Calder, 1: The picture worth a thousand words?

Click on Photo to Enlarge

Alexander Calder's fountain mobile, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

O, No. So Bad.

Diplomacy Begins with the Tongue

      Kind of glad to see L.A.'s new Mayor Garcetti speaking Spanish while visiting Mexico and doing a pretty good job of it from most accounts.

       Of course he had some lapses, not being a native speaker.  In one fairly notable instance, he was trying to say "the social fabric," and his Spanish made it fabrica social.  Unfortunately, el tejido social would have been correct.  What the Mayor uttered translates as "the social manufacturing plant."

       Writing for the L.A. times today, reporter Richard Fausset said:  "If Garcetti had been speaking French on a diplomatic mission to Paris, he might have been harangued--or even hanged--for his errors.  But Mexicans tend not to be such purists, and they have built up decades of tolerance for visitors from El Norte mangling their mother tongue."

Calder's Universe, and Einstein's

       I'm looking forward to seeing about my fifth Alexander Calder exhibit this coming Friday.

       LACMA curator Stephanie Barron noted in the L.A. Times this week that when Albert Einstein saw Calder's work in 1943 at MOMA, he "spent 45 minutes looking" at one mobile, watching it go through its total pattern of changes.

       Finally Einstein said, "I wish I had thought of that." 

Nostalgia Is Setting In...

Johnny Ray/Justin Timberlake, Take Note

       With Crimea and Ukraine in the scary news at this time,  my son David told me that there is indeed a place called "Crimea River."

Reigning Smart Phones

       Connie and I each purchased smart phones yesterday for the first time and learned that we're protected by the "cloud."

       In other words, the way I understand it, if everything we put into our phones evaporates somehow, we can still get it to rain down on us.

Creative Mishearing

                                       "The Way I Heard It"

       On the radio:

       "Prophylactics for birth control have come under the Catholic Church's condomnation."

Waiting to Emerge

Staring Down the Same Two Paths

       My wordplay cartoon here seems as relevant today as when it first appeared in the Wit, Wisdom, Words and Wonders calendar I produced 17 years ago:  Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel then too.

Cartooning Blogger's Diptych

Oh, you bad, blogging cartoonist

And Tummy?

The one way of sliding down hill they didn't include in the Olympics:

          ski
             snowboard
                luge
                   bobsled
                      skeleton
              

 (Some countries call skeleton toboganing, but Olympic skeletons don't                   resemble the toboggans I grew up with in Minnesota.)

Beware: Word Cartoon

Hilburn and I must be brothers under the "s kin."  See yesterday's post.

Cartooning Blogger Once Again

      

The Indelible World Wide Web

       I woke up yesterday shocked to realize how many signs of me and my use of language are on the planet...due mainly to the internet.

       Currently I am heard both live and recorded on radio and online reading newspapers for the blind; I can be read, heard, and seen since 2012 and from now to perpetuity in this blog; and there are audio recordings of me that were made 65 years ago that are accessible to anyone anywhere in the world...at this minute!

       Yes, I acted in radio dramas for kids while in college.  Someone retained those broadcast recordings, and they're now online.  You can hear me as "Whitney the Neighborly Whale" narrating my whale story back in 1950 by clicking here.

        Consider:  you yourself may be leaving indelible marks you're hardly aware of!

The Cartooning Blogger Again

      

The Cartooning Blogger ("ellipses")

Poetry, the Most Compact Language

       Many have pointed out our need to be better listeners and more reluctant speakers than we are most of the time, and I have heard and read some eloquent language encouraging me to engage more fully and sensitively in what the world, others' thoughts, and my own inner voices have to say, to really listen.

       But today I heard Coleman Barks, the devoted advocate and translator of Rumi, give a line of the great Sufi poet that sums up all the other admonitions, gives their essence, and obviates the need for anything more:

                 "I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears."

Amtrak Voices on the Train

       A four hour Amtrak return trip today, different train announcement styles from ones I heard last Friday.   Those were more personal, in tune with our desires for better seats upstairs, etc., what to anticipate at the next stop, e.g., number of people expected to leave and enter the train.  The tones were direct and helpful.

       Today's voices were brisk, fast, routine.   Sometimes the tones were those bored--pay-no-attention-to-me-while-I-talk--deliveries airline attendants assume when reading safety procedures.

        My basic moral would be:  Remember you've got listeners to what you're saying; don't be perfunctory and arrogant!  Regular travelers can disregard if they want, but others could be your future customers.  Court that traveler; have in mind a person whose needs you are fulfilling with your words!

Without Words

      I am away from home for two or three days with Connie and with family we haven't seen in too long a time.  Words fail me today.  But the pleasure of being with others one is close to and spending joyful time, that does not fail me.

  

      

"Touch Me" by Stanley Kunitz

       I heard Stanley Kunitz doing this very reading of his poem at the Dodge Poetry Festival.  I hope you find it as moving as I did, and do.

"Forever Missed"

       New technologies serve new purposes.  Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal wrote on "virtual gravestones" and "digital legacies."

       Fowler realized he himself stood in need of one of several such services that already exist.  He had a homeless friend without anyone else to take note of his passing.  Fowler found the best for himself and for his friend was a service called "Forever Missed."

