I Failed a Course in Speed Reading

     I've finally decided it was a blessing in disguise, perhaps.  Language is so juicy and fun that it's a shame to race through it.  And slow reading goes deeper oft times.  It certainly gives you a chance to savor and contemplate. 

     And reading aloud plays around with all of those advantages and offers the opportunity to share them with others.

Just a 20th Century Hangover?

     Texting when you can make a phone call is being in touch without really being in touch.

"An Unfathomable Amount of Rain"

    You  know when even Noah would be praying for his life from too much water?  I think I heard a forecaster come up with it on the radio program, “The World.”

     The weatherman spoke of  “an unfathomable amount of rain.”  That REALLY caught my ear, and would have, I think, caught Noah’s if he happened to be tuned in to FM.
 
     The word “fathom” roots itself in the Indo-European meaning “to spread,” grew into Old English and other tongues to be the measure between two outstretched arms, solidified to become exactly 6 feet, and is ordinarily the measure used to plumb the depth of water bodies.

     From the weatherman’s tone, I don’t think he was being consciously ironic in the expression, but only thinking metaphorically:   unable to comprehend so much rain, it was “unfathomable.”
   

Words Travel on Beasts of Burden

     Finally, another English word that comes from Hebrew, so rare, so hard to find. 

     Now "camel" comes to my notice and, like "sack" from Hebrew, it's a word that gets around.  Sacks in which goods were held were on camels' backs on the trading routes of the ancient world, from Southeast Asia through South Asia, to the Middle East, including Israel, and even reached Europe by trade with Greece and Rome; Rome traded with Germanic tribes and brought these words from Latin into Germanic tongues, and thence Old English.

     Yes, CAMELS got around that way, and so did SACKS, sacks of goods that people wanted along all those trade routes. And the people of other tongues heard the words: 

     "If that's what they call this awesome beast of burden, then we must too!"

                    Please see the "Word History" of "sack" in the American Heritage Dictionary!



  

Souvenir Romance

     Still wearing my gondolier blue-and-white-striped shirt from Venice, I kissed Connie goodnight from the bedside, and her slightly decollete nighty drew my attention.

     Connie said, "I like your gondolier shirt."

     I said, "I do too," and my hand went down to caress a breast.

     Connie said, "The gondolier never did that."

     I said, "I just thought I'd fondle a bit.   It's because I'm kinda fond o' you . . . and it's kinda fun."

     

What's Left After We're Gone?

     Speaking, as I was Friday in the blog, of California's killer wildfires, I reminded myself of a noun met often enough in the news accounts of those horrific events, "remains," a body after death.

     Terrible as it is to contemplate someone's death of suffocation, or any other mortal blow, what it is that remains of the body after a racing inferno takes the living person in one's tracks a few steps from one's own front door is a totally consumed body, just ashes.

      And for that common enough occurrence in the town of Paradise, CA., during the wildfire, there is now the word (since 1947) "cremains," the blending of the words "cremation" and "remains," though "blending" seems just too inexcusably mellow a term to describe this particular neologism.

      For those who choose cremation, the harshness disappears.    

Imagine it on the Lips, Minds, and Hearts of Those Affected

     The names of two California fires make me lift my head and grimace my brows every time I hear them; no matter what, I can't resist, when I read 'em or listen.  One is the "Camp" fire, it's a wildfire in California.  A campfire?   It's destroyed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of trees and  homes and people, and it's called a campfire.

     And the other one is "Holy Fire," the "Holy Fire"!  What?!  My eyebrows again.  I have to, when I read that.  It's horrendous.  California wildfires.   One of them is called the "Holy" fire?  These are unholy fires.  They destroy, taking, immolating human lives.

     I know they get their names from something identifying them near the place the fire was incited.

     But please, pause a second and listen . . . before you choose.

For Connie

                                                                              

Siri and I Had an Exchange

     Siri (who will answer your questions on Apple's iPhone) said that one of the questions I could ask was, "Where's my sister?"

     So I asked, "Where's my sister?" 

     Siri responded that she couldn't find a listing for my sister, what was her first and last name?

     I said, "No, you're right, I don't have a sister.  I don't."

     And Siri responded, "Who am I to say otherwise?"


     In all this, I spoke; and Siri texted.
 

And Cummings is Still Coming at You

     This is the whole passage that precedes my previous entry. 


A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.


      Cummings also has a poem that begins (and is titled) "Since feeling is first."
 

EEK, E.E. Cummings is Coming at You

  
     It currently graces the splashy TV tube in our living room, not only in word, but in voice, of inimitable poet E. E. Cummings.  Yes, it's on a car commercial, but if the recorded voice weren't recognizable, (as it is to me), the words in their form, in their manner, would be.  Not to mention their dignity, their intensity, their "hold off the world" insistence, their truthfulness:

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

         I found the source of the Cummings quote at a wonderful website called "Brain Pickings"; you can find it too at brainpickings.org, "The Courage to Be Yourself."   

      

Is it never too late to use the old words?

 You really are getting up there in years when you mention in conversation something is "Newfangled" and realize just how oldfangled that word sounds.

Actually "newfangled" IS the older word (14th century), and "oldfangled" is first found in 1842 as patterned after"newfangled."
 
Merriam-Webster tells us both words derive from Old English fangen, "to take or seize."  

My 2019 entries pick up tomorrow on Feb. 7, 2019.