Kit and caboodle

Sarah Lang slang at UCHICAGO.EDU
Thu May 17 17:17:41 UTC 2007 

Your daughter may also be interested in its early 90s use. The
Caboodles organizers:
http://bitterbutton.com/fieldkit/caboodle.bmp

S.



On May 17, 2007, at 8:00 AM, Landau, James wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Landau, James" <James.Landau at NGC.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Kit and caboodle
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> When you were at the Presidio it was still "the Army Language School",
> but by 1969, when I was drafted, it had become the "Defense Language
> Institute" and had at least three branches, the one at the
> Presidio, the
> one at Fort Bliss which as far as I know taught only Vietnamese,
> and one
> somewhere in Washington DC, which I know of solely because every
> once in
> a while I ran into a student from there.
>
> I was really commenting on how odd it appeared, at first glance, to
> see
> Hebrew and Hindi among a list of languages that the Armed Forces
> obviously need interpreters in (Arabic, languages of Afghanistan,
> Korean, Chinese).  Of course it may just mean that the Hebrew and
> Hindi
> instructors currently at DLI are retiring and need to be replaced.
>
> Of ADS interest is your usage of "human resource".  This was correct
> Army jargon circa 1960?  I am wondering whether there is any
> connection
> with the trend, starting I don't when but definitely later than the
> 60's, to rename Personnel Departments as "Human Resources".
>
> Do svidan'a!
>
>    - Jim Landau
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wilson Gray [mailto:hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 1:18 AM
> Subject: Re: Kit and caboodle
>
> During the Vietnam era, using 1960 as the official start date of that
> era, since service on or after 1 Jan 1960 qualified one for the
> Vietnam-Era GI Bill, there was no Defense Language Institute. There
> was
> the U.S. Army Language School at the Presidio of Monterey, California.
> In addition to the human resources of the Army, the Language School,
> during the Vietnam era and earlier, also served the human resources of
> the Navy and those of the Marine Corps. The Air Force had its own
> language school, then located at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. There
> was, at that time and, no doubt, still is, the Foreign Service
> Language
> Institute, located somewhere in the Greater Washington, DC,
> Metropolitan
> Area.
>
> Back in the day, the ALS taught more than eighty languages, some
> having
> only a single student. All the languages that you mention were among
> those taught in those days. In order to get a handle on our foreign
> policy by examining the Language Institute, one would have to know how
> many students were studying a given language. In my day, the ALS
> had two
> divisions, "Russian" and "Other Languages." There were about 400
> military human rresources studying Russian, which was subdivided into
> three separate courses of varying lengths. The other
> 79 or so languages had about 400 students in toto. I'd call that a
> pretty good clue as to the foreign policy of the day.
>
> I'm well aware of the reincarnation of the old ALS as the new Defense
> Language Institute, West Coast Branch, and its Web site has been among
> my bookmarks since there've been bookmarks. I last visited the
> Presidio,
> as an old grad, in 1979. Things had already changed so much that I was
> nearly unable to find my way into the Presidio. The elimination of
> Private Bolio Drive, in my day, the main entrance to the Presidio,
> was a
> real disappointment. it was one of the few major boulevards on a major
> military base not only named after an enlisted man, but also after one
> of such low rank.
>
> As for the question as to whether there are several language
> institutes
> or merely one with several branches, well, that strikes me as merely
> splitting hairs. Macht es nichts, to coin a phrase.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 5/15/07, Landau, James <James.Landau at ngc.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Landau, James" <James.Landau at NGC.COM>
>> Subject:      Kit and caboodle
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> ---------
>>
>> My daughter asked me for information on the origin of the phrase "kit
>> and caboodle".  Can anybody help
>>
>> Aside to Wilson Gray:  there is only one Defense Language Institute,
>> although during Vietnam it had branches at Fort Bliss, Texas and
>> somewhere in the Washington DC area..  Its Web site,
>> http://www.dliflc.edu/, certainly seems to show it is alive and well:
>> "DLIFLC is home to more than 3,500 military and civilian students
>> annually and employs over 1,600 faculty and staff. We are in the
>> business of teaching language to the finest group of students in the
>> United States and welcome the opportunity to show the public why we
>> are the premier foreign language institute in the world."
>>
>> On the Web site is the announcement:
>> "Now Hiring Teachers for Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Hebrew, Hindi,
>> Korean,
>
>> Kurdish, Pashto, and Persian."
>> What this says about future US foreign policy is unclear.  Arabic,
>> Kurdish, Dari, and Pashto are spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan, so they
>> are no surprise.  Neither is Korean or Chinese.  Hindi seems a little
>> unlikely - we don't have troops stationed in India, do we?  I'd
>> expect
>
>> more interest in Urdu than in Hindi, but maybe they already have Urdu
>> staff.  Hebrew also seems unlikely - are we expecting to be involved
>> in another Arab-Israeli war? =20
>>      - James A. Landau
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
> ------
> The tongue has no bones, yet it breaks bones.
>
>                                            Rumanian proverb
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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