"Study Who(m) & What to Vote For"

       Does it make any difference?  With or without the "m"?  This is a note I jotted myself before the recent election.

       No, I was going to be doing the same thing either way.  But that darn "who, whom" question still tickles the corner of my mind.  And I didn't feel right till I added the "m" as object of the preposition "for."

Getting Help on the Web

       I entered this into a search engine today: "My car bucks and bumps over the road; what's wrong?"   

       One guy whose car matched exactly my '96 Dodge Neon's symptoms said, "I have new springs, isolators, sway bar endlink bushings, caster camber plates, subframe connectors and yet every little bump in the road seems to HIT my car..."  Wow!  I had no idea what might be involved.

       Another guy said he preferred "performance" over "ride."  "My car will out-handle most anything on the street, but I can feel paint stripes through the steering wheel."  Wow again.  For him.  But not for me. 

        However,  I finally realized why everyone on the site seemed to be referring to "stangs."  I was in a site for Ford Mustang owners.  I think I'll just take a third guy's advice and let some air out of the tires.      

It's Hebrew that Carries Your Groceries

       I noticed in the Jewish Journal today a little feature called "HEBREW [Word of the Week]."  It instantly reminded me of the Hebrew study I did as an adult at the American Jewish University.

       I kept searching for words that were similar to English words.  Needle in a haystack time!  The word I found that stunned me was "sack" [ שק].  How did it get into English?  The American Heritage Dictionary even does a special "word history" on it.

        In the ancient Middle East Palestine was on a trade route.  Products had to be carried and transported.  Along with the goods went the containers that held them and the container names, from country to country, including to German tribes; so into German, and finally Old English,  a Germanic language.


   

A Jog in My Blog

       Coming to the end of the first lap in my Tuesday jog, I uttered or muttered, "1/8th."  It surprised me.

       In over 15 years of running, I'd never said that.  I keep track of the laps in my eight times around the path in the park.

        The way I put it was in keeping with my state--I was tired and draggy:  1/8th meant "I've got seven laps yet to go," which is the way I felt; would I make all of them today?

       I always have said, "One," which marks the completion of a lap, an enumeration that's sort of a congratulation.

       In such ways does language choice express us.

"Chortle," a Blend

       My poet friend has sent me a new poem he's written as he's done through the years.  It contains the phrase "a chortle of children." I liked the sound of it, but paused over whether it was quite right in the poem.

       Lewis Carroll coined the word "chortle," apparently out of "chuckle" and "snort."  Every time I see the word, I try a chuckle, then a snort, then fancy a sound that would be a combination of the two.   I have trouble making that sound without a wry or derisive cast to it.

       Carroll's words are "O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!  He chortled in his joy."  And my friend's line and context suggest joy and enthusiasm as well; so perhaps that's Carroll's intention.

       But the "snort" in there always takes me to a slightly different place with a subversive undertone!
                                                                  

                                                                      

Laughs Can Dissolve and Temper Anxiety

        Larry Joseph of radio station WBAI, N.Y.C, told this joke on Garrison Keillor's show today:

              CNN heard of a Jew in Israel who prayed at the Western Wall every single day for years.  A broadcaster caught the man as he was finishing one day, introduced herself, and said,
               "I'm from CNN.  We've heard you are here every day.  May I ask your name?"
              "Abe Goldberg."
              "How long have you been praying here?"
              "60 years."
              "60 years!  What do you pray for?"
              "I pray for peace among Christians, Jews, and Muslims and among all people of the world.  I pray for politicians to listen, understand, be generous, and find a way to live together.   I pray that everyone stop, look around, appreciate this wonderful world, and enjoy what God has given us."
              "And, Mr. Goldberg, how do you feel about it after all these years?"
              "It's like talking to a wall!"



              

              

"Stick-to-itiveness"

       Yes, Elizabeth, there is a "stick-to-itiveness" (since my daughter once asked me), it is, indeed, a word.

       Imagine what an accomplishment it is:  five different parts of speech--a verb, a preposition, a pronoun, an adjective, all rolled up into a single noun.

       Why won't "determination," "perseverance," "assiduousness," do instead?  Why this patched together hunk of common clay?  Maybe it's that dogged seat-of-the-pants-to-the-chair grit that no other more "respectable" term will quite convey.

