"Sesquicentennial"

       Connie and I were driving to temple yesterday when Connie noticed the word "sesquicentennial" on a license plate ahead of us and asked me what it meant.  I phumphered around a bit and said, "I think it means 150, but I'm not sure, and I don't know what "sesqui" means or comes from; why don't you try my iPhone (she'd left hers at home)."

       Working slowly but methodically, my nondriving navigator wife got me through--not the drive, but the search. 

       Centennial means 100 years, of course, but sesqui comes from Latin semi ("half") + que ("and"); "half and one hundred years," (or 100 years and half a hundred years), which equals...150!

       By the time we pulled up at temple, Connie had it, thanks to...my idea, iPhone's admirable help, and my wife's plucky insistence. 



      

 

Chili

       Connie made it.  We had leftovers.  I looked at it in a little bowl in the refrigerator and said, "Chili con Carne."  That's what we called it when my mother made it back in St. Paul when I was a kid.  Connie had called it Chili.

       In childhood, we pronounced it [kahn KAR-nee], with "carne" sounding like carnival, and isn't a "carney" someone who works with carnivals?   But "con carne" does mean "with meat," and chili con carne was beans with meat and chile pepper or powder, and still is! 

       I find surprisingly that "carnival" relates to meat.  It's from Latin meaning "removal of meat":  "Carnival" was originally a festival before Lent.  A carnival worker IS a "carny" or" carney" whether or not that person eats meat!

       (My Connie, not carney, DOES...eat meat.)  

A Different Perspective, 2: Bruegel and Auden

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully        along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

A Different Perspective, 1: Cat's Eye View

       One of the two players was about to serve on a crucial point in a finals tennis match on TV.   I first noticed the sudden surprising relaxation of muscles when I would expect to see the highest degree of tension for a strike and follow-through.  The next instant a cat came into view on the screen sauntering amiably across the court.  It was a dark, strange object on the brightly lit, pale blue tennis court.  Both players relaxed.

       The audience responded in amused laughter, and a new perspective was suddenly placed on the game.  The game meant nothing to the cat, and whereas it had just meant everything to the participants and observers, it was now suddenly perceived, as it were, through the cat's eyes, as being of very little consequence. 

Concluded tomorrow.

      

The Mall

       We went to the mall yesterday.  A shame that the Memorial Day Holiday in honor of those who gave their lives for their country is mainly a shopping day to too many of us.   Very sad the losses of men and women in the prime of blooming man-and-womanhood.

       Yes, as noted last year on this day, the above thoughts are the reason for Connie's coinage:  it should really be called meMALLial Day.

       But what does "mall" come from?  Source is the Mall in London's St. James' Park, a sheltered promenade, which had originally been used for the game of Pall Mall ("ball" "mallet") a wooden ball  hit down an alley and through a ring.   Later of course a pedestrian walkway with shops, businesses, restaurants, on either side of it:  the Mall.

Language Has Power--You Have No Idea

Click on image to enlarge.

"Machines of Loving Grace"

       Since some recent posts seem to dwell on what humanizes us and what may distance us from our humanity (technology, titles, etc.),  I recalled this poem which envisions an ideal blending:  what could undermine our humanness might also enhance it.

        
            All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

            I like to think (and
            the sooner the better!)
            of a cybernetic meadow
            where mammals and computers
            live together in mutually
            programming harmony
            like pure water
            touching clear sky.

            I like to think
            (right now, please!)
            of a cybernetic forest
            filled with pines and electronics
            where deer stroll peacefully
            past computers
            as if they were flowers
            with spinning blossoms.

            I like to think
             (it has to be!)
            of a cybernetic ecology
            where we are free of our labors
            and joined back to nature,
            returned to our mammal
            brothers and sisters,
            and all watched over
            by machines of loving grace.                                                                                                                                                                                               Richard Brautigan

When Friendly Invite Turns to Dust

Click on Nose to Enlarge

The Title of this Post is "Titles," Part Two

       The clergy in my congregation prefer not to be called "rabbi" but would rather be called by their first names.  And it is true that this can break down barriers and put us in a more human relationship with one another.   But I don't think in the final analysis that it really has to be that we are more human with one another because we're on a first name basis.  It was well known at a certain university I taught at that one professor who insisted on being called by her first name was one of the toughest, most impossible teachers to deal with on the entire campus and that the first name was merely a subterfuge.

       I don't think this is generally the case, and I don't think professors ought to try to keep their professional or title difference with their students, but these are constantly changing fashions, and they are somehow indicators of the way we view ourselves and would have others view us, and they're constantly posing interesting questions about who we think we are and how we would like to be thought of, not only as individuals, but as professions and as a society.


