"smoke, sweat, dirt and flesh"

For those who may think poetry is namby-pamby stuff, here is a poem by Gregory Orr:

                  Work Gloves

          All morning with gloved
          hands, we grip and tug
          burdock and the tough
          fibrous stalks of chicory.
          We knock roots against
          bootsoles to jar
          the clumped earth loose.

          When the brushpile's
          tangled mound is high enough
          we set it ablaze and stand
          squinting into the heat,
          waiting for the branch
          that always rises whole
          and flaming, ready
          to sprint to where it settles
          and put out its sparks
          with quick, flat
          slaps of our bamboo rakes.

          At dusk, easing down
          on porch steps to unlace
          my boots, I pause:
          smoke, sweat, dirt and flesh
          make this smell I love:
          I hold my face in my hands
          and breathe deeply.

                  Gregory Orr

  

iPhone Blues

       Yes, Connie and I have sent "messages," text messages, but were stymied sending emails on our iPhones.

       I just realized my two "contact lists" are duplicates (WHY?), that both are the basis for sending text messages, which are tied to the phone number.  But then, how to use these contact list(s) to also send an email, which HAS NO CONTACT LIST OF ITS OWN.

       OH...I can add an email address onto each person in the phone contact list(s) once I see with a little smart figuring (and the book for seniors and dummies)...how to DO IT!

       I pass this on to Connie.  Then I send off first ever emails to son and daughter from iPhone and exclaim under my breath running down the hallway

                    WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!!!!!!!

"their/there"; "formerly/formally"

       Yes, I like language in print to acknowledge the "tongue" as spoken.  Hence I also sympathize with writers who confuse words which sound alike but are different.

       A letter from our dentist's office this week said, "I'm respectfully asking patients to please check there schedules and make sure they will be able to make their scheduled appointments."  One "their" is spelled correctly, and one isn't. 

       The same communication wrote of the dentist's 24 hour cancellation "policy (formally 48 hour)."  The "formally" for "formerly" mistake is perhaps understandable because the sound is close.  But we call such mistakes "illiterate" because language appears in letters (liter) as well as sounds, and the written version must be respected as well. 

       Someone should have caught these mistakes!  It is a professional office that now looks illiterate to its patients.

      

      

What Is Wrong with This Sentence:

MEDICAL REPORT:  "Hanley Ramirez remained sidelined, but there is no structural damage in the shortstop's irritated right shoulder, according to a MRI exam he underwent."


       I am upset that there is no "n" after the lone "a."  True, "M" is not a vowel, and therefore, theoretically, the article "a" belongs before the consonant "M."  This is what the writer in today's L.A. Times Sports Section was no doubt thinking. 

       But this "M" is pronounced [ehm], not [m] (as in "milk"), and hence it begins with a vowel sound.  This "M" requires the added "n" after "a" before it to make the syllables felicitously pronounceable, and hence the correct word before it is "an," not "a."

       Alphabets were invented as representations of speech.  Those who write words for a living shouldn't forget it. 

"fetal / fatal": Word Cartoon

"SYMMETRY / CEMETERY": Word Cartoon

Shakespeares Sonnet # 60

'LOIDS OF LONDON KEEP TABS ON ANDY

       The headline above caught my eye for sure today in the L.A. Times.

       We've  heard of Lloyds the insurers, but sports columnist Bill Dwyre is writing of Wimbledon and Andy Murray.  The flacks on London tabloids can smell or manufacture a nasty story at the drop of a hat.

       Andy has hired Amelie Mauresmo as his new coach to shape him up to defend his Wimbledon title just as strong-minded male Ivan Lendl had done for Murray last year.  The flacks are going to hammer and taunt and tease Andy about his choice until it either proves successful or, the 'loids hope, disastrous.

       You can see how nicely "TAB" would replace the apostrophe in the first word and then doubles in service on the fifth word of this imaginative headline!   


        

"half in given reality, half in...symbols"

       In William Pitt Root's recent (2013) book, Strange Angels, the Tucson poet (and First Poet Laureate of Tucson) begins his book with quotes from other writers and thinkers, amongst which is this wonderful thought to ponder from Aldous Huxley:


       For man is an amphibian.  He lives half in given reality, half in the home-made universe of symbols.  We are like icebergs, immersed in language but projecting into immediate experience.

