A pun'll getcha plenty, Hon.

click on comic to enlarge

Dan Piraro's comic can be located at this site.

Watching your "f'"s and "p"s in a found twister

       Having gotten those lips of yours moving with the tongue twister finished yesterday, I offer another jaw exerciser, again from the sports pages:

                   "all four par five holes"

Can you do it even six times without messing up a syllable, going at a steady, medium-fast pace?

Limber those lips: a Tongue Twister

       As often  happens, the daily paper supplies a good one.  In the World Series, the New York Mets finally took the third game from the Kansas City Royals when fastball pitcher Syndergaard started the game with a 99 mph pitch high and inside, announcing the Mets, now in their home stadium, weren't going to let Game 3 get away from them as the first two did.

       The single column but large print headline on the continuation of the article in the inner pages read  this way:

              High heat
              lifts Mets, 
          miffs Royals

OK, see if you can say those words fast 10 times without slipping up.   Betcha can't.  For one thing, you have to get your lips together for the [m] sounds, but you have to get them apart for the [f], [t], and [s] sounds.  

Good luck!  In any case you'll give your facial muscles a workout. 

The product is less dangerous than the accompanying manual.

       I got the new toaster at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  It said, "SAVE THESE INSTRUCTIONS"  in the booklet that came with it; so I've saved them.

       It says, "Before Using for the First Time," I should do seven things, by the number.  Number 7 mentions running the toaster once or twice without bread "to burn off any manufacturing residue."  Then these words immediately follow:

"You may notice a light amount of smoke; this is normal and will stop as the heating elements continue to heat. bowl first.  Start with the lowest setting and gradually increase as the cream begins to thicken."

       I'm glad I've saved these instructions.  They're useful to me.   Just maybe not the way the manufacturer imagined.

       

Incorrigible Cartooning Punster

 The website for this comic can be found here.

"A wave comes into shore"

"This Way to the Egress"

       Yesterday's < and  > symbols reminded me of Barnum and Bailey.  As I recall it, they had trouble getting people to leave their great animal show and circus and had the bright idea to put up a sign "This Way to the Egress," with an arrow pointing.  They rightly suspected that most people wouldn't know the word and would imagine finding another exotic animal they'd never seen before.

       The words and arrow led people through a door, and before they knew it, they were outside.

       "Egress" is in the same Latin-sourced basket as "progress"--"go forward" and "regress"--"go backward," and "congress"--"come together" or "go together."  So why not "egress"--"go out"?

        Not so incidentally, on this very day, the U.S. Congress is on the point of "coming together" for the first time in a very long time indeed to pass a bi-partisan bill to keep the country solvent and able to conduct its business!  "Congress" living up to its name?

       Oh, and for Speaker John Boehner, finally a moment of triumph and . . . "This Way to the Egress."   
       

< > ???

       I've been unable to remember . . . until now . . . the meaning of two mathematical symbols I did not grow up with but which are commonly used, especially in my medical lab reports from Kaiser:

                                              >  and  <

The two mean "less than" and "more than," but I can never remember which, and end up confused, not knowing whether my numbers are within or outside of a healthy range for a given test.

       I asked for assistance online, and one mnemonic device worked best for me, maybe because it had to do with letters rather than numbers:  one of the two symbols easily reshapes into the letter "L" for "less than," and the other doesn't!  Instant communication as far as I am concerned.

       I'm not sure, but I think the person who came up with that was a grade schooler.  Naturally.

       Math is a language too, of course, just not the one I'm most comfortable with.
  

Mis-hearing is an Art

       A friend and relation who is a psychological therapist has a message on his home cell phone.  His voice asks patients to call his office phone number, but that isn't the way I heard it when I first tried to reach him.  This is the way the message started to my ears:


              "If you're QUIET (some emphasis), call the office phone at . . . "


This took me aback, and I almost hung up, figuring, yes, I can be quiet enough to leave my message, but then thought again, let it go on and realized I could leave my personal message here.  I did.

       And then I re-called this same number just to check the actual word; it wasn't "quiet," it was "a client."

Take this with "interest"

       Again Life's Little Instruction Calendar Volume XIX provides me a daily "instruction" that resonates:

               "Become more interesting to others by becoming more interested in them."

       A good thing to remember, and I showed how the thought is embedded in the word "interest" itself when I did this blog entry.

Words Answer Sights

       Coming home from the beach late afternoon, driving through Malibu Canyon, the stark mountains rendering awesomeness to my eyes, we drop to roads with fields on either side, the lower mountains beyond now dark against slowly fading but still bright light.

       Suddenly a surprising symmetry:

                Pointed mountain peak
                Poking holes in the sky

Room in the Inn

       Connie saw a wonderful saying on a T-shirt:

                  "Sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out."

      

A Romantic Beach Poem

From One "Cowlick" to Another

       Standing behind Connie as she registered to get an x-ray at Kaiser Permanente, I kissed the back of her neck.  I said, "You have a cowlick."  "I know, nothing'll make it stay down."  "What does 'cowlick' come from?"  She didn't know.  Nor I.

       I have it on good authority (means it sounds good to me) that "it's British in origin.   It almost certainly comes from a comparison with the projecting ridge of hairs on a cow's hide, licked into shape by the animal.  The word is first recorded in 1598."   (QPB Word and Phrase Origins, Fourth Edition 2008, by Robert Hendrickson)

       In any case, I like the sound of the word, and that we share some wispy, pesky out-of-place hair with our fellow bovine breed.

Puns: they catch you like a fish

       My son was talking about volcanoes he'd enjoyed going over on his way to Seattle in an airplane.

       And he said, "You know, there's a whole series of them," and he said "which you'd expect--they'd be in a row--they're a fissure in the earth."

       And I said, "I thought fish're in the sea."

       He-he.  Caught him unawares, and he said, "Ooooh," and laughed, and of course I did, and my wife's face went all sour because we'd made a lousy pun.

       But we liked it, and it was a good one.

How the columnist may soften from online to newsprint

       From the online column headline at midnight "Chase Utley's slide was late, high and arguably dirty" to the morning headline when the L.A. Times was delivered at home "Utley's hard slide at second base is borderline legal, but it might be a season saver" is an alteration of tone to match the piece's changes themselves in Bill Plaschke's sports column. 

       Overnight worries about arousing New York City readers before Monday's third game of the National League Divisional Series by an L.A. paper admitting that dirty work had been afoot?    Maybe editorial or columnist concern that L.A. fans would think the piece "too" honest and judgmental on what the fans wanted to celebrate, a gutsy play that led to a victory.

       Possibly also, just a reconsideration of the piece after a first blush of rapid columnizing.  Plaschke is not afraid to make ethical judgments and has often been a conscience for sports in L.A., but he may have seen his piece as a little unbalanced or unfair to the home team, especially after 27 years without a World Series appearance.

       "It was awful, it was ugly, but the Dodgers scored the tying run on the play" appears online at night but is absent in morning at home.