       Paying a single fee of about $75.00, Fowler could establish a legacy with words that acknowledged the remembered friend's life, to be kept in perpetuity, to which one could return, which others who may have known him could visit and add their own reflections.

       A gravestone on high accessible to virtual visitation. 

The Letter-Fascinated Cartoonist

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

       Looks like they might be a bit "JUMPY" at the hideout too.

"Cute" is Aphetic

       While looking for something else entirely in the dictionary today (of course), I came across the abbreviation "aphet.", had to look it up, found "aphetic" applied to words like "cute," which struck me as serendipitous since yesterday the word "cuter" appeared in my post, and I knew this had to be my post for today.

       Actually aphetic is a linguistic term, an adjective from the Greek meaning "letting go."  Vowels at the beginning of words tend to be lost over time.  This is what happened to the word "acute" in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd," also the original meaning of "cute."  Gradually cute became a term of approval for someone with those qualities, and thence to its own sense of "attractive, fetching."

       Cute not only "let go" of a vowel, but its own original meaning!

WORDS in Art?

Barbara Kruger's towering black-and-white text now dominates the lobby of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

       I've been puzzling what to make of Barbara Kruger's use of language in her art for a good number of years.

       That "YOU" you're looking at (click on image to enlarge it) says, "You are here to get cultured.  To get smarter, richer, younger, angrier, funnier, skinnier, hipper, hotter, wiser, weirder, cuter, and kinder."

       It made me chuckle and smile at some of those words.  And the culture you'll gain at a museum consists of that wide a range of possibilities?  Includes things that are personally desirable to me, and feelings and wishes and curiosity and emotions I've had or suppressed, not just what's way outside my body and life?

       Is she saying the whole world, including ME, is in art, and art can even include huge words to help remind me of that!? 

Speak to Me in Snowboarding

       Reminded me of the strange lingo in other specialized activities, other sports like figure skating, yes, but other crafts as well, like ceramics.  Where did they get those names for things?  Out of the air, out of deference to the guy or country who created the move, out of plain descriptive ardor.

       Sage Kotsenburg won the Olympics in slopestyle snowboarding with his "Backside Double Cork 1620 Japan," chosen impetuously just before his last run because, as his brother advised him, "Why not?"

       And to top it off, do anybody but wild American youth toss around terms of joy like "down for it," "I'm stoked," "coolest thing," "that is sick."

       ALL in the spirit of "Why do we climb mountains?   Because they're there."  And with  meticulous devotion to techniques (and fun!) that'll get the job done.

"international artists"

       I recently saw mentioned a group of singers named

                    "international artists so-called."

I thought it was funny, a satirical jibe that hit a nerve for some performers (and maybe other artists).

       I've had the feeling from time to time that a performer was staking a claim that was fudging the truth.  Had a U.S. citizen stepped across the Canadian border one day and asked a couple strangers to appraise him as he sang a few notes, their approval and smiles sealing (for him) his "international reputation"?

       So it is a good joke to form a group that takes on the title officially (uncapitalized), thumbing its collective nose at pretension, in effect saying, "come listen to us for the music."

       I can't find the group online,  but if they ever appear near me, I'm going.

"Shtick"

        President Obama tonight used the word "shtick" in response to a question asked him on TV about President Putin just before the opening ceremonies at the Russian Olympics.

       Obama said the "bored," "tough guy" face Putin often had in public was part of his "shtick."  Interesting to me that a black American leader would use about a white Russian leader a term I grew up with as Jewish "ghetto" language.  It's pure Yiddish.

       The etymology is "piece" or "bit," and shtick traces to Middle and Old High German.  It's defined as "a show-business routine, gimmick, or gag" or "a characteristic attribute, talent, or trait that is helpful in securing recognition or attention" to cite Merriam-Webster and American Heritage Dictionary respectively. 

       Putin's face is a "put-on," a shtick, says Obama.

"tWITter"

       I don't do Twitter, but I was pleased to read some tweets on the way polite, laid back, Seattle tore up the town after their huge first Super Bowl victory.  The L.A. Times reported there had been "a few torched sofas, a damaged historic building, maybe half a dozen arrests."

       A hashtag (#How Seattle Riots) produced these gems: "Throw garbage in the compost-only bin."  "The Priuses are honking."  "Wearing sandals without your socks."

       It does tend to prove that brevity is the soul of wit.

      

Proofreader's Emendation

       Reading today's newspaper over the air, as I do every other Wednesday for the blind and print-impaired, I came across this sentence:  "Upon taking the helm at Microsoft, Nadella instantly becomes one of the most influential Indian business leaders in the..." the next word was "word," but I recognized it must be "world" and changed it on the spot before the mistake got out of my mouth and into the listener's ear.

       We've heard of "proofreader's error" when  a proofreader just doesn't notice a missing letter because the mind knew what should be there and filled it in (and spell-check can't catch this kind of error), so the mistake goes by and is permitted.  What shall I call what I did to restore the missing letter?

       I'm calling it "proofreader's [spell-check's?] emendation." 

"Enthuse"

       Film composer James Broughton's composition was nominated for this year's Academy Awards and then disqualified.  Some Academy rule was broken.

