"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 1

       Maybe it's because some pop singers are hitting it big at the moment--Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga,  Taylor Swift--that I'm thinking about what makes songs suddenly pop into our memory.

       I first started noticing a flood of songs coming back to me shortly after I retired.  "I catch myself singing these days," my journal says.  "It feels good."

       "Sentimental Journey," "There's a Small Hotel," "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face," "Who Wouldn't Love You?" "An Irish Lullaby."  Journal:  "I'm loosening up the memory trails." 

       "You Do Something to Me," "Blue Moon," "Amapola," "It Had to Be You," "Get Me to the Church on Time."  These all in one day!  There were so many I decided to try to capture what triggered a song coming into my head.

                             (Continued Tomorrow)

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "Do Not Go Gentle" (about the other night's post)

       I had memorized it previously but needed to refresh for sure.  I always think it will take only one recording for a poem performance.  Hah!  Screw a word.  Do over.  Next time, what was that awful noise during playback?  My grandson Micah had replugged in the ballclock I have behind me.  Steel balls go rattling down a slide on the hour!  Something made me a little uneasy during the next take, but I thought it had gone OK.  "Do not go gentle..." and "Rage, rage..." alternate as final lines of each successive stanza.   Had done two "Do not go gentles" in a row!  Fussing with the hardly professional lighting and look of things takes time too.  Thought the last take had made it.  Seemed good on replay.  Haven't had the courage to watch since.

       (See this page about the villanelle form Dylan Thomas chose, plus the poem itself.)   

"All the troubles you have will pass quickly."

        How artful the wording, Fortune Cookie.  If you had said, "The troubles you have will pass," one might have taken it as a harmless bit of encouragement.  With "All" it's the whole sum of troubles, and with "quickly" not just gone, but "snap of the finger."

       Yes, and the word "pass":  a euphemism for "die"?  Especially with "quickly."  Nice touch, Fortune Cookie.  And even if we didn't think we had too many troubles, we DO, you say, F. C., and LOTS of them,  maybe just the burden of LIVING?  It'll be gone, "Don't you worry."

       I am amused, and actually a little relieved.  I can feel the weight lifting already.

       That's the way it should be.

       You nailed it, Fortune Cookie, you nailed it.

                          "All the troubles you have will pass quickly."

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

       In honor of and thanks for Tom Hollander's wonderful performance as Dylan Thomas in tonight's airing of "A Poet in New York" on BBC America.

"Bedspread" vs. "Comforter"

       Making the bed the other day, I wondered again what to call the thing on top.  I asked Connie.  She thought either word would do.  My dictionaries tell me that the kind of distinction I was reaching for may actually exist, the cloth covering for a bed  being adequately called a "bedspread," whereas the layered pieces of cloth with some kind of filling, like down, in between is apparently more accurately called a "comforter," which sounds reasonable to me.

       I guess either item could have a decorative as well as protective function for the bedclothes beneath, and that's OK with me.  But I guess too I've always felt I'm doing something a bit more for the bed (and possibly the inhabitants of said bed) with the "comforter" we have than if it were a "bedspread."

"Re-up"

       I spontaneously (and thoughtlessly) said this when speaking to the executive director of our temple about our having rejoined the temple later than usual this year.  Why I should care whether it was an untoward word or not since this makes the 45th year in a row that we are members, I don't know!

       But I did wonder afterward whether it was really in the dictionary.  Yes, it was.  After my two years of service in the Korean thing, old sergeants asked me, "Are you going to re-up?"  "Why sign up for an organization in which I see no foreseeable future?" I would say.

       An informal military word begun early 20th century, "re-enlist"; now, also wider applications.  The Oxford English Dictionary designates it U.S. Slang.  Heaven forbid anyone British should use it! 

      

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "LATEXTRA"

       A couple of the great young female journalists who made the LATEXTRA section sing (see Friday) are Nita Lelyveld and Kate Linthicum.  The kind of living stories of people in L.A. they told I don't want squeezed out of the renewed California section the Times is starting up.

       We need the down-to-earth identifiable reality of those stories for the reporters to grab ahold of and us readers to sink our hearts into.  I suggest reading this Judy Woodruff piece to get my view but from a true reporter; it's called "The News in Our Backyard."

       Yes, "California" shows promise with its widening scope to include heretofore undercovered, important regional and state-wide news.  Just leave room for the the soul of L.A. so we can recognize ourselves.
      

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "Composed"

       Doing last Monday's post reminded me of my Dad's favorite poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling, which begins:


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;


       If you can meet this and the good further prescriptions Kipling makes, then you too can "have the world and everything that's in it," and (skirting by the actual last line that challenged me)

And - which is more - you'll be composed, my son!


Find the poem here.

LATEXTRA Gone! Read All About It!

       A section of the L.A. Times is gone as of this week.  I rhapsodized over it a couple of years ago.  It was called LATEXTRA, and it would give more late-breaking news than the Front section could.   A response to television's and the Internet's timeliness.

       I loved that the "E" was red and served both words, which were butted up against each other like a website or emailaddress on your digital device.

       But more important, the section also sent fresh Metro reporters, mostly female, out to find human interest stories in L.A.  It got to be my favorite section; I'd read it first, as a kind of secret vice--interesting, well-written, local. . .articles done with a reporter's personal passion.  We need that to keep us grounded!

       I'm nostalgic for LATEXTRA. . .already.

I'm going to get a TSHATSHKE

       The Yiddish Book Center wants help, and it's hard to resist a four page letter that is packed with good reasons to send along some gelt.

       Can a guy interested in language turn down an outfit that's rescuing one?  Rescuing books themselves written in it, scanning those books for online perpetuity,  teaching the language to youngsters, translating these books into English for those who can't read Yiddish.

       Yes, it isn't only that they're rescuing a language, but my grandparents spoke it in my hearing, my parents spoke it somewhat, I know a few words, and some Yiddish is even English now (gelt).  It's too close to home not to help.

       Besides, I get a tshatshke (tchotchke), a commemorative Yiddish Kitchen Magnet, and it's useful! 

So Be Warned, Everybody

Click on comic to enlarge.