       An added print ending that wasn't online summoned Tommy Lasorda's shouted admonition to the fans after tossing out the first pitch, "We gotta win tonight" and reminded morning readers that the Dodgers won "in a style that the tough Lasorda surely loved."

"Right as Rain"

       Standing outside my car I'd just locked, I noticed I hadn't put the the window all the way up.  Since I was in a hurry, I quickly decided I didn't need to unlock and roll--it wasn't going to rain.

       Next day got to the car, smiled and said, "I was right as rain."

       Which surprised and delighted me and led me to wonder the phrase's origin.  Nothing notable I can find, but the frisky, single-syllabled alliteration is catchy.

Not the the worst misspelling ever

       Local high school sign in front of school:

                    "Volleyball tryouts have been susspended"

       You know, it's not altogether wrong because the second extended "s" is an enactment of what the word means--it's an extension of expected time.  Maybe they will pick up again, those tryouts, and maybe they won't.

       For the moment they're off, they're done.  Is it temporarily?  I don't know, but it is, the event is. . .
                             
                        suss pended 

       The Latin roots of the word mean "hung up."
 

Something ELSE to atone for?!

       The concluding Day of Atonement service was coming to an end; most in attendance were surely hungry and perhaps a little weak from fasting; two weeks of trying to mend one's ways and plan and promise for better behavior in the year ahead lay behind.

       The rabbi's voice was still strong and urgent in final penitence and ready to ask God to accept our prayers and write us in the book of life for the coming year before the gate was closed.

       We read along with him in the book or tried to track the hurried Hebrew if we could, but at last I simply listened as the rabbi read from The Gates of Repentance.

       What I could not believe but most assuredly heard in stentorian tones was:

                    "Now send forth Your hidden light and open to Your servants the gates of Hell."

        WHAT?

        Trying to restrain my incredulity and then my fervent impulse to laughter, I finally fumbled and found the place in the text.  The word was "help."  Little closing sounds can get lost to the ear.  BUT SOMEONE SHOULD NEVER HAVE WRITTEN THAT WORD AT ALL, knowing what it might sound like! 

       I did restrain my mirth from others hearing and made my way from the synagogue, smiling, a little faint and confused, and figured it's all part of the emotions of the day that one seeks restitution with God.

Carl Sandburg, Weather Forecaster

       In an antic mood after looking up the weather on my localconditions.com website, I decided to send something to them since they allow for a forecast from their customers about our own neighborhood weather.

       This popped into my mind almost unbidden but instantaneously:  "The fog comes on little cat feet."  I smiled and sent it.   

       Last time, they let my "prediction" stay published ; so we'll see if this time they think it's neither "abusive" nor "disrespectful." 

       The Carl Sandburg poem the line came from in toto:

                                       FOG

                              The fog comes
                              on little cat feet.

                              It sits looking
                              over harbor and city
                              on silent haunches
                              and then moves on.
 

(My "forecast" was published here.  Scroll down to bottom of page.  The report or prediction is retained only for a few days.  I'm glad they've                                               got a sense of humor.)

Why MDs study Greek and Latin Roots

       We need Greek and Latin, if for no other reason than to sound impressive, arcane, important, mysterious.  I'm thinking of medical terms.

       Connie saw an endocrinologist the same day that she saw a urologist.  A week later it was an orthopedist, to be followed next week by an internist.

       God, they must be taking good care of her.

      

WHIPPED: Unable to Keep Up with Baseball's Statistical Refinements

       Baseball statistics have gone out of their mind.  A recent one is the WHIP.   But I was unable to remember its meaning.  A newspaper article today pegged it down.  A pitcher had a 1.58 WHIP:  in other words, a little over 1 1/2 "walks and hits per innings pitched."

       So it's how many blokes are getting on base one way or another due to your failed pitching.  It has a point; you certainly want a good WHIP whether it's something on your fastball or in your stats.

       But the main reason I have to give it a pass as the seventy-fifth-thousand-and-third kind of statistic in baseball is there's some small virtue in the near rhyme and ALterNAting RHYTHm in the WHIP:

          WALKS and HITS
          per INNings PITCHED

       I can roll with that.  Plus the snappy acronym.

Hello Again.

       Last night, I cut into a lime from my back yard, worried that it might be moving toward overripe. I tasted it and found it was nicely acidic, then heard a word I doubt would have had anything to do with the matter--"Hasidic."

       A Hasid might be quite sour about my comparison.

Blog

       Blog is on hiatus for a period of time this summer.  After two and a half years of daily blogging, it's needed. 

SCOTUS Rules

       I should have known, guessed, recognized (but didn't) yesterday when I saw-heard the word SCOTUS.  It's like POTUS, which I learned from The Veep is short for President of the United States.

       Since Antony Scalia employed it, I might have figured (but didn't) that it meant Supreme Court of the United States.  In an enormous dig at the majority yesterday, Scalia "suggested" that along with the previous vote by the Court that favored the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), the Court's favorable vote for it yesterday meant that the ACA might as well be called "SCOTUScare."

       As I say, I didn't catch it first time around, but then seeing it later as just printed, I realized the devilish Scalia might have intended not only to demean the ACA and the majority as out-of-line and unjust but to set forth that they were both very "scary."

       (Now I know that FLOTUS stands for "First Lady of the United States."  New to me also.)

       Merriam-Webster says SCOTUS was the first of these acronyms to be used, serving as an abbreviation in telegrams in the late 1800s; thence to be followed by other such fortunate(?) shortenings. 

        

       Three times accosted by women in the grocery store parking lot wheeling my grocery cart to the  car for transport home, twice today by two different women and once the other day.  Two wanted help for sad personal situations; the other hadn't "yet" asked for money before I turned her down before she asked.

       Whether they truly needed help or were simply panhandlers, I'm not sure.  Since two of the women (was one the same one as the other day?) offered to pay me back, just to give them my address, I suppose further effort to get more money from me was possible that way.  Two of the three offered to meet me for lunch or coffee--apart from payback, it sounded like--and one of them seemed to know I was married.  One of them I didn't answer; the other I said, "I can't do that."

       Was I manhandled, panhandled, womanhandled?  All three?  

I'm "Raisin'" My Hand in Protest

       A Supreme Court  ruling yesterday, something about it being wrong that a Raisin Administrative Committee produce a "raisin" price of raisins by withholding some raisins from market.

       You know these language things tease and drive me a little crazy at the same time.  This front page raisin story made me recall the Minnesota "All Agency Moose Advisory Committee" in my home state; I couldn't help seeing a roomful of moose sitting around deciding what advice to mete out.

       Now we have a tableful of raisins sitting around administering their own fate.