       The music is for a religious film, and what interested me was that the film will have a wider release in June from "Enthuse Entertainment."  "Enthuse" may not sound like a word with religious connotations, but I'm sure the company knows its etymology.

       Entheos is the Greek adjective meaning "having the god within," "possessed or inspired by a god" and is the root of our noun "enthusiasm" and verb "enthuse."  Enthusiasm is now pretty thoroughly secularized, and neither the gods of the Greeks nor the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is apparent.

       Fervor is still at the heart of it, however.  So forgive me if I enthuse over English's Greek linguistic heritage.

The Consonantal Divide, 6

       After crossing several consonants,  here's a reward.  You deserve it.

       Just put together a couple of the sounds we've been dealing with, and you’ll be there.  Give me a panting [h] and give me the second vowel sound in [w], i.e. “uh.”  You've got “huh.”  Say it out loud.
 
       Now string out 5 of them going up the scale:

                                        huh
                                huh
                        huh
                huh
        huh

       And string out five going down:

        huh
                huh
                        huh
                                huh
                                        huh

       Good.  Once more now.  First up, then down.
 
       Now collapse the “huh”s together more closely and speed it up; then do it all in one breath.

       I hope you’re starting to have a good laugh!

The Consonantal Divide, 5

       We've been talking about the strange characteristics of the consonants "w," "h," and "y."  But put  them all in the same word "why," and they surprise again.

       The phonetic symbol for the first two letters in this word is an upside down “h”.  And why is this?  Because the first part of the sound for these two letters is [h], not [w].  To say “why” properly, you first say [h] (the pant), and then [w], just the opposite order of the letters in the word.  And of course the “y” at the end here is pronounced as a long “i”, as in the personal pronoun “I,” not the “ih” of “yes.”

       You may be tired of traveling this trans-consonantal highway; so tomorrow I'll give you a laugh.







       

      

The Consonantal Divide, 4

       The letter “h” is a strange consonant.   No, it isn’t a semi-vowel like "w" or "y," but it isn’t much of a consonant either.  "H" can be silent ("honor," "oh"), but when it has sound, it is only that of the breath moving through partially closed vocal cords.  In fact, it is the sound of panting.  Give it a try:  [h] [h] [h].

       Alexander Pope has a line of poetry describing Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain:

                    "Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone"

If you have any breath left after saying that line, you're probably an athlete.  Pope creates exertion within the line by including all those panting [h] sounds.

       It takes a lot of effort to say [h] because the only sound of this consonant is breath !

The Consonantal Divide, 3

       We are playing at the fringes where vowels and consonants aren't distinct from one another but converge.

       Think, for example, of the consonant letter "y."  Along with "w," "y" is often referred to as a semi-vowel.  Why?  When we make the sound for "y" at the beginning of words [y], it is composed of two vowel sounds merged, "ih" as in "bit" and "uh" as in "but."

       It helps to try these aloud:  say "ih," then "uh"; then say them close to one another, "ih-uh"; then let them flow into each other without pause.  Do you hear it?  Another diphthong like [w].  

       There you have it.  The so-called consonant "y" is made up of two vowel sounds!

       

The Consonantal Divide, 2

       All right, if the consonant "w" is made up of two u's, a double-u, how so? 

       Produce the sound the letter makes when it begins a word, [w].  You purse your lips and start to say something like "ooh," then merge into a second sound that's something like "uh."  It's a diphthong consisting of those two sounds.

       In fact, it's two slightly different pronunciations of the vowel "u."  It's the "ooh" sound in words like June, tuba, ludicrous,  lubricate, illuminate, plus the "uh" sound as in sun, run,  jump, rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.  Strange to say, but there really are two different vowel sounds merged in that single consonant "w."

       That is why "w" is often called a "semi-vowel."
       

The Consonantal Divide, 1

       Consider some ironies about letters and sounds:  “h” begins with a vowel; “u” begins with a consonant.

       I don’t mean the sounds of the letters, I mean the names of the letters.  The consonant “h” is pronounced “aitch.”  It begins with a vowel "a."   The vowel “u” is pronounced “you.”  It begins with the consonant “y.”

       Another irony is that the "www" of World Wide Web has nine syllables and the MUCH longer "World Wide Web" with 12 letters has only three syllables.  Say "www":  [dub-uhl-you dub-uhl-you dub-uhl-you]--nine.

       Also, if you listen to the letter "w," you hear what that consonant consists of..."double u"...now turn the printed "w" into written "w," you will SEE the two u's, which are both vowels and not a consonant! 

Some Free Writing about Free Writing

 ...your censor starts “improving,” even before you’ve written.  What kind of fun or advantage is that, espcially when it’s a kind of disadvantage, especially with regard to “free” writing.  Why put quotation marks around free, because you can’t really be free, you think, but only in quotation marks?  I suppose so.  But to keep the words coming is a marvelous desideratum; it takes a free wheelingness, and free willingness, and it takes at least a modicum of courage.  Maybe more than that.  It was the secret to doing my essays, and it was the secret to doing my Ph.D. dissertation finally, I had to say each day I sat down, “I don’t care if it comes out shit.”

Even Kings Get Sick (Not to Mention Cartoonists)

Click on cartoon to enlarge.

