"Pro" 2: "Project"

       That little “pro” is always moving forward, as in "project" (noun and verb). 

       Consider "film project.”  It seems to be the universal term for this Hollywood creative effort.  Sort of like “construction project.”  And I guess it really is:  a multi-headed effort involving bankrollers, script writers, producers, actors, director, cinematographer, scenic artists, editors, etc.  It needs to be “projected,” “-ject” deriving from Latin iacere, to “throw” or “lay.”  Lots of projects that are “thrown forward”... that are “fore-cast”... are “thrown out” before they materialize.

       But if such a hydra-headed monster survives and flourishes, it's mysteriously gratifying and wondrous.  It’s a “project” which had to be negotiated and carried forward through innumerable byways.  A work had been projected and achieved!  Now nothing needed but a projector...and the audience.

"Pro" 1: "Prose"

       In distinguishing “prose” from “verse” for students, I always went back to the Latin roots.  Why?  Because it always helped me.  “Prose” means “straightforward.”  So it’s the form of writing that appears in paragraphs.  The words go straight ahead until the sentence is completed and then straight ahead until the thought is completed. 

      “Verse” means “turn” as in “reverse” “turn back,” and it is the form of writing that appears in lines; you come to the end of the line, and you “turn” and begin again, come to the end of the next line and “turn” to begin anew.  Lines are units of the “turning” verse as sentences and paragraphs are the units of the “forwarding” prose.

"Human," "Humble," "Humility," 2

       "To err is human," said Alexander Pope.

       It may have been our errant ways that led biologist-essayist Lewis Thomas to ponder the impermanence of our species, so unprogrammed for success compared to a school of fish or members of the insect realm.  But Thomas posited one universal human behavior that he said just might save us:  "the urge to be useful."

       Lest it be said by the species that replaces us--said posthumously, "after burial in the earth"--that we were not sufficiently of use to the planet and one another, we should heed Lewis Thomas, and poet Marge Piercy too:   "I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,/...who do what has to be done, again and again."

      May we humbly seek our ways to serve.

"Human," "Humble," "Humility," 1

       Most words have "roots," which implies they have grown from fertile soil, but certain words have grown out of "earth" itself.  You've seen the word "humus" for soil or earth; it is directly from the Latin humus:  "earth."  "Human" and "humble" and "humility" come out of the same "soil."

       We are this planet's creatures, fully attuned to sentient life here where we were given life.  To be "human" is to be of the earth...and also therefore "humble."  We designate some of our best people as "down to earth," and that quality of character as one of the most enviable.  They are "human," we say.

       "Humility" becomes a human being:  to be human is to have feet of clay, quite literally.   Born of earth, finally, we are borne to the earth.  Our language says so.

"Antithesis"

       Shakespeare studied rhetoric growing up, and this way of thinking by contrasts and opposites is persistent in his work:  antithesis.

       Many poets and writers use it.   John F. Kennedy's inaugural:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." 

       I just received Barry Edelstein's book Thinking Shakespeare and found it saying, in part, if you want to get into Shakespeare as a reader or performer, you've got to get with the antithetical mode of thought.  I close with the couplet at the end of  Sonnet #43.    Each day a lover misses seeing his absent love and is only able to see her at nights by imagining her:

               All days are nights to see till I see thee,
               And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

Front Page Puns

       Sports pages and comics aren't the only places where puns thrive in the L.A. Times.  Today's front page has a story headlined "Helping kelp now an urchin matter."  The subheadline reads "Divers cull the spiny purple creatures that are ravaging the giant algae off Palos Verdes [Peninsula]."

       Sorry to hear the sea urchins need to be culled because they are beautiful, even if a bit scary:
 

And I have a couple other reasons to be attracted to the story.  I possess a sea urchin shell found on a local Pacific beach (sans spines):
 

Topside

Mouth on Underside

 It's only













 2 1/2 inches in diameter.








And then Connie's favorite cooking show recently had the aspiring cooks competing to make the best dish from the live creatures.

       My shell's perfectly symmetrical shape is lovely, but please don't accuse me of being spineless for not wishing to personally meet an urchin in spiny condition.  From the cooking show's very careful handling, I gathered I would find that an "urgent matter."

"Patent Ailments" & their Patent Medicine Cures

Click on Comic Strip to Enlarge

My son put me onto this old OPUS strip by Berkeley Breathed.

Even Marcel Marceau May Be Smiling

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

"Fug"

       OK, I didn't know this word, and Connie did.  It kind of shocked me, not that Connie knew it and I didn't, but that it was a printable word at all.  "Fug."  My association would have been a word pervasively used and allowed in Norman Mailer's post World War II novel Naked and the Dead, a slight euphemism for battlefield talk:   "fuggin.'"

       Mary McNamara's L.A. Times review of a TV show some time back spoke of "the fug of male cluelessness that hangs over so many comedies these days."  Merriam-Webster defines "fug" as "the stuffy atmosphere of a poorly ventilated space; also :  a stuffy or malodorous emanation."  The word dates from 1888, perhaps an alteration of "fog."

       My vocabulary has gone up.  (If I can forget my other association.)

Foibles of the Mother Tongue

       Yesterday's L.A. Times spoke of Major League Baseball players desiring stiffer penalties for use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.  One sentence ended with this peculiarity:  "exactly the kind of hypocrisy rank-and-final union members want to end."

