"Spot Passages"

       Spot Passages.  We learned them for Miss Anderson, our high school English teacher.  Each of us had to come up, sit by her desk, and recite the passage for the week to her. 

                    “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.”

I’ve thought of it many, many times since, and I had and still have it in my mind when needed.  (See Sunday, March 10, 2013, e.g.)  Macbeth, Act II, Scene 2.  We did read the play, of course.
 
       Another spot passage, Act I, Scene 7:

                 “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but                          only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls                      on th’other.”

I’ve accused myself of that not a few times.  But Shakespeare had Macbeth say it first! 

Typewriter Laureate

        I suppose I shouldn’t marvel that my computer keyboard alphabet with its three rows of letters hasn’t changed one whit since I first learned to type on our old Royal typewriter 57 years ago.

       Then as now I was interested in the sounds of language and couldn’t escape learning the names of the three rows of letters, at least as I pronounced them:

                 kware ty you ee ahp
                  ass dihf guh djihkl
                   zihx sihv bihnm

       How could I help saying them?  I saw them every time I looked down at the keyboard.  So do you.

       If the above reads strangely to you, here it is “in the life”:

                 qwertyuiop   
                  asdfghjkl
                   zxcvbnm

How do you recite it?  

Shop On: You'll Find No Better Name than This

       I can't let another day pass without recalling what Connie dubbed yesterday's Holiday:        meMALLial day.

Another "who/whom" Conundrum, 2 (see yesterday first)

       "It's (he/him) (who/whom) you can't understand."

       This is a difficult one, but “he” and “whom” are correct. 

       Any form of the verb “to be” does not take an object following it, only a subject.  For example,  one should say, “It is I” not “It is me.”   “He” is a subject, “him” is an object; hence “It’s he” is correct.

       “(Who/whom) you can’t understand” is a separate  clause in which the word in question is the object of the verb “understand.”  To check which  sounds right, change the word order around and substitute “he” and “him” for “who” and “whom":  “You can’t understand he” doesn't sound right; “him” does.  “Whom” is an object like "him"; so the correct choice is “whom you can’t understand.”

       "It's he whom you can't understand."

Another "who/whom" Conundrum, 1

"It's (he/him) (who/whom) you can't understand."

       Which of the two words in each of the above parentheses is correct?

                 (Answer will be posted tomorrow.) 

"I've got catholic tastes. Catholic with a small 'c,' of course."

       How did "Catholic" become a secular word as well as religious?  The answer surprises me.  Anthony Burgess's small "c" "catholic tastes" (or your or my such usage, signifying "broad" or "general") preceded the religious use.

       It was a secular word before it became a religious one with a large "C."  The word dates to pre-Christian Greece and Rome, deriving from Greek katholikos, "universal."

       The first  upper case use is in a letter from Ignatius of Antioch in about 107:  "Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

Why "BUTTERfly"?

       Apparently, according to my sources, you have your choice.  And when you hear one of these etymological possibilities, you may be glad you can choose.

       Possibly from Old English, referring to the creamy yellow color of a number of butterfly species.

       Germanic naming makes the insect into a "milk-thief" and a "butter licker" based on belief or observation.

       The next may be the reason to pick any other derivation:   the Dutch noted the creatures' excrement is a butter-like substance and worked it into their name for it, literally "butter shitter."
 
       But the one that warms my heart most is that the "BUTTER" in "BUTTERfly" comes from Old English butor--"beater," a mutation of beatan--"to beat."

Cartooning the Cosmic against the Trivial

What Passes for Mail

Connie:  (Bringing in what's in the box with its usual disappointing                           contents of ads and solicitations)

                      "The mail isn't much to write home about."

"Synergy"

       Yahoo joining up with Tumblr to the tune of 1.1 billion dollars has Wall Street types uttering "synergy" when they contemplate the deal. 

       Syn, "together with"; erg, "work" (traced back to Indo-European werg, "to do").   In physics, "erg" is the unit of work in the metric system, and there it is right in the middle of "energy."

       Peculiarly, the name "George" comes from this.  Ge is "earth" from the Greek, and orge another form of "erg," an occupation-derived name:   "earth worker,"  farmer.

       "Orgy" has the same root, and no telling what a "to-do" and how many "ergs" of energy are embedded in that!

       Only question with Yahoo and Tumblr:  How well do their respective elements really "work together with" each other?

Misleading Participles

       Online, Mayo Clinic writes wonderful, clear, user-friendly  descriptions and accounts of different medical conditions.  But everyone needs to be watchful of unintentional confusion.  English’ll do that to you.

       Speaking of dermatitis, these sentences appear:

Avoid products that seem to trigger your rash.  Wearing nonlatex gloves while washing dishes, shampooing your hair or handling other products that irritate your skin may help.

       Sounds a little like nonlatex gloves could be one of those bad triggers, and also shampooing your hair could be, plus handling irritating products “may help”?!  It’s all those “ing” participles in a row that get entangled.
 
       A little thought and revision would make for better communication, with less potential for reader befuddlement. 