               In numerology, letters can be assigned numerical value; numbers can be assigned letters.  There's a certain interchangableness.

               None of this has anything to do with what's going on in this crazy cartoon.

Advertising Language

       Hollywood leads like Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chiwetel Ejiofor are sporting beards and mustaches in public.   Men's razor and blade sales are going down.

       Proctor and Gamble, owner of Gillette Razor Company, is not without a response.  The company says there is "increased shaving below the neck, particularly among younger men."  P&G spies an opening into what it craftily calls "guys' holistic shaving needs," also known as manscaping.

       New this year is the Gillette Body razor, the first tool of its kind "built for the terrain of a man's body."  (Women have curves, apparently, men have terrain.)

       "Holistic" sounds positive, and "built" and "terrain" so masculine, you could almost forget you're shaving off your body hair.

Cartoonists Prosecuted

                 Some food for thought in this little reversal.

"Reengaged": Engaging a Word

                                                        

                                     reengaged

Up Over

       Cursing Federer for not closing out Murray in three straight sets and my having to watch the finish on recording the next day in order to get any sleep.   Then cursing Australia for its seasons and time zones belng opposite from ours, the land "Down Under."

       Then waking (barely) into our late American morning today, couldn't help thinking through my bleary-eyed consciousness:

       For people from Australia, am I "Up Over"?

Haiku--Issa--Hass

       What strikes me about so many Haiku and makes me prize them is that little "explosion" in the third line.  Hass captures them in his translations of Issa's poems, and in his oral readings of them!  Here are five of my favorites from the nine Hass shared in yesterday's post:

             Don't worry, spiders,                        Goes out,
          I keep house                                    comes back;
             casually.                                              the love life of my cat.


             Even with insects--             The whole time I pray to Buddha                  some can sing,                     I keep on             
             some can't.                           killing mosquitoes.              


                                            Napped half the day;
                                         no one
                                            punished me!
       

            

"Napped half the day;/no one/punished me!"

       I was looking for a particular Haiku today, found it plus a whole flood of others, as will happen on the Internet.

       I had witnessed poet Robert Hass read at the Dodge Poetry Festival; this is one reading I hadn't heard, from his own book of versions of Issa's Haiku poems.

"Ax" for "Ask"?

       In writing lately about Yiddish words I know from childhood, I came upon John McWhorter's piece in the L.A. Times yesterday on the Black use of "ax" for "ask."

       Yes, it's different from chutzpah or mishegas in my recent posts, but not different in the way Blacks can hold "ax" close to them even when educated and "knowing better" just because it's "a facet of black being" as linguist McWhorter puts it.  If you grow up with a way of saying something that's characteristic of and indigenous to your people, and different from the mainstream's way of putting it, you treasure it in a personal way.   "Correct,"  "incorrect," or whether you can find it in a dictionary are not the question.

       A fuller treatment by the black Columbia University Prof can be located here.

A Poem's Bow to Art

 
       Rabbi Leib 's reminder in yesterday's post that "nature itself" is "the greatest wonder we can know" is echoed in "Notes from Prehistory" by Linda Bierds, a poem on the cave paintings at Font-de-Gaume in France.  Bierds says, in a beautiful phrase, the purpose of art is
                              "to venerate the living world. "

Nature = Miracle

       I'm not sure we believe much in miracles any more.  So it's inspiriting to come across a few words that remind us of such things:

                [We] should understand that miracles and nature are all one. 
                In fact there is no miracle as great and wondrous as nature
                itself, the greatest wonder we can know.

                           from The Language of Truth:  the Torah Commentary 
                           of the Sefat Emet  by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger

Spell it Out for 'em, Cowch!

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

A Culture Dies When a Language Dies

       Reminded of one thing today I had heard of and apprized of another I hadn't. 

       There is a Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.  The attempt is to save disappearing tongues before they die.  For example, when speakers of 27 Native American languages were forced into one reservation in Oregon in 1885, they developed a "cross-over" language out of necessity that allowed them to speak to one another; only one of the 27 original languages has a living speaker.   The institute has made a talking dictionary of that last language.  You can find the Institute here. 

       There's also a website in which speakers of minority languages can send tweets to one another, such as in Gaelic, yes Yiddish, a host of Native American languages, many others.  The site can be  reached at this location.  

"Peregrinations"

       I used this word in an email today.  It seemed to come out of thin air.  Writing of a former student,  now friend of long standing, I mentioned that "I followed her job peregrinations."  She'd had a few different ones in those years after graduation.  Was it a right use?

       First contact with online defining made the meaning sound like "traveling on foot."  Oops.  Asking Connie, she thought "wandering," which was more in my ball park.  Online, Reference.com used the word in a sentence:  "His peregrinations in and around the mediums of drawing and photography nearly amount to a second and third career."  That echoes my own use pretty closely.

       Gathering from a few dictionaries:  Latin roots meaning "through the land"; journeying or traveling from place to place; wandering, migrating.  I'll claim victory.

      

      

"Mishegas"

       The post about Yiddish a couple days ago reminded me I'd written the following over two years ago:

       My Grandma used to look at the new TV set in our living room; any new face that came on, she would say, "Is Jewish?"   A public medium, but she wanted to see her own kind looking back at her, a reflection, a confirmation.

