Creative Mishearing

                                       "The Way I Heard It"

       On the radio:

       "Prophylactics for birth control have come under the Catholic Church's condomnation."

Waiting to Emerge

Staring Down the Same Two Paths

       My wordplay cartoon here seems as relevant today as when it first appeared in the Wit, Wisdom, Words and Wonders calendar I produced 17 years ago:  Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel then too.

Cartooning Blogger's Diptych

Oh, you bad, blogging cartoonist

And Tummy?

The one way of sliding down hill they didn't include in the Olympics:

          ski
             snowboard
                luge
                   bobsled
                      skeleton
              

 (Some countries call skeleton toboganing, but Olympic skeletons don't                   resemble the toboggans I grew up with in Minnesota.)

Beware: Word Cartoon

Hilburn and I must be brothers under the "s kin."  See yesterday's post.

Cartooning Blogger Once Again

      

The Indelible World Wide Web

       I woke up yesterday shocked to realize how many signs of me and my use of language are on the planet...due mainly to the internet.

       Currently I am heard both live and recorded on radio and online reading newspapers for the blind; I can be read, heard, and seen since 2012 and from now to perpetuity in this blog; and there are audio recordings of me that were made 65 years ago that are accessible to anyone anywhere in the world...at this minute!

       Yes, I acted in radio dramas for kids while in college.  Someone retained those broadcast recordings, and they're now online.  You can hear me as "Whitney the Neighborly Whale" narrating my whale story back in 1950 by clicking here.

        Consider:  you yourself may be leaving indelible marks you're hardly aware of!

The Cartooning Blogger Again

      

The Cartooning Blogger ("ellipses")

Poetry, the Most Compact Language

       Many have pointed out our need to be better listeners and more reluctant speakers than we are most of the time, and I have heard and read some eloquent language encouraging me to engage more fully and sensitively in what the world, others' thoughts, and my own inner voices have to say, to really listen.

       But today I heard Coleman Barks, the devoted advocate and translator of Rumi, give a line of the great Sufi poet that sums up all the other admonitions, gives their essence, and obviates the need for anything more:

                 "I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears."

Amtrak Voices on the Train

       A four hour Amtrak return trip today, different train announcement styles from ones I heard last Friday.   Those were more personal, in tune with our desires for better seats upstairs, etc., what to anticipate at the next stop, e.g., number of people expected to leave and enter the train.  The tones were direct and helpful.

       Today's voices were brisk, fast, routine.   Sometimes the tones were those bored--pay-no-attention-to-me-while-I-talk--deliveries airline attendants assume when reading safety procedures.

        My basic moral would be:  Remember you've got listeners to what you're saying; don't be perfunctory and arrogant!  Regular travelers can disregard if they want, but others could be your future customers.  Court that traveler; have in mind a person whose needs you are fulfilling with your words!

Without Words

      I am away from home for two or three days with Connie and with family we haven't seen in too long a time.  Words fail me today.  But the pleasure of being with others one is close to and spending joyful time, that does not fail me.

  

      

"Touch Me" by Stanley Kunitz

       I heard Stanley Kunitz doing this very reading of his poem at the Dodge Poetry Festival.  I hope you find it as moving as I did, and do.

"Forever Missed"

       New technologies serve new purposes.  Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal wrote on "virtual gravestones" and "digital legacies."

       Fowler realized he himself stood in need of one of several such services that already exist.  He had a homeless friend without anyone else to take note of his passing.  Fowler found the best for himself and for his friend was a service called "Forever Missed."

       Paying a single fee of about $75.00, Fowler could establish a legacy with words that acknowledged the remembered friend's life, to be kept in perpetuity, to which one could return, which others who may have known him could visit and add their own reflections.

       A gravestone on high accessible to virtual visitation. 

The Letter-Fascinated Cartoonist

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

       Looks like they might be a bit "JUMPY" at the hideout too.