       "Rank-and-final?"  How did this happen?   First, no spell-check would catch it.  Second, doubtful any other human being (like an editor?) read the article before it was published.  Third then, how did the journalist come to using it?

       Perhaps he misheard "rank-and-file" before he ever saw it in print, figured it's the ordinary folks who in a democracy have the "final" say. 

       I had seen a similar expression go astray.  A close election race was described as "neck in neck."  I feel sure the journalist heard it that way first, and it stuck!    

"Complaint"/"Compliant"

       In a previous page-a-day calendar I created, I had a regular feature pairing two words, close to one another in sound and/or spelling but highly contrasting in meaning. One of that sort occurred to me again:

                                          Complaint
                                        Compliant

A couple letters reversed, and the whole meaning's almost upside down. "Plaint" is from a root word meaning "beat one's breast."  "Pliant" has the root of "pli" meaning "fold."  To be "compliant" is to fold oneself together with someone else; to utter a "complaint" is to beat one's breast with/against someone else.

      Two words so near and yet so far.

      Ah, English.

"Bougainvillea"

   Our Bougainvillea in Summer

       A fourth backyard flora graces our home, and its name has struck and charmed me: "bougainvillea."  Where does it come from?  I remember the World War II battle fought in the South Pacific on Bougainville.  What do the flowering bush or vine and the island have to do with each other, if anything?

       In 1766-69, French botanist Philibert Commerçon accompanied Louis Antoine de Bougainville, admiral and explorer, on a circumnavigation of the globe.  Commerçon discovered and named the South American climbing vine for his ship's captain.  When they reached the Solomon Islands, Captain Bougainville named one of its islands for himself.  Therefore, despite the common namesake, it's possible the bougainvillea does not grow on Bougainville.
 
        This plant (name included) has enhanced our yard and home for more than forty years.

Click on photo to enlarge

"Magnolia"

Our Magnolia

       Even the names of local plants do not come automatically to mind as did oaks and maples and pines in Minnesota.  Pyracantha, pomegranate, magnolia, bougainvillea; they have a strangeness on the tongue as identifiers of the natural environment for me.

       The magnolia tree that stands tall in our back yard presents its large white blossoms each spring, drops its big leaves into the pomegranate and bottle brush "next door," but still fights in my consciousness for "home" status, magnolia having such a Southern significance in my mind, the culture of the Southeastern United States, suggesting mint juleps, Southern drawls, and sultry Southern belles.

       I'm getting accustomed to you, magnolia...named for Pierre Magnol, 17th century French botanist...and increasingly appreciative of your constant presence and seasonal offerings.

A Blossom in Spring

 

"Pomegranate"

       The second bush or tree I face immediately outside our kitchen window is a pomegranate.

Our Pomegranate

       It is ancient and storied.  I often recall the lines from Exodus 28: 34-35, describing the fringe of the High Priest's robe:

"On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, around its hem, with bells of gold between them, a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, around the hem of the robe."

Now

        The word literally means "seedy apple"; Middle English from Old French:  pome "apple,"  grenate "having many seeds."  Truly many seeds, each enclosed in a juicy, mildly tart red pulp.

Pomegranate At Maturity

"Today Is Forever"

       Once again I was saying the Saturday poem I offer each week which expresses the idea that today is eternity if we experience it aright.  The everyday miracles that abound around us are packed with the scent of forever.  It's just hard to experience that continuously, so a day set aside for it can help.

        But what I wondered as I said the poem was how to experience these words I say as a fresh miracle of expression each time.  Because if I can't, the very message of the poem disintegrates.  Renewing the freshness of this poem seems to be my task, creating the immanence of eternity in every passing moment.

"Pyracantha"

Pyracantha, Pomegranate, Magnolia

       This is one of three trees/shrubs that grow in our back yard within sight of our kitchen window.  They're all interesting to me as words and because I didn't know them growing up in Minnesota.

Pyracantha

      



"Pyracantha" comes to us through Latin from Greek purakantha, meaning "fire thorn."   

The Berries Now

   



I have several "pin-pricks" from thorns while trimming the other day.

      
     

      


The bush has red-orange berries in the fall, hence the "fire" name.  (Pyromaniacs set fires).



        When our first pyracantha died from lack of watering, I had it replaced quickly:  I wanted a reprise of the "drunken squirrel" incident.  Squirrel became intoxicated from late season berries that had become fermented, and he would do 3 1/2 foot somersaults in the air from ground level.  He also kept coming back for more!  I await same from our "second edition" pyracantha.

"I've Taken on Teachers"

       I had marveled recently at the effectiveness of Rabbi Dan of our congregation in his weekly Torah study group.  He headed some sessions years back, but now he was a master teacher, taking us places we never could have imagined and always ending with unavoidable challenges to us on how we were conducting our lives in relationship with others.

       I praised Dan one-on-one after his last study session, just before he moved up to become senior rabbi in another congregation.  He thanked me, and I asked him what made the difference from those early sessions.  He said, "I've taken on teachers."  That surprised me.  "I used to think I knew best, that I could do better than anyone.  Now I have questions, go online, email friends and colleagues I know can help."