       Today I saw a word used by theatre critic Charles McNulty.  He was reviewing a new play with myriad plot lines with multiple family members, each
                                  "adding to the spiraling mishegas,"

(mish-uh-GAHSS), a Yiddish word meaning "mixed up" and "crazy." And I felt proud.  Why?  Word I recognized, heard family and friends use, was a part of me.

       But look, Charles, "chutzpah" became good American English; maybe next time you don't even need to italicize.

Better than "Hairpiece"?

       Lead actress Sandra Bullock, who spends a lot of time in a cramped space vehicle in the movie "Gravity," was given an offer early in the filming that she couldn't believe.

       As Mexican Alfonso Cuaron reminded her in accepting his Golden Globe award as best director last night on NBC:  "Sandra, I want to thank you for not quitting when I told you I would give you herpes.  My thick accent got in the way.  What I was trying to say to her was 'earpiece'."

       To find his inimitable and charming way of speaking at the Globes, go here.

I'll Drink to Yiddish

       My daughter gave me a mug with Yiddish expressions and sayings on it.  My mother and father spoke some Yiddish, nowhere near as much as their parents, and I know a handful of words.  Thus the progression with each generation a little more distanced from the Mother tongue.  Yet Yiddish makes its way into English:  "Chutzpah," for example.

       My favorite saying on the mug is, "Life is nothing but a dream, but don't wake me up!"

       The Yiddish (transliterated)?  "Dos lebn iz nit mer vi a kholem, ober vekt mikh nit oyl!"

       Yiddish is a combination of German and Hebrew, and English with large Germanic background allows one to make out a few of the words.

       There's an element of street smarts, common sense, and a good deal of humor in these Yiddish expressions.

A Way to Think about Writing

       "Writing is like washing windows in the sun.  With every attempt to perfect clarity you make a new smear."

                                      James Richardson

"Obliterate"

       I've had occasion to think about this word today.   I was worried that something I'd done could end up obliterating my whole blog.  Hopefully this will not happen though I'm still worried.  So I sat and looked at the word "obliterate" and realized the word for "letter" is in there, from Latin littera, and in fact you have the whole English word "literate."

       But I thought "obliterate" meant "destroy utterly" anything the word is referring to.   Of course that is what it often does mean, but it's by extension from the meaning embedded in the Latin root, to "wipe out, erase, the letters, the words."

       So in this case, though I hadn't realized it when the word came to me, I was literally concerned about my blog being obliterated.

Beware of Cartoonist with Hammer

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

Once again Piraro is here jerking our linguistic heads around.  Check                                                 out any neck pains.

"It's Not Your Way. It's Yahweh."

       Spying this saying or motto stenciled on the back of the car ahead of me this morning reminded me of an earlier saying or catch-phrase I'd seen on the front of a church as I passed by it in a vehicle:

                                                  Let Go.
                                    Let God.

My eyes wouldn't let me look away until I was sure I had this one:

                             It's not your way.  It's
                     Yahweh. 

"Yahweh" is an Englishing of the Hebrew for "Lord," and, of course, a pun on "your way."

       The similarity between the two sayings is striking.  Both catch-phrases promoting God in your life, for sure; both wonderful playing with the language; both transforming the ego-driven secular into the transcendence of the Deity in the flash of an eye.

"Abscond"

       A word used in a newspaper's front page lead story made me realize I must not have known what that word meant.   Yesterday's L. A. Times spoke of ex-prisoners evading probation by absconding.

       I somehow had learned at an early age that "absconding" meant running off and disappearing with money that didn't belong to the person.  Here it seemed money didn't play a part in it at all.  Hiding and not making set meetings with probation officers was itself "absconding."

       Dictionaries confirm my misunderstanding.  Latin abs ("away") and condere ("put" or "stow"), make abscond an intransitive verb that's self-reflexive, meaning "to hide (oneself)."

       I must have read a lot about people stealing funds and then "absconding with the money," thinking money an integral part of absconding.  Not so!    

"Defenestration"

       While going to the Merriam-Webster website to look up another word, I discovered their video feature on interesting words.  "Defenestration" is certainly one of those, and while it's not one you and I are likely to need in our everyday vocabulary, the story behind it is worth knowing.

       Its Latin derivation might lead you to think the word means something like "out the window," and you'd be right.  But then how did such a word come into existence?

                                          You can learn that here.

Double Negatives: Writer Beware!

       Today's (Jan. 5th) L.A. Times has an article on the release of Vladimir Horowitz's Carnegie Hall recitals over 35 years:  41 CDs.

       The caption under a photo of the musician at the piano reads
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ performs in 1965 at Carnegie Hall, a venue whose               importance to the pianist's career can't be understated.
Most likely the caption writer made the mistake; the author said "overstated" in the body of the article.

       Let's see:  "Was Carnegie Hall important to Horowitz's career?"  "Uh-uh.  It was unimportant.  No, it was really worse than that.  It was terribly unimportant.  Somehow that doesn't do it justice.  Carnegie Hall meant nothing to his career."

       Using a double negative or a negative plus something like "overstated/understated," be careful you don't contradict your own intended meaning!