                                      theism                belief in deity

                                      a theism             belief in no deity

                                      a gnosticism      not knowing


                                    
 (non sequitur     not following)     
                                                
                                                       The official site for Non Sequitur is here.

A Promising Use of iPhone Language Capability

       Last Sunday's New York Times tells how iPhone's Siri is helping an autistic boy with communication problems.  Here's a sample exchange the boy's Mom overheard between 13 year old Gus and the female voice of Siri:

Gus:  "You're a really nice computer."
Siri:   "It's nice to be appreciated."
Gus:  "You are always asking if you can help me.  Is there anything you want?"
Siri:   "Thank you, but I have very few wants."

       Siri is endlessly patient, non-judgmental, has a sense of humor, and can even fend off naughty speech aimed at her:  "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

       Gus's Mom says this is carrying over to longer exchanges with adults than Gus has ever had.  The article by Judith Newman is "To Siri, With Love," and you can find it here.

"Composed"

       Frank Gehry has a new building in Paris, and a critic yesterday described it as "eager to look...composed."

       It made me think of the wonderful malleability of language.  "Composed."  You start with "put" or "placed" (posed) and "together" (com), and you can end up with

            
"To make or create by putting together parts or elements.  To create or produce (a literary or musical piece).   To arrange aesthetically or artistically.  To make (oneself) calm or tranquil.  To arrange or set (type or matter to be printed)."  (AHD)


All this from "put together." 

       In  a letter recently to a relative about a dear cousin who died, I could say, "Some have their mental makeup with them so completely till the end. . .and Shirley was able to compose herself and compose indeed her life. . .to the end."
 


  
 

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "My Cup Runneth Over"

       The Wednesday blog this week suggested keeping "my cup runneth over," rather than translating simply to get rid of "eth" endings, marked outmoded, OLD, "nobody speaks that way any more."

       A thought one might ponder is, does anybody have trouble understanding what "runneth" means?  Another is, what does "overflow" do to clarify/enhance the understanding or appreciation of the line?  or "runs over," "is running over," or other similar wording, compared with the time-honored and still-accessible "runneth"?

       The Hebrew itself offers no particular help, it being a verb that suggests "saturation."  So "full" might suffice too or even my rather snarkily suggested "filled to the brim."  Any variation on "overflows" or "runs over" is, perhaps, more an attempt to render the King James translation than the necessary literal meaning of the Hebrew.
       

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "Apotheosis" and "Anathema"

       In last Sunday's post on "The Giving Tree," I surprised myself a little by those two big words at the close of it.  The surprise was, I guess, that I don't think of someone as moving into big words when emotions are aroused, usually more simple and direct language, maybe images or metaphors, but not large Greek and Latin words, which are often abstract.  And I was angry there.

       But only a "little" surprised because I am an academic (who learned those 365 words when a freshman in college--see post of October 2, 2014) and am wont to move into vocabulary mode as well.

       Struck by words.  It's a little like being electrocuted by lightning.


       (Succinctly:  "apotheosis"--deification
                               "anathema"--formally, ecclesiastically banned)

      

END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS: "Embed"

       Monday's post featured "embed," "em" being a form of "in," "n"s are sometimes easier to pronounce as "m"s; hence the spelling gets changed due to the mouth and tongue "asking" for it.  Here the "b" sound influences--it's a "two-lip"  sound; "n" is a tip-of-tongue-on-gumridge sound, while "m" is a two-lipper like "b"; "embed" is easier to say than "enbed."

      "Bed" is simple but has lots of uses, as in "flower bed," a post "embedded" in concrete; the reporter was an "EMbed" (changing from verb to noun with accent shifting to front syllable).

       DOES the use of "embedded" for Iraq reporters increase the likelihood or popularity of using "embed" for "tucking" files into a blog?

       Or perhaps I shoulda just stood "embed."
      

A Confusion of Sayings

       I first thought the sign on the store window had distorted a famous line from a poem by John Milton.
   

       The Milton line:  "They also serve who only stand and wait."

       But then there's a traditional proverb:   "Everything comes to he who waits."

       The actual line on a "Jamba Juice" store window?  "Good things come to those who juice."


       Well, in any case, the company has remedied the gender discrimination.

"My Cup Runneth Over"

       Conversation in the car:

Don:  What's that sound?  Kind of a high sound.
Connie:  My cups hitting each other.
Don:  Oh.  My cups tinkleth over.
Connie:  (Chuckle.)
Don:  Why did they change that!
Connie:  What?
Don:  "My cup runneth over."
Connie:  Oh.
Don:  From the 23rd Psalm.  They had to modernize it, didn't they?
Connie:  What's the modern version?
Don:  I don't remember.  "My cup's filled to the brim."
Both:  (Chuckling)
Don:  That does sound awful.  What's wrong with keeping those wonderful translations from the King James version?!      

Finding it on the "Rundown"

       The anchors at PBS make me salivate for a story that didn't get into the newscast.  All I have to do is "find it on the Rundown."   But this means getting up > going to the computer > finding PBS.org > the Newshour > the story.   The  ANCHORS can go after an hour's work and RELAX, but I have to rouse myself and "find it on the Rundown."

       If it was interesting enough, PUT IT ON THE DARN NEWSCAST!  Don't tantalize me when you and I both need a change from news anyway, maybe some entertainment?  Maybe you and I could meet outside ISIS and Congress and Ebola and drown our sorrows in a good drink!

       The idea of "Rundown" evokes too much energy at this time of night.  I don't think I can even "Walkover" to the "Rundown."

      

"Embed"

       I must now send my videos up to Youtube to receive a code; otherwise, I can't "embed" them on my blog such that smartphones can also see them.

       Until I learned this the other day, "embed" mostly meant to me a journalist staying with and following a military unit in Iraq. 

       Being embedded, I suppose, can be a tight fit or a cozy one depending on the circumstances; in any case a close one, for sure. 

       I found I could manipulate code and insert it in my blog without difficulty; "embed" is a pretty good word--the new code is tucked right in there midst other text and symbols--a foreign element--a video--among other text and instructions.  

