Happy Haiku

                                                year's end
                                                the to-do list
                                                in pencil

                                                     Ann K. Schwader

       So glad I found this today (and through it, other interesting things) at the blog for Lilliput Review located here.

       (And for Robert Hass's wonderful reading of several Issa haiku in a similar spirit to Ann Schwader's, please click on this.)

Yes, I'm a Blog Rat

Please click on cartoon to enlarge

       All of us rats just want to be a star; which we all know is "rats" spelled backwards!

            (Dan Piraro's work is bizarrely but joyfully accessible here.)

"Chifforobe"

       I hadn't used that word in a long time.  Probably many younger folk will wrinkle their eyebrows.

       I referred to the chest of drawers that's in my bedroom.  Was I using it accurately? 

       The AHD calls "chifforobe" "a tall piece of furniture typically having drawers on one side and space for hanging clothes on the other" [behind a "closet door" that is like a cabinet].  Mine is only the tall, wide chest of drawers, which I sometimes call the "dresser."

       A "chiffoniere" is a high narrow chest of drawers, sometimes with a mirror on top.

       "Chifforobe" is from French chiffon, deriving from chiffe meaning "rag" + (ward)robe.

       So I wasn't accurate about mine (can't hang clothes).  Pronunciation?   iPhone had it right in its unique way when it converted my voicing into text:  "Schiffer Robe."

End-of-the-Week Rumination: "Homonym" Revisited

       I decided it was pretty confusing what I wrote on Saturday, December 13th; so I hopped on to another dictionary or two, and I like what American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) had to say for "homonym."

       "One of two or more words that have the same sound and often the same spelling but differ in meaning."

       That definition allows for the "raised"/"razed" and "naval"/"navel" pairings I brought up because it says "often the same spelling" but doesn't exclude different spellings.

        But yes,  dog "bark" and "bark" from a tree are also homonyms with the same spelling and sound, and they differ in meaning.

        There is a use for the word "homograph":  one of two or more words spelled alike, with different meanings, that sound different like "lead" (conduct) and "lead" (metal).

         Done ruminating.

      

"Plethora" Cartooned

Click on cartoon to enlarge

     
       And in case you could use a mnemonic device for recalling the definition of "plethora," it comes from the same Greek, ultimately Indo-European, root as the word "plenty."

       (The "Argyle Sweater" official website may be found here.)

Hand-Me-Up

       Gift season again.  I wore this yesterday at an annual family gathering.  A discarded item from my son's wardrobe, a nice vest that fit, looked good, and also could keep me warm in moderately cold circumstances.   He offered, and I accepted.  I call it a hand-me-up!

click on photo to enlarge

 

I'm for grabbin' rhyme any ohl time.

       'Tis the season for gifts, and I'm indebted for a pair of books I received from a friend with a neat bonus "attached."

       From two different categories came gifting through to me:


                          Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara

                                                 &

                            The Yogi Book by Yogi Berra

                                                 
Seldom, if ever, have the names Frank O'Hara and Yogi Berra appeared this close together.

What's the name of that coffee shop?

       I've previously confessed forgetfulness of people's names.  The same holds true of names of stores and other things.  Even though I try to go to Starbucks once weekly to read, listen to lectures, and listen to music, and even though I make notes like the word "Starbucks" on schedules I am wont to produce for myself each day, I can lose the word "Starbucks" from my memory.

       How do I proceed to get the name of the coffee shop back?  I know it's named for something.  What is it?  Oh, yes, it's a character in Moby Dick, which I've read.  And then, finally, Starbucks will come back to me, and I can jot my note.

       Connections, synapses, repetitions, use it not to lose it.   Got to get to Starbucks again next week.

When does Chanukah Begin and End?

       The very last words in a calendar I otherwise cherish are "All Jewish Holidays begin at sundown the previous day."

       Sundown "the previous day" isn't just idle information you want to learn about the next morning.  Most Jewish holidays start the observance at that sundown time, maybe a temple service, maybe an observance at home like the lighting of candles with Chanukah.

       For Chanukah, calendars should have noted on December 16th this year "Chanukah begins at sundown."  That was the lighting of the first candle.  And so as not to miss the lighting of the last candles, December 23rd (today) should read something like "Final day of Chanukah begins at sundown."

       I know there are people still waiting to light eight candles tomorrow evening when the holiday's officially over!   

      
      
      

         

      

"The Menorah in the Palisades"

Son David took this photo in Pacific Palisades a few nights ago and posted it on Facebook.  The Large Menorah is located at a gas station there.   Wonderful caption on the photo itself is David's.