 

A Cheer that Rings through the yEars

      Sports seasons overlap and merge with one another; high school, college, professional sports; women's sports, men's sports, kids' sports.  In thinking how most of them have cheer leaders, and the crazy yells and songs you and I may have given voice to in our lives supporting one team or another, I recalled what our St. Paul Central High cheer leaders came up with in a frivolous mood and which they couldn't help sharing with our student body at an assembly:


               We may lose one,
               We may lose two,
               We may lose three,

               Tee-He-He


We laughed.  That little "cheer" was supposed to die right there.  But it was too catchy and cute and satiric, and we students wouldn't let a game go by without voicing a rendition or two of it.

     

      

"Summer Afternoon"

       Thank you, "Mutts," thank you Patrick McDonnell, thank you, Henry James, and thank you even finally, I believe, Edith Wharton who quoted Henry James from a conversation on a perfect afternoon they spent together, in her book A Backward Glance.

       Yesterday longest day of the year on the solstice, today only a breath shorter I'm sure.  And these long afternoons are good for naps for both Connie and me when you can wake up and find the sun and light still g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s-l-y with us.

      Summer Afternoon . . . Summer Afternoon.

How Does a Cartoonist Keep it Fresh?

       How does the cartoonist keep getting ideas that work for a long-lived comic?  This one jolts a little with freshness partly because it moves you back and forth from the main character to something he couldn't know, the title of the cartoon he's been in all these years.  Of course, the parents know, or if not, they could easily manufacture it right at this moment.  In any case it sure looks like the Mom is contemplating it, and not blushing either.  Of course, Dennis is entirely "innocent," ho ho ho.  And for us, the oh-so-familiar title, which we virtually disregard because of that, is suddenly restored attention--from within the comic itself.

       The cartoon is the thing, but words and rhyme and naming are at the heart of the matter.

(Website to reach Hank Ketcham's "Dennis the Menace" is found here.)

Words and Images Having Fun Together

       I like that the dad cartoonist who's letting his son replace him for a week with the 7 year old's own cartoons (see yesterday's post) refers to what the son is doing as "pun-in-ink" cartoons.  That captures it all the way around.

Another Cartooning Punster has Arrived

A neat annual event around Father's Day at this cartoon site, where "Family Circus" can be located.

Do You Rehearse Real-Life Conversations?

       Have you ever practiced something you were going to say to someone?  I have, often.  If I'm the least nervous, or afraid I'll say the wrong thing and blow a relationship, or fail to persuade on something I really want to happen, I'll go over it imagining the situation and trying out what I'll say.

       Caught myself doing that tonight on something pretty unimportant, but still . . .

       The car needs an oil change, plus windshield washer checked and refilled.  Then I remembered, if it's Santos who does the job, he always fills my tires with air, which is nice, but Santos always puts in maximum air, and the tight tires jolt the hell out of me over slightest bumps for the next several weeks, if not months:


       "Oh, and Santos . . ."

       "Yeah?"

       "I know when you finish, you always pump up my tires, which I appreciate, but could you hold off something short of maximum?   I really don't care if I don't get good mileage on 'em or they don't last as long as they should.  The car's old, and I'm old, and I need as smooth a ride as I can get."


       That'll do it . . . I hope.


       

Wegman's Words Go with his Photos

       When William Wegman titles the photographs of his Weimaraner dogs in his annual "Man's Best Friend" calendars, the language is part of their success.  Witness this one coming up for July:

"Washed Up"

Proper Names into Adjectives: Second of Two Parts

       Those who follow in the footsteps of or are likened to Swiss learning theorist Jean Piaget (pee-ah-ZHAY) have been called in print "Piagetian."  Now is this to be said pee-ah-ZHAY-shn or pee-ah ZHAY-tee-uhn or, perhaps to honor the original pronunciation of the name, pee-ah-ZHAY-ee-uhn?  The mouth wants to make it pee-ah-ZHAY-uhn, but the spelling won't let it.

       It is demeaning to the reputation and memory of one of the world's great conductors when his style is referred to as "Toscaninian."

       Somewhere along the way "Aristotelian" stopped sounding peculiar, and perhaps the same happy fate awaits author Bernard Malamud.  Meanwhile ""Malamudian" doesn't quite make it.  A little inventiveness is in order for these recently famous names.  In this instance, how about "Malamudic?"  That seems to me perfect, borrowed from the manner of "Platonic"with "Talmudic" overtones.

       Now I have seen "Frostean" for Robert Frost, which doesn't quite ring right, at least yet.  So one tries out "Frost-like," gets playful with "Frosted," and hurtles ahead to "Frozen."

       And what about philosopher Martin Buber?  I have heard "Buberian" on the radio, which is pretty bad.  "Buberic" would be no better.  "Bubonic?"  At this point, I rise to my Salperean heights ("Look, Ma, I'm famous!") . .  . and desist. 

       

Proper Names into Adjectives: First of Two Parts

       My pondering has been deepened on the precariousness of becoming famous.  Before one knows it, one's proud family name can be turned into an unfortunate adjective.

       Oh, we have become quite used to Shakespearean and Freudian and Einsteinian, and maybe "getting used to" is what it takes because some "proper adjectives" are not easily assimilable.  I submit the following examples.

       Saul Bellow and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow have been modified into the modifiers "Bellovian" and "Longfellovian."

       Film directors have been said to work "in the Mankiewiezian style" or "the Hitchcockian tradition."

       Composer Gustav Mahler transmutes to "Mahlerian," and this sentence appears in a review:

"Conductor George Solti knows the secret of tightening the Mahlerian sprawl and tempering the Mahlerian bombast without devaluing the Mahlerian spirit."

After reading this, one feels vaguely overcome by a tropical disease.

      

      

"Interpretation"

       Two posts ago, I felt I had to write about "hermeneutics," probably gratuitously, but being caught up in words has its hazards.

       Now I need to give you an insight about the word "interpretation," which I proclaimed as being probably the best single word synonymous with "hermeneutics."

       Actually the synyonymity (a word I doubt exists) between the two words makes perfect sense even if we are moving from Greek to Latin:  "Interpretation" means "taking between" by derivation--inter "between" and pret "take," the exact thing we expect a messenger (the messenger god Hermes) to do, take a message from here to there--"between."

       Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, I discovered years back that the earliest implications of the word "interpretation" were commercial, a sense that the interpreter was one who brought goods from here to there between people, sales.

       My profession centering on "oral interpretation of literature," being the conduit between literature and audiences, which I'd always thought far afield from my father's, a men's clothing business, had more in common with his than I would ever have imagined.

      

Speech and Writing can Give Each Other the Comeuppance

       Seeing again today "Duck Tape" being sold on the shelves of a store, I recalled the similar peculiarity based in the news yesterday.

       The product generically is "duct" tape, so named for its special usefulness in sealing places where ducts join,  to prevent hot air or cold air from escaping containment.  Because "t" both ends duct and begins tape, it's easy to hear only one "t" and think the first word is "duck."  A "smart" manufacturer simply named its product "Duck" tape.

       Last night's PBS news had an interview with the prime minister of Scotland, someone I'd never heard of, Nicolas Sturgeon.  I heard she was a woman, and she clearly was when she came on screen.  I thought it peculiar that a woman was named Nicolas.

