"Shedding" Jobs

         I've been bothered in tough economic times to hear the frequent use of the word "shedding" as in "the company is shedding jobs."  One of the meanings of the verb "shed" is to rid oneself of something not wanted or needed like shedding pounds through diet and exercise. And that's the connotation I hear when the economic, business, and employment reports come out. The economy is "shedding jobs," businesses are "shedding workers."    Please watch it, news media and economic analysts: those are people's livelihoods you're talking about!

Geriatric Anagrams

       Coming home one day from Connie 's periodic followup medical appointment with our primary physician, I recalled that I needed to take care of something before my own next followup with him.  What was it?  The name for it escaped me, but what came in its place was "Octopussy. "  (Wasn't that a James Bond movie?)

       That's how I proceed through life in these days of abrading memory: feeling my way sonically, knowing what comes misses the mark but probably partakes of the word I'm reaching for. What came had nine of the eleven letters in the word I actually sought and finally caught:  "colonoscopy. "

Is Language Important?

       Did I need to have a name for the sparrows that frequent our back yard and peck at the grass seed interminably like little bobbing automatons?

       Well, when I decided to shoot them (with my camera) to try to capture that cutely incessant group feasting, I saw in closeup and with zooming in for the first time the distinct black and white stripes on their heads.

       Out with Kimball Garrett, Jon L. Dunn, and Bob Morse's Birds of the Los Angeles Region:  these were "White-crowned Sparrows."

       And I had a name.  An identifier.  Yes, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"...but...I had a name...and that too is important.

"Comity"/"Comedy"

       Al Franken made his reputation with comedy before election to U.S. Senator.  In the December 2, 2010 New Republic a photo caption:  "Franken is an unlikely devotee of the rituals of senatorial comity."

       The sonic chime struck:  comedy/comity.  The article said Franken seeks to be a Ted Kennedy, a master of working across the aisle.  He wants progressive measures but to be institutional,  recognizing the honor he shares equally with senators of other stripes.  The article noted he had two or three personal joshing relationships with conservative colleagues already in his first year.

       "Comity" means civility, an atmosphere of social harmony, derives from Latin comitas, "courtesy."  The Indo-European roots are "smiling together with."

       Maybe Franken's "comedy" is not far from his "comity," especially when we remember that comedy is the great leveler.

Counter-Parry at the Grocery Counter

       I thought I had an amusing remark when I said to the young man behind the bakery cases in the grocery store who had just sliced my loaf of their good olive bread, "I wish they could bake it sliced."

       He handed it to me with, "That would be the best thing since sliced bread." 

Hale Fellow, and Well Met

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My Own Strained Pun

       I jotted the following in January 2011 while watching the Australian Open men's semi-final:


       Strangest thing I've seen (and heard) on a tennis court, Federer halting play in the middle of Djokovic's bouncing of the ball before serving to ask for something to be removed from the court--a white feather stuck in the net--ball boy did so midst a bird's loud squawking from above.  Camera then showed another feather drifting into Djokovic's space just as he served.  Apparently Djokovic had two opponents today, Federer and the Featherer.

       Oh, I know.  Forgive me.

       (And anyway, Djokovic beat them both in three straight sets.) 

Oops.

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       I hope there's no connection between Norman and the author of this blog.

"ONCE Only"

       The epigraph to Mary Oliver's book Swan is a quote from Rilke's Duino Elegies.  It took me two or three readings, but I felt repaid for them:


               Everyone once, once only.  Just once and no more.
               And we also once.  Never again.  But this having been
               once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
               seems irrevocable.


       Taking that seriously is a lot of the import of Mary Oliver's poems:


              When it's over, I don't want to wonder
              if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
              I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
              or full of argument.

              I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
                                               from "When Death Comes"


        (By the way, "epigraph" simply means "writing above or upon" from the Greek.)

 

                    

Was This Pun Really Necessary?

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You can't get off the hook, Piraro, blaming it on a "guest cartoonist."

Another Wonderful Insight

       Here's a powerful understanding conveyed by Rabbi David Wolpe in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel:

             "The reason a sin is a sin is not because laws are broken but
              because a person is hurt."

That brings it right down to the very human reality.

A Thought that Stuck With Me

       I jotted some notes quickly before the words escaped, from a talk by Rabbi David Wolpe at a temple men's retreat, especially this insight from Carl Jung:


     "The greatest influence on children is the unlived life of the parents."


Have a go-round on that as a child or a parent, or both.

"PET-i-TUDE"?

       After shopping, I noticed the name on the business next door and thought it was kind of weird:

Seeing the added-on banner underneath, I wondered why they changed the name and what it had been.  I stepped in and inquired to a clerk who was free at his register.

       The name was "Pet People," a chain I gather, and I was told when the company was sold, they didn't like the new ownership and dropped out.   Of course, they couldn't keep the name legally; hence the name change.