         

"Shedding" Jobs

         I've been bothered in tough economic times to hear the frequent use of the word "shedding" as in "the company is shedding jobs."  One of the meanings of the verb "shed" is to rid oneself of something not wanted or needed like shedding pounds through diet and exercise. And that's the connotation I hear when the economic, business, and employment reports come out. The economy is "shedding jobs," businesses are "shedding workers."    Please watch it, news media and economic analysts: those are people's livelihoods you're talking about!

Geriatric Anagrams

       Coming home one day from Connie 's periodic followup medical appointment with our primary physician, I recalled that I needed to take care of something before my own next followup with him.  What was it?  The name for it escaped me, but what came in its place was "Octopussy. "  (Wasn't that a James Bond movie?)

       That's how I proceed through life in these days of abrading memory: feeling my way sonically, knowing what comes misses the mark but probably partakes of the word I'm reaching for. What came had nine of the eleven letters in the word I actually sought and finally caught:  "colonoscopy. "

Is Language Important?

       Did I need to have a name for the sparrows that frequent our back yard and peck at the grass seed interminably like little bobbing automatons?

       Well, when I decided to shoot them (with my camera) to try to capture that cutely incessant group feasting, I saw in closeup and with zooming in for the first time the distinct black and white stripes on their heads.

       Out with Kimball Garrett, Jon L. Dunn, and Bob Morse's Birds of the Los Angeles Region:  these were "White-crowned Sparrows."

       And I had a name.  An identifier.  Yes, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"...but...I had a name...and that too is important.

"Comity"/"Comedy"

       Al Franken made his reputation with comedy before election to U.S. Senator.  In the December 2, 2010 New Republic a photo caption:  "Franken is an unlikely devotee of the rituals of senatorial comity."

       The sonic chime struck:  comedy/comity.  The article said Franken seeks to be a Ted Kennedy, a master of working across the aisle.  He wants progressive measures but to be institutional,  recognizing the honor he shares equally with senators of other stripes.  The article noted he had two or three personal joshing relationships with conservative colleagues already in his first year.

       "Comity" means civility, an atmosphere of social harmony, derives from Latin comitas, "courtesy."  The Indo-European roots are "smiling together with."

       Maybe Franken's "comedy" is not far from his "comity," especially when we remember that comedy is the great leveler.

Counter-Parry at the Grocery Counter

       I thought I had an amusing remark when I said to the young man behind the bakery cases in the grocery store who had just sliced my loaf of their good olive bread, "I wish they could bake it sliced."

       He handed it to me with, "That would be the best thing since sliced bread." 

Hale Fellow, and Well Met

enlarge by clicking on cartoon

My Own Strained Pun

       I jotted the following in January 2011 while watching the Australian Open men's semi-final:


       Strangest thing I've seen (and heard) on a tennis court, Federer halting play in the middle of Djokovic's bouncing of the ball before serving to ask for something to be removed from the court--a white feather stuck in the net--ball boy did so midst a bird's loud squawking from above.  Camera then showed another feather drifting into Djokovic's space just as he served.  Apparently Djokovic had two opponents today, Federer and the Featherer.

       Oh, I know.  Forgive me.

       (And anyway, Djokovic beat them both in three straight sets.) 

Oops.

click on cartoon to enlarge

       I hope there's no connection between Norman and the author of this blog.

"ONCE Only"

       The epigraph to Mary Oliver's book Swan is a quote from Rilke's Duino Elegies.  It took me two or three readings, but I felt repaid for them:


               Everyone once, once only.  Just once and no more.
               And we also once.  Never again.  But this having been
               once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
               seems irrevocable.


       Taking that seriously is a lot of the import of Mary Oliver's poems:


              When it's over, I don't want to wonder
              if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
              I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
              or full of argument.

              I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
                                               from "When Death Comes"


        (By the way, "epigraph" simply means "writing above or upon" from the Greek.)

 

                    

Was This Pun Really Necessary?

click on cartoon to enlarge

You can't get off the hook, Piraro, blaming it on a "guest cartoonist."

Another Wonderful Insight

       Here's a powerful understanding conveyed by Rabbi David Wolpe in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel:

             "The reason a sin is a sin is not because laws are broken but
              because a person is hurt."

That brings it right down to the very human reality.

A Thought that Stuck With Me

       I jotted some notes quickly before the words escaped, from a talk by Rabbi David Wolpe at a temple men's retreat, especially this insight from Carl Jung:


     "The greatest influence on children is the unlived life of the parents."


Have a go-round on that as a child or a parent, or both.

"PET-i-TUDE"?

       After shopping, I noticed the name on the business next door and thought it was kind of weird:

Seeing the added-on banner underneath, I wondered why they changed the name and what it had been.  I stepped in and inquired to a clerk who was free at his register.

       The name was "Pet People," a chain I gather, and I was told when the company was sold, they didn't like the new ownership and dropped out.   Of course, they couldn't keep the name legally; hence the name change.

       But "PET-i-TUDE"?  Maybe it's a play on "attitude," a word I note their former company uses online to suggest a positive, fun approach toward pets.  Mightn't this store have done better with "PET FOLKS"?   Anyway, I hope business is doing well.

We Need to Be Taken Aback

       Sometimes, whatever we are doing, we need to hear what a poem we've come across has to tell us.



               What Can I Say?

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
   and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.


 
       Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this from your book, Swan.