       Today's newspaper told me that she'd be interviewed on Fareed Zakaria's show, and I saw her name was Nicola, a name I'd only heard of once, and it belonged to a man.  I'd made the "s" from Sturgeon serve by hearing it also as the end of Nicola.

        In the first instance, the two "t"s shrink to one and make the first word "duck"; in the second instance it's easy to hear the single "s" as connected with both names and make the first name Nicolas. 

        Speech and writing sometimes give each other the comeuppance.

      

      

"Hermeneutics"

       In my June 3 post titled "An erotics of art," I used the word "hermeneutics" and, I suppose, figured the context would imply its most common synonym:  "interpretation."  But it struck me in re-reading the post that "hermeneutics" is so little used in everyday conversation, a "word" is in order.

       Where it is commonly used gives a clue to its meaning:  in biblical study, reading-explaining-understanding-translating-interpereting ancient religious texts; this kind of study is called "hermeneutics."

        The way I always remember it is the place the word comes from.  It's Greek, and it's derived from the god Hermes.  And who was Hermes?  He was the messenger god, the guy depicted with fleet wings on his heels to help get him from here to there as fast as possible.

        "Hermeneutics" in general is the study of getting the "message" from one place to another, "reading-explaining-understanding-translating-interpreting texts," literary, Biblical, or otherwise, and is aptly applied by Susan Sontag to a similar process regarding the assimilation, explication--the interpretaion--of art in general.

The Redoubtable Dept. of Debt

       Just found a scrap of torn magazine with content I intended to use for the blog.  From it I learned why we have the silent and not-so-silent "b" in words like "doubt," debt," "dubious," and "debit."

       The "b" demonstrates the English word's indebtedness to its Latin origins in dubitatio and debitum.  

Don't Read "Amelia Bedelia" to an Autistic Child

       I learned something about autistic spectrum children because of the Tony-honored new play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  These children often have gaps in their ability to process figurative language.  The play apparently beautifully illustrates and demonstrates how the world is experienced by someone autistic.  For example, a woman onstage speaking of "the apple of my eye" has a piece of fruit on her face.  The image is taken literally.

       It made me recall the one day I was asked to try working on reading with an autistic student while I was still tutoring reading.  We had a very noisy, distracting environment that day, and I used a poetry book as I recall,  probably full of imagery and metaphors.  My student got up and walked out of the library; I had to follow him, and our only real communication was kicking a ball back and forth before I futiley returned him to his class room.  I had no training or understanding to begin to work with an autistic child and we had actually been instructed at the outset of my volunteering not to accept a special ed. student.

       The Curious Incident is one of the brightest lights of the current Broadway season and won Best Play and four other awards at the Tonys last Sunday.

S.P.A.N.--Student Project for Amity among Nations; an "acronym"

       I was one of those students at the University of Minnesota who went to England in 1950 to study the BBC and glean and understand what I could in my relationships with people from another country for the first time.  It was a wonderful experience.  A newsletter recently from SPAN informed me that my roommate from Minneosta during that English visit had died.  We had long since lost touch with one another, but I remember him and our time spent together fondly--usually in funny yet serious arguments, not disliking one another, while still disagreeing ardently.

       I don't know who thought up the acronym SPAN, but they had to use a not-often-employed word to get the meaningful shortening of the long organizational name--"amity"--friendliness--among nations.

       Didn't know "acronym" was coined only in 1943 to help identify abbreviations like radio detecting and ranging=radar.  Acronym signifies a word created by combining the initial letters or parts of a series of words.  "Acronym" is from Greek:  acro, "topmost" or "beginning of" + onoma, "name."    

"Swords into Plowshares," 21st Century Update

       . . . They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks:  nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

                                                 from Isaiah Chapter 2, Verse 4

click on image to enlarge

(Thanks to nephew Mike Boos for this wonderful image from a gift T-Shirt, purchased if I'm not mistaken, at a music store.)

Was Serena Williams "Cursing"?

       Before finally winning the championship at Roland Garros, Serena Williams dropped the "F-Bomb" more than once.  The Associated Press in the L.A. Times had it this morning that "Williams was warned by the chair umpire for cursing loudly."  I don't think that was correct.

       The actual tennis rules that were applied here and presumably told to Williams were a warning for "audible obscenity."  That sounded exactly right to me.

       "Obscenity" comes from the Greek for "off scene," a stage term to indicate things like murder should not be shown on stage but only referred to, the act being "obscene."  Same holds true here--certain words that most of us may utter at one time or another best not be brought out for display before the public, in this case including millions of ears and eyes both attending the event and around the world.

       I think "cursing" and "profanity" have implications of their source in "taking the Lord's name in vain" from the Bible and probably should be reserved for that kind of "unholy," sacrilegious language.  "Profane" by root meaning is "before" or "in front of" (but not in) "the temple."    

 

The Dodgers and the L.A. Times on the Same Page?

       "For most of the Dodgers, their 2-1 defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday was only one of 162 games they will play this season.  For Schebler, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."


       Yeah, Schebler played his first major league game with the Dodgers and got a hit.  This was the main front page story in the sports section of the Times this morning . . . about that player.

       But what I mainly noticed was the first sentence of the paragraph!  That's exactly it.  For the Dodgers, the loss to the Cardinals was just one of 162 games.  You may or may not remember my blog entry of May 29th calling them the "L.A. Slackers."  Six games against St. Louis during the regular season, and they've already lost 4 out of 5 of them.

       The Cardinals are practicing up on how they're gonna murder the Dodgers again in the post-season (if the Dodgers make it that far), but for the "Slackers" it was just another game!!!!!  That's why I called them that before the first of their 6 meetings--and look at them now.  Neither the team nor the L.A. Times seems to think this day's game has any importance.

Silence Produces Words

       Colm Toibin's comments in my post on May 30th from the documentary The 50 Year Argument:  "Reading and writing are done in silence" connected up with my three readings from Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

       The depth and profundity of King's "letter" were no doubt conditioned partly by the words being produced in the silence and isolation of a prison cell.  But, just as Toibin's remarks made clear that words rendered in silence, to be vibrant, must have hovering about them the writer's palpable sense of community, so King in his "deprived" state had a crystal clear sense of the black community he was writing both for and out of as well as the fellow clergy he was addressing and responding to.  They were totally present in that cell with him.

        Regarding "silence," in the same connection, I'm minded of the book I'm currently reading Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids edited by Meghan Daum.  Since all are writers, many of them are acutely aware of the increased freedom and ability they have to write without children to bring up.  As Sigrid Nunez, put it:

     
       "No young woman aspiring to a literary career could ignore the fact that the women writers of highest achievement, women like Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, did not have children."  

Is Memory a Crossroads?

       Looking at the part of the film The 50 Year Argument  about The New York Review of Books which I had missed seeing, I saw another quote I thought shouldn't be left out of this blog:


           "Memory arises not only from direct experience but from the                      intercourse of many minds."