       It worked!  I saw a video on my iPhone that had been a blank space before!

      

Oi, "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein

       Teaching performance of children's literature to budding teachers for two or three years, I read and re-read this story, hoping to find something different each time, but it always said, "It's all right to take and keep taking, and you never have to give back."

       I once heard "The Giving Tree" used as the backbone of a Jewish Friday service, parts of the story alternating with parts of the service.  In a discussion afterward,  all in the room tacitly accepted that this was a quality story, and my regret to this day is that I did not speak up to express my dismay and anger.  Was the tree's endless giving anything less than the apotheosis of being a "Jewish mother"?  Was the boy's total selfishness anything less than anathema in a Jewish religious setting!! 

 

     

Accounting for Attractions, Relationships, Partings

       A much anticipated TV series called "The Affair" begins tomorrow night on Showtime.  Apparently it's about two married couples who don't know one another, but one member of each couple has an affair with the other.

       A psychologist was hired as consultant to the series, and a co-writer paraphrased a principal lesson the psychologist provided the show's writing team:  "[I]nfidelity is a lot more about who you are than about the person you're with."

       For some reason, this prompted me to conjure a formulation imperfectly connected and in another situation:  "If you're single, having a relationship is an infidelity to who you are as an individual."

"Cheek by Jowl"

       One of the pleasures of writing is finding words coming forth from your finger tips that you had either never used before or very seldom.  In the case of "cheek by jowl" in yesterday's post, I wasn't even sure of the first word in the expression.  I started putting down "teeth by jowl."  Maybe I used teeth because I'm talking about food, but maybe, I just so seldom use the phrase (or see it used), it wasn't until I looked it up that I found cheek showing up more regularly and pretty much the main choice.

       It's a colorful expression and a perfect fit.  When you're surprised at words' appearance that are  yet an exact characterization of what you observed, only gratefulness and delight are in order.

 

Chicken "Pop Eye"

       Right NEXT to one another at eye level in the freezer window at Ralph's Grocery Store while I was shopping yesterday:


                             "Chicken Pot Pie"   "Chicken Pad Thai"


About as American a dish as you can get, cheek by jowl with about as Thai a dish as you can get.

"Pitcher" by Robert Francis

       It's all over for the Dodgers.  The touted "Freeway World Series" between the Angels and Dodgers is a smirk in the eye of the baseball gods.   Three and out, four and out for the two respectively, in a five game series.

       My own analysis?  Vaunted Pitcher Kershaw for the Dodgers could have used a little more of what 2nd ranked pitcher Greinke of the Dodgers evidences at a higher level still:  the "art" of pitching.

       Robert Francis says it about as well as anyone I know:

     
Pitcher
 by Robert Francis

His art is eccentricity, his aim                                                      How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,

His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.

Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.

Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway

       There's always a certain air of excitement when we leave friends in Santa Monica, get on the 10 Freeway and see a sign announcing something challenging, adventurous, fundamentally American.  This is how it looks:


Coming closer, I glimpse more clearly the words that turn me on, and make me smile:

We've just put the Pacific behind us; the 10 will take us all the way there, to the Atlantic.  I'm ready to explore, my sense of discovery aroused.  So's my wife's I hope, because we're GOING, and the motor seems to gun itself!

OK, OK, so in a couple of miles , we take a left turn, and the 405 shoots North to the San Fernando Valley.  My great reverse traverse of American vastness West to East has been cut unmercifully short!

But we can still see our Santa Monica friends again, AND...renew the glorious stimulus of this imagined adventure.  It begins HERE!

An Important Scrap of Paper

Please click on comic to enlarge

       I so identify with him.  I keep a daily 3" x 5" scrap of paper with my "list" for that day "to do."  I'm lost without it.  Sometimes it escapes to the "other" pocket.  Sometimes I leave it next to the phone where I've been calling.  Sometimes I've pulled it out of my tennis shorts while reaching for a Kleenex and never seen it again.  I've changed clothes and forgotten to shift it to a new pair of pants.

       I'm lost without it...Sometimes, I remember what it was I haven't done yet, and do it.  Or more often, spend endless time looking for it and when I find it, find I've done everything on it already.  What a waste!  But nevertheless, I'm VERY relieved I found that scrap of paper!  

"Amen"

       A word uttered often during the High Holidays, just completed.  "Amen" is a word that takes one back to an ancient tongue, the language of origin of the Jewish people.

       Tracing a not totally unfamiliar course into the past, the American Heritage Dictionary follows the word from Middle English to Old English to Latin to Greek to Hebrew "amen, certainly, verily."  The OED adds "from base 'mn be firm, be certain."

       But of the different possible translations, including "truly" and "so be it," I think I like best what I remember Rabbi Don Goor once using:  "May it be so."  That has about it for me humility as well as resolve.
      

A Tale of Two Rabbis

       I recently heard a sermon.  The  conclusion I could endorse and accept, but I had no idea how the rabbi got to it.   The body of the sermon seemed to be heading in (an)other direction(s) entirely.   I was puzzled and dizzy with the twists the sermon took down dark alleyways, making sharp turns at high speed, endangering "life and limb" of those the rabbi had taken along for the ride.

       In other respects I thought this rabbi showed clear signs of being a good, reliable congregational rabbi.

       When we were first married, Connie and I heard great sermons for several months of a rabbi near our home in N.Y.C.   He gave literate, thoughtful. well constructed sermons every week, with point and value, smiles and tears, beautiful imagery,  colorful examples, inspiring anecdotes.  The congregation fired him, and I was told, to my astonishment, that's ALL he had time for each week:   "No, I'm sorry, the rabbi is writing his sermon."  He was never available for any needs of his congregants.

Journalistic Conundrum

       Concert honoring John Williams, music-maker extraordinaire.  At the end of the review:


                    "Williams, who is a vigorous 82, has been                                                         lauded for ages.  More celebrations are                                          evitable."


       I made the proofreader's error and figured the word was "inevitable," then...read what was actually there.  Did you fall for the phantom word?  Then see and self-correct while laughing at the mistake in print?  I did.

       But did you wonder whether it was, in fact, a word?  Yes, it is.  This word means "avoidable."