And My Fortune Is???

       I think the intention may be to say, "Watch your relations with other people carefully; be reserved."  Not bad advice (if one gleans it).

       I am glad to learn some Chinese and to utter "Jiu-pian"--now I have to figure where "Nine pieces" might be appropriate.

       But then the writers of this fortune perhaps would like to "Learn (some) English."

"Juxtaposition"

       I have received the new calendar for the Nature Conservancy with fine photos by members along with a few words about each image by the photographers.

       This is great, but once in awhile there's a little deficiency in the language:

          "I like the juxtaposition between the delightful harmless    
           butterflies and the sinister expression of the caiman..."

click on picture to enlarge

Taken in Peru, wonderful photo, amazingly captured by R. Grant Maslowski (mine is a retake of part of his shot to show what his sentence is referring to).

       It's probably to be forgiven, but if you know the Latin root of "juxtaposition," "placed next to," the word "between" isn't quite right.  "Of" would have been a better choice.  The "betweenness" is already implied in juxtaposition itself.

Cartoonist Fun Pun

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"Welcome"; "You're Welcome"; "No Problem"

        At the Dodger game yesterday, I noted on the stadium above the entrance it said "Welcome" and also "Bienvenidos."  I noticed and observed to son David that the Spanish said exactly the same things in the two halves of its word:  "Well" and "come."

        David said "But other languages aren't the same as English in the response to 'Thank you';  they don't say 'You're welcome.'"  I knew a couple languages where that is so, and looking it up, here are several:

        French--de rien--"it's nothing"
        Italian--prego--"pray"
        Danish--selv tak--"thanks yourself"
        Polish--prosze--"please"
        Chinese (Cantonese)--(mn say-ha-hay)--"not necessary"
        Spanish--de nada --"nothing"

I personally think any one of these, including the English "You're welcome" is far better than the Johnny-come-lately, ubiquitous, and annoying "No problem."
       

Right Words Capture Taste

       Couldn't resist the occasional thrill of bringing home some Haagen-Dazs ice cream from the grocery store.  It's coffee, and they've got it exactly right on the box:

         FLAVOR TOP NOTES:  freshly brewed roasted coffee

         FLAVOR FINISH NOTES:  lingering sweetened cream

      Who wrote that? How did they figure that out? Is it a copywriter's description after the fact, or did the ice cream designers aim for that result? I don t know, but the immediate and prominent flavor is coffee, and the taste ends in "lingering sweetened cream."  And did they get those "top" and "finish notes" from wine tasting?

      What can I tell you? Once in awhile, calories or no, it's terrific.

      And the perfect words to describe it don't hurt either!!

The Need to Reconnect

       I made a call to a cousin whom Connie and I hadn't seen nor talked with in several years but have a shared history with in New York City and in the Twin Cities. There's a close kinship with many memories, laughs, sympatico attitudes. We just hadn't talked in too long.

       I wasn't sure I even had the right phone number because I knew they'd moved but gave it a try:

        Her Voice: (Inquiring) Hello?
        Mine: (Smiling with satisfaction) Shirrr-ley.
        Hers: (Recognizing) Don?
        Mine: (Amazed but not really)  A syllable or two and we know who
                    we are.
        Shir: How are you?
        Me: How are you?
        Shir: I asked you first.
        Don: I called you.

It doesn't take any more than that when the line's connecting two people who needed to talk to each other. . .as the next hour attested!  

"Gargle"; "Gargoyle"

       I leave a one-word note for myself with the oral inhalant I take each morning.  The word is "gargle" because I'd read it was good to cleanse after breathing in the medicine.  Peculiarly this morning I asked myself how a New Yawker might say the word "gargle":  "gargoil," I figured.

       THEN I wondered, "Is there any connection between "gargle" and "gargoyle"?  NO, I was sure; but I'll look it up. 

       YES!  Both the sputtering we do in our throats with liquid to freshen or medicate and the grotesque faces and figures projecting from gutters of buildings, especially in Gothic architecture, acting as spouts to drain rainwater!, have exactly the same root, a root that means "throat" in several languages.

       From Old French, back to Latin and Greek, and forward to English too, the root is imitative in origin.   The semi-"gagging" and liquid "gurgling" (imitative also) are what's happening with both "gargoyles" and "gargling."

click on image to enlarge

Everyone, Every Human Being

       A conjunction amongst three quotes.

       The first is by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., from his Life 's Little Instruction Calendar :
             Remember that everyone you meet is looking for       
             affirmation, direction, and hope.

      The second is by Philo of Alexandria:
             Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle.

      The last quote is a Chasidic teaching cited by Roger Kamenetz in his book The Jew in the Lotus:
             Before every human being comes a retinue of angels,
             announcing, "Make way for an image of the Holy One,
             Blessed be He. "
Kamenetz says, "How rarely do we listen for those angels when we
encounter another human being." 

"Houyhnhnms"

       As I noted in the last post, my essay on "Yahoo" pointed out that the "noble creatures Swift created to live by right reason alone were horses.  They called themselves Houyhnhnms.  Swift has Gulliver say,

        'The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature.'"

I love Swift 's choice of the word to identify these creatures. If you try to give voice to the word Houyhnhnm, you can see how Swift came up with it.
   
       It's a pretty good imitation of what we ordinarily call a "whinny."