Saving P. L. Travers

       Connie, David, and I saw Saving Mr. Banks today.  I did it somewhat grudgingly.  I loved Mary Poppins when my mother read it to me as a child...the take-charge-of-the-kids-and-household, not-to-be-stopped whirlwind of governess Mary Poppins.  I agreed with author P. L. Travers the movie was too saccharine.

       Oh, yes, they showed Mary Poppins' author as stern and resistant to seeing her book adapted a la Hollywood, and they made a plausible psychological case for Travers' reluctance to let the Disney team lighten the movie, practically giving her a therapeutic catharsis right before your eyes.  But I still felt the two Disney movies did the same thing, taking the guts out of Travers as they had out of Mary.  These were Disney's stories, not Mary Poppins' and not Mrs. Travers'.

"Fartlek"

       You pop into a chair in an orthopedic physician's outer office waiting for her to see your wife about a foot problem.  You pick up a running magazine because you jog, and you come across a coach's article regarding training for marathons and become puzzled and smile when you read that the coach says he employs fartleks for his runners.

       Did I read that right?  Yes.  I did.  What in the world is a fartlek?

       And then you learn that a fartlek is a training device, especially useful for long-distance runners:  short bursts of fast running with slower paced passages in between.  The OED tells me later the two syllables of the word mean "speed" and "play" respectively, in Swedish.  
       Meanwhile, the English speaker, conjuring up a different "short burst,"  cannot refrain from smiling :).

"Empathy," Literature, and Performance

       Does the reading of serious fiction boost one's ability to feel into another person's emotions, help one understand another person?   Research published in the journal Science suggests the answer is yes, says Robert M. Sapolsky's op-ed piece in last Sunday's L.A. Times.

       This certainly was an article of faith during my college teaching career, now apparently verified with more objective measurement.

       Broadening one's capacity for empathy, for "feeling into" (from the Greek) is a worthwhile virtue for living.  Reading good literature does it,  performing literature can go even further, calling for the enacting of that empathy, for oneself and for audiences. 
      

"To the Point," Happy New Year

       I have praised this radio series before.

       This New Year's Day prompts me to wish the program success for the coming year and to thank it for over a decade of great programs.

       Do I value words?  Yes.  Spoken words in a way especially?  Yes.  The auditory art of radio with particular affection? Yes.

       The visual is great with TV news to see what's happening.   Hearing the complexity and gaining understanding through pointed interviews with excellent spokespersons for frequently contradictory positions,  better yet.  Even topics I'm not necessarily avid to hear about like today's "Should College Athletes Be Paid?" turn out to be interesting, multi-faceted, controversial, illuminating!

        Be instructed by the series "To the Point" here.

Peculiar Label

       I noticed an unusual label the other day on an old sweater of mine.  The brand appeared to be "Bowen & Wright," which had a rectangular box inscribed around it and underneath it the words "Registered Trademark."  But above them both in a semi-rainbow-shaped arc was "AUTHENTIC CLOTHING."  What?  Was there some doubt?

       Imagine finding a loaf of bread labeled "AUTHENTIC FOOD."  Wouldn't you wonder?  In fact, I had taken the sweater off its hanger simply to confirm it was wool as I figured all along it was.  There were no other labels than this one.  Now the "Authentic" has me wondering what the darned thing IS made of.

      

Misleading Label Again

       I probably wouldn't have gone for an ice cream called "Black Raspberry" as Connie did, not being attracted to fruity flavors, but might have been lured by the rest of its name "Dark Chocolate Chunk."

       Since I was out of my own ice cream, I tried hers and found the "chunks" tiny and disappointing.  I looked back at the cover label and read in smaller print "pieces of dark chocolate folded into..." "pieces" already being a reduction from "chunks," but what was inside would not have been misnamed "bits" or even "specks."

       If you're going to call something "chunk," remember the sound and heft as well as image of that;  I imagined mini-iceberg size chocolate fragments, not dainty dots, especially with most of the container covered in a rich deep brown! 

      

"The Child Is Father of the Man"

       I just finished munching a "Nut Goodie" candy bar that I ordered by email and had sent to "Donnie" at my address here in California, a box of ten bars.  I loved them as a kid in St. Paul where they're made.  I even wrote a note to include to my younger self:

                 Dear Donnie,
                      
                          Since "the child is father of the man" (Wordsworth),

                 Happy Father's Day.

                          I know how much you loved Nut Goodies.

                 And because of that, thankfully, I do too.

                          Let's share the box!

                                      Don

"Under Penalty of Law"

       How many of us leave tags untouched on the end of new pillows?

       Consumers can rip them off if they want.  They're unsightly; they hang out the pillow case ends and tickle a bed partner.   YET I BET THERE ARE THOUSANDS of homes with those tags present and accounted for!

       We are intimidated by those first words in the federally mandated statement, "UNDER PENALTY OF LAW"...my God, I've got to obey whatever follows: 
                       UNDER PENALTY OF LAW THIS TAG
                                    NOT TO BE REMOVED
You see jail bars and hardly notice the final
                             EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER

       Consider this changed word order:
                              EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER
                          THIS TAG NOT TO BE REMOVED
                                UNDER PENALTY OF LAW
The threat is allayed!  I predict a lot more joyous tag-ripping ceremonies in America.