       Current PostScript--I guess, in retrospect, the most complimentary and satisfying name my students called me for a certain number of years during my career combined the granting of earned expertise with the claiming of student-teacher, first-name equality:   "Dr. Don."

The Title of this Post is "Titles," Part One

[The following is revised from part of an oral essay on "names" which I delivered and recorded in 1983.  I imagine this aspect of the subject to still be an ever-shifting dynamic.]

       What do we want to be known as?  Do we want to be known in the classroom as Dr., Professor, Mister, Don?  This has been a longstanding question for academia.   When I first got into higher education as a faculty member, it was just not thought about twice.  I was Professor, and my students were Mister, Miss, or Mrs.

       That all changed in the late 1960s, and students, at least, became first names to most professors, and that change seems to have remained.  What the professor is called has often been reduced to a first-name basis as well, and a number of my younger colleagues prefer to be called by their first name, and this is a fairly common thing:   break through the title barrier, the thing that makes us seem so different from one another and so removed.

      

Words from Songs Stick to Us

       Connie caught me in the kitchen making salad and said, "You're singing a new musical." 

       I've been reviving some favorite songs from way-old musicals lately and reveling in it.  But this was a new old musical, "Hello Dolly."  Why was I singing its title song?

       A couple moments' thought.  I figured a recent association, probably with a word.  Yes, mail opened from my alma mater, clever address and stamp on the back of the envelope, front with a big "picture" window, colorful image, and the words in large print, "HELLO, DONALD."

       Making me a star before I opened it, what could I do but sing, "Hello, Donald, well hello, Donald..."  I found myself feeling welcomed back to town, and not even knowing what or if I was singing...all the way through salad making.    

Titles and Roles

       How long do our titles last?  How long do our roles define us?

       We may be called professor...or doctor...till our dying day.  We may be mother, father, aunt, grandma, son, daughter.  We may be mister, or miss, or Mrs., but on our dying day, may we not be luckiest and truest called by one name only.

       As death approaches, we're just who we are, roles fulfilled, attainments behind us, services nor needed nor wanted, titles in absentia. 

       My mother was Ida, and many knew her just that way well before she died at 101, family and others, friends and others.  Ida.  An honorific.  A name said warmly...with a smile.

"Wuxtry! Wuxtry!"

       A world pervaded by language.  I grew up with comic books showing newsboys on the corner like this one in Gotham or Metropolis:

That's how people got the word, from their local newspaper delivered at home or the newsboy shouting his Big City version of "Extra" with the latest hot-off-the-press crisis or scandal!

       It's still true, but it's not the boy at the corner "purveying" his newspapers.  It's the TV, it's the computer "pervading" our lives, our purses, our pockets with language on every size screen imaginable:  "Wuxtry!  Wuxtry!" they proclaim.

"Bizarro" Cartoonist Strikes Paydirt

Click on comic strip to enlarge

       Is there anyone who hasn't experienced this?  And more than once.  And more than twice?  And more than thrice?

Echoic Writing

       Echoic writing, in my definition anyway, is an example of how the mind may go momentarily dead and accept a word it's being fed by something the writer just wrote containing the same word.

       My most recent notice of this is in language accompanying a photograph in my National Geographic Engagement Calendar, "Beautiful Landscapes."  Writing of the following wonderful photograph in Iceland by Gunter Grafenhain/Huber/SIME,

the writer said, "Decades ago, the government planned to supplant the falls with a hydroelectric power plant..."  I usually ascribe such repetition to laziness or temporary distraction; sometimes a close-sounding but different word may echo into place.

        Great writers can also lapse.  Poet Alexander Pope observed that even Homer nods.  For an earlier post on echoic writing go here.

      
   

A New Day and Age with Smartphones

       Witness yesterday's blog post (which see, please).  I could record my idea immediately while standing in the aisle at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  Clicking on "Voice Memo" in my iPhone I spoke a few words  swiftly, "Remember, 'Serutan' spelled backwards is 'Nature's,' etc."  

       However, when I had to supply a text title for my voice memo, I used the microphone icon to speak the title, "Tums Spelled Backwards is Smut,"  articulating the final word clearly enough for the genius machine to make out the unusual word and translate it to text perfectly for me.  As my son David texted me when I wrote him what iPhone had done with it, "Yes, there are still a few hitches with Voice Recognition."

       What iPhone gave me back as my title was "Tums Spelled Backwards is Some Butt"!