       But "PET-i-TUDE"?  Maybe it's a play on "attitude," a word I note their former company uses online to suggest a positive, fun approach toward pets.  Mightn't this store have done better with "PET FOLKS"?   Anyway, I hope business is doing well.

We Need to Be Taken Aback

       Sometimes, whatever we are doing, we need to hear what a poem we've come across has to tell us.



               What Can I Say?

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
   and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.


 
       Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this from your book, Swan.

And My Fortune Is???

       I think the intention may be to say, "Watch your relations with other people carefully; be reserved."  Not bad advice (if one gleans it).

       I am glad to learn some Chinese and to utter "Jiu-pian"--now I have to figure where "Nine pieces" might be appropriate.

       But then the writers of this fortune perhaps would like to "Learn (some) English."

"Juxtaposition"

       I have received the new calendar for the Nature Conservancy with fine photos by members along with a few words about each image by the photographers.

       This is great, but once in awhile there's a little deficiency in the language:

          "I like the juxtaposition between the delightful harmless    
           butterflies and the sinister expression of the caiman..."

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Taken in Peru, wonderful photo, amazingly captured by R. Grant Maslowski (mine is a retake of part of his shot to show what his sentence is referring to).

       It's probably to be forgiven, but if you know the Latin root of "juxtaposition," "placed next to," the word "between" isn't quite right.  "Of" would have been a better choice.  The "betweenness" is already implied in juxtaposition itself.

Cartoonist Fun Pun

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"Welcome"; "You're Welcome"; "No Problem"

        At the Dodger game yesterday, I noted on the stadium above the entrance it said "Welcome" and also "Bienvenidos."  I noticed and observed to son David that the Spanish said exactly the same things in the two halves of its word:  "Well" and "come."

        David said "But other languages aren't the same as English in the response to 'Thank you';  they don't say 'You're welcome.'"  I knew a couple languages where that is so, and looking it up, here are several:

        French--de rien--"it's nothing"
        Italian--prego--"pray"
        Danish--selv tak--"thanks yourself"
        Polish--prosze--"please"
        Chinese (Cantonese)--(mn say-ha-hay)--"not necessary"
        Spanish--de nada --"nothing"

I personally think any one of these, including the English "You're welcome" is far better than the Johnny-come-lately, ubiquitous, and annoying "No problem."
       

Right Words Capture Taste

       Couldn't resist the occasional thrill of bringing home some Haagen-Dazs ice cream from the grocery store.  It's coffee, and they've got it exactly right on the box:

         FLAVOR TOP NOTES:  freshly brewed roasted coffee

         FLAVOR FINISH NOTES:  lingering sweetened cream

      Who wrote that? How did they figure that out? Is it a copywriter's description after the fact, or did the ice cream designers aim for that result? I don t know, but the immediate and prominent flavor is coffee, and the taste ends in "lingering sweetened cream."  And did they get those "top" and "finish notes" from wine tasting?

      What can I tell you? Once in awhile, calories or no, it's terrific.

      And the perfect words to describe it don't hurt either!!

The Need to Reconnect

       I made a call to a cousin whom Connie and I hadn't seen nor talked with in several years but have a shared history with in New York City and in the Twin Cities. There's a close kinship with many memories, laughs, sympatico attitudes. We just hadn't talked in too long.

       I wasn't sure I even had the right phone number because I knew they'd moved but gave it a try:

        Her Voice: (Inquiring) Hello?
        Mine: (Smiling with satisfaction) Shirrr-ley.
        Hers: (Recognizing) Don?
        Mine: (Amazed but not really)  A syllable or two and we know who
                    we are.
        Shir: How are you?
        Me: How are you?
        Shir: I asked you first.
        Don: I called you.

It doesn't take any more than that when the line's connecting two people who needed to talk to each other. . .as the next hour attested!  

"Gargle"; "Gargoyle"

       I leave a one-word note for myself with the oral inhalant I take each morning.  The word is "gargle" because I'd read it was good to cleanse after breathing in the medicine.  Peculiarly this morning I asked myself how a New Yawker might say the word "gargle":  "gargoil," I figured.

       THEN I wondered, "Is there any connection between "gargle" and "gargoyle"?  NO, I was sure; but I'll look it up. 

       YES!  Both the sputtering we do in our throats with liquid to freshen or medicate and the grotesque faces and figures projecting from gutters of buildings, especially in Gothic architecture, acting as spouts to drain rainwater!, have exactly the same root, a root that means "throat" in several languages.

       From Old French, back to Latin and Greek, and forward to English too, the root is imitative in origin.   The semi-"gagging" and liquid "gurgling" (imitative also) are what's happening with both "gargoyles" and "gargling."

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Everyone, Every Human Being

       A conjunction amongst three quotes.

       The first is by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., from his Life 's Little Instruction Calendar :
             Remember that everyone you meet is looking for       
             affirmation, direction, and hope.