       Huzzah for "stick-to-itiveness."  The gummy, tackyness of it is virtually gluing everything in place right now:  "Keep at it, hold to task, courage, focus, you can do it, you're doing it, hey...there, you've DONE it!"

"Buried" Words

       Waiting for some family goodbyes at our hotel room, I had flopped backwards onto the King-size bed to surrender to the tiredness of the trip.  Arms, legs, and body in full mattress contact, as wife Connie came by, I said, "This is my catafalque."

        I had never used the word before.  But all it needed was the physical experience of being laid out lifeless to activate an inert part of my vocabulary.   Perhaps it's analogous to a computer's "finder":  give it the right "hint" and it pulls up what one has forgotten.

"Thanks" Also Due to Samuel Johnson

       Eating breakfast out on Thanksgiving Day this morning with our two children, son-in-law, and grandson, the spirits were running high along with the volume.

       The breakfast sandwich at Brueggers' was good, and I was trying to concentrate on enjoying it.   Since I had not been very communicative, in fact, annoyed a bit with the chattering around me, I said pointedly, "Excuse me for concentrating on my food."

       This immediately brought back Dr. Samuel Johnson's remark, which I then repeated to my voluble family:

        "A man who pays no attention to his stomach will pay little attention to anything else."

Not His Grandfather's Game

       Some of the games kids play today are by name alone downright scary:  "Assassins' Creed," "Resident Evil 6," "Beastly," even "Undead Nightmare."

      The one my grandson Micah wanted sounded relatively mild--"Pokeman White Version 2," less frightening, for example, than "Rage" from the creators of "Doom."

       It was also a relief to see in the game store prominently displayed..."Just Dance 4."

Grateful Time

       Thanksgiving approaches.  I came upon these words that seem to strike the right note for the season.  They're by author, lecturer, and Benedictine brother David Steindl-Rast:

You think this is just another day in your life.  It's not just another day.  It's the one day that is given to you, today. ...[T]he only appropriate response is gratefulness. ...If you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.

A Simple, Friendly Inquiry

       To hear pleasant words at an airport fast food shop was so exceptional, it proved a tonic before taking flight.  The girl at the register said, "How are you doing this morning?"  A simple and direct question.  "Tired but ok" was my honest response.  She smiled and said she felt the same way.

       A lot better than the exchange Connie recounted she had read in a novel last week.  One character asked another, "How are you?"  "FINE.    Frantic, Irritated, Neurotic, and Exhausted."

Not a Bad Name for a Shampoo

       I noticed Suave shampoo on my wife's dressing table and realized its root is ultimately "sweet."  Teaching in the speech communication field, I became aware of this.

       Whence else "persuasion," "to sweeten thoroughly"?

       I always felt I wouldn't want to "argue" or "debate"--argue goes back to a root meaning "babble, chatter, prate."  And debate means to "bat down"--you wouldn't persuade someone hitting him with a bat!

       "Suave"--smoothly agreeable and courteous--sweet.


 

"The End of the World--Again?"

                   
       A clever and blase´way to put down the "Maya Calendar End Time Follies" as E. C. Krupp calls them in the November 2012 Griffith Observer.  12/21/12 is the supposed Mayan prediction for the end of the world.  Krupp reprints this 2009 Skeptic magazine cover.

  

     
 

Could Be Why "Voyeur" Is a French Word

       I was shopping today in a women's clothing store with my wife.  Let's say she was shopping, I was hauling, and it struck me it's important to know French so you can talk about one section of the store, "Intimate Apparel."

       "Intimate" itself goes back to French intime, and the master term of the category after all is "lingerie" pronounced and spelled a la Français.  "Brassiere" too stands forth from its French origins direct into English, briefed into "bra" by impatient Americans, and  "camisole," "chemise," "negligee," and "bustier" all made their way into our language pretty much intact.

       Thus many "intimate" items seem to be borrowed,  along with their cachet,  right out of the French "boudoir."

Romney's "Women in Binders": a Footnote

       Calvin Trillin writes humorous political poems in The Nation.  This week in his "Three Republican Candidates Discourse on the Subject of Rape," he recalls Todd Akin, Joe Walsh, and Richard Mourdock and their denigration of womanhood.

       After the three quatrains, a couplet concludes:

              The Rape Science Three can provide more reminders
              That now Mitt's got wingnuts in all of those binders.