      Now does the context tell you that the intended word was the one that means "unavoidable" (still "vigorous" at "82") or the word we see in print (after all he's been "lauded for ages")? 

       (Also, another example of a word that spell-check would never have questioned.  It's in the dictionary.)

        

I Ran Away with Language, Staying Right at Home

       Every good long-term habit I've had has been a daily practice pertaining to language.

       *  V-mails I wrote to my older brother Dick during World War II, blue, light-weight paper, a single thin sheet folded.  Mailed weekly, but I wrote daily and fit the meager things I had to report in my early teens into seven carefully printed entries.  Through North Africa, Italy, and into the South Pacific Dick went.  Two, three years, one packed page a week from me.

       *  Learning  one new word a day for meaning and one for pronunciation my first year of college, 365 days.  Creating a sentence in which the new word could be used and reviewing the word from yesterday and the week preceding.

       *  Now this blog, 135 word limit, almost two years of daily posts.

      

His Words and Voice Echo Still

       Watching and listening to the Ken Burns work on the Roosevelts, I certainly recalled those twelve years of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency from 1933 to FDR's death in 1945.  Well, I was three when he became president, 15 when he died.

       It was a period when somebody who found he was interested in speech could hear good speeches--Roosevelt, Churchill--and hear them well spoken.  And somebody interested in radio could hear in Roosevelt's fireside chats a man who knew that radio spoke to one or two, not millions.

       And with FDR--that cultured, Eastern accent, just natural to him, and clear and self-confident and full of noblesse oblige as any average Midwesterner might take pleasure in looking up to--the whole image of a President, the only one you'd ever known, was there complete.

Talmudically Speaking

       We were studying with our former senior rabbi, returned from Israel to be with us during the High Holidays.   The rabbi noted in a Talmudic passage the three books that are opened on Rosh Hashanah, "one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate."

       The rabbi asked us which category we thought we were in.  All of us said "intermediate."   But after we read,  discussed, and parsed the whole passage almost word for word for some time, I offered up that I now felt "thoroughly intermediate."

More Speculating French vs. English

       Cases in point:


              English--"I am five years old."
              French--"J'ai cinq ans."  ["I have five years."]

There is a sense of accumulation in the French.  "I've lived those, and they're mine."  In the English, "This is how far I've progressed in my age; that's what I am, no more."

              English--"I am angry."
              French--"Je me fache."  ["I anger myself."]

"I am angry" is feeling I am in; therefore, who knows how long it could last?  "Je me fache," the anger is an action of mine; I could stop it at any time--or make it go on.


       Does the French suggest the speaker is more at the center of an ongoing life and in control than the English speaker, who is less assertive and ego-centered, but perhaps also more at sea?  (Compare posts of August 27 & 28, 2014.)

THAT Movie would be VERY Brightly Lit

       When Connie and I go to the Laemmle movie theatre on Ventura Blvd. in the San Fernando Valley, we hand over our tickets and are told our movie is to the right or to the left.  Tonight we turned left and were met as usual with overhead signs so we could find our movie's name and theater number.  This was the scene:

click on image to enlarge

       I don't know how many times I've been duped by the arrows and the brightest words visible to think one of the movies playing tonight was "RESTROOMS & WATER."

iPhone and I: Creative Mishearing

       My own hearing has been gradually deteriorating for, I suppose 15 years, or more, but I still struggle with myself and others (especially others), resisting getting hearing aids even if, as my son says, I should think of it as "glasses for the ears."

       But I've got someone (something?) that's right up there with me in the hearing department.

       David and I were texting .  I messaged him something I knew he would want to know at a timely moment.  He texted me back "Thanks."  Then here's what I spoke into iPhone's microphone:
 

                                    "Welcome.  Lots to talk about."
 

And this is the text I got back which iPhone wanted to send:


                                         "Welcome to Taco Bell."


Not bad, iPhone, I could have come up with that one myself. 

"Immunity Leads to Impunity"

       Sometimes what seems to be a catch phrase captures exactly what needs to be said in a memorable form.  That happened tonight on the PBS NewsHour.

       Commentators were asked to evaluate the work of resigning Attorney General Eric Holder, and Mark Shields averred that it was a failure not to make Wall Street CEOs personally accountable for the disaster they brought on.  Fines, yes.  But people lost life savings, the country was brought to its knees, and no jail time for anyone.  He ended his assessment by saying "Immunity leads to Impunity."

       If no investigation and calling to account takes place of the ones who had the power and authority in the financial industry, CEOs conclude that there's no punishment for careless, greedy, and precipitously risky decision-making...and there will be a next-time.

Once Again "The Shehecheyanu"

Nice to repeat this post of November 23, 2013 at another happy time, Rosh Hashanah:

  
       There's a nice blessing said at the beginning of happy occasions in Judaism; it's from the Talmud, and it'll be said next Wednesday on the first night of Chanukah.
   
       The blessing starts with the usual "Praised be Thou, O Lord, our God" and then gives the reason for the blessing:

                "Who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us
                                          to reach this season. "

It feels good to say because it expresses thanks for being allowed to arrive at a joyful moment.

       It also helps that the Hebrew language affords such a rhythmic and rhymed combination of syllables to say those words:

            sheHECHeyanu, viKEYamanu, viHIGeyanu, lazMAN haZEH.

There's a built-in affirmation in the very roll of the utterance.
                                      Listen here.

Texting and the World Meet

       I was texting my son that this Friday our former senior rabbi, now retired and living in Israel, and our new senior rabbi for the past year, will be leading a service together and talking about the challenges facing Israel.

       When my oral words came down into text, the word(s) I saw were "is real"  I didn't and don't know whether to put a period at the end of that sentence or, seems just as likely, a question mark.

       The people, the land, the nation, Israel.  Its fellow travelers, livers, co-occupants, contenders, Palestinians.  Partial owners all.  

       is real?   is real.

      

Montanans Revisited

       Re my post "Words, Sounds, Meaning" of Monday, September 8th, 2014, I told of two Montanans who had similar character traits and that all the words I could think of to describe them had "sta" in them, an Indo-European root meaning "stand," and these were both "stand-up" folks in many ways.