"Day" Thoughts upon Awakening

Today is Friday wash day because yesterday's usual wash day daughter Elizabeth was still in town;  must confirm next date to read newspapers over the air (my regular every-other-Wednesday was Christmas Day, no broadcast).    Good to have set days for things.  What was Friday for in that song my dad sang?..."Friday Fish"..."Monday Hasenpfeffer," I think, "All the German mothers we wish the same to you"; Tuesday can't remember, I know Wednesday was "Zooop" (Soup), Thursday "Roast Beef," pretty sure;  doing week backwards each time brought me "Tuesday String Beans"; Saturday I think was "Payday"; Sunday of course "Church." 

       Good to have those set days, those things to anchor your week on, whether broadcast day or fish day...or wash day (even a day late)--better get up to do it.

Lazy Day Repartee

       Exhausted from family stuff for the last two days, Connie and I were sitting in late morning poring sleepily over newspapers in our sunroom with sunlight pouring in.

       After reading awhile and my sharing a funny passage from a humanizing piece about John McCain in the N.Y. Times Magazine, I contemplated my situation and said,  "I'm trying to figure what to do with my day....Do you know what you're doing with your day?"

       "I'm just trying to sit here and let it go by," said Connie.

       It cracked me up good.

Oof, He's At It Again

"The Love of Self"

       "The curse of our house...has been the love of self; has ever been the love of self.

       "There is a kind of selfishness...I have learned it in my own experience of my own breast:  which is constantly upon the watch for selfishness in others:  and holding others at a distance by suspicions and distrusts, wonders why they don't approach, and don't confide, and calls that selfishness in them."

                        Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

      

"Keelhaul"

       In the final blog post yesterday on "Naming Rites," it was noted that the sports team nickname chosen by the California Maritime Academy was "Keelhaulers."

       It's a word I'd run into but was unsure of its meaning.  Kevin Baxter thought the name was appropriate for a school with a "nautical mooring."  After all, "What could be more threatening than keelhauling, an often deadly form of punishment."

       As the OED defines "keelhaul," "Haul (a person) through the water under the keel of a ship, as a punishment (obsolete except Historically).  Now also figuratively, rebuke or reprimand severely."

"Naming Rites," 5

Sidebar 2  by Kevin Baxter, L.A. Times Sports Section

       So what's in a nickname?  PLENTY.  As Kevin Baxter's December 15, 2013, L.A. Times sports section article reveals.  (I don't know whether Baxter or the headline writer gave us the pun in the title, but it's an excellent one, both humorous and appropriately illuminating.)

"Naming Rites," 4

Sidebar 1 by Kevin Baxter, L.A. Times

"Naming Rites," 3

From Kevin Baxter's L.A. Times Sports Section piece

"Naming Rites," 2

Excerpted from L.A. Times article by Kevin Baxter.

"Naming Rites," 1

Excerpts from L.A. Times Sports Section, Dec. 15, 2013 

Waning "Gibbous" Moon

       Today is actually a full moon, traditionally called the December "full cold moon."  But what happens after today?

       The words above caught my eye yesterday and reminded me, after full moon, the moon's phase becomes "waning gibbous moon."  No longer circular, the moon loses some of its roundness and gains the term "gibbous" (pronounced GIB-us) from the Latin gibbus ("hump").

       As long as the moon is between 50% lit and full, it's called gibbous for its rounded but not round appearance, or "hump-backed" if you wish.  When the moon is becoming smaller, it's "waning," when the moon is becoming larger, it's "waxing."

       Just so it's between 50 and 100% illuminated, it's gibbous.  As soon as the moon has "points," it's no longer a gibbous moon.  

"Being Alive," by Stephen Sondheim, 5

      At the end of Bobby's song, the words "being alive" are sung three times, meaning something a little different and a little more each time in accord with Bobby's progression:   surviving the challenges of "being alive"; going through those together is "being alive"; and what life's about, "being alive!"

       There's a beginning, middle, and end in "Being Alive," it develops, and Bobby is NOT in the same place at the end as he was at the beginning.  Stephen Sondheim has thrillingly fulfilled the prescription of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein for lyrics in a musical.

       As for words, well Sondheim must have to pay words overtime for making them do so much for him.

       In the new documentary film Six by Sondheim, you'll see Dean Jones give a memorable and moving performance of "Being Alive."
   
       

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 4

       Stanza seven makes a dizzying turn, Bobby welcoming the helter-skelter of relationship and life.  By stanza eight,  Bobby has worked his way through to acknowledging this turn from "alone" to "alive."

       And in the final ninth stanza the intensity of stanza four is reprised but with the same small word changes of five and six, bringing their height of emotional angst and yearning, Bobby pleading "Somebody crowd me with love," the intensity now at a peak.

       "Alive" appears a dozen times in stanzas four, five, six, eight, and nine:  Bobby and someone being "frightened" "of being alive,"  Bobby asking somebody to make him "aware of being alive,"  to "support" him "for being alive," to "make" him "alive,"  Bobby will "help us survive / Being alive." The repetitions and variations are exalting and affirming.

