished in a pearlescent pink, the paint mixed using the same techniques as the West Coast hot rod community: exotic pigments & toners with metal-flakes, challenging enough to perfect for a one-off and years away from being viable for large-scale production.  While an extensive use of pink paint and accessories had not much increased the appeal of the Dodge La Femme (1955-1956) among the female demographic in which US commerce was taking an increasing interest, Buick's product planners must have decided there was life in the “women like pink” approach.  Cynical that may have been but the sparkling color must have been eye-catching under the lights and the Flamingo was one of the most photographed exhibits when the 1961 Motorama opened its swansong season at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, then the final home of General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964).  The Flamingo’s interior certainly complimented the paint, the two-tone upholstery in pink leather and cranberry brocade while the front bucket seats were separated by a wide console trimmed in bright metal, a feature Detroit widely would adopt although in 1961 Buick kept the transmission’s shift level on the column; “T-bar” shifts and such soon would come.

1961 Buick Flamingo.

Structurally, the Flamingo's most obvious novelty was the pivoting passenger seat, able to turned 180^o and thus more easily permit a conversation with those in the rear compartment, an design aspect to ponder given it was before seatbelts were universal but well after the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) First Law of Motion (known also as the Law of Inertia: “An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will continue in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force”).  It was also a time before Ralph Nader’s (b 1934) book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) prompted politicians to take their legislative axe to such ventures.  Swivelling front seats had actually been around for a while but their extent of rotation had been only the few degrees required to afford easier ingress and egress although Chrysler did later include a passenger seat able to rotate the full 180^o.  Offered as part of the “Mobile Director Package” and available exclusively on the 1967-1968 Imperial Crown Coupe, demand was subdued and even had it not been obvious the new safety rules would outlaw such things, the option would not have been carried over to the new generation of “Fuselage” cars in 1969.  What became of the Buick Flamingo isn’t known.  It was mechanically identically to any other Electra 225 convertible so it may have been used by Buick’s engineers for other purposes and the consensus is it was likely scrapped and sent to the crusher, the fate of many such machines.

Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am advertisement, 1973.

Internationally, the South African automotive industry of the 1960s and early 1970s remains best known for improving cars from Europe by installing larger capacity V8 engines sourced from the US, the most noted including the Perana (the Mark I Ford Capri (1969-1974) but fitted with a 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) V8) some 500 of which were built until the first oil shock (1973) put a stop to the fun and the Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am (a coupé variant of the HC Vauxhall Viva (1970-1979) which used the Chevrolet Z/28 302 V8 that had in the US become surplus when the rules of the Trans-Am competition were relaxed to permit racing teams to de-stroke larger displacement units to meet the 5.0 litre (305 cubic inch) class limit), 100 produced in 1973 as a homologation exercise for use in local competition.  Fondly those brutish machines still are recalled by those who remember how things used to be done but, years before, there had also been the rather more delicate GSM Flamingo.

1963 GSM Flamingo, note the elevated stance and disproportionate windscreen height.

Capetown-based GSM (Glassport Motor Company) was formed in 1958 with a business model following the approach of many small-scale “cottage industry” producers in the UK: Diminutive sports cars with small-displacement engines that achieved competitive performance through the light weight of their bodies constructed with the then still novel fibreglass in shapes which, although often not wind-tunnel tested, certainly looked aerodynamic.  GSM had enjoyed some success with their Dart sports car (1958-1964) but when in 1962 the company expanded the range to include the Flamingo, it followed the approach which doomed more than one concern: A larger coupé, fitted with some of the creature comforts better to appeal to a wider market than their uncompromising little roadsters, the native environment of the latter a race track.  Had it been possible to fit the Flamingo with Ford’s Cologne V6 engine the car might have enjoyed greater commercial success but for various reasons it appeared instead with the corporation’s 1.5 & 1.7 litre (92 & 102 cubic inch) four cylinder units.  Although the low mass and clearly slippery aerodynamics made it possible for some Flamingos to achieve a then exceptional 110 mph (175 km/h), in getting there it lacked the refinement buyers of coupés in its price range had come to expect and production ended in 1964.