       The other day I talked with one of those two Montanans and his wife, mentioned the post and sent it to them.  The wife especially agreed that the words definitely applied but then informed me those qualities also applied to the other part of his (and her) heritage, Scottish.

       This astonished me when I realized the other Montanan I knew was ALSO Scottish in background.  Have to rethink this.  Are these Montanan or Scottish characteristics, or BOTH?  But the "sta" words do apply.

Where are the Proofreaders and Editors of Yore?

       Some sentences from a Sunday, September 21, 2014, article on classical music in the L.A.Times Calendar section:


       *   "She [pianist Yuja Wang] played Prokofiev's Second Piano Concert."

       *   "The Symphonie Fantastique...was irresistible joyous."

       *   "The Prokofiev concerto [conducted by Bringuier] had an entirely different character than the heavier one [conductor] Dudamel made last year in Caracas..."

       I'm missing the actual editor, copyreader, anyone! to help catch the mistakes in the writing above.  The  writer will do the writer's best but can't catch everything in the tight time-frame journalistic deadlines bring to bear.

       *     No final "o" on "Concerto."

       *     It's a "bly" ending not a "ble" ending in the second example.  And no spell-check would catch either of these first two because in both cases what's on the page is an acceptable (but different) WORD.

       *     The third instance, what gets me is the word "made."  What's going on with the grammar and sense here.  What did Dudamel make, a performance, a recording, a character?  Someone should have caught and clarified this.

       The digital age is wonderful and promising, but it can't fill the human's place in every instance.

The Man Who Preserved a Language

TEACHER AT HEART

       A belated tribute to Richard Dauenhauer who was a force in saving the Alaskan language of Tlingit.  Dauenhauer was a linguist, anthropologist, and former Alaska poet laureate.  The photo shows him speaking in 2013.

       "Dauenhauer, 72, made recording, transcribing and advocating for the Tlingit language his life's work.  He trained a cadre of teachers and translators to continue his efforts.  He sought not just to revive the fast-disappearing  tongue, largely relegated  to the thoughts of a few surviving tribal elders, but to win acceptance for its use."
                   from Jill Leovy's obituary in the Los Angeles Times of Sunday, August 24, 2014

    

"pic Q you a" language

       Speech recognition sometimes shows you OTHER words that MATCH EXACTLY the sounds you gave it.  Example:   I said "will erase," and iPhone texted "Willy race."

       Yesterday, I said "be in touch with us," and it came back "be in Taitsch with us."  I thought that was funny, and why the capital T?  iPhone knew, as I didn't, that "Taitsch House" was a beautiful restored house in Fredericksburg, Texas.  I repeated the word, and iPhone gave me back "touch."   Slight differentiations in pronunciation or energy can do that.

       In messaging my son David about the tremendously effective, yet sometimes "peculiar" ways of speech recognition, the text came up "pic Q you a" which is funny but not far off in sound!

       Since I've always hovered between speech and writing, I'm puzzled and fascinated with this.    

Sometimes Mottoes Give us Guidance

       There is a neat bit of wisdom in my "Life's Little Instruction Calendar" today.  Only I wondered if younger folk might not be familiar with the reference made in it.

       Then I also came across a Fortune Cookie lurking on my dresser.  IT said:


                    We must always have old memories and young hopes.


That sounded neat to me too.

       So here's my "old memory" that informs today's "instruction":  When you used to have to cook oatmeal instead of just heating it up, you could ruin it if you made it the wrong way.

       And here's the "instruction":


                    Life is like cooking oatmeal.  If you don't keep stirring it, it                         gets lumpy.


I fully intend to retain my young hopes on this my wife's birthday and keep "stirring it up" for both of us.  

"Kayam," "Stand," "Stay"

       I wrote on September 8th and 9th about "exist" as meaning "standing out" by derivation.  My mind plays with the Hebrew prayer on awakening called "Modeh Ani" ("I acknowledge, thank").
 
       The prayer speaks of God as "chai v'kayam" ("living and existing, enduring").  Like "exist," "kayam" comes from a root "koom," meaning "stand."  Recall that numerous "st" words with that root "stand" also have a sense of "staying," of endurance about them.  The Hebrew/Aramaic word "kayam" is of exactly the same breed.
      
       We suppose God to "live" as one supposes the soul to "live," vital but totally intangible, without physical presence, manifestation.  But the world God has created, the world that persists, which we meet each day, that is existence, "standing forth," invoking us to engage.

Tongue Twister Alert

       Bet you can't say the following correctly five times fast:


                            "a short social sharing site"

Language on Your Back

       Reading about language today made me recall Jonathan Swift and "Gulliver's Travels" in the land of Laputa.

       Gulliver found that professors there abolished all words, saving breath, lungs, and time.  Why?   "[S]ince words are only names for things," people would carry things with them such as "were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on."

       The more you had to say, the more you carried.  Gulliver writes he'd often seen two Laputans "sinking under the weight of their packs...who when they met in the streets would lay down their loads, open their sacks and hold conversation for an hour together; then... help each other to resume their burthens, and take their leave."

       In the interest of health and brevity, I can't see why we don't abolish all words here too. 

       

       

Is a Preposition Something I can End a Sentence with?

       Most of us have heard of this one.  I think it was Winston Churchill who mocked the proscription by saying "A preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which I will not put."

       I learned today that the proposed rule was initially advocated by l7th century British Poet Laureate John Dryden.  English was coming into its own as a language by this time, and Dryden thought it needed regularity, rules.  He believed that following Latin was the correct path, and Latin did not let a preposition end a sentence.

       The rule-makers had noble goals but were not to win out, which, some think, may be one reason English has become as popular a language as it is. 

        I discovered this while at the online website "The World in Words."

Sometimes You Have to Hear Yourself

Click on Dilbert Strip to Enlarge

You can find "Dilbert" by Scott Adams at this address.