 
      

     

"JiRaffe"/Girafe

       A lovely 57th Anniversary dinner at JiRaffe Restaurant in Santa Monica last night.  Just Connie and I.

       The name [zhee-RAHF} strikes me as French sounding and appropriately elegant, fancy, and promising of good food.   Yet I thought I remembered "JiRaffe" was a "chefs' creation," combining names of the two owners.  I checked on it again.

       Yes, the chefs who started it were Josiah Citrin and Raphael Lunetta; Josiah is now chef at Melisse, Raphael still chef at JiRaffe.

       I suppose one could say [dgih-RAF], and there are giraffe sculptures and paintings around, also Eiffel Tower photos, looking very much like giraffes themselves, all adding to the mystery, elegance (and fun) of the restaurant.

       But the food, with help from the language, is très très délicieux.

"Hashtag"

       Since it was entered as a new word in the Oxford English Dictionary this month, June 2014, I suppose I should try to be a little less benighted than the Zits parents:

click on cartoon to enlarge

     
       Wikipedia tells me Chris Messina proposed the use of the symbol to tag topics of interest on Twitter on August 23, 2007.   The first use of the term "hash tag" was in a blog post by Steve Boyd three days later on August 26th.  A not so secondary sidenote is that in 2010 on its front page Twitter introduced "Trending Topics," displaying hashtags that were rapidly becoming popular.

       By the way, If I'd been one of the Zits parents (and I am), I would have said, "Tic Tac Toe?"

The Labor, the Labour: the "Perfect Words"

       My Life's Little Instruction 2014 Calendar by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., has this that caught my eye and mind:

          "A sentence composed of perfect words needs no explanation."

       This is why writers labor.

       That thought then put me in mind of Dylan Thomas's poem:

     
       Two sentences with perfect words.

               

"The Story of Human Language," Two

       Language is different and changes much quicker for those forest folk with only speech than for sophisticated city dwellers with a written language.  Words or forms of words can change or even disappear when they're not seen.  Once there's an alphabet, written language, and literacy, then there's something to refer to for the eyes, and language changes much more slowly.

       And then too the written language gets to be considered "the language" and becomes the standard to which "speech" is expected to adhere and thought lesser of and more informal when it veers from the "book" even though language's natural way of proceeding is to change as it is used, altered, and disused in spoken interaction with others.

       [Based on "Dialects--The Standard as Token of the Past,"  Lecture 17, The Story of Human Language.]

"The Story of Human Language," One

       Linguist John McWhorter teaches a great course, which I listen to on CD 30 minutes at a time, checking its abbreviation in book form chapter by chapter to get a quick summary of what I've been listening to, see visually some words I've only heard orally, but not missing much substance as an audio student only.

       Last session, John spoke of not thinking of language the way most of his students do.  He's thinking of it taking place somewhere in a distant forest where natives have no written "tongue," only what drops from their mouths; they are illiterate.

       It's very hard for literate folks to think of "dog" without seeing those letters "d"-"o"-"g."  When the forest inhabitants use the word for dog in their tongue, it's the critter itself that's being seen.

      

Does English Favor Intellect over Passion?

       Son David got me wondering the other day whether Spanish may be more a language of passion and English more a language of the intellect.  He's working on his own blog piece prompted by his recent trip to Chile during a visit to a cemetery:   he noticed the word recuerdo on gravestones utilized where we would use "memory," root of the former being "heart" and the latter being "mind."

       That made me recall Marjorie Agosin's poem I heard her read at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 1998.  Please click on pages to enlarge:

Look to the Skies! Heaven-word Again

       Vincent Lloyd , writing in April 2014's Griffith Observer, gives us insight into some astronomical terms based on their etymology:

       Eclipse comes from the Greek "verb ekleipein,  'to leave out,' which is a combination of the prefix ek-, 'out' and the verb leipein, 'to leave.'...[A]n eclipse is an event in which the sun or the moon is 'left out' of the picture."  Very neat and pretty easy to remember.

       Universe is formed from two Latin words "unum, meaning 'one,' and versum, meaning 'turned.'"  As Lloyd puts it, the universe is "the whole thing turned into one."  "Turn" might have been a natural word to choose for the ancient world because even though they didn't know the earth itself was turning, they could see the wheel of the stars above them...turning.