"Yahoo," "Search Engines"

       Re-reading my book of essays on words, I came across "Yahoo" again; yes it's a "search engine"  (which Jonathan Swift might have satirized for the sheer inhuman sound of needing an engine to search for anything), but Swift did create the "Yahoo," the lowest, least civilized, most stench-ridden being on earth, with a human form and every human vice in a land where horses are the noblest and kindest of beings.  I ended my essay this way:

           May we "Yahoos " be reminded by the reference to keep our uses

           friendly and our goals bent to extending the best that is in us

           through the powerful and pervasive computer.

Cutting Through Grammatical Awkwardness

       On a wonderful nature calendar sent to me, winning nature photographs from competitors are published by the Nature Conservancy.

       Each photo has words about nature by the winner and usually praise for the work of the Conservancy.  All this is well except for the last sentence of one winner who has just said she supports the N.C.: "Their work continues to leave the world in a better state than which they found it. "

       She may have been trying to avoid ending the sentence with the preposition "in", but she got herself kind of tangled. The solution here is to simply delete the word "which," and it makes perfectly good and clear English.

The "Patient's Belongings"

       Getting deeper into summer reminds me of going to Kaiser for an emergency two summers ago.  While being examined for dizziness, I renewed my anger at the "Patient's Belongings" bag supplied me.

       There were no problems discernible in heart, brain, or blood--hence vertigo due probably to slightly calcifying cilia, little hairs in inner ear, which help control balance. Best available medicine, meclizine, same one buys to prevent airplane stuffed ears or dizziness! I had had the worrisome symptom for five days, so it was time to attend to it.
 
       But there it was, a term I remembered from years before.  You feel you 're already dead when you see a bag imprinted "Patient's Belongings."  Connie recalled the usage: "His belongings were distributed to next of kin"!

       At least it didn't say "Deceased's Belongings."

Cartooning Language Again

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Kids and Communication Technology

       This cartoon hit home on a day I had to plea for help to my son in getting several computer conundrums figured out:

click on  comic to enlarge

Block that Pun

       Some puns are so bad you just have to moan or groan (which may mean they're good).  Some puns are bad because they're bad puns.

       Yesterday's L.A. Times sports page headlined an article:

                    Lisicki brings heat, 
                    Serena the timidity.

       Yes, a lesser known Sabine Lisicki ousted Serena Williams from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in one of the middle rounds when Serena was expected to win it all.  Lisicki apparently hit and fought hard; Serena was unaggressive at times.

       But the PUN?  Playing "timidity" off "humidity"?  If you have to think, "What IS the pun?" and when you find it it wasn't worth it, it doesn't even rise to the level of a groan!

Some "K" Words: "Kibosh" 2

       Does "kibosh" go back to Yiddish “kye” as “18,” “bosh” as “pence”? 
      
       “It’s said that bidders at small auctions, put the kibosh on other bidders, forced them out, by jumping their bids to eighteen pence.”  Leo Rosten puts the word in his book The Joys of Yiddish, only indicating, after exhaustive consideration, that he’s not very happy with any etymology, including Yiddish.
 
       I want to believe that it came over to America as “death cape” with Irish immigrants as my friend Marvin said, but I’m afraid I have to put the kibosh on that one too.  I reluctantly resign myself to the  exasperating, universally agreed upon source in all my principal references:  “origin unknown.”                  

Some "K" Words: "Kibosh" 1

       We move from Middle English to Greek to Chinese in our previous three "K" words.  As the origins get more exotic, you might well wonder about “kibosh.”  “Put the kibosh on, put an end to: dispose of finally.”

       I could easily accept what my friend first put me on to, Gaelic, cie bas, pronounced “kibosh,” which means "death cape."  To me that sounds perfect.  Writing of word and phrase origins, author Robert Hendrickson is inclined to see this as “the most logical explanation.”

       But then Hendrickson offers up the long held belief that the etymology is Yiddish, going back to “kye” as “18” and “bosh” as “pence.”  What is this about?  More (and "K" concluded) tomorrow.

Some "K" Words: "Kowtow"

       The kudos continue(s) for my line-up of “k” words as I  kowtow to the word “kowtow”:  “the action or practice, formerly customary in China, of touching the ground with the forehead as a sign of extreme respect, submission, or worship," the OED says, "figuratively an act of obsequious respect.”  The AHD tells us  Kou in Chinese Mandarin means “knock” or “strike,” and tou means “head.”  If your forehead strikes the pavement, you have definitely “kowtowed” to someone. 

       And don’t try doing it arms akimbo; you might not make it back up.

Some "K" Words: "Kudos"

       Everyone’s glad to receive “kudos,” which is “praise for achievement,” but where does it come from?  It’s Greek.  Kydos in Greek.  It means “magical glory.”  What more marvelous accolade to have bestowed upon one than “magical glory”? 

       The American Heritage Dictionary says the word is singular by derivation, but I’ll not get into that, believing that if one “kudo” is good (a “back-formation” from the original), then several “kudos” must be better . . .even if it's singular!?

Some "K" words: "Akimbo"

       Some words that find themselves together because they're "k" words and because they're strange and for no other reason.