"'Tums' for the Tummy"

       Shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I came across "Tums" on one of the shelves and had to smile.  In my growing up days listening to radio, there was a product called "Serutan" for some kind of similar stomach problem most kids are in no need of yet, but with the prevalence of the commercial, it was hard to avoid hearing, and it always ended with, "And remember, 'Serutan' spelled backwards is 'Nature's.'"  Having fun with words was down my alley; therefore, I approved of this product even though I couldn't have told you exactly what it was for.

       But it occurred to me at some point that "Tums" would never have tried it.  "And remember, 'Tums' spelled backwards is 'Smut.'"

"Auld Lang Syne"

       Having come across the Robert Burns words which are put to a traditional melody--Auld Lang Syne--I realized I didn't know the actual meaning of that title.

       The words translate into "Old Long Since" from the Scots.  I think you can sing that song many, many times and not know for sure what it means.  It's wonderful though, the mood of that and the tone of that, those three words, whether in Scots dialect or English.   Honoring the memory-entangled, heart-worthy relationships, the ones you've had "old long since."  For this person, these people, you can cheerfully and poignantly lift your voice,

       we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
       for auld lang syne.

Jacob's Pillow, 2

[I'm fascinated with this particular part of the Bible.  It's when Jacob spends his first night away from home on his journey to seek a bride.  Here's what I wrote about the passage.]


        I’ve often thought, what must it be like to use a stone as a pillow?  And what kind of dreams might that produce?  Well, if you could get to sleep at all, I think those dreams would be painful ones.  Before the dreams of angels and the Lord’s appearance and blessings, might Jacob have dreamed about being alone in the wilderness away from home; might he have dreamed of his brother Esau coming after him to kill him since Jacob had just connived with his mother to wrest Isaac’s blessing away from Esau; might Jacob’s neck muscles have been cramped and aching and produced an anxious dream about a foreign land he’d never been to and whether he’d be able to find a wife there?

       I think sleeping on a stone tells us that this was for Jacob a hard place, not a place where you’re comfortable and stable and know you belong.  And yet the most redemptive and beautiful dream comes to awaken him, as though to say, in the midst of your being uprooted and in pain and guilt and doubt, the Lord is in this place.


       Jacob discovers, in my view, that wherever he goes, hard place or no, God is, and will be with him:   a frightening, awesome, profound moment in the Torah.

       And now I know that an iconic place in the United States is the very namesake of the passage.

Dancer Ted Shawn, Founder of "Jacob's Pillow," at the rock

Jacob's Pillow, 1

       Connie and I were watching a TV program called " A Chance to Dance."  The producers take the dancers to "Jacob's Pillow," a famous location out East devoted to the art of dance.

       I've known the name of the place forever but never realized till this series that it referred to the Biblical rock which Jacob used as a place to rest his head before his dream of angels going up and down a ladder to heaven and thence receiving God's blessings.  A prominent rock formation where everyone gets a picture taken was given the name "Jacob's Pillow," and that became the name of the whole site of the dance institute.

       I've always been fascinated with this particular part of the Torah.  It's when Jacob spends his first night away from home on his way to seek a bride.  My commentary on the passage tomorrow.

Being Technologically Superannuated Feels Thus

Click on strip to enlarge

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 6

       Oh, yes, I tried my new ballpoint over butter-smeared paper.  Oh, yes, I tried it under water.  Fainter yet it became, but some vestiges of my marks were there sure enough.

       I fiddled with the thing in the bus on the way home from school, writing, opening and closing it, fingering its many ridges, just experiencing the secret pride of ownership.

       I wonder if the ballpoint gave the death knell to the Palmer method of penmanship.  It may have adumbrated the passing of cursive handwriting itself.  It's impossible to imagine Miss Evans functioning at all with ballpoint, though it's hard to imagine anything ruffling her superb aplomb.  Is she teaching the Spencerian hand on high where the ancient and honored yet hold their court?

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 5

       Midst the teacher's protestations about the new, infernal instrument, I sat at my desk musing and marveling as I wrote and wrote.  I think it was then that I got in the habit of trying to find as many ways to write my initials as I could possibly think of just to test out the ballpoint.  I found dozens of ways, many of which I still use when idly doodling.

click on image to enlarge

       Who knows what the substance of those lessons was for the first week or so after I obtained my ballpoint?  All I knew was I was writing in a wonderful new way, and anything could be grist for my mill...a teacher's instructions, my own initials, any thought that popped into my mind.  I would write endlessly across the page just to see the faint ink trail its way from beneath the ball at the tip of the pen.  Would the ink ever run out?  Had 15 cents ever purchased a more marvelous thing?  Would the teacher hear it if I kept snapping the pen open and closed just for the fun of hearing it and feeling it respond to my eager touch?

