Peculiar Label

       I noticed an unusual label the other day on an old sweater of mine.  The brand appeared to be "Bowen & Wright," which had a rectangular box inscribed around it and underneath it the words "Registered Trademark."  But above them both in a semi-rainbow-shaped arc was "AUTHENTIC CLOTHING."  What?  Was there some doubt?

       Imagine finding a loaf of bread labeled "AUTHENTIC FOOD."  Wouldn't you wonder?  In fact, I had taken the sweater off its hanger simply to confirm it was wool as I figured all along it was.  There were no other labels than this one.  Now the "Authentic" has me wondering what the darned thing IS made of.

      

Misleading Label Again

       I probably wouldn't have gone for an ice cream called "Black Raspberry" as Connie did, not being attracted to fruity flavors, but might have been lured by the rest of its name "Dark Chocolate Chunk."

       Since I was out of my own ice cream, I tried hers and found the "chunks" tiny and disappointing.  I looked back at the cover label and read in smaller print "pieces of dark chocolate folded into..." "pieces" already being a reduction from "chunks," but what was inside would not have been misnamed "bits" or even "specks."

       If you're going to call something "chunk," remember the sound and heft as well as image of that;  I imagined mini-iceberg size chocolate fragments, not dainty dots, especially with most of the container covered in a rich deep brown! 

      

"The Child Is Father of the Man"

       I just finished munching a "Nut Goodie" candy bar that I ordered by email and had sent to "Donnie" at my address here in California, a box of ten bars.  I loved them as a kid in St. Paul where they're made.  I even wrote a note to include to my younger self:

                 Dear Donnie,
                      
                          Since "the child is father of the man" (Wordsworth),

                 Happy Father's Day.

                          I know how much you loved Nut Goodies.

                 And because of that, thankfully, I do too.

                          Let's share the box!

                                      Don

"Under Penalty of Law"

       How many of us leave tags untouched on the end of new pillows?

       Consumers can rip them off if they want.  They're unsightly; they hang out the pillow case ends and tickle a bed partner.   YET I BET THERE ARE THOUSANDS of homes with those tags present and accounted for!

       We are intimidated by those first words in the federally mandated statement, "UNDER PENALTY OF LAW"...my God, I've got to obey whatever follows: 
                       UNDER PENALTY OF LAW THIS TAG
                                    NOT TO BE REMOVED
You see jail bars and hardly notice the final
                             EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER

       Consider this changed word order:
                              EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER
                          THIS TAG NOT TO BE REMOVED
                                UNDER PENALTY OF LAW
The threat is allayed!  I predict a lot more joyous tag-ripping ceremonies in America.

"Day" Thoughts upon Awakening

Today is Friday wash day because yesterday's usual wash day daughter Elizabeth was still in town;  must confirm next date to read newspapers over the air (my regular every-other-Wednesday was Christmas Day, no broadcast).    Good to have set days for things.  What was Friday for in that song my dad sang?..."Friday Fish"..."Monday Hasenpfeffer," I think, "All the German mothers we wish the same to you"; Tuesday can't remember, I know Wednesday was "Zooop" (Soup), Thursday "Roast Beef," pretty sure;  doing week backwards each time brought me "Tuesday String Beans"; Saturday I think was "Payday"; Sunday of course "Church." 

       Good to have those set days, those things to anchor your week on, whether broadcast day or fish day...or wash day (even a day late)--better get up to do it.

Lazy Day Repartee

       Exhausted from family stuff for the last two days, Connie and I were sitting in late morning poring sleepily over newspapers in our sunroom with sunlight pouring in.

       After reading awhile and my sharing a funny passage from a humanizing piece about John McCain in the N.Y. Times Magazine, I contemplated my situation and said,  "I'm trying to figure what to do with my day....Do you know what you're doing with your day?"

       "I'm just trying to sit here and let it go by," said Connie.

       It cracked me up good.

Oof, He's At It Again

"The Love of Self"

       "The curse of our house...has been the love of self; has ever been the love of self.

       "There is a kind of selfishness...I have learned it in my own experience of my own breast:  which is constantly upon the watch for selfishness in others:  and holding others at a distance by suspicions and distrusts, wonders why they don't approach, and don't confide, and calls that selfishness in them."