       “Akimbo” is the only word that doesn’t begin with “k,” and we’ll begin with it.   I love this word but hadn’t the faintest idea what its root might be.  Those two hands planted on the hips, elbows jutting outwards, no other word to describe that, is there?  Just arms “akimbo.”

       What does it mean?  Literally, “in keen bow” from Middle English in kenebowe, in a “sharp” (kene) “bent curve” (bowe).  Exactly the picture of those elbows.  Taking the “keen” (kene) back to Old English cene, the meaning suggests “bold, brave,” to go along with the attitude that might be associated with that posture:  “King of the hill!”  I love that.                                                           

       Arms in keen bow!                                           

A Loss for Words

       I'm remembering our last "shoot" for my photography class in summer 2011.   It was at the Getty Villa in Malibu with art works and architecture from the Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans.
  
       Shooting these pieces and classic Roman architecture and landscaping, I was attentive to the visual, and my usual museum behavior with lots of reading went out the window.  We had visual art to be recorded, and I skipped a whole lot of verbal learning and acquired instead greater sense appreciation aided by focusing through the camera’s lens.

       Loss is sometimes gain; words can encumber the eye.

"I Do..."

       A certain choice of words can have meaning a similar wording doesn’t.  Not long ago in bed, side by side, holding hands, Connie said, “I do love you,” and I instantly responded, “I do love you too.”

       We had our emotional reasons for speaking this way, both experiencing recent help and support as well as the long-term relationship we have between us.

       The “do” adds something.   I recalled later “do” in the traditional marriage vows:  “Do you take this man/woman...” “I do.”  It asks for and asserts the firmness of intention.  In these latter days of marriage, “I do” confirms fruition of that early resolve. 

Thinking Outside the Camera

       It's summer, and I recall with pleasure the wonderful photography class I had two summers ago.  Early in the course, I noted two ironies of photography, each with linguistic implications:

1.  Still photographers need to be very much in motion:  they have to keep shifting their position in order to find the best shot; also they need to physically pose their subjects into more natural and relaxed postures, not let them remain stiff and "salami"-armed.

2.  Photographers need to think outside the box so that what goes in the box will be worthwhile.  Some word play here of course, partly because “camera” literally means “room,” “chamber,” and a room is a “box.”  (Interestingly, the old “box camera” is a redundancy.)

"Dressage"

       I learned something.  In the wonderful movie “Buck,” a first class documentary about the real “horse whisperer,” Buck Brannaman, someone pointed out the marvels of “dressage.”
 
       Horses are rehearsed in doing the most refined movements of which they are capable, almost ballet.  But the horse is actually being asked to do what is very useful in all sorts of work situations, herding cattle, roping steers, etc.  And once it gets the idea, “OK then, this is PRACTICE,” the horse goes right along with dressage (French dresser, "train," "drill").

       I guess I never realized all that side-stepping and backing and prancing were not just hoidy toidy stuff for upper class watchers to revel in, but useful maneuvers, and which provide the horse an added sense of self-worth. 

"a" and "an"

       At a dermatologist's office, I read a brochure on sunscreens that spoke of “a SPF of 15.”  To my speechy mind, that was wrong.  It should have been "an SPF of 15."

       The common thought is that if a word begins with a consonant, the article before it is properly "a".   It's true "s" is a consonant, but that "s" is an initial and is pronounced "ess."

       Before a vowel, the article "a" becomes "an".    I like things in print that recognize the way we’d  say something when reading it aloud (or even when "silent"-reading it for our own inner ear).

Aren't Words Wonderful?

Click on image to enlarge

Junk Peddlar Redux

Click on photo to enlarge

        Seeing this sight in front of my own house this morning (they were picking up some stuff from us), it immediately took my mind back to the early days of Jewish immigrants in the U.S.  Collecting discarded or used stuff from others for resale was a major way to start making a living in this country for those without much of anything to begin with.

       This time it's gasoline and truck instead of horse and cart.   And the language I heard was Spanish mixed with a little English, instead of a bissel English mixed in with the Yiddish. 

56 Years and Counting!

       Our 56th wedding anniverary, and I looked it up online, asking what was special about the 56th; you know, paper, copper, whatever.  I found that there's nothing special about the 56th. 

       But I did like one of the comments made by an online reader after that answer was given to someone else's same question two years ago:

       "It's a bloody miracle!  You both should be wearing gold stars all day long."

Connie and I are assuming that attitude for ourselves.

"Behooves"

       I was curious about the word "behooves" because of its sound, and it took me on this journey:

       Behooves means to "be morally required of (a person), be incumbent upon; befit."  It behooves one to do this, we say.

       It is derived from Middle English behoven, from Old English behof "use, profit, need," thence from Germanic bi-hof:  "bi" is a reduced form of ambhi from Indo-European "on all sides" and is an intensifying prefix; so what is at root here is "to have a need all around"; "that which binds."

       If it "behooves" you to do something,  everything is pointing towards its necessity!

"Kvelling about Henry Cavill"

       A piece in the L.A. Times Tuesday morning about why the new Superman movie is doing so well.  The little internal headline on one section reads "Kvelling about Henry Cavill."  Henry was cast as Superman and apparently is successful in the role.

       Writing the article is Steven Zeitchik who I'm guessing is Jewish and may or may not have written that internal headline.  I don't think "kvelling" has quite reached the status of "chutzpah" as a Yiddish word adopted by English but may be on its way.  Kvelling means "bragging with pride," usually about a loved one.