It's taken from an essay in the Review by Oliver Sachs of February 21, 2013  called "Speak, Memory."

       Whether we're talking about how we recall a 50 year period argued over by many fine minds, or we're talking about our own individual memories, they have been constructed of what many people's narratives have contributed to.

       Which is why we read or listen or share words at all.

"Chance drizzle"

       My weather source on the web had an upcoming prediction today which reminded me of my  grandmother.  It was brief, appearing in this chart-like form:

                      Today                                       Tonight
       
                      Sunny                                    Chance Drizzle


I could hear it spoken with my Grandmother's slightly broken English,  Yiddish intonation, and especially that marker of her Eastern European or Russian Jewish background in word choice--"chance drizzle"-- minus any preposition, peculiar to look at, but perfectly understandable, especially to me.

"An erotics of art"

       I think I know why I didn't read Susan Sontag's essay "Against Interpretation" when it came out.  It was the year I wrote my PhD. dissertation, got my doctorate, had our daughter, obtained our next place to live and work, in California, and moved there with Connie and Elizabeth.  I had an intense tunnel vision during the year 1964.

       But  I was moved to look at the essay once again when Sontag was one of the writers featured in The 50 Year Argument film about The New York Review of Books.

       Sontag's famous concluding sentence of that essay was "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art."  Sontag says critics want to know what the "content" of the work of art is, the intellectual "take-away" so they can put the art work itself behind them, having gleaned what it has to "say," having "interpreted" it.

       Sontag thought that what was needed rather was engagement, a falling in love with the work in its palpable, material form and letting it have its way with you.  If you gave an account of that with your experience and joy in the work intact, that could be a proper criticism.  And she gave examples. 

       My field was (and is) "oral interpretation of literature," and had I read and thought about Sontag's essay at the time, I think I would have seen her as an ally rather than an enemy.  Yes, we try to understand the literature, but in doing it through performance, we are embodying and envoicing the work, not "saying other things" about it.  In giving ourselves to the work, we are fulfilling what Sontag identifies as the need for "an erotics of art."

"A NEW WAGE DAWNS"

       Yes, it's my most recent favorite headline:

               A NEW
          WAGE
          DAWNS
        
       From the front page of the Business Section of the L.A. Times Monday.  The punning headline is followed by this sub-headline which summarizes the actual article:

               $15 an hour, rippling through the economy, 
               wouldn't be as good or bad as each side claims
      

"Chocolate"

       It takes a Travel section of the Sunday newspaper to give you a flavor of where certain words come from.  Here is part of Jode Jaffe's journalism today from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where the word "chocolate" came from:


       The term "cacao" comes from the Olmecs who pre-dated the Maya....

       But it was the Maya who came up with chocolate--both the name and the drink.

       Combining the words chokoh, meaning hot and ha, meaning water, Maya chocolate was a drink that mixed ground-up cacao with chile, vanilla and other spices.

       To the Maya, cacao was crucial.  They thought it was a gift from the gods and drank it for religious ceremonies.  So cherished, the beans were their currency.  A rabbit cost 10 beans, a slave 100.

       It was xocolatl, the Aztec version of the Maya drink, that the Spanish first encountered -- and hated.  One of Hernan Cortes' conquistadors called it "a bitter drink for pigs."

       Nonetheless, Cortes brought the cacao mixture back to Spain.  That's when the magic happened.  They added cane sugar, which turned it from something for pigs to what Cortes called "a divine drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue."

       It quickly became a favorite in the Spanish court, then swept through Europe and eventually the world.

       Once the secret of chocolate got out, other places started cultivating it.  Today more than 80% of cacao is grown in Africa and Indonesia.  Less than 2% is grown in Mexico.  But the vestiges of the cacao culture remain and there's an effort to make the Yucatan the center of the chocolate world again.

            L.A. Times

Reading and Writing are Done in Silence

       Watching a program tonight with Connie, The Fifty Year Argument, about The New York Review of Books magazine.

       Connie and I were both in New York City when it began during our first year or so there; it was born during a newspaper strike!

       One statement made during the program I knew I wanted to quote in its entirety for the blog:

       
        Reading and writing are done in silence.  But you must have the idea that other people are reading the books you're reading, and that other people will read the novel you're writing.  And the idea of community within a world which depends on silence is so fundamental, although we don't think about it or remember enough how important it's been, if we don't join forces as readers in some strange way (also inside), our reading becomes a strange dessicated Mr. Casaubon sort of activity forever about to produce a book that, you know, nobody will read.

              Colm Toibin, a contributor to The New York Review of Books

The L.A. Slackers?

       The L.A. Dodgers have met their nemesis in each of the last two postseasons:  The St. Louis Cardinals put the kibosh on 'em and ended their year before they could claw their way into the World Series.

       Here's a sentence from an article in the L.A. Times this morning by Zach Helfand:


       "Few teams have hit Kershaw as well as the Cardinals, whose success against him has become the central mystery of L.A.'s lack of postseason success."


       I suppose I'm crazy, I know, but I keep reading a couple words there as "L.A. slack."

       The Dodgers meet St. Louis today. . .this weekend. . .for the first time since last October; I'm hoping they see they need to take up the "slack" before they can beat a really fine team like the Cardinals.  

Words Enhancing Pictures

       On May 25th, 2015, I illustrated how vivid words from a journalist can capture the artistry of photographs we don't even see.  It's also true that vivid description can help our appreciation of photographs we are actually looking at.

       This is often true with the work of the "legend" writer in National Geographic's 2015 Engagement Calendar, "Beautiful Landscapes."
 

click on image to enlarge

    
       Here is how Abbe Pascal began her legend to this extraordinary Carr Clifton photograph for the week of May 25th, 2015:

"In Desolation Canyon, Utah, weathered roots of sagebrush radiate outward like fingers embracing claret cup cactus in full spring bloom."

The "priestly blessing"

       Naida, our part-time caregiver, told of a five or six-year old who was suspended from public school for a certain number of days for saying "Bless you" to a fellow student.  Both Naida and I wondered how benighted could those responsible for the suspension have been.  Was that youngster perpetrating "religious" expression on another student in a public school?!

       I told Naida that this very day we happened to be studying the "priestly blessing" from the Torah in a class at our temple.  It's beautiful in Hebrew and in most translations, I imagine.

          The Lord bless you and keep you.
          The Lord make His countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
          The Lord lift up His countenance to you and give you peace.

I asked our rabbi whether only "priests" should say the blessing, or could we as well to one another?  She asked me what I thought; I said I thought we could.  And she nodded.

I once consciously exchanged blessings with another man after each of us had expressed our hopes and aspirations for the coming year.   The blessing and support we gave each other felt very good indeed, and maybe even more in the giving than the receiving. 

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail": Three

       May 22nd's post presented a second excerpt from M. L. King's letter replying to a number of clergy critical of King.  The clergy had written a signed letter to a local Birmingham newspaper while King was in jail.