Click on photo to enlarge.

End-of-the-Week-Ruminations: Use It or Lose It.

       The Wednesday film documentary Connie and I saw on Alzheimer's patients does seem to re-embrace the popular saying on physical health but this time regarding mental health and stability.

       And you have to go back to "elementary" school in your eighties or nineties, one way or another, to start "using it" again.

       As I re-read the Wednesday blog post, I realized the name of my blog Living with Language can mean, amongst other things, staying alive and healthy by employing language (and numbers) every day!  

      

No Immunity from Clogging in the Verbisphere

       As beautiful and well written as Joff Gottlieb's obituary is in yesterday's L.A. Times, journalistic thoroughness sometimes poses nearly insuperable challenges.

       I speak of a paragraph consisting of a long single sentence, which concluded with "said Rabbi Bradley Artson, the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean's Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles."  There's nothing there to actually fault despite Rabbi Artson apparently being within all that verbiage, as I understand it, a "Chair" and the last part being exclusively "of," "at," and "in" prepositional phrases, four in a row.

       It does get to be crowded, and what's most awkward is the use of several names and a possessive noun "Dean's" to modify that innocent noun "Chair."

       Oh, were it only somehow avoidable.  

How to Use Speech and Language: Make the Call!

       I am thinking of a wonderful rabbi who just died, Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom Synagogue.  He advocated for and did powerful things, sermonizing, writing, and founding organizations that helped hundreds and thousands of people in need worldwide.

       When Connie and I first joined Temple Judea just a mile or two from VBS, we had a new rabbi, Steve Jacobs, and the first week of his tenure, Rabbi Schulweis got ahold of him not only to congratulate him but to invite him to lunch.

       Rabbi Akiva Annes became our leader several years later, and Schulweis again made the invitation during the first week.  And upon Annes's retirement a few years after that,  Don Goor took over as senior rabbi, and he too received the invitation. 

       I knew of these lunch invitations because all three of our rabbis spoke of it from the pulpit with a sense of pride and appreciation; another rabbi, and Conservative not Reform like our rabbis, had made that welcoming gesture.  And a relationship was begun.

       Harold Schulweis lived his values and put them into action.  He made the call.

       (Please see Rabbi Schulweis's remarkable obituary in the Los Angeles Times today here.)

When Language can be Intimidating, then Humanizing

       Jogging today, "Press Play" from KCRW pressed to my ears.  Madeleine Brand interviewing two restaurant critics. 

       Each has a 10 best list for 2014 in L.A.  THE restaurants to go to according to one female, one male critic.  Their lists overlap but are also considerably different.

       How many large incomprehensible names of restaurants and the food they serve can one disgruntled jogger put up with?

       Then Madeleine, the host of the daily show, noon, 89.9 F.M., asks, "Now what are your favorite guilty pleasures?"

       "Norm's," says he, "I love to sit on the stools and watch the cooks work.  Love to eat there."

       "A hot dog from the street stands," she says, "Or food truck food."

       Bless you, Madeleine, for that final question.

      

          

"Do You Know What My Name Is?"

       Connie and I saw a documentary of that title today, Alzheimer patients taking very elementary arithmetic, reading, and writing lessons a half hour each morning to help them regain skills and social attributes they'd in major part lost.

       These elders couldn't recall the name of a person who introduced himself to them five minutes before.   With the repetition of the lessons over six months, progress became evident, and the name would be rememberable.  Interest in things long since left behind, like knitting, self-grooming, plus sociability with others started shining through.

       I am TERRIBLE with names, at age 84, not far from these Alzheimer patients' ages, trying to maintain my own faculties.  As Connie works with "Lumosity" brain program daily and I keep this blog about language each day, we may be on the right track.

What's "wrong" and "right" in language.

       When we ponder what's "right" and "wrong" in language, we have to consider things like this:

       "Properly" speaking, "education" "should" be pronounced [EHD-you-KAY-shn].  Only trouble is, when you put syllables together in connected speech, those syllables influence one another. And when you are putting the tip of the tongue on the upper gum ridge to say [d], you are already anticipating the move toward the position for the letter "u" made high in the back of the mouth, which takes you  THROUGH the position for [zh] as in "azure."

       The sound  that comes out is neither [d] nor [zh] but a splicing of the two as in the sound we usually find spelled with the letter "j."  As in "judge."  [d] + [zh] = [j].

       There's no "j" in "education," but there IS.