       You might say it's a near opposite for "cavil," which is English for picking at or taking issue with a minor aspect of something.  I'm glad people are kvelling and not cavilling about Henry Cavill!

Father's Day, Plus 1

       Two years ago this day, I wrote the following:

       June 17, 2011--In honor of Father’s Day, daughter Elizabeth’s weekly poem to her mailing list was from “Song of the Open Road” in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a book I’d given her. Elizabeth cited the note I’d written, about my having performed Whitman’s poem:  “I loved doing it. He so energizes you.”

       Whitman did so again, but one line stuck out for me this time:

                        "[Wisdom] applies to all stages and objects and                     qualities, and is content..."

reminding me of the saying of an 18th century Chasid, Rabbi Michal:

                         "My life was blessed because I never needed anything until I had it. "

Elizabeth’s blog for today [June 17, 2011] reprints the Whitman excerpt.  You can find it here.



 

Connie's Refrigerator Dad's Day Greeting

"Pre"-Father's Day Card

       These are the words, some barely readable now, scattered about the poster-size Father's Day card hand-made by my son in 1992 when I was 62 and he was 26:

                                                            DONOS
               PA                                                                                          PADRE
               PAPA                             "DADDY"CATION                               POP
                                                                                                                     POPS
                                       MALE PARENTAL UNIT          ABA                         POPPY
       pere                              FATHER          "pop"ulation
                                                                DADA            Hope Springs Paternal
                               DAD                                                   IN
                                                                                                                   A
                                                                                   LOVE,                WORD....
                                                                                        DAvid
               ALPA PATER                                                                           YOU!

"Our Wantings"

       These words struck me in a poem by Rumi:  "our wantings."  A nice double meaning, things that we desire and qualities that we lack.

       They can take us in contrasting directions, worth considering.

       What we want may not be what we lack; what we are deficient in may not be what we desire.

       (The words are from "When We Pray Alone," translation by Coleman Barks, from The Essential Rumi.)    

"Jejune"

       Someone made the movie "Sleepless in Seattle" into a stage musical, and its world premiere in Pasadena last week was met with L.A. Times theater critic Charles McNulty's characterization of the vehicle's song lyrics as "jejune."

       Had I seen the word before?  Yes.  Did I remember what it meant?  No.  Of course it's an attractive word because of the little stutter syllable at the outset, making one wonder.   And no, it has nothing to do with the Roman Goddess Juno, quite the opposite of beauty in its meanings drawn from a part of the intestine--the jejunum--usually found empty upon dissection after death.

       Yes, the lyrics are empty, dry, devoid of life and sustenance, and with associations of intellectually vapid and arid and (maybe because of associations with "juvenile") sophomoric.

       Reading the "Sleepless" review on June 4th, my own association with the word?

                                      "JeJune is bustin' out all over,"

from a far better musical of my youth by Rodgers and Hammerstein, "Carousel." 

It's Not Exactly "June/Moon"

       Driving to broadcast in early morning today, sunless skies call to mind the ”June Gloom” we’re all aware of in Southern California before the sun breaks through around noon to warm us.

       I realize the weather’s less of a downer because we all have those words, June Gloom, to identify the condition.  As long as we have a name for it, it has less of a hold on us--rather, we’ve got a hold on it!

       And if it rhymes to boot--near rhyme anyway--we can almost make a song about it:

                 June Gloom, don’t try to rain on my day
                 You know the sun’s on its way
                 We’ve got your number, Hooray! 

"Echoic" Writing

       One of my pet peeves is "echoic" writing, re-using one of one's own previous words  absentmindedly or lazily.

       Today, an unusual example.   Under the headline "League can't close the deal" Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times tells us closing pitcher Brandon League couldn't pull off a save and lost the game.  Then:

       "On what might be the most discouraging night in a season full of them, the Dodgers' beleaguered closer blew a two-run lead with two outs to go..."   "be-league-red"

       It might have been deliberate; if so, my congratulations.  Even if it wasn't, I can hardly complain.  But my hunch is it was unconscious as "echoes" usually are.  So this one gets a pass from me and maybe my smiling admiration.  It's a good pun.

A Cartoon Built on an Awful Pun

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

       Here is the English nursery rhyme:
                              
                           Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
                           See how they run. See how they run.
                           They all ran after the farmer's wife,
                           Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
                           Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
                           As three blind mice?

Proud and Insightful Quote from the Tony Awards

       For all actors, who put their voices and bodies to "telling it like it is" but who may have doubted their calling or themselves in that calling, Tracy Letts, who tonight won the Tony Award for best actor in the revival of the Broadway play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, put things in the right perspective:

       "We are the ones who say it to their faces.  And we have a unique responsibility."

"Curation," "Curator," "Curate"

       Last Thursday's L.A. Times noted that the Ojai Music Festival was put together by choreographer and music director Mark Morris, "and his curation includes danceable and moving tunes by Terry Riley, Lou Harrison..." etc.

       I hadn't seen the word "curation" before, only "curator" and the verb "curate."  One keeps learning.  It's a word.  Then I discovered something odd:  81% of the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Panel" disapproves of  "to curate"; it is a back-formation of the noun "curator" (i.e., formed after "curator" and developed from it).