       This is my third and concluding excerpt from King's response:

 

Words Worth a Thousand Pictures?

       Nita Lelyveld does L.A. Times pieces on the City Beat.  Today's piece on a self-taught amateur photographer at the point of becoming a true professional was a funny and heartwarming one as well as conveying Rafael Cardenas's budding artistry.  Here are Nita's words about some of Rafael's photographs:

     
       He didn't think in themes.  He simply stopped for what caught his eye.  A man walking down the front steps of City Hall, looking as if he carried the weight of all L.A. on his shoulders.  The window of a store with two signs: Open and Closed.

       From inside his truck, in a downpour, he captured raindrops on his window as a cyclist passed under a traffic light.

       While leaving a Martin Luther King Day parade, he spotted a vintage yellow Chevy Monte Carlo with yellow starfish rims, stuck in traffic, hugging the road's yellow center stripes.  On the other side of the street was the yellow sign of a furniture store.  The road was wet.  The yellow was everywhere, so bright.  He caught the perfect moment when the woman behind the wheel turned her head his way and smiled.

       On Valentine's Day, he saw a young couple sitting on some steps, leaning into each other.  He clicked when the girl kissed the boy's cheek, cradling his chin with one hand.

Ads and land's sake, finally an appropriate holiday.

       I think it's definitely time to revive one of Connie's unquestionably superb bon mots.

       I had said something to the effect that with all the Sunday newspaper ads, you would think this holiday weekend was about nothing but shopping, to which Connie, standing at the kitchen sink, quickly replied,


                   "Sure, didn't you know, it's Memallial Day!"

"Unraveling"

       Looks like a good play and praised by a worthy critic, but the capsule review of The Other Place in the L.A. Times has a usage that leaves me hung up when I come across it.  Here's the quote:


       "Andre Barron's suave direction prohibits our getting ahead of the steadily unraveling plot . . ."

     
       Now I believe I know what the critic meant, something like skilled and smooth directing prevents us from leaping too quickly to mistaken conclusions about upcoming twists in the story; however, doesn't "unraveling" also suggest that the plot itself is disintegrating, "steadily" coming apart before your very eyes?

       That's the hangup I have with the use of "unraveling" this way, as one would if an untethered piece of yarn were pulled until the whole garment just disappeared.        

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail": Two

       On May 20th, 2015, I began three excerpts from Martin Luther King's Letter responding to fellow clergy who had expressed in print their skepticism and disapproval of King's activism in the face of racial injustice.

       Here is the second part:

"Clos du Bois"

       Make-up Mother's Day lobster dinner with Connie tonight:  she loved it as usual, i.e., every year.  I didn't think my lobster was bad either.

       We couldn't have the Pinot Grigio we liked and wanted because, I guess, they were out of it temporarily.   The waiter asked us, "Would you mind having [cloy du boys]?"  I looked skeptical.  He said it was the only other Pinot Grigio they had.

       It was the name that got me, didn't sound like anybody's good wine.  [cloy du boys] turned out to be [cloh du bwah], spelled Clos du Bois, and the price confirmed I was in good territory.

       You know if  it's wine and it sounds French and then it's spelled French, you aren't taking too much of a chance.  And it was good!

      Shouldn't a waiter in a pretty expensive restaurant know how to pronounce the wine list!    

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail": One

       I saw that Anna Deavere Smith had given a reading recently in Los Angeles of Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and realized I had never read that letter. 

       King was in jail when he read an op-ed piece in a local paper, written and signed by a number of ministers and rabbis, criticizing his actions in open protest to segregation and racial injustice.

       In three parts, today and within the next several days, here are some of Martin Luther King's still powerful words:

 
      
      

The Voice can Hold the World

       Son staying over again after a first read-through of a play/musical he's been cast in.  Voice sounded a little weary when he got home from the evening reading.  I told him I envied him that.  I haven't been doing enough reading aloud lately.

       Your voice is weary after working it, but then that's strengthening it too and helping its flexibility and responsiveness to whatever material's being read or performed . . . next.

       I directed and ended up playing the lead in a Readers' Theatre performance of Zangezi, which  I'd been studying for a couple years.  Finally I couldn't fathom how to pass on to a student performer all that was in that complex, linguistically/sonically sophisticated title role and chose, no doubt selfishly, to do it myself:  full of wonderful sounds, words and ideas about language for an hour and a half.

       A month or two later, I took a one-day workshop with performance artist Tim Miller.  A female and I were paired off to improvise on some kind of vocal sounds or word we'd been assigned. We stimulated each other, extending one another further and further, and I remember ending up so high and sonically free of ALL tethers into the far rafters of that building, there was room left only for stunned astonishment in the class, and a sort of gasping whistle from Tim himself.  I knew where my resources for that flight had come from.

      
      

"Blip"

       David here to help supervise placing of grab-bars by workers for assistance to Connie.  Naida our part-time care-giver also here today.  Both welcome as we, Connie and I, go about our business, reading, jig-saw puzzle assembling, paying back overdue phone calls to friends, exercising, watering, attending, and trimming plants.

       And with all this, not a single blip on the language meter all day.  Oh, wonder about "blip"?

       Merriam-Webster dates it from 1945.  [Imitative.]
 
       American Heritage Dictionary has:  1.  A spot of light on a radar or sonar screen indicating the position of a detected object, such as an aircraft or a submarine.... 2.  A high-pitched electronic sound; a bleep.

       And Merriam-Webster again:  a transient sharp movement up or down (as of a quantity commonly shown on a graph).   

       Bull's-eye.  

"Save SAVE. SAVE!!!!!!", Part 2

Provide, Provide


The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

Robert Frost

"Save SAVE. SAVE!!!!!!", Part 1

       Glancing through some "Free Writing" I did a number of years back--just writing without stopping and no going back, for ten minutes--I came across this segment I'll quote for you:

       My parents used to tell me of folks from the “old country” who wound rubber bands linto a ball, a arger and larger ball not to waste the rubbaerbands but use them again, maybe it became a ball you could play with, I don’t know and bouce it for your ids to use.  People saved string and wound it into bals so as not to waste, balls ao string, bigger and bigger and BIGGER yes, waste not want not, my mother oftensaid and taught ito to my kids, and they know it.  don’t leave a room without turning off the lights, don’t waste the electricity; wasteot want tnot.  Who needs that ligght after ou’ve eft the room.  so those sox get mended, and mended and mended.  Connie just throws them away, not worth it.  What family did she come from?  Not one with od word memories, not one that was pooror had pooess i the genes or knew that you didn’t come by thigs easily and might ose thigs any old time  Why am I so conservatie?  Don’t gamel, might lose.  Loo out, and peope are out to take thigs away rom you to.  Save SAVE.  SAVE!!!!!!

      (This passage reminded me of a Robert Frost poem, which shall be my next post.) 

Is THIS Sports Journalism?!