A Literate Comic Strip

 He (who is gay) is Her roommate.  They are dance partners in a ballet company.  He has also danced lately with Fernanda.
                                                                                                                                                                           

Click on strip to enlarge.

When's the last time you saw the word Brobdingnagian in the comics?

Few but Telling Words

       Sometimes a handful of words can right the course for you.  Manolo spoke little but helped me improve my tennis game immensely.

       Watching me hit, he said, “You should see the ball over one shoulder on the backswing and over the other on the follow-through.”  What a simple instruction, but I started to hit with authority:  my swing had more scope and power.

       Manolo watched me serve, said two things: “Take it easy” and “Now use your wrist.”  I immediately started getting my first serve in regularly, and when I use my wrist, there’s speed enough to tie up my opponents, often for a missed return.

       Manolo’s few words reshaped my game! 

Starting a Conversation, How Hard Is It?

       Not sure the source of this dream.  Maybe my friend Toby Lurie who always reminds me we are friends and who himself speaks with people readily and easily.  Or maybe my friend Marvin Holloway, who died this past year.   He was open and loquacious to all around him.

       Extraverts attract me, I guess, partly because I’m pretty introverted myself.

       The dream seemed to be saying to me (was I on an airplane, a stranger sitting next to me?), “Start a conversation.  Let the world in.  You’ll be pleased, surprised!”

       “Even when I have nothing to say?” I seemed to be thinking, “nothing, only dullness?”

       “Yes!” came back the dream.

       I turned to my seat-mate and asked, “Is this a dull moment?”   He smiled, and we began to converse. 

Therapist Has Words, Will Travel

       Connie's home after more than a week in a skilled nursing facility for her painful back, and Kaiser's home health corps has followed.  Today an occupational therapist came in with practical help on things like getting on sox and jeans without twisting your back in doing so.

       I noted  a couple linguistic "twists" during the visit.   Connie was asked if she'd ever tried a "stockade."  "A what?" I thought, "Kaiser wants to put Connie in prison?"

       "Sock Aid" was the actual word.  This item helps you get your sox on without bending over or bending your knees, both of which are hard on the back.  You can see a picture of one here.

       Our therapist came in pulling a pack that rolled on wheels.   The carrying device looked strong and efficient, and as she departed, I saw it had a name:  "MAGNA CART."

Birds, Poems, and Reality

       How do birds sleep?  It’s a question I put online to answer a doubt I have every time I say a certain poem, which is often.

       The poem called “Today Is Forever” by Malka Heifetz Tussman speaks of a bird scratching a small trough for itself in the earth, lying in it like a crib, and resting.
 
       Do birds rest and sleep this way?

       My online informants testify to a good number of ways birds sleep, not only claw(s) grappled to a twig or branch; for example, huddled up on the floor of a bird cage, and I suppose the poet’s description to be a possible one also.

       I wish I knew all that David Attenborough knows, but I guess I am satisfied this poem does not transgress the bounds of reality.

Two Poems by Grandson Micah

Oh Wind

Oh wind I see you how you sway
to the left and the right.
You always make me sleep.

Oh wind you always make me dance.   
Your music is so beautiful
you sometimes make me laugh.
Your sways make me sway.

Micah Bernard (Age 8)

                                                               

Spring

Oh the Spring
A good time

We can enjoy the summer…
Solstice
Oh mighty rain
Give/our/plants/water
Says the desert man

Oh Spring finally you,
No more Winter

Micah Joseph Bernard
Age 11

                                                                                                                                                            

"Oh What a Tangled Web..."

       Another adage such as the one I brought up the other day, arose in conversation with friends.  We’d been talking about marital infidelity and how one lie can lead to another to cover for the first, etc., until the truth is suffocated.

       The saying we finally pieced together from our memories was the following:

            Oh what a tangled web we weave
            When first we practice to deceive.

This rhyming aphorism is a moral one rather than a practical one like “a pint’s a pound the world around” but very useful to remember!  It was said by Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott over 200 years ago.

Don's Sonnet to Connie for Mother's day

       Thou were you at first and only that to me,
       Your person, self, and life were one and all.
       Then wed we were and double joined to see
       If two could make one life, without a fall.

       That life has grown and mingled our true love
       And fashioned for us labor, joy, and smile,
       And made a marriage of earth and heav’n above:
       Husband, wife, and lovers all the while.

       Till double yoked we double child produced
       Of either sex in perpetuity;
       This two, now one, not halved, nor yet reduced
       But blissed and arched a rainbow progeny.

       Though children, husband, make thee Wife and Mother,
       No less, no more to me than wast, nor other.

       At the time I wrote this decades ago, I was asking my college students to memorize and perform a Shakespeare sonnet "by heart."  With this I think I was challenging my own understanding of the form by composing one.

"A Pint's a Pound the World Around"

       This is something Connie taught me that I’d never heard before but was a part of her "folk" knowledge.  These pithy, often rhyming catch phrases are useful and memorable.
 