                        Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

      

"Keelhaul"

       In the final blog post yesterday on "Naming Rites," it was noted that the sports team nickname chosen by the California Maritime Academy was "Keelhaulers."

       It's a word I'd run into but was unsure of its meaning.  Kevin Baxter thought the name was appropriate for a school with a "nautical mooring."  After all, "What could be more threatening than keelhauling, an often deadly form of punishment."

       As the OED defines "keelhaul," "Haul (a person) through the water under the keel of a ship, as a punishment (obsolete except Historically).  Now also figuratively, rebuke or reprimand severely."

"Naming Rites," 5

Sidebar 2  by Kevin Baxter, L.A. Times Sports Section

       So what's in a nickname?  PLENTY.  As Kevin Baxter's December 15, 2013, L.A. Times sports section article reveals.  (I don't know whether Baxter or the headline writer gave us the pun in the title, but it's an excellent one, both humorous and appropriately illuminating.)

"Naming Rites," 4

Sidebar 1 by Kevin Baxter, L.A. Times

"Naming Rites," 3

From Kevin Baxter's L.A. Times Sports Section piece

"Naming Rites," 2

Excerpted from L.A. Times article by Kevin Baxter.

"Naming Rites," 1

Excerpts from L.A. Times Sports Section, Dec. 15, 2013 

Waning "Gibbous" Moon

       Today is actually a full moon, traditionally called the December "full cold moon."  But what happens after today?

       The words above caught my eye yesterday and reminded me, after full moon, the moon's phase becomes "waning gibbous moon."  No longer circular, the moon loses some of its roundness and gains the term "gibbous" (pronounced GIB-us) from the Latin gibbus ("hump").

       As long as the moon is between 50% lit and full, it's called gibbous for its rounded but not round appearance, or "hump-backed" if you wish.  When the moon is becoming smaller, it's "waning," when the moon is becoming larger, it's "waxing."

       Just so it's between 50 and 100% illuminated, it's gibbous.  As soon as the moon has "points," it's no longer a gibbous moon.  

"Being Alive," by Stephen Sondheim, 5

      At the end of Bobby's song, the words "being alive" are sung three times, meaning something a little different and a little more each time in accord with Bobby's progression:   surviving the challenges of "being alive"; going through those together is "being alive"; and what life's about, "being alive!"

       There's a beginning, middle, and end in "Being Alive," it develops, and Bobby is NOT in the same place at the end as he was at the beginning.  Stephen Sondheim has thrillingly fulfilled the prescription of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein for lyrics in a musical.

       As for words, well Sondheim must have to pay words overtime for making them do so much for him.

       In the new documentary film Six by Sondheim, you'll see Dean Jones give a memorable and moving performance of "Being Alive."
   
       

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 4

       Stanza seven makes a dizzying turn, Bobby welcoming the helter-skelter of relationship and life.  By stanza eight,  Bobby has worked his way through to acknowledging this turn from "alone" to "alive."

       And in the final ninth stanza the intensity of stanza four is reprised but with the same small word changes of five and six, bringing their height of emotional angst and yearning, Bobby pleading "Somebody crowd me with love," the intensity now at a peak.

       "Alive" appears a dozen times in stanzas four, five, six, eight, and nine:  Bobby and someone being "frightened" "of being alive,"  Bobby asking somebody to make him "aware of being alive,"  to "support" him "for being alive," to "make" him "alive,"  Bobby will "help us survive / Being alive." The repetitions and variations are exalting and affirming.

      
      

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 3

       In the lyrics as I posted them yesterday, you can see the progression of language, expressive of Bobby's resistance, wrenching transformation, and change.

       In the first three stanzas, Bobby is aggrieved and distanced ("Someone to hold you too close") and satiric ("To ruin your sleep"); in the fourth stanza the language intensifies ("Someone to crowd you," "to force you," "to make you"), and Bobby's  distance collapses ("[Someone] as frightened as you/Of being alive.")

       In the fifth stanza, with Sondheim altering only two or three words from the first stanza, Bobby's complaint ("Someone to hold you too close") transmutes to an anguished and yearning self-referenced plea ("Somebody hold me too close").  And that little but amazing shift carries through every line of stanzas five and six, raising emotions right along with it.