       Why does the L.A. Times sports page allow a Dodgers story,  appearing the morning after a game, to be so far afield from what the reader mainly wants to know:  what the Dodgers did yesterday; I mean like, win or lose?

       Instead, what did we have today?  Headline:  "Ethier playing like old self."  Oh, Goodie.   Ethier must have been prominent in the team's win!  You could read lots in that article before it came near mentioning that the Dodgers lost!  The sub-sub head, in gray print, Colorado 5 Dodgers 4, could have been easily overlooked while you went on reading about Ethier.

       The story of the game (in disjunctive, not sequential, order), is a hard to read,  gray-backgrounded, side-bar on page 5.  The Ethier, but hardly Dodger, story began on page 1.

William Zinsser, 1922 - 2015

       William Zinsser has died.  He wrote and edited for a number of well regarded U.S. periodical publications, taught non-fiction writing in the English Department at Yale, and is perhaps best known for his book On Writing Well that came out in 1976 and is still valued in its several thoughtful revisions.

       Zinsser recently wrote a weekly blog for two years for American Scholar Magazine, hardly believing it when his first article received 16,000 hits. He thought he was absolutely wedded to paper but became an enthusiastic convert.

       Zinsser prized clarity. economy, and human warmth in writing.  Simplicity was a watchword for him.  He held that you should be grateful for every word that can be pruned:  "Clutter is the disease of American writing."   

     

When is a "mistake" almost right and nearly acceptable?!

       In an obituary today in the Los Angeles Times for the wonderful performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, the article tells us Rachel graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City and began to be friends with painters like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and joined the dance company headed by Merce Cunningham:


           "She was a dancer and fell in with an avant garde crowd at a time             of artistic fervent in the 1950s."


       Now a spell-check wouldn't catch the "fervent" as a mistake or misspelling because it's actually a word, and although it is an adjective when a noun is called for and "ferment" was no doubt intended, a churning, boiling time of artistic creativity is also clearly one where the artists are "fervent" about their art!  

"Mesmerizing"

       Just ran across the word again and realize how nice it is, I guess, to have a word coined out of your name.  Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century medical doctor, was a visionary and began believing magnets could cure or help patients in some way.

       Then he thought he had some of those powers himself, and got people to do things through what he hardly recognized as hypnotism; hence mesmerism is broadly understood as the equivalent of hypnotism.  American Heritage Dictionary's Word History continues:


One of [Mesmer's] pupils, named Puyse´gur, then used the term mesmerism (first recorded in English in 1802) for Mesmer's practices.  The related word mesmerize (first recorded in English in 1829), having shed its reference to the hypnotic doctor, lives on in the sense "to enthrall."

"Modicum"

       So the word "modicum" occurred to me the other day, sounded a little small on the tongue, and, of course, why not, that's what it refers to, something little, tiny, small, diminished, a bit.

       But there are other words that can serve the same purpose, refer to similar size things:  iota, tad, tittle. . . just to start such a list.

       It's good to have a quantity of words at hand to choose from, then to settle on one that seems to fit best.

A Restaurant I would Gladly Patronize

       Daughter Elizabeth told me today, Mother's Day, she and Grandson Micah went to a favorite restaurant she's loved ever since she's lived in Tucson, an unpretentious, neighborhood kind of place where the food is good, the wait staff is longstanding, and both they and the customers seem just glad to be there.

       I was struck with the unshamefaced straightforwardness of the restaurant's motto, which Elizabeth snapped today and mailed me:

"Homeland"

       Wrote this essay closer to the time the word first became prominent in the country.  The muse and thoughts I had then still seem to me to be pertinent regarding this almost-taken-for-granted word now:


                                                HOMELAND

       The term “Homeland” as in “Homeland Security” has bothered some people, including me.  Others seem to accept it readily.

       It was apparently first used in an American government context by a 1997 document of the National Defense Panel, then as part of the two-word phrase in the first Hart/Rudman report on national security in 1999, but most notably to the general public in President Bush’s October 2001 creation of an Office of Homeland Security which has now received its Congressional imprimatur in November 2002.

      The term, perhaps for one old enough, resonates from World War II and Hitler’s Germany.  Naturally the sound of it is not favorable for somebody with that association.

       But it’s what the term does (and maybe what it did for Germany!) that bothers me most:  it makes us into an isolated patch of soil in which we are all rooted, apart from the rest of the world.

       What happens to the “homelands” to which most of us trace our ancestry, i.e., the now widely disparate countries that gave us or our forbears their birth?  Those countries are cut off from contributing to our culture and our identities as we float ever further from our peculiar, distinct, and diverse origins.

       WE are now the “homeland,” barricaded and armored away from the rest of humanity, thus giving the lie to our welcoming and immigrant-built country, subverting our very appeal to the world.

Language is a Great Mulch!

       I finished lecture #36, the final one in John McWhorter's "Great Course" The Story of Human Language on CD, my first real introduction to linguistics and a worthy one indeed.

       I'll share a couple little "food for thought" items as given in print form in the little book that accompanies and consolidates the fuller actual lectures:


       Ask traces back to an Old English word acsian, but despite how we feel about the pronunciation "aks" today, in Old English acsian was as common as ascian, casually written in formal documents.  As so often, our contemporary senses of what is "wrong" are abitrary--even literate English speakers once saw nothing amiss in the alternation between these words.

       About came from a case of the rebracketing that we saw create the word alone [originally "all one," time and use reduced it to "alone"].  At plus by plus out, pronounced together rapidly over time, became the single word about, just as God be with you became Goodbye.

       

       

       

       

More on "The Ballad of Beautiful Words"

       Why is the poetry in yesterday's post so readable, listenable?  So Euphonious?  Is it more the rhymes, more the rhythms, is it more the individual words and their sound/image value?  Is it just a list of nice words in a "ballad"?  WITHIN each line, what are the colors, the shifting differences even when the letters are all the same that begin words?  I think the poem a marvel.  The selection process itself must have been a feast, not to mention the piecing it all together in a seamless sound and rhythmic package, each stanza.

       I can't tell for sure who made the poem; this is one-third of it, but I can find it for you and send you to it.  It's at Issa's Untidy Hut, the Poetry Blog for Lilliput Review.  Scroll down till you come to "The Ballad of Beautiful Words."

from "The Ballad of Beautiful Words"

Amethyst, airy, drifting, dell.
    Oriole, lark, alone,
Columbine, kestrel, temple, bell,
    Madrigal, calm, condone.

Emerald, swallow, tawny, dawn
    Silvery, starling, lane,
Radiance, rosary, garland, fawn,
    Pastoral, valley, vane.

Saraband, arrow, huntsman’s horn,
    Orison, organ, bairn
Meadow, madonna, moorland, morn,
    Colony, carol, cairn.

Crinoline, crimson, crystal, croon,
    Troubadour, flagon, flown,
Caravan, amber, laurel, moon,
    Tamarind, tendon, tone.

Anchorage, archer, astral, own,
    Barnacle, billion, bay,
Channel, communion, island, moan,
    Carnival, castaway.