Clearly words are sounds; no, clearly words are letters.

       A morning headline held a name I was stunned by:  ABE.  Seems he was the leader of a country.  Wait a minute, Abe was a president of our country, but that doesn't mean you "first name" him in newsprint.

       Writer Susan Sontag told of when she first went to Berkeley.  She'd been a bright and voracious reader from an early age but couldn't find anyone to talk with about her reading.

       Now, on her first day at UC, she mentioned the author of a book to a fellow student who said, "'Proost,' not 'Prowst.'" And instantly she knew she was in the right place.  She'd never heard anyone say Marcel Proust's name before.

       In my reverse experience,  I'd heard [AH-bay] but not seen it in print and had no idea how it looked.    

      

Streep by Any Other Name Would Be as Sweet.

       Stephen Sondheim tickled me today in a Times interview about Into the Woods.

       The lyricist-composer was alongside Meryl Streep talking about the movie version of the stage musical opening Christmas Day.  Streep was saying she never could have imagined when she first saw the show on Broadway many years ago that she would be able to play the witch role.

       Sondheim said, "You were ordained for the part.  The last name of the woman playing the witch on stage that day and your own are anagrams of each other."

       Perhaps you recall that the person who did the part on Broadway was Bernadette _ _ _ _ _ _?

       Love that Sondheim, master of words in all their incarnations.  
         

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: "Homophones" / "Homonyms"

        I don't think I've ever used the terms, but the whole blog is replete with them: "razed" / "raised" on Wednesday, December 10th; "naval" / "navel" yesterday December 12th.  These are "homophones."

        "Homophones" ("same sounds"), words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and different meanings.

       "Homographs" ("same writing"), words that have the same spelling but different meanings ["bear" animal, "bear" carry; "lead" conduct, "lead" metal].   

       "Homonyms" ("same names") are like homophones with same pronunciation, but like homographs with same spelling, and have different meanings "bark" of tree, "bark" of dog; "cast" of a play, "cast" a fishline.

       But now I'm told::  both homophones and homographs can be considered, loosely, to be forms of the third, homonyms.  I'm breathing easier already.

       All I know is cartooning punsters and I would be much worse off without them.

"Naval" / "Navel"

       Got a letter today from the college I taught at for thirty years; it was bragging that our engineering students in a challenging design contest had beaten out students from the U.S. Naval Academy.

       Here's what I was thinking when I read that:

       "Well, it's no wonder we beat students who sit around staring at their navels."

"Regarding Susan Sontag"

       The following is taken from the film "Regarding Susan Sontag."  Nancy D. Kates made the film, and it premiered over HBO last Monday, December 8th.  Susan Sontag was the American writer and cultural critic, and the film documents her life and work.

       LOVE WORDS,
       Agonize over Sentences.
       Pay Attention to the World.

"What I love, what draws me very much to writing, is, it's a way of                                         paying attention to the world."


The trailer for the film with further information can be found here.

"Tower of fire RAZES complex"

       For as long as I can remember, the occasional meet-up with the fourth word in that headline I saw yesterday has set me off-kilter.

       You hear the word "raises," and yet you know it means "lowers" or "levels" or "destroys"--just the opposite kind of import from rising, ascending, building.

       "Raze" or "rase" began by meaning "scratch" with some of the notion of scraping away surface material, and that meaning is now archaic (though "erase" is still with us), and "raze" now extends the "scratch" to the demolishing of large quantities of material (often by fire).    A  common use of the word is "razed to the ground."

                                                                                                                   lift.
       It still makes my chin tilt a little.  I want to give that word a  

       

Wit and Honesty can Make the Day!

       In a set of tennis Sunday morning, after we lost 6-0 to the mixed doubles team on the other side of the net whom I'd congratulated by saying "Well, you two came to play!" because they'd been awfully good and consistent, my partner Jeanette followed up with a wonderful finish line, "But in our defense, we sucked !" which was right as rain, true as truth, and made me smile and laugh and feel good despite it all.  Didn't appear the other team thought it was funny, but I didn't care.  Thank you, Jeanette!

       I was giving maybe too much credit, but Jeanette was telling the other half of the story.  I don't know what kind of "defense" it was, but.. ...that line made great sense to me!

"Coccyx"

       I've been curious about the word "coccyx" for its peculiarity and its sound.  It's another word for what is often called the tailbone.  The Greeks have it in this case because the origin is the Greek word for "cuckoo."  And why should that be the origin of the tailbone?  Because the bone itself, the "tail" end of the spine, a more or less triangular fusion of the four final vertebrae, resembles the shape of a cuckoo's beak!  So there you have [COCK-six] "coccyx."