      
      

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 3

       In the lyrics as I posted them yesterday, you can see the progression of language, expressive of Bobby's resistance, wrenching transformation, and change.

       In the first three stanzas, Bobby is aggrieved and distanced ("Someone to hold you too close") and satiric ("To ruin your sleep"); in the fourth stanza the language intensifies ("Someone to crowd you," "to force you," "to make you"), and Bobby's  distance collapses ("[Someone] as frightened as you/Of being alive.")

       In the fifth stanza, with Sondheim altering only two or three words from the first stanza, Bobby's complaint ("Someone to hold you too close") transmutes to an anguished and yearning self-referenced plea ("Somebody hold me too close").  And that little but amazing shift carries through every line of stanzas five and six, raising emotions right along with it.

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 2

In Company, Robert (Bobby) a confirmed bachelor of 35 goes through two acts observing the plight & joys of his married friends, plus his own plight & joys with three girlfriends, & sings this culminating song:

click on lyrics to enlarge

"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 1

       In the film Six by Sondheim the composer/lyricist says when he was 15, he learned from Oscar Hammerstein directly the most important single thing about lyric-writing for a musical:  the lyric had to have a beginning, middle, and end; it had to develop; the character singing needed to be in a different place when the song finished than when it began.

       I think it's a marvel of language the way Sondheim does it in "Being Alive," one of the six songs of the documentary's title.

       Tomorrow:  The Lyrics

"Cinerama" Anagram

       Amongst many other revelations in the marvelous new documentary film Six by Sondheim which HBO premiered the other night, this linguistic tidbit was noted by Steve Sondheim,

                 CINERAMA has an anagram:
                    AMERICAN 

"Mad Libs": the Hanukkah Edition

  
       Mad Libs books have been out for years:   brief stories with blank spaces for you to fill in words.  But you don't know the STORY till you read it with your created words now filled in.  My sample.

                      CELEBRATING THE JEWISH HOLIDAYS 101

We all know how to celebrate Hanukkah, but other holidays?  Well, on Tu B'Shevat, we celebrate by planting a participle in the ground.  On Passover we have a special meal called a Seder, which means "Duck."  Someone hides the furnace, and all the kids try to find it at the end of the Seder.  On Sukkot we build a glove outside and then crack up in it for 17 days.  There are many more holidays, but one of the most furtive is Shavuot.  That's when we stay up and curse all night long.

"The Long Boat" by Stanley Kunitz

"Lagniappe"

       "Lagniappe" was used in the headline of a review of Treme´ (about New Orleans) for its new, final, abbreviated season on HBO. 

       1.  Lagniappe (LAN-yap) was italicized in the headline when it needn't have been.  None of my references treat it as a foreign word;

       2.  Lagniappe is nowhere in the review itself, thus added by the headline writer based on Robert Lloyd's L.A. Times review calling the five-show season perhaps "an unnecessary appendix" to the series essentially completed last year, but welcome--a bonus, something tossed in extra for good measure;

       3.  The last words of #2 are indeed the word's definition;

       4.  It's a Southern Louisiana word from American Spanish la napa "the gift," and with the Creole dialect mix in New Orleans, then turned into Louisiana French.

        

Self-Serving Insurance Claims

       Actual excerpts from auto insurance claim forms in California.

Claim 1:  A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

Claim 2:  I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my
                 mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.

Claim 3:  My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.

Claim 4:  An invisible car came out of nowhere and struck my
                  vehicle--and vanished.

Claim 5:  The telephone pole was approaching fast.  I was attempting to
                 swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.

Claim 6: Pedestrian had no idea what direction to go, so I ran over him.

P(r)i(r)(v)acy

       Campaign Political Funds solicited online:

           when they use the phrase
                                                     "To Protect Your Privacy"--
           why do I always read
                                                      "To Protect Your Piracy"?

"Paraphernalia"

       I employ the term for a spacer tube I use with an asthma inhaler.

       But every time I think of the word "paraphernalia," my first association is with accoutrements for drug taking.

       The word comes from Greek para "beyond," pherne "a dowry," that is, a wife-to-be's personal possessions outside her dowry.

       Generally, the word refers to objects or appurtenances that go along with some main thing else.

Sycamore (forgive me)

Sycamore

                

More Sycamore

                                 
                                                                         

Sick o' More Sycamore?

 

                                                                                                                                                

Oops, Cartoonist & I on a Single Track

Click on cartoon to enlarge.

Photo I took some years back.

Solicitous Husband / Sardonic Wife

       Don:  Are you OK?

       Connie:  Yes.

       Don:  I heard you sneezing.

       Connie:  All I need is a Jewish mother.  I sneeze; therefore, I am.

Out-of-Control Cartoonist

click on cartoon to enlarge

       You kind of wish he'd just been tempted to do this cartoon but hadn't.  (Still, why am I glad he did?)

       So far as I can find out, there are only Jack Russell Terriers, called thus for a reverend of that name who was also a hunter and bred these dogs in the early 19th century.  Of course there have to be female Jack Russell Terriers, but apparently no Jane has given her name to a breed.

       Maybe the dad being happy birthdayed in the cartoon had a crush on the buxom actress back in the 1940s and 50s.