Chivalry, convoy, clamor, cling,
    Hurricane, highland, dream,
Journeyman, mariner, sailor, wing,
    Mandarin, tarn, redeem.

       (more in next post about this poem)

Brain on "hold."

       Restrained from much energetic exercise at the moment, it's hard to maintain animated vitality.  Keep wanting to take another nap.  Good for continued recovery from my hernia surgery but less so for the life of the blog.
   
       I rest, seek respite, reset, yawn, stare at the screen, nod off...to bed. 

      

"Empty Nesters"

       Seeing two birds flapping and fluttering under the eaves of our patio to a location somewhere in the patio this morning reminded me of the bird I saw the other day just beyond our patio pick up and sort of weigh and balance and consider a twig and then take it and fly in.

       That made me think (and today it was confirmed) there's a couple building a nest in our patio--and I saw it.   
  
       It's exciting!  But mainly it made me think how for granted we take our relationship with other sentient and wild beings that accompany us on the planet.

       Do we notice that we say, "Yeah, our kids have flown.  We're empty nesters now."  They're hardly metaphors!  Fellow creatures are how we know some things, and it's in our language.

"Welterweight"

       So it was a welterweight contest in Las Vegas last night.

       But what weight is it?    Obviously more than a"fly"and more than a "bantam."

       "Welterweight" is between lightweight and middle weight and comes in at between 135 and 147 pounds.

       I grew up on the heavyweight fights of such figures as Joe Lewis, "The Brown Bomber."  I suppose heavier guys are more capable of committing greater mayhem on their opponents.

      But what is a "welterweight"?  Probably the name came from "welt," raised portion of the skin that's been bruised, typically by a blow to it. 

Fortune Cookie?

       One of those little moments that takes you aback.

       Chinese dinner delivered to home.  Three Fortune Cookies.  Chose.


                 "You and your spouse will be happy in your life together."


       Wait a minute.  Well, yes, but what percent of pride do you want for your prediction when we're already in our eighties and been happily married for 58 years?

Cut from a Different Cloth

       Purchased new toaster today at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  I think I may have learned what the "Beyond" stands for when I read the directions that told me certain things I should do before starting to operate the toaster.  One of them was the following:


                    "Wipe the exterior with a damp sloth."


       I wonder if a sloth is damp most of the time; and also what a sloth might think of my using it in this way.  We usually figure a sloth is pretty lazy, but then it might take such use as a salve for its conscience.  It'd get the credit, but I'd be doing all the work!

"Saxophonist"

       As a kind of addendum on yesterday's "microscopist" entry, I have to say that the Brit's attempt especially to get us to say [sack-SAHPH-n-IST] for this word is a very similar case in point.  You've entirely lost the word "saxophone."

       At least Merriam-Webster tells us as Americans that the pronunciation for this word is [SACK-suh-PHONE-ist].  Brava! Bravo! from me for that one.  And if we can come off our high horses (never the British, of course) for this one, why not for the other and make the word [MY-kruh-SKOHP-ist]!!!

       We tend to want to emulate the "high-class" Brits for whom at times, the more esoteric the word sounds, the more right it must be.  (A little jazz saxophone ought to loosen 'em up.)

"Microscopist"

       Reading biologist E. O. Wilson's latest book called Creation,  a beautifullly detailed and eloquent siren call to save the life of the planet,  I come across the kind of word that drives me a little nuts.

       Now you and I know how to say the word "microscope."  But in discussing how to get a young person turned on to science by giving the kid a microscope, Wilson speaks of it having worked for himself, turning him into a microscopist like Anton Leeuwenhoek.  There it is.

       Neither the word "micro" nor the word "scope" appear in the word "microscopist," anyway in the saying of it.  It comes out [my-KRAHS-kuh-PIST].   This pronunciation  loses entire touch with the original root parts that give us to understand,  provide our bearing on what the word means!

          (Please see tomorrow's post.)

Lindstrom Got its Dots Back, Yeah!

       Here's a language story that reminds me of my native Minnesota and sounds just right to me!

       FM's "The World" keeps track of the "The World in Words" as part of its coverage and discovered that the little town of Lindstrom, Minnesota, had lost its "umlaut" over its "o" when the road signs leading into town were repainted.  People began to complain because the vast majority of the 4,442 citizens of Lindstrom are of Swedish inheritance, and that diacritical mark meant the town was pronounced LIND-strohm, not LIND-strm, and that's the way the townsfolk want it to be!

       Governor Mark Dayton finally sent out a fiat ordering the restoration of the two dots.  And his will was carried out.

       Umlauts are really of German origin and used in the German language, but Swedish too apparently.

(You can take a link to the story in print, audio and podcast by clicking here.)

"Trippingly on the Tongue"

       Please read this paragraph ALOUD from this morning's Los Angeles Times front page:


          After years of government investigations, Corinthian Colleges Inc. will shut down more than two dozen of its remaining schools, displacing more than 10,000 California students.  The move ends the turmoil at what was once one of the nation's largest for-profit college chains but presents fresh challenges to students, who now must seek transfers or federal loan forgiveness.


       At the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service, we often read articles over the air which we've not read completely, sometimes at all, in advance of going on air.  I stumbled when I came to four words in this paragraph--"what was once one"--.

       The writer might not realize this is a tough chain of words to put together and get right aloud; the broadcaster knows very well.  The sound that begins all four words is [w]; the vowel sound that follows it is [uh] as in "sun" in all four words; the closing consonant sounds all differ.  It's hard to get your mouth around all these successive single similar syllables successfully.

       HAVE FUN!  READ ALOUD.


      

"Inadvertently"

       What does it mean?  “Not turning to,” by root meaning anyway.

       Let’s see.  “Ad” means “to” from Latin and “vert” means “turn” as in “reverse” “turn back.”   Then “in” as a prefix  means “not” and so “not turning to.”

       Doing something “inadvertently” is to do it without intention, doing it without the mind turning [sufficiently] toward it.

When is sub-par English just fine?

   
       Yesterday, Dodgers manager Mattingly was talking generally in the direction of whether a hot-hitting, homer hitting rookie substitute infielder should replace a seasoned and popular third baseman in the lineup:

       "We know we have a long season, a long way to go.  You put things together during the winter knowing who your personnel [are] and how you think you see it working.  Sometimes, you stay with that course.  Other times, you have to get off that course.  We've played, how many games?  I just don't think we're willing to just go run in a whole 'nother thing."

       I don't mind at all that last sentence.  That 'nother is fine.  Maybe you'd rather see, "I just don't think we're willing to just go run in another whole thing."  More literate, but conversationally less spontaneous and "right on."   

"Stool Softeners"

       "Stool Softeners"?  I thought stools were supposed to be rigid so you didn't fall off  'em.

       But now that I look at "softener," I see that though the word has that "rigid" "t," there's no hard sound in the word "softener."

       Now that's appropriate.