1963 GSM Flamingo.

Entertaining though it was acknowledged to be, the target market wanted also to be pampered and there were too many aspects of the Flamingo that betrayed its “backyard” origins.  The cars sat higher on the chassis than was intended because of a measurement error when the molds were created (shades of the later Hubble Space Telescope) which meant a somewhat “jacked-up” look and, more seriously, a higher centre of gravity which had to be compensated for by adjustments to the suspension settings, exactly what MG was in 1974 compelled to do to make its Midget (1963-1979) and MGB (1962-1980) comply with US headlight height rules.  Had resources been available, the flawed molds would have been scrapped and re-cast using correct dimensions but by then cash-flow was more of a priority than perfection.  Additionally, the windscreen, while offering commanding visibility, was aesthetically too big for the shape, economic realities dictating the “best fit available” being bought “off the shelf”, in this case the glass from BMC’s (British Motor Corporation) Austin A40 Farina (1958-1967, the Countryman version of which was one of the earliest “hatchbacks”).  Coincidentally, Nissan in 1968 created a similar look when adding a taller windscreen to their Fairlady roadster (1963-1970 and in some markets sold as the “Sports”, “1500”, “1600” or “2000” (the latter three designations denoting engine displacement)), preferring that to fitting a third windscreen wiper as the UK industry did to render the Austin Healey Sprite (1958-1971) & MG Midget compliant with US regulations.  The A40's re-purposed windscreen made things a little ungainly but the “split rear screen” was, visually, more satisfying and the car’s most memorable feature.

1963 GSM Flamingo.  As well as providing structural integrity, at speed, the central fin would have contributed to straight-line stability.

Common in the inter-war years, most split rear screens were gone by the mid-1950s although there was a quixotic revival by GM which included the look on the C2 Chevrolet Corvette (1963-1967).  The cause at the time of internecine squabbles within the division, the “anti-splitty” faction prevailed and the 1964 models appeared with a single piece of glass but, in a sense, the “splitty” faction had the last laugh because, apart from limited production exotics like the GS Sport (5) and L88 (20), it’s the 1963 coupes that are the most sought-after C2 Corvettes.  At the time, the GSM Flamingo probably was thought to be a final fling for the split-screen but the feature appeared (mounted in a pair of hood covers which opened a la gullwing doors) on the achingly lovely De Tomaso Mangusta (1967-1971) and behind the Iron Curtain, as late as 1975, in Czechoslovakia (the Warsaw Pact’s improbable source of the avant-garde) Tatra still was producing the 603 (1956-1975), the last car in volume production with a split rear screen.

Road test of GSM Flamingo V8, Car Magazine, February 1967.

It’s the treatment of the rear glass that tends to dominate the design; the distinctive swept point, splitting the window, created a dramatic, “double-scalloped” rear deck and what was, in effect, a fin.  That was not a whimsical stylistic flourish but a structural necessity to achieve the desired strength without increasing weight by adding reinforcing steel to support the fibreglass skin and was GSM's second attempt to style the rear, the original “breadvan” look having been considered and discarded.  That was indicative of the high development costs and, in an attempt to amortize the investment, production was increased but demand never reached to level necessary to sustain the business and GSM in 1965 ceased trading after building 128 Flamingos and 116 of the earlier Dart roadsters.  That meant the planned version of the Flamingo with a 260 cubic inch (4.2 litre) Ford V8 never came to fruition but one prototype was built using a 221 cubic inch (3.6 litre) version.  It had been a 221 AC in England had been given to install in an Ace; that became the first Shelby American Cobra prototype which, after being shipped to Shelby's Los Angeles operation received a 260, becoming “the first Cobra”.  A V8 Flamingo of course sounds an enticing prospect but when it’s remembered Shelby’s Cobra was financially viable to the extent it was only because of Ford’s corporate support, its prospects of success would likely have been limited to racetracks.

2008 Morgan Aeromax.  It's likely designers will again be tempted by the lure of the split screen so it may again be seen.

For decades the split screens on the 1963 Corvette and GSM Flamingo had been remembered as quirky outliers but, thirty years after the last Tatra 603 left the line, Morgan brought back the look.  It was unexpected because the split rear screen was last part mainstream design language around 1936 when Morgan added a fourth wheel to the roadsters the company had been manufacturing since 1910.  However, almost every Morgan made since a fourth wheel sprouted has maintained a strong visual link with the roadsters of 1936 so there was really no machine better suited to being adorned with the feature.  In the narrow technical sense it really wasn’t a “retro touch” because even in 1936 Morgans were beginning to look an anachronism and by 1955 when MG's MGA (1955-1962) replaced the TF (1953-1955 and the last of the old “square riggers”), it was a living relic.  The split rear screen appeared in 2005 on what had been intended as a one-off for a private collector but so positive was the reception when the car was shown at that year’s Geneva Motor Show a run of 100 units was arranged.  Released as the Aeromax (2008-2009), the distinctive split rear windows opened, clamshell-like (a la the De Tomaso Mangusta) and the offer of 100 was over-subscribed although a reputed additional four were manufactured to replace those damaged in accidents and written off.  Under the art deco aluminum body, the Aeromax was powered by a 4.8-litre (292 cubic inch) BMW V8 rated at 367 HP, making the lightweight machine genuinely fast (although better behaved than the swing-axled Tatras).