       I know it now too and have used it.  Weighing myself this morning, as I do every day, I forgot to delay the two cups of water I also have every day to ward off kidney stones until after weighing; but I knew I could subtract one pound from my weight, and it would be accurate!  “A pint’s a pound the world around.”

A Friend Closed with "Sent from my smarter than I Phone"

       I trust there are others who resent "sent from my iPad" or "sent from my iPhone" as the closing line on an email.  (I understand the phrase cannot be eliminated from the message by customers;  triple the blame on Apple then.) 

       WHO CARES WHERE YOU SENT IT FROM?!

               sent from my toilet,
                       Don

Blog? What's that?

       Connie's home for first full day from skilled nursing facility. 

       I'm too tired and happy for words.

Creative Listening? (Or Hard of Hearing)

       When your hearing’s getting a little frayed around the edges, it can lead to some creative listening.   At dinner one night at in-laws and friends Jean and Michael’s house, it was noted that Michael’s father, now passed on, had not eaten meat.  Jean said, “But that was because of sexual issues.”

       I thought, then paused, finally asked, “Did you say ‘sexual’ issues?”  There was broad laughter at the table.
  
       Jean had said “textural.”  (Meat hard to digest?  I didn’t pursue the question.)  Michael was especially amused, realizing if I’d thought I heard “sexual,” why I just had to ask!

       We seem unable to live with a blurred, indefinite meaning; we’re gonna fill it in with the best we can make of it.

"Sonnetto for Furious Nursing Baby"

       I can't resist putting this poem in my blog.  It is scrupulously observed, and the language is perfectly attuned to its subject.


Frothy and pink as a rabid pig, you-
a mauler - a lunatic, stricken with

a madness induced by flesh - squeeze my skin
until blotched, nicked. Your fingernails

are jagged and mouth-slick. Pinprick scabs jewel
my breasts. Your tongue, your wisest muscle,

is the wet engine of discontent.
It self-fastens by a purse-bead of spit

while your elegant hands flail, conducting
orchestral milk, and sometimes prime the pump.

Nipple in mouth, nipple in hand, you have
your cake and eat it too. Then when wrenched

loose, you’ll eat sorrow, loss - one flexed hand twists,
as you open your mouth to eat your fist.
           
           by Julianna Baggott
             appeared in Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2010  
                Selected by Shafiq Naz

Comic Strip: Teenager Communicating with Parents

Click on Strip to Enlarge

"Cairo," Illinois; "New Madrid," Missouri

       On my way recently to the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service to read the day’s newspapers over the air for the blind and print-impaired, I heard an announcer on my car radio slightly uncomfortably pronouncing the name of a nearby town.  I wondered if he was new to the area.

       Then on our own broadcast, as my reading partner Mike read an article on the floods in the Midwest, I realized I had an advantage because I grew up in the Midwest while Mike grew up in Burbank.

       If you hadn’t heard it occasionally, how would you know the Illinois town “Cairo” is pronounced KAY-roe or that “New Madrid” in Missouri is pronounced nu-MAD-rid, not nu-muh-DRID?  We’ve all got some “inside” linguistic knowledge simply because of where we were raised.

Mark Swed's Joyous Writing about Music

       When a great music critic gets turned on, he or she can be as artistic a writer as any wielder of prose around.  I submit this paragraph from Mark Swed last week, written of young violinist Jennifer Koh, Chicago born of Asian background:

        "Her tone is big, bold and drop-dead gorgeous, just the thing for Romantic-era repertory.... Less than three years ago, she appeared at the Cerritos Center with the Moscow State Symphony as soloist in the soupy Bruch Violin Concerto.  A blindfolded listener could have been fooled into thinking that an American woman of Korean heritage in her early 30s was, in fact, a burly old-school Russian virtuoso in rumpled suit specked with dandruff reaching into the throbbing depths of a passionate, vodka-besotted soul."

      

From "Stem" to "Stern"

       I'm a speech person because I consider speech the source of language but I'll grant that visual symbols helped regularize speech and make it more widely accessible.  Those who favor words on a page or a screen, though, will have to grant that sometimes these visual entities get us screwed up.

       One of my favorites is how, especially in some fonts, the "m" and "n" and "r" can cohabit with one another in less than communicative ways:  the actress Laura Dern can change before your eyes into Laura Dem.  And the front and back end of a boat can both be the same, in the phrase "from stem to stern."

      Yes, the spoken word can mumble and jumble and hem and haw, but the printed word has its  special vulnerabilities.  And I shall never be happy with a front page story making me turn multiple pages to get to the rest of a single word that has been broken off in its middle while the thought that is an intelligible sentence evaporates!

My Only Joke

Wordplay

       Playing with words gets to be a habit.

       I recall the captured Boston Marathon bomber being forthcoming about his crime.  Then I wonder if he'd confess even more in a fifthcoming.

       But there was or is or will be a Second Coming.

       The first coming I remember---I must have been 15.
    
       If you're sonically-minded or speech-minded (and pun minded), no telling where words will take you.  (And some will wish there were no telling.)

       "Forecasting" anyone?