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 4

       My pen, when I got it, was somewhat of a marvel.  Aluminum it was, I'm sure.  Very light, and, oh, maybe not more than four inches in length, perhaps five or six.  It had its own built-in cap for the point, not like any I've seen since.  It protracted out over the point to protect it when not in use and retracted to reveal the point when you were ready to write.  The cap could be moved back and forth with the same hand one wrote with (with a little effort) and couldn't be lost because it was attached to the pen.

       The silvery aluminum barrel had an array of ridges up and down its length which made it firm to hold but somewhat hard on the fingers after writing for awhile.  It also wrote rather faintly, a pale blue that was legible if one adjusted one's eyes to it.  Oh yes, it "skipped" a little compared to dip pens...tiny gaps in the ink flow that you could make out...but obviously a small penalty to pay for so many advantages.

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 3

       When the ballpoint pen came out, the question for a time was, would the teachers accept work written in ballpoint?  But I was one of the most eager to obtain one, for no one could expect from the ballpoint that freeflowing, elegant, and ultimate handwriting of the dipped pen.  The ballpoint was more sparing of its ink supply and more jealous of its release onto the page. 

       Besides, hadn't it been advertised with such marvelous appeal as being able to write under water, as being able to write over butter...I guess they meant paper that had been impregnated with oily butter....Who could resist being the possessor of such a marvelous instrument?

       And it could make carbon copies like a typewriter or pencil.  Disregard the fact that I had no use for carbon copies and had never made one up to that time...the new pen could do it!  And it was another point of appeal for its purchase.

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 2

       Of course, for Miss Evans of the swirling hand, we were not to pinch our fingers as we made our way across the page with the pen, but to have whole-hand-and-wrist free movement as we skated and pirouetted "on point."

       But I would always look at my handwriting--the handwriting which to this day wreaks and which my students when I wrote them notes would beg me to translate--and look at Miss Evans's handwriting, and the heart would sink deeper into depression-admiration.  Who could ever emulate--yet who could but be astonished and appreciative of--the "hand" of Miss Evans?

click on image to enlarge

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 1

       This year, 2014, is the 70th anniversary of the ballpoint pen.  If you're interested in language, you're interested in the instruments that carry language.  From typewriter to computer was a very big step.  For me as a kid, from ink pens and fountain pens to ballpoint pens was such a one.  I remember the fascination, pride, and pleasure with which I purchased my first ballpoint.

       Quite a novelty for a school kid then, especially one who had been brought up on Palmer penmanship.  I never did come anywhere near mastering the Spencerian handwriting style taught us in the early grades by a wonderfully behatted elegant woman who whisked in once a week to teach us how to write.

       We sat stunned and astonished as Miss Evans swirled her incredible hand across the blackboard in exquisite cursive letters of beauteous perfection.  It was like a show.  In a way, we loved to have her come in.  It wasn't so much teaching as a demonstration, a theatre of the classroom. 

       

      

My Prowess with Words, 4

       Now there's one more word, "enervated."  For a very long time I "knew" what that meant:  "energized"--full of the dickens!  If you were enervated, you were ready to go!  Association with "energy" in its first two syllables, as simple as that, but, well, you know, it means just the opposite, no energy, depleted of vim, vigor, and vitality, without energy.

       I'm getting enervated just thinking of my "prowess" with words.  Only a little more depletion on my part and I'll be . . . be-dridden.

My Prowess with Words, 3

       From childhood on up I was confused by the word "misled."  My inner ear heard it as MIZ-eld.  I knew in a vague way it was not a very good thing to be.  Too much later I learned I was looking at miss-LEHD.

       Of course, I was also the guy who, in my early adult years, happened across a booklet on "Corporal Punishment" put out by a church group.  For a full day or two I was dumbstruck that a religion could approve of this practice.  My eyes grew bigger with each page.  But what was in my mind the whole time was "capital punishment."  And they were recommending it for kids!

My Prowess with Words, 2

[...confirmed to me that I understood this word.  Hah!]

       I suppose it was my fate to make this kind of mistake.  Wasn't it I who sat in the first grade, stared all year at the map in the front of the room, and read the legend underneath:  un-KNIT-ed states?  All year I had this dissonance within me--a little kid of six, "If we're supposed to be the you-NIGHT-ed states, as I've heard, all together and joined, why are we this way, all unravelled as that map says?"

My Prowess with Words, 1

      When I was growing up, I read the word "bedridden" as [be-DRID-en].  Why?  I haven't the faintest idea except I read it that way the first time I saw it, and it was that way for years after.  I knew it was a more negative than positive word . . . connotations of "ridden" and "driven" came through to me.  Somebody was in dire straits as I saw it, and overarching notions of "bewitched" and good "riddance" confirmed to me that I understood this word.  Hah!