"Cute" is Aphetic

       While looking for something else entirely in the dictionary today (of course), I came across the abbreviation "aphet.", had to look it up, found "aphetic" applied to words like "cute," which struck me as serendipitous since yesterday the word "cuter" appeared in my post, and I knew this had to be my post for today.

       Actually aphetic is a linguistic term, an adjective from the Greek meaning "letting go."  Vowels at the beginning of words tend to be lost over time.  This is what happened to the word "acute" in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd," also the original meaning of "cute."  Gradually cute became a term of approval for someone with those qualities, and thence to its own sense of "attractive, fetching."

       Cute not only "let go" of a vowel, but its own original meaning!

WORDS in Art?

Barbara Kruger's towering black-and-white text now dominates the lobby of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

       I've been puzzling what to make of Barbara Kruger's use of language in her art for a good number of years.

       That "YOU" you're looking at (click on image to enlarge it) says, "You are here to get cultured.  To get smarter, richer, younger, angrier, funnier, skinnier, hipper, hotter, wiser, weirder, cuter, and kinder."

       It made me chuckle and smile at some of those words.  And the culture you'll gain at a museum consists of that wide a range of possibilities?  Includes things that are personally desirable to me, and feelings and wishes and curiosity and emotions I've had or suppressed, not just what's way outside my body and life?

       Is she saying the whole world, including ME, is in art, and art can even include huge words to help remind me of that!? 

Speak to Me in Snowboarding

       Reminded me of the strange lingo in other specialized activities, other sports like figure skating, yes, but other crafts as well, like ceramics.  Where did they get those names for things?  Out of the air, out of deference to the guy or country who created the move, out of plain descriptive ardor.

       Sage Kotsenburg won the Olympics in slopestyle snowboarding with his "Backside Double Cork 1620 Japan," chosen impetuously just before his last run because, as his brother advised him, "Why not?"

       And to top it off, do anybody but wild American youth toss around terms of joy like "down for it," "I'm stoked," "coolest thing," "that is sick."

       ALL in the spirit of "Why do we climb mountains?   Because they're there."  And with  meticulous devotion to techniques (and fun!) that'll get the job done.

"international artists"

       I recently saw mentioned a group of singers named

                    "international artists so-called."

I thought it was funny, a satirical jibe that hit a nerve for some performers (and maybe other artists).

       I've had the feeling from time to time that a performer was staking a claim that was fudging the truth.  Had a U.S. citizen stepped across the Canadian border one day and asked a couple strangers to appraise him as he sang a few notes, their approval and smiles sealing (for him) his "international reputation"?

       So it is a good joke to form a group that takes on the title officially (uncapitalized), thumbing its collective nose at pretension, in effect saying, "come listen to us for the music."

       I can't find the group online,  but if they ever appear near me, I'm going.

"Shtick"

        President Obama tonight used the word "shtick" in response to a question asked him on TV about President Putin just before the opening ceremonies at the Russian Olympics.

       Obama said the "bored," "tough guy" face Putin often had in public was part of his "shtick."  Interesting to me that a black American leader would use about a white Russian leader a term I grew up with as Jewish "ghetto" language.  It's pure Yiddish.

       The etymology is "piece" or "bit," and shtick traces to Middle and Old High German.  It's defined as "a show-business routine, gimmick, or gag" or "a characteristic attribute, talent, or trait that is helpful in securing recognition or attention" to cite Merriam-Webster and American Heritage Dictionary respectively. 

       Putin's face is a "put-on," a shtick, says Obama.

"tWITter"

       I don't do Twitter, but I was pleased to read some tweets on the way polite, laid back, Seattle tore up the town after their huge first Super Bowl victory.  The L.A. Times reported there had been "a few torched sofas, a damaged historic building, maybe half a dozen arrests."

       A hashtag (#How Seattle Riots) produced these gems: "Throw garbage in the compost-only bin."  "The Priuses are honking."  "Wearing sandals without your socks."

       It does tend to prove that brevity is the soul of wit.