      

An Easy Segue from Segue to Segway

       I heard a radio host use the word "segue" yesterday as I have heard others, often TV hosts/comedians, use it to refer to smooth transitions from one topic, for example, to the next.  It is a verb or a noun, from the Italian word meaning "to follow."  And its first associations were with musical transitions.

       It's a nice word, I think, and I find that it is actually the source of the brand-named but differently spelled "Segway PT (Personal Transporter)," the two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery powered vehicle invented by Dean Kamen and introduced in 2001.  The product is named, the company says, for its "smooth transitions" in going from place to place.

Coloradans May Have Trouble with This Word

       I heard a not uncommon mispronunciation today on radio:  [PAHT-a-ble] for [POHT-a-ble] with the word "potable."  No source I've looked up mentions the "ah" pronunciation as even an alternate choice.

       The word comes from Latin potare meaning "to drink," and hence "drinkable."  One would suppose the "ah" choice may come from seeing those first three letters and thinking pot like "pots and pans" or some other association with "pot."  And from not having heard it pronounced [POHT-a-ble] by others.


      

The Night Sky! Look Heaven-word

       Vincent Lloyd's article in the April 2014 Griffith Observer gives us the roots of some  astronomical words.

       Let's begin with constellation.  Con or com as usual means, from Latin, "together," and stella provides the "stars"; what could be a better root meaning for "constellation" than "stars together"?

       Astronomy leads off with the Greek root for "star" aster and uses nomos for "law" to give us "astronomy," "law of the stars," again exceedingly appropriate.

       A third term that astronomy helps give us the "laws" for is planets.  Planetes is Greek and means "wanderer."  The ancient world saw the planets as stars that wandered around the sky, which indeed they do compared to the stars, so what could be a more perfect and suggestive name to distinguish them from stella and aster than planetes,                                                                     "wanderer"

Getting to Know the Microphone on my Smartphone

       I like that I can send a text message by touching the microphone icon, saying what I'm thinking, and watching a pretty darn accurate text representation of what I said there on the little screen.

       But last night I did this long text to my daughter, mentioning I had to get to bed early, doing a broadcast tomorrow morning.  The little wizard captured my words almost exactly paragraph on end.  I didn't know whether Elizabeth was still up.  But she texted me right away, "sleep well da!"

       Surprised, I wanted to give a quick goodnight to her.  I spoke my three words, "Thanks, you too," let it transcribe to text, and sent it.  I've always thought my articulation and pronunciation were pretty top-drawer, but this is what my daughter received:  "Thanks, YouTube."

Embarrassing Corrections in Print/Text

       Richard Lederer's The Revenge of Anguished English has a chapter on corrections of mistakes in print where the mistakes were quite laughable.  Here are a few:


       It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is T-shirt Appreciation Day.  In fact, it is actually Teacher Appreciation Day.

       Our article about Jewish burial customs contained an error:  mourner's clothing is rent--that is, torn, not rented.

       Apology:  I originally wrote, "Woodrow Wilson's wife grazed sheep on the front lawn of the White House."  I'm sorry that typesetting inadvertently left out the word sheep.


       Ah, typesetting, those were the days.  But, fortunately for the funny bone, mistakes are still made.

Language to Boost an Ego

       I was at the checkout stand in the grocery store, having completed my every-other-week shopping for Connie and myself.  The cart was stuffed.  The bagger offered to help unload the cart, and I gladly accepted.  As I took out my credit card at the register, the checker said, "What job do you have?"  I was kind of surprised.  "Professor," I said, "I was; retired now."  I thought maybe it had something to do with the quantity of groceries I was purchasing, but that didn't compute somehow.  "Why do you ask?" 

       Smiling, the 20-to-30-something checker said, "Well, I like your style!  The cap, everything."  He turned to the bagger and said, "I hope I look like that when I retire."

       "Thanks," I said, really meaning it.
 

What the retired prof looked like back at the checkstand.

Odd Names for Tomato Plants

         Looking to pick up some potted plants of an heirloom variety so we could grow them for our summer table, I was seeking "Cherokee" or "Black Cherry" which Connie had mentioned.  Closest I could find to possibly fll the bill didn't sound promising:  "Mortgage Lifter."  Whatever that had to do with, it didn't seem to be tomatoes.

       Connie, the usual purchaser anyway, went later by herself and found reason to think "Mortgage Lifters" would be fine and bought one.