      The second is by Philo of Alexandria:
             Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle.

      The last quote is a Chasidic teaching cited by Roger Kamenetz in his book The Jew in the Lotus:
             Before every human being comes a retinue of angels,
             announcing, "Make way for an image of the Holy One,
             Blessed be He. "
Kamenetz says, "How rarely do we listen for those angels when we
encounter another human being." 

"Houyhnhnms"

       As I noted in the last post, my essay on "Yahoo" pointed out that the "noble creatures Swift created to live by right reason alone were horses.  They called themselves Houyhnhnms.  Swift has Gulliver say,

        'The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature.'"

I love Swift 's choice of the word to identify these creatures. If you try to give voice to the word Houyhnhnm, you can see how Swift came up with it.
   
       It's a pretty good imitation of what we ordinarily call a "whinny."

"Yahoo," "Search Engines"

       Re-reading my book of essays on words, I came across "Yahoo" again; yes it's a "search engine"  (which Jonathan Swift might have satirized for the sheer inhuman sound of needing an engine to search for anything), but Swift did create the "Yahoo," the lowest, least civilized, most stench-ridden being on earth, with a human form and every human vice in a land where horses are the noblest and kindest of beings.  I ended my essay this way:

           May we "Yahoos " be reminded by the reference to keep our uses

           friendly and our goals bent to extending the best that is in us

           through the powerful and pervasive computer.

Cutting Through Grammatical Awkwardness

       On a wonderful nature calendar sent to me, winning nature photographs from competitors are published by the Nature Conservancy.

       Each photo has words about nature by the winner and usually praise for the work of the Conservancy.  All this is well except for the last sentence of one winner who has just said she supports the N.C.: "Their work continues to leave the world in a better state than which they found it. "

       She may have been trying to avoid ending the sentence with the preposition "in", but she got herself kind of tangled. The solution here is to simply delete the word "which," and it makes perfectly good and clear English.

The "Patient's Belongings"

       Getting deeper into summer reminds me of going to Kaiser for an emergency two summers ago.  While being examined for dizziness, I renewed my anger at the "Patient's Belongings" bag supplied me.

       There were no problems discernible in heart, brain, or blood--hence vertigo due probably to slightly calcifying cilia, little hairs in inner ear, which help control balance. Best available medicine, meclizine, same one buys to prevent airplane stuffed ears or dizziness! I had had the worrisome symptom for five days, so it was time to attend to it.
 
       But there it was, a term I remembered from years before.  You feel you 're already dead when you see a bag imprinted "Patient's Belongings."  Connie recalled the usage: "His belongings were distributed to next of kin"!

       At least it didn't say "Deceased's Belongings."

Cartooning Language Again

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Kids and Communication Technology

       This cartoon hit home on a day I had to plea for help to my son in getting several computer conundrums figured out:

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Block that Pun

       Some puns are so bad you just have to moan or groan (which may mean they're good).  Some puns are bad because they're bad puns.

       Yesterday's L.A. Times sports page headlined an article:

                    Lisicki brings heat, 
                    Serena the timidity.

       Yes, a lesser known Sabine Lisicki ousted Serena Williams from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in one of the middle rounds when Serena was expected to win it all.  Lisicki apparently hit and fought hard; Serena was unaggressive at times.

       But the PUN?  Playing "timidity" off "humidity"?  If you have to think, "What IS the pun?" and when you find it it wasn't worth it, it doesn't even rise to the level of a groan!

Some "K" Words: "Kibosh" 2

       Does "kibosh" go back to Yiddish “kye” as “18,” “bosh” as “pence”? 
      
       “It’s said that bidders at small auctions, put the kibosh on other bidders, forced them out, by jumping their bids to eighteen pence.”  Leo Rosten puts the word in his book The Joys of Yiddish, only indicating, after exhaustive consideration, that he’s not very happy with any etymology, including Yiddish.
 
       I want to believe that it came over to America as “death cape” with Irish immigrants as my friend Marvin said, but I’m afraid I have to put the kibosh on that one too.  I reluctantly resign myself to the  exasperating, universally agreed upon source in all my principal references:  “origin unknown.”                  

Some "K" Words: "Kibosh" 1

       We move from Middle English to Greek to Chinese in our previous three "K" words.  As the origins get more exotic, you might well wonder about “kibosh.”  “Put the kibosh on, put an end to: dispose of finally.”

       I could easily accept what my friend first put me on to, Gaelic, cie bas, pronounced “kibosh,” which means "death cape."  To me that sounds perfect.  Writing of word and phrase origins, author Robert Hendrickson is inclined to see this as “the most logical explanation.”

       But then Hendrickson offers up the long held belief that the etymology is Yiddish, going back to “kye” as “18” and “bosh” as “pence.”  What is this about?  More (and "K" concluded) tomorrow.