       Thus the "tail" ends with my curiosity being satisfied.  And if the "cuckoo" can be imitatively named for the sound of its own monotonous call, why can't the coccyx of both humans and tailless apes be imitatively named for the shape, not of their missing tails but the beak of the cuckoo?!    

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: Bumper Stickers

       On Wednesday, I spoke of my daughter's growing supply of stickers on the back of her car.  But she isn't the only one in the family.

       Wife Connie has a "War Is Not the Answer" sticker that's getting difficult to read from exposure to the elements and a Gay Rights = sign in yellow against a blue background.  And both her car and mine display this:

       I don't see too many cars these days with thoughts their owners would like to promote or share displayed on the back of vehicles. 

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: "Superannuation"

       "Superannuation" is the title I gave yesterday's post, and it made me ask myself, "Was this an appropriate title?"

       It means "old-fashioned" or "obsolete," and I guess I thought it referred to Uber being too "old," at something like four years old, to be called a "start-up" any longer.

       The word origin is Medieval Latin [superannuatus] meaning "over one year old."

       Egad.  That's about it.  A company older than a year these days is probably beyond a start-up, and has to be ready for the competition from  all the other "up-starts."  It's "superannuated."

Is there an app for superannuation?

       Here's a paragraph from today's L.A. Times about Uber:


              Still, Uber is ahead of the competition, racing past established          car rental services and other ride-sharing up-starts.


Yes, many other "get-a-driver-and-a-ride-by-digital-app" companies have arisen since Uber began it.  Still this is a very recent phenomenon.  Uber a handful of years ago was a start-up.  Now the others can already be called "up-starts."

Therapy by any other name would smell as sweet.

       Returned for a second physical therapy session today.  Had a new therapist, but he'd read the notes for me and followed up effectively.

       My first therapist's name was Timothy.  His face was of Asian descent, and I saw his last name was Peng.  Arriving today I see a another Asian face, but this therapist's first name was Calvin; his last was Lum.

       Two young men with distinctly non-Asian first names.  I'd guess there was a parental desire to put an American imprint on their future lives in this country, so they could feel at home, less "foreign."

       And then I recalled my parents, both of recent immigrant background, who chose "Donald" for me, not a Central European nor Jewish sound to it.  Assimilation; an understandable goal, but not necessarily easy nor without its ironies.

Having Children, Making History

       My daughter drove up here from Tucson for Thanksgiving with our grandson.  I took a look at the back of her car, and it's getting as full with signs as her old one, well, not nearly, but it's striving to be the next major depository of protest.

       There are several peace symbols, a bumper sticker: "READING IS SEXY," and a prominently located strip in the middle of her hatchback door-window:

         WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN     RARELY MAKE HISTORY  

"Buffaloed"

       I had used it in a letter and wondered how the word originated.

       First, it has nothing to do with the city of Buffalo.  Further, it seems that meanings of being  overcome by fear or being outwitted or taken advantage of as based in a buffalo's size or strength or high IQ are far less persuasive in the final analysis than, from observations of buffalos' behavior, BUFFALOS are the ones more likely to not be too smart, easily led to just mill around aimlessly and become vulnerable targets for killing.  THEY are "buffaloed," confused, stymied, easy marks, and this is what is analogized to human states of mind and behavior.

       For interesting tracing of this word as derived from various good sources, I recommend a look at the "buffaloed" entry on wordwizard.com  

"Spoken" for in "Spokane"

       Sometimes writers choose a word influenced by another word "in the neighborhood."  This can be to good effect or, more often than not, lazy and mindless word choice.  I have called it the "echoic" effect.

       Fortunately in the instance of Picture Legends Writer Abbe Pascal's description of a photograph, she has a winner in beginning this way:

           "Frost crystals spangle leaves in Spokane, Washington."

You can see and hear the echo in the words "spangle" and "Spokane."  It's the [sp] and the [an] in both words. 

       My point is "spangle" is musical with "Spokane" whether consciously chosen or not, but may have been unconsciously selected from a multitude of possibilities due to the anticipated sound of the city name just ahead!  And "spangle" fits the photo perfectly.

Portion of Charles Gurche's Photograph.  Click on it to enlarge.

(From the Dec. 1st through 7th page of the National Geographic Society's 2014 engagement calendar Beautiful Landscapes.)