       When she got home and told me, I was almost into a doze but asked Connie, "Did you get any other kind?"  "Toilet Cleaner" came the answer, which woke me up enough to observe, "That's further afield than 'Mortgage Lifter.'  "No," she laughed.  "That was from hardware right next to OSH's garden shop."

My Email to Dylan Hernandez, L.A. Times Sports Page

       I've been following your accounts of the Dodgers daily all last year and now this.  May I suggest that the new format of covering the team this year might be making a contribution to the team's troubles?  Sounds outlandish, I know, but the more the main article keeps focusing on the "bigger picture" and pervasive issues that seem to surround the Dodgers, and the nuts and bolts of what went on in today's game is boxed and grayed into a sidebar, the more the game itself seems like a sidebar too!  I don't see how that can help but influence how players, manager, readers, everybody experiences what's going on.  The story never seems to be today's game!  This kind of journalistic format is not satisfying my interest in the Dodgers on a daily basis.

The Origin of X's as Kisses at the End of Letters

        "The custom of writing X's for kisses in signing off a letter dates from the Middle Ages, when much of Europe's population remained illiterate.  On legal documents, in lieu of a signature, a person might write an X or the sign of the cross.  The signatory would then kiss the X, to promise to stick to the agreement.  Over later centuries, the written X came to mean not the signature but the kiss."

                   Language Visible:  Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet                         from A to Z, David Sacks, p. 243

Once Again, Headlines You Hope Didn't Appear (but are glad you read them)

       OK, if your appetite was whetted (and not repelled) yesterday, then these three more from the headlines in Richard Lederer's 2014 book:


                   OFFICIALS SUSPENDED OVER HOTEL FIRE

                            BIRDS MAKE MESS; CITY STEPS IN

        DENVER CHAPTER WILL HAVE SENATOR FOR BREAKFAST


               Words are these wonderfully malleable things, you see.

    

       

      

Headlines You Hope Didn't Appear (but are glad you read them)

       Some of the headlines in Richard Lederer's book The Revenge of Anguished English seem too good to be true, and since there are no sources given for them, it does make one suspicious.  But here goes with a handful of them because they're also too good not to share:


               HITLER MEMORABILIA CAUSES FUROR

                ONE-LEGGED MAN ESCAPES ON FOOT

                 CRACK FOUND IN MAN'S BUTTOCKS


                        Wuxtry! Wuxtry!  Read all about it.

"Tilting at Windmills," "Rocinante," and No, I Haven't Read the Book

       Connie noted that when authors are asked what great books they haven't yet read they name things like Don Quixote.  I said, "I haven't read that either, but I kind of feel as though I have.  You know, 'tilting at windmills,' everyone knows that, and it comes from Don Quixote...I'm pretty certain."  Connie looked skeptical.

       Out came my iPhone, in went the phrase, and back came the confirmation.  Quixote spies windmills on his travels and sees them as whirling-armed "giants" whom he intends "to do battle with" and "slay."  "Tilting" has reference to jousting.

       The word "quixotic" means "foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals: marked by...romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action."

       The pet name for my Dodge Neon companion on my 3500 mile "West Coast" trip was "Rocinante," Quixote's horse.   

LOL, well, Not Quite

       I'm having trouble with some of the abbreviations used in texting these days.  You might say I have cognitive dissonance over the use of LOL.  In my day it meant something entirely different.

       It took me a long time to grasp that when people use LOL, it means "Laugh Out Loud," I guess to show JUST how funny someone's previous text had struck them.

       The expression I had ringing in my ears from high school days was L.O.my L., part of a handwritten note in a high school yearbook from a gal enamored of me, and meaning...breathtakingly..."Love of my Life."

       I guess I haven't quite gotten over that, even though I couldn't quite return the feeling.

Tongue Twisters United

      I usually read Sandy Banks's columns in the L.A. Times for loftier reasons than the following.

       But, as usual, when a good tongue twister shows up, I'll smell it out despite more elevated, important meanings elsewhere in the article.  Last Saturday's piece about why it's difficult to throw away old things in our drawers and cabinets, has meaning for this particular procrastinator; so I cut it out for further contemplation in pursuit of ridding myself of the hoarding habit.

       But this Tongue Twister was too good to pass by!  Sandy's replacing of old kitchen spice containers for new ones was the occasion.  Can you say it five times FAST without busting a syllable?


              "I sprang for fancy spinning spice racks"