Opting Out of Personalized Ads, 2

       On Saturday, August 30th, I made my feelings known about Personalized Ads.  One of the things I complained about was the linguistic obfuscation used by the purveyors of these ads to subvert the  choice we have of "opting out."   Here's an example of such language:


       "One more thing. The only way we know that youre opted out is to deposit a special 'opt out' cookie. With current internet technology, thats really the only way for us to know not to collect data. (And again, its the same approach others use as well.) So, if you look at your cookies, you will still see one from us. Please dont delete it or we wont know not to collect data any longer."   (Sic)


       How many of us have looked at our "cookies" lately?  And which cookie are they talking about?   The final sentence has at least a triple if not quadruple negative in it; what is it saying?  This is scandalously purposeful language intended to have you and me back off feeling stupid and scared of doing anything!  (The five missing apostrophes are just an additional irritant.)

       I went ahead and clicked that "opt out" button anyway, and it did it.  No more personalized ads sent to me by "My Buys."  But it's like killing a hydra-headed monster.  A personalized ad came yesterday.  There'll be one from another source tomorrow.  Find the little blue triangular icon in a corner of the ad and click on it.  It's the first step toward privacy and sanity.

      


       



       

"Severely Adored"

Click on comic to enlarge

Don't think I've ever seen these two words together before.   Brilliant, provocative, evocative--words, drawings, location all well matched.  Find these guys' cartoon website here.

Would iPhone Know Samsung's name?

       I love using iPhone's speech recognition capabilities to accelerate the texting process.  Besides I'm an old speech and radio kind of guy; put a mike in front of me, and I'll respond.

       I was messaging with David about Apple's smart phone compared to Samsung's, and when I said "Samsung" into the microphone, I wondered if iPhone might mistranslate it on purpose.  It came back "sam's song," which I thought was kind of nice; so I let it be sent.

       But then I wondered, could it actually get it right?  I pronounced it more carefully, and it came back perfect,  correctly spelled; however, it was underlined, which meant iPhone wasn't sure and gave me two more in case.  The alternates were "Sam soon" and "Sam's soon."

       I rejected them, but nodded approvingly at iPhone's thoroughness.

Sonic Multipliers

       Alliteration in poetry is sound repetition in nearby words that calls attention to those words and makes associations between them.  Such connections also occur in everyday speaking.

       On one PBS NewsHour story about ISIS, several guests were interviewed.   I heard the following in words close to one another:

1. "fierce" and "fearsome":  two different roots [ferus] "wild" and [faer] "fear" but words with sounds that mimicked one another and reenforced each other's meaning;

2.  "contain" and "continue":   both words with the same roots [con] "with" and [tien] "hold," meaning "hold together," an echo going back and forth between them;

3.  "bomb" and "Obama":  here is maybe the most potent sonic connection, inevitably moving the words toward one another in our minds as almost synonymous.

       Similar sounds in words link and create a multiplier effect.
      

"Exist," "Ecstasy"

       Words that begin with "sta" (basic derivational meaning "stand," as noted yesterday) are not the only words that employ that root.

       "Exist" and "ecstasy" are two that fascinate me.  The first syllable in both words means "out." The "st" part of both words is the "stand."  To "exist" is to "stand out" by derivation.  And to be "ecstatic" is to "stand outside" or be "beside" oneself, the state of ecstasy.

       Just playing with the concrete images embedded in even the most potentially philosophical and spiritual of words, is the great joy and practicality of tracing words to their tangible, touchable, palpable, sensory, bodily beginnings.

Words, Sounds, Meaning

       What makes a Montanan?   I've only known two, but for a goodly number of years, and they have similarities.  I began to wonder how I would characterize them:

          "sturdy,"    "stalwart,"     "steady,"    "stable,"    "staunch"

I realized I was using words that all began the same way.  Was this an accident?  The words seemed appropriate, and they were the first ones that came to my mind.

       Then I recalled that in another context entirely I had learned the three-letter Indo-European  root "sta" stood behind a huge host of words, all with the basic meaning "stand," these words among them.

       These men, not known for lying or sitting around, do stand; they follow standards, and they are persistent.  I wonder if even the "sta" sounds and the way we utter them suggest staying qualities.

            

"a poem...makes you shut up."

       Poet Galway Kinnell was once introduced at a poetry reading as "a living American poet."  Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets Toi Derricotte notes how funny but also how sad this is, indicating "the distance between most Americans and poetry."

       But later in a letter written to "Friend(s) of Poetry," Derricotte mentions a 4th grader who had been writing poems for several days with a group of students in a class she taught, who, when asked, "So what is a poem?"  replied, "I don't know what a poem is, but it makes you shut up."

       "Living" poems (whether the poet be dead or alive), that's what they do--make us shut up, in realization of a truth we had not fully known until that moment.

Names: A Wonderful Mouthful

       Tennis players come from all over the world these days to compete, and the names can be a challenge.  In the women's doubles final today at the U.S. Open,


       Martina Hingis and Flavia Pennetta played Ekaterina Makarova          and Elena Vesnina who were winners over Kimiko Date-Krumm              and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.


       In that connection, Kei Nishikori today won a men's singles semifinal.  When Kei's father was asked how his son was given the first name Kei [kay], the reply was that he thought the name was pronounceable, and both parents wanted their son to be a citizen of the world.  A couple American broadcasters admitted Kei's English was far better than their Japanese.                              

Reading Is ALWAYS an Interactive Process

       One of the problems with words that "crawl" beneath the main content on a CNN screen is how distracting they can be.

       Another problem I found yesterday is that words coming into view parts-of-words at a time means we perforce make a guess as to the remainder of the word, and when the overall news about the Islamic State has centered on horrendous acts, interesting things can happen.

       Consider these sentences yesterday, first what I THOUGHT I would read, second, in parentheses, the actual word(s):


"Store owners who don't close during times of prayer are beHEADED (beaten)."

"man may have fled U.S., joined terror group and could be beHEADED (behind the group's social media campaign.)"


       BeHEAD (Believe me), everything influences the way we read.

"Dingy," "Dinghy," and a Ring-a-Ding-Ding!

     
       I see the word "dingy" and wonder how we know how to pronounce it, especially when the word "dinghy" is pronounced [DING-ee].  Why shouldn't "dingy" be pronounced [DING-ee], or, both words [DIN-jee]?

       "Dinghy" is from Hindi and means a little boat.  The OED says it's pronounced [DING-ghee] in Britain, spelled with "gh" in English (no "h" in the Indian word) to indicate the "g" is hard.  I ask why?  "gh" could be [f] as in "rough," in which case [DIN-fee]; or silent as in "doughy," in which case [DIN-ee]. 

       "Dingy" means dirty, and the origin is either "unknown" (my preferred one) or related to "dung."  But how do I know this is pronounced [DIN-jee] and not [DING-ee] as with "thingy" or "slangy" or, one might repeat, "dinghy"?     

        

Just Saying. . .

       Celebrities' smart phone photos sent to the "cloud" were being hacked and put on websites this week.   Digital security experts tell us don't use easily discovered words or names from your life as passwords or "security check" words.  Don't use any word in a dictionary as a password.  Computerized "password sniffers" can go through millions of words in no time and grab a word you're using.

       So how many of us will buy and use a password creator and storer that manufactures meaningless mixtures of numbers, letters, etc., for each password we need, to defy code breakers?

       Those of us who can't remember passwords in the first place, how likely are we to remember at some point what the "key" is to the password creator-storer, or where the device is itself?

Expression Can Be Dangerous

The pause at the stoplight gave me just time enough to catch this on the car ahead of me.  The fact that I've tried to catch myself on the iPhone camera lately in my own car humming, moving to the beat, and just caught up in the joy of the music, has nothing to do with the fact that I LOVE this bumper sticker!

Both Thumbs Typing

click on comic  to enlarge

The "Zits" website can be found here.

Free Writing (a little post-edited)

       So your time starts now, Mr. Don, no going back, no erasing, just hold your editor, your censor, your "cut it, it's not right, it's no good, you can't say that."  So let's just get on with the mind "whorl," no, "whirl," no, "worl."  Small words that speak to each other like frere jacques, and Ferrer Mel and Ferrer Federer, yes Federer was playing Ferrer the other day at the U.S. Open and all you could hear was FEHR-er and FEHD-er-er and they sounded almost exactly alike, especially since "r" and "d" are produced similarly.  Things that sound alike, things that sound all right, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout, and that's my free write tonight.   

Opting Out of Personalized Ads

       We can opt out of receiving on our computing devices ads that are aimed exactly at each of us individually. 

       Many different sources provide these personalized ads--you can't opt out of all personalized ads at once. 

       To opt out, you read and re-read obscure words and sentences.  They want to make you feel like a dummy so you'll just forget about opting out.  Then they want you to feel like a loser:  "Remember, you'll still get ads anyway, just not ones tailored for you."

       When you see an ad appear suddenly for a kind of thing you maybe just bought online yesterday, go to the corner of the ad, click on the tiny icon, have a little patience, and you'll be free of at least one source.       

     

In the Palm of Your Hand

       As I lie here reading text messages and emails on my iPhone, I realize this is the twenty-first century version of palm reading.

"I Call Myself" / "I Am" / "I Am Called," Part 3

       What appeals to me most of all is what Jack Gariss used to say to identify himself on his KPFK Pacifica program:  "I am called Jack Gariss."  Neither the assertion of an identity upon oneself nor the merging of oneself with an identity, but rather, the acceptance of a temporary designation in a much larger design.  This is how the world addresses me.  It's no more who I am than any word constitutes what it designates; a mere happenstance sign that others use to point me out.

       Neither do I call myself this.  Someone else gave me that first name, someones else, my surname, but I don't call myself this except as an echo of being spoken to.  It's all a makeshift of my passage.  When I rejoin the whole, this particularity will pass with me, for the I and the All ultimately are not to be distinguished.  "I am called Jack Gariss, but how little that matters in the sum of things."

       I am called Don, but like Jack, I shall be moving on.

"I Call Myself" / "I Am" / "I Am Called," Part 2

       If the name is not a part of my essence or being but something I call myself (as with French), it's a moniker, a label, a "handle" as Texans might say, something to get ahold of me by; without it, I'm not a graspable package.  In other terms, there's no pigeon hole for me, no "address" to find me, to see me home, to send me a message.  So let's agree that you'll call me by this name, and everything'll be all right; the assertive ego staking its claim in the world.

       So what of the "is of identity" (as with English)?  "I am Jake."  "I'm Hillary Rodham Clinton."  "I'm Don."

       Then that's who I am; that's my substance.  Give me a "title," whether first or last or maiden name or all together, and that's the core of me.  Without the name I am nothing.  A pretty flimsy ego if it rests on simply and only that which is exterior to me yet is supposed to individuate and particularize me.

       And since so much rests on my name, the fate of my very self, both it and I are more "fragile" phenomena in English than in French.  

"I Call Myself" / "I Am" / "I Am Called," Part 1

       "Je m'appelle Don."  I am back in high school French class.  The French way of saying your name.  Rather than the English "I am..." or "My name is..." "Je m'appelle..."  "I call myself Don."

       An interesting difference.  The "is of identity" in English:  the "subjects" on either side of the "copulative" "is" are equivalent, are the same, are identical, I am that name.  This name constitutes my core, my essence, my very being.  My name is who I am.

       The reflexive form of "appellation" in French is an act of the one named, not the "is" of being, but the act of doing:  "I call myself."

       Such differences, one is tempted to speculate, do they make a difference in character, in psychological approach to "self"?

      

"Scroll" like the Ancients

       It's nice to find a word like "scroll" associated with computers.  It can make computers seem less imposingly modern and technological.  "Scrolling" text down a display screen, you are in touch with the ancients, who inscribed their scrolls of parchment or leather or papyrus with the symbols of commerce and religion of their time, and, not too coincidentally, preserved it for us.

       "Scroll" (the word) is a blend of Middle English rolle "roll" and scrowe from Old French escrowe "strip of parchment."  Amazing the storied backgrounds of language as well as language storage that pop out from the glowing rectangles of our desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart phones!

       "Scroll down," and smile. 

Words at Your Service

       It's trash night.  I was pulling the barrels out to the curb for tomorrow morning's pickup.  Connie was bringing out the empty bags she used at the grocery and putting them in the car as I went by.

       "Getting them out of the way," she said.

       I knew what she meant; she didn't like 'em lying inside our front door all week.  As she was heading back into the house, I was about to say, "I've got a neat wife," and then it occurred to me . . . and I said:

       "I've got a neat wife, in more than one way."

       She said, "Oh yeah," but smiled too as she turned and went in.

      

Communication Technology: A Stitch in Time, Part 4

       From the podium for an ancient rhapsode to a modem for an internet surfer seems a long way indeed.  But just as the medieval "rhapsode" of England, called a scop, was spoken of in Beowulf as "the one who wields wide with his words," so the contemporary location of symbolic nexus is the "World Wide Web."  And while we are almost all caught in this "web," we should remember its roots also are "to weave" from Old English wefan.  

        It is nice to contemplate that secret "threads" run between all these different eras.  The weave, the warp and woof (also from wefan) that stitch together the narratives of our people and our people themselves, whether in speech, text, or digital data, these threads intertwine and communicate in metaphoric subtext.  They connect across centuries through the "subtle" ("finest thread") loom of our language. 

        

Communication Technology: A Stitch in Time, Part 3

       With writing and later the printed word, the passing on of knowledge and values became the primary task of words on a page, of what we typically think of as "text."  And the thread that runs through this era is weaving:  Latin texere--"to weave"; textus--"something woven."  And what are those words on a page but a "texture," a "tissue" (same root for both words), of ideas, of narrative?  The preserved text connects us with one another, and weaves our past into the tapestry of our future.

       ("Textiles" gives present day evidence of the root meaning of "text.")

Communication Technology: A Stitch in Time, Part 2

       Ancient tales were passed along from mouth to ear, and glad they were who sat to hear the tales told of their foretathers and foremothers in days of yore.  (And if the tales had some of the rhyme and rhythm of the preceding sentence, all the better.)  These oral tales were the precedents of the race that set the sights in behavior and conduct for the next stages of the tribe's advance.

       Those who passed on the ancient tales in Greece, the "rhapsodes," were "song stitchers."  Rhaptein, rhaps-:  "to sew," "stitch."  Oide:  "song."  The ancient Homeric storyteller stitched together episodes from the legendary epic of the race; he also stitched together the fabric of a people, their values and societal continuity from generation to generation.

Communication Technology: A Stitch in Time, Part 1

       We're rapidly moving toward the age of computer interaction on a planetary scale:  anything we need on a screen at our fingertips.  There's little we think we have in common with the ancient world in communication technology.  But . . .

        In the everydayness of life on the planet something like clothing is fundamental, and with it stitching, sewing, and weaving.  Images from these activities get embedded in the roots of our otherwise transcending and abstracting language, keeping us down to earth and tying our lives together over time.

      

      

Smart Phones Help the Blind (Too)

       What a blessing the smart phone has been for Jolie, our leader in the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service.  Jolie is blind, but she knows EVERYTHING about her iPhone.

       Nowadays text can be translated to speech; speech can be translated to text.  Today Jolie could send me a text message by speaking aloud into iPhone's microphone and having it transferred to print for me to read, letting me know we have to cancel tomorrow's program.  I responded to her message instantly by the same modes, and she could listen to my text.

       In our entire exchange with multiple back-and-forths between voice and print, print and voice,  only one word was muffed.  Jolie's spoken "acknowledge" became "add knowledge."

       No one was heard (or read) to complain, least of all Jolie or I.

     

Bad Language on Cable/Satellite

       Connie and I view/listen to Bill Maher and John Oliver on Satellite/Cable.  We like both shows.  They're on HBO.  Both gentlemen are comedians; both do satiric political humor on events and people in the news.

       Both have carte-blanche (not to mention carte-brun) to utter street language, filthy talk, swearing, wash-the-mouth-out-with-soap words. 

       Connie listens "through" it but wishes it weren't there; I tend to listen "to" it and accept, maybe even welcome it.  Does the sub-par language help the comedy?  Yes, the sheer "low-lifeness" of the words provides a chuckle, and hearing an unexpected word uttered that is often said by people in anger, anxiety, or frustration can underline the satirical point.

       Shocking to some degree?  Yes.   Freeing and enlivening?  That too.

Public Commercial Radio

       Two local "public" radio stations are including more commercials on their air waves.  They don't want them to be called commercials, but they are.

       Last week, one of those stations did a promo for itself, speaking of its virtues, proudly ending, "and all this with no commercials."  The irony was pretty heavy--just before the promo, three businesses had been identified as sponsors, including "selling" language for those respective companies.

       I have heard the words "supporters" and "underwriters," and I remember a time when that minimal straightforward wording and the sparseness of such announcements made those appellations credible.

       But now I even hear the word "sponsor" used on the air shamelessly.  And the numbers are growing.  When will the government, not to mention listeners, decide "public" radio doesn't need us any more and withdraw funding?

       

"What did they do to the booze, Hickey?"

       Sometimes a line from a play will stick with you for the rest of your life, meeting your needs in many situations.

       Last night that was the case when I found myself saying, "What did they do to the booze, Hickey?"

       In Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Hickey proselytizes the habitues at a local bar into getting off their duffs and making something of their lives.  Hickey's inspirational, and the men all try but are really not up to it.  When Hickey returns and finds them back at the bar, disgruntled and forlorn, one man says, "What did they do to the booze, Hickey?"

       So when something that used to satisfy doesn't, has no savor to it, that line from O'Neill pops into my head, and I recite it with the sullen passion it deserves.

      

"For Your Convenience," My Arse

       We are regular receivers of recorded phone messages from several different sources which are at pains to let us know:  "This message will now be repeated for your convenience."

       It's NOT for our convenience.  It's for their convenience because somehow their recorded message begins in the middle, and if they didn't "repeat" it, only half the message would get onto the machine; so now one and one half to two times their message is slathered all over our voice mail.

          

Seen on a Pin

                                        "I need
                                someone really bad.
                                    Are you really
                                           bad?"

A Peculiar Sign

       Emily