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 2

In Company, Robert (Bobby) a confirmed bachelor of 35 goes through two acts observing the plight & joys of his married friends, plus his own plight & joys with three girlfriends, & sings this culminating song:

click on lyrics to enlarge

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 1

       In the film Six by Sondheim the composer/lyricist says when he was 15, he learned from Oscar Hammerstein directly the most important single thing about lyric-writing for a musical:  the lyric had to have a beginning, middle, and end; it had to develop; the character singing needed to be in a different place when the song finished than when it began.

       I think it's a marvel of language the way Sondheim does it in "Being Alive," one of the six songs of the documentary's title.

       Tomorrow:  The Lyrics

"Cinerama" Anagram

       Amongst many other revelations in the marvelous new documentary film Six by Sondheim which HBO premiered the other night, this linguistic tidbit was noted by Steve Sondheim,

                 CINERAMA has an anagram:
                    AMERICAN 

"Mad Libs": the Hanukkah Edition

  
       Mad Libs books have been out for years:   brief stories with blank spaces for you to fill in words.  But you don't know the STORY till you read it with your created words now filled in.  My sample.

                      CELEBRATING THE JEWISH HOLIDAYS 101

We all know how to celebrate Hanukkah, but other holidays?  Well, on Tu B'Shevat, we celebrate by planting a participle in the ground.  On Passover we have a special meal called a Seder, which means "Duck."  Someone hides the furnace, and all the kids try to find it at the end of the Seder.  On Sukkot we build a glove outside and then crack up in it for 17 days.  There are many more holidays, but one of the most furtive is Shavuot.  That's when we stay up and curse all night long.

"The Long Boat" by Stanley Kunitz

"Lagniappe"

       "Lagniappe" was used in the headline of a review of Treme´ (about New Orleans) for its new, final, abbreviated season on HBO. 

       1.  Lagniappe (LAN-yap) was italicized in the headline when it needn't have been.  None of my references treat it as a foreign word;

       2.  Lagniappe is nowhere in the review itself, thus added by the headline writer based on Robert Lloyd's L.A. Times review calling the five-show season perhaps "an unnecessary appendix" to the series essentially completed last year, but welcome--a bonus, something tossed in extra for good measure;

       3.  The last words of #2 are indeed the word's definition;

       4.  It's a Southern Louisiana word from American Spanish la napa "the gift," and with the Creole dialect mix in New Orleans, then turned into Louisiana French.

        

Self-Serving Insurance Claims

       Actual excerpts from auto insurance claim forms in California.

Claim 1:  A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

Claim 2:  I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my
                 mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.

Claim 3:  My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.

Claim 4:  An invisible car came out of nowhere and struck my
                  vehicle--and vanished.

Claim 5:  The telephone pole was approaching fast.  I was attempting to
                 swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.

Claim 6: Pedestrian had no idea what direction to go, so I ran over him.

P(r)i(r)(v)acy

       Campaign Political Funds solicited online:

           when they use the phrase
                                                     "To Protect Your Privacy"--
           why do I always read
                                                      "To Protect Your Piracy"?

"Paraphernalia"

       I employ the term for a spacer tube I use with an asthma inhaler.

       But every time I think of the word "paraphernalia," my first association is with accoutrements for drug taking.

       The word comes from Greek para "beyond," pherne "a dowry," that is, a wife-to-be's personal possessions outside her dowry.

       Generally, the word refers to objects or appurtenances that go along with some main thing else.

Sycamore (forgive me)

Sycamore

                

More Sycamore

                                 
                                                                         

Sick o' More Sycamore?

 

                                                                                                                                                

Oops, Cartoonist & I on a Single Track

Click on cartoon to enlarge.

Photo I took some years back.

Solicitous Husband / Sardonic Wife

       Don:  Are you OK?

       Connie:  Yes.

       Don:  I heard you sneezing.

       Connie:  All I need is a Jewish mother.  I sneeze; therefore, I am.

Out-of-Control Cartoonist

click on cartoon to enlarge

       You kind of wish he'd just been tempted to do this cartoon but hadn't.  (Still, why am I glad he did?)

       So far as I can find out, there are only Jack Russell Terriers, called thus for a reverend of that name who was also a hunter and bred these dogs in the early 19th century.  Of course there have to be female Jack Russell Terriers, but apparently no Jane has given her name to a breed.

       Maybe the dad being happy birthdayed in the cartoon had a crush on the buxom actress back in the 1940s and 50s.