Cartoonist As Punster

               

                                And then there's the least-liked puns.

No Backtalk, God!

       During the past year I bought two books at separate times and just realized recently they "speak" to one another.  The first is called Talking to God and the second, When God Talks Back. 

       Actually, each book is fine in its own way.  The former by Naomi Levy is personal prayers, not out of sacred text or prayer books but created by her out of tangible human situations, needs, and joys...as so many of the original religious prayers were.

       The second is an effort at understanding what happens when evangelicals find themselves hearing from God.  T. H. Luhrmann goes into four congregations and with a participant-observer's eye produces a nonjudgmental and insightful study.
      
      

Steady and Clear

        "I love you from way back," I said to my wife as I kissed her at bedtime the other night.  First time I'd ever put it that way.

        But it's true.  1950 is when I fell in love with Connie.  62 years.

        Then today in a review of the "Collected Poems" of Jack Gilbert, from his poem "The Abnormal Is Not Courage," I came upon lines that resonate:

                      The marriage
                      Not the month's rapture...The beauty
                      That is of many days.  Steady and clear.

Puns with Double Jeopardy

       I was tuned to the replay of "A Prairie Home Companion" joke show on L.A.'s KPCC-FM today and heard what must be one of the few two-word puns:

                 Couple guys are sitting next to each other in a cabana at the beach, and one of them says  to the other, "Have you read Marx?"
                 The other guy:  "Yeah, from sitting on these wicker chairs."

       Oooh.  Oooh. 

A Deadline Ploy?

"As Harry Truman famously said, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'."

By saying "famously," the journalist at once acknowledges the phrase has been quoted endlessly and  excuses himself from laziness in not finding a less clichéd way of making the point.

At the OK Corral

                                 
                                                              
                                  Fiscal Cliff
                                       meet
                                Bronco Bama

                                     

The Lurid Always Rings Twice

"Hook me, Frank, hook me."

No, that isn't what my wife said as she approached me this morning to help her hook her bra in back.  It was simply "Hook me."  But whenever she asks, I flash back to the time in 8th grade Milt Gordon, Ev Karon, and I had discovered a paperback of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Inside the lurid front cover was a snippet from the book in which the female character, a waitress, is saying to her boss at a roadside diner as he hovers over her, "Rip me, Frank, rip me."   The three of us looked at each other, mouths gaping, "Wow!"

So when Connie asks, I smile and say, "Hook me, Frank, hook me."

(As Connie pointed out, it's the reverse of what's happening in the novel.)

Speech Doctor to the President

I spent some time this morning (Wednesday) rewriting the President’s speech last night.  It would have been a far more humble (and shorter) speech, not only thanking those who supported him,  but promising them he would as avidly seek their support during the next four years, seeking not donations and door knocks and votes this time, but phone calls, emails, letters, Tweets, and homing pigeons if necessary, to get Congress to acknowledge the groundswell behind the President's policies. 

Some of President Obama's final words do underlie those policies:

"I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try. "

Those words sound the notes that have indeed made America great!

From Election Day, November 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your 

   powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless 

   prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its 

   spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, 

   appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty 

   lakes--nor Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, 

   I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's 

   choosing day...
                               Walt Whitman

Same Words, but What a Difference

At the funeral today for Abraham Kleiman,  a friend who had a fine sense of humor, the rabbi recalled the best joke he thought Abe had told him:

            You know the difference between a pessimist and an optimist?

            The optimist says, "Good morning, God."

            The pessimist says, "Good God, morning."

How Big is Your Scoop?

"Two Scoops" appears on the Kellogg's Raisin Bran box.  Is there an objective measure for a scoop of anything, including raisins?   You could call it "One Scoop" or "Three Scoops" and still have the same amount of raisins.  

A Word that Outsmarted Spell Check

Can you find what spell check couldn't in this Associated Press article about decreasing sales of Hallmark Greeting Cards?

               "Pete Burney, Hallmark's senior vice president who overseas production, said 'competition in our industry is indeed formidable' and that 'consumers do have more ways to connect digitally and online and through social media'." 

The President's New Name

Things are looking up for Obama when a little kid in a home video goes viral on YouTube after she calls the president "Bronco Bama."  I think just about anybody would vote for Bronco Bama!