       Personally, I think if people need a verb to declare what someone DOES who is a curator, and come up with the word for it, it's a WORD.   You'll only consign yourselves to the dust-bin of history, "Usage Panel,"  huffing at a word widely present and useful.

"GUMPTION"; "PAWKY"; "SMIDGEN"; "FLUKE"; "FLUMMOX"

       It's interesting that when you've gotten to the root meanings of this elusive set of wild sounding words, the trail has led ... NOWHERE.

       I'd say "Huzzah," but we'd have to look it up and find that they're not too sure about that one either.

       So we're left simply with this rootless but wonderful array of words:  Gumption, Pawky, Smidgen, Fluke, and Flummox.

"GUMPTION"; "PAWKY"; "SMIDGEN"; "Fluke"; "Flummox"

       Now it could be that three of these words have taken what I call the "low" road back to Scotland.  I begin to wonder if the English who make the OED don't inherit a little of their great predecessor Samuel Johnson's attitude towards the "outside."   Johnson's definition of "oats"?  "A grain which is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people."

       When the OED writers came to a word they couldn't find the root of, did they tend to dismiss it to Scotland:  "gumption"; or to Scotland and "northern":  "pawky"; or even beyond, to Scotland and North America:  "smitch"; or worst and consigned to total oblivion:  "smidge"--"originating and chiefly North America"?

       Just kidding, OED, where would we be without you?

       (Concluded tomorrow)

"Gumption"; "PAWKY"; "SMIDGEN"; "Fluke"; "Flummox"

       Last week I came upon the word "squandering" and said to myself, "That's an interesting sounding word.  I'll bet it has a fascinating background."  ORIGIN UNKNOWN.  Always disappointing.

       I remembered an essay I wrote about some attractive words with no identifiable "primeval" ancestor, and I'm drawing on that this week.

       "Pawky" does come from "pawk," which is obsolete but meant "trick," and pawky is "crafty, artful, cunning," but no one knows where pawk came from.  Similarly "smidgen" probably comes from "smitch," "a particle, a bit," but no one knows where that came from.

       (Continued tomorrow)

"GUMPTION"; "Pawky"; "Smidgen"; "Fluke"; "FLUMMOX"

       In continuing our look at a group of words that have etymological dead-ends, only a quick glance at "gumption" about which apparently the less said the better.  But you gotta revel in its definition:  "Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.  Guts, spunk.  Common sense."  Gumption!   A great word that I'm glad to have in the language.

       "Flummox" (FLUHM-ihks) has thankfully flummoxed ("perplexed" and "confused," AHD) all lexicographers as to its roots.  But the OED says "probably imitative."  Now that sounds right to me, a word expressive of its meaning in its sheer utterance:  flummoxed.

       (Continued tomorrow)

"Gumption"; "Pawky"; "Smidgen"; "FLUKE"; "Flummox"

 
       Fluke as "an unlikely chance occurrence" was at first "an accidentally successful stroke at billiards or pool," but no one knows why, or what the root is.

       This fluke is unrelated to two other flukes, one of them flatfish or flatworms from German flach "flat," and the other being either of the lobes of a whale's tale, perhaps because they're flat.  Uncertainty is rampant.  "Just check it in the dictionary" will not net you certitude.

       To me it seemed a fluke that "fluke" and "flummox" appeared within a couple inches of one another on the same page in my dictionaries.  I was glad to see it!  (Continued tomorrow)

"Gumption"; "Pawky"; "Smidgen"; "Fluke"; "Flummox"

       "Gumption," pawky," "smidgen," "fluke," and "flummox."  Now there's a handful of words.  They're together because they sound funny and make you wonder where they came from.  I like this:  no one knows where they came from!

       These words happen to be "dialectical," a form of speech peculiar to a person, class or district, and no one knows or remembers just how the words began.  Like folk tales that have no real author but "the people," these words were simply adopted and passed on.  FINE.  Speech in  my lexicon should have some secrets from nosy literate researchers!

       But because they're from the people, these words are interesting.  Continued tomorrow.                                                                                                              

A Rabbi Retires

       Twice in a year we've "lost" a rabbi.   One advanced to senior rabbi at another congregation, and now our own senior rabbi, is retiring to live in Israel.   Don Goor, rabbi for 26 years with us, left some text-based thoughts on Friday night to ponder for our lives.    The first is from the Torah in Deuteronomy:

       "Do not say, 'My strengths and my might have allowed me to achieve greatness.'  No one individual, not even Moses, can say, 'Look what I did.'"

The second text is from Pirke Avot (The Sayings of the Fathers):

       "Who is rich?  He who is content with his portion."

I treasure these, and they very much marked the man himself, including that he never taught a class without a text in hand to read and ponder with us together. 

"Macbeth" Yields More

        Two more lines from Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7, strummed on my memory as I looked up yesterday's passages.  Lady Macbeth, in bolstering Macbeth's will power, says,

                    Screw your courage to the sticking place,/And we'll not fail.

Since it is the killing of Duncan they are contemplating, Macbeth ends the scene with this rhymed couplet to his wife:

                   Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
                   False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

       And only "a page or so later" in Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth,  soliloquizing about the imagined bloodiness ahead, says,

                                                         Whiles I threat, he lives:
                  Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

       Shakespeare captures by vivid language psychological truths.