      

Proofreader's Emendation

       Reading today's newspaper over the air, as I do every other Wednesday for the blind and print-impaired, I came across this sentence:  "Upon taking the helm at Microsoft, Nadella instantly becomes one of the most influential Indian business leaders in the..." the next word was "word," but I recognized it must be "world" and changed it on the spot before the mistake got out of my mouth and into the listener's ear.

       We've heard of "proofreader's error" when  a proofreader just doesn't notice a missing letter because the mind knew what should be there and filled it in (and spell-check can't catch this kind of error), so the mistake goes by and is permitted.  What shall I call what I did to restore the missing letter?

       I'm calling it "proofreader's [spell-check's?] emendation." 

"Enthuse"

       Film composer James Broughton's composition was nominated for this year's Academy Awards and then disqualified.  Some Academy rule was broken.

       The music is for a religious film, and what interested me was that the film will have a wider release in June from "Enthuse Entertainment."  "Enthuse" may not sound like a word with religious connotations, but I'm sure the company knows its etymology.

       Entheos is the Greek adjective meaning "having the god within," "possessed or inspired by a god" and is the root of our noun "enthusiasm" and verb "enthuse."  Enthusiasm is now pretty thoroughly secularized, and neither the gods of the Greeks nor the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is apparent.

       Fervor is still at the heart of it, however.  So forgive me if I enthuse over English's Greek linguistic heritage.

The Consonantal Divide, 6

       After crossing several consonants,  here's a reward.  You deserve it.

       Just put together a couple of the sounds we've been dealing with, and you’ll be there.  Give me a panting [h] and give me the second vowel sound in [w], i.e. “uh.”  You've got “huh.”  Say it out loud.
 
       Now string out 5 of them going up the scale:

                                        huh
                                huh
                        huh
                huh
        huh

       And string out five going down:

        huh
                huh
                        huh
                                huh
                                        huh

       Good.  Once more now.  First up, then down.
 
       Now collapse the “huh”s together more closely and speed it up; then do it all in one breath.

       I hope you’re starting to have a good laugh!

The Consonantal Divide, 5

       We've been talking about the strange characteristics of the consonants "w," "h," and "y."  But put  them all in the same word "why," and they surprise again.

       The phonetic symbol for the first two letters in this word is an upside down “h”.  And why is this?  Because the first part of the sound for these two letters is [h], not [w].  To say “why” properly, you first say [h] (the pant), and then [w], just the opposite order of the letters in the word.  And of course the “y” at the end here is pronounced as a long “i”, as in the personal pronoun “I,” not the “ih” of “yes.”

       You may be tired of traveling this trans-consonantal highway; so tomorrow I'll give you a laugh.







       

      

The Consonantal Divide, 4

       The letter “h” is a strange consonant.   No, it isn’t a semi-vowel like "w" or "y," but it isn’t much of a consonant either.  "H" can be silent ("honor," "oh"), but when it has sound, it is only that of the breath moving through partially closed vocal cords.  In fact, it is the sound of panting.  Give it a try:  [h] [h] [h].

       Alexander Pope has a line of poetry describing Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain:

                    "Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone"

If you have any breath left after saying that line, you're probably an athlete.  Pope creates exertion within the line by including all those panting [h] sounds.

       It takes a lot of effort to say [h] because the only sound of this consonant is breath !

The Consonantal Divide, 3

       We are playing at the fringes where vowels and consonants aren't distinct from one another but converge.

       Think, for example, of the consonant letter "y."  Along with "w," "y" is often referred to as a semi-vowel.  Why?  When we make the sound for "y" at the beginning of words [y], it is composed of two vowel sounds merged, "ih" as in "bit" and "uh" as in "but."

       It helps to try these aloud:  say "ih," then "uh"; then say them close to one another, "ih-uh"; then let them flow into each other without pause.  Do you hear it?  Another diphthong like [w].  

       There you have it.  The so-called consonant "y" is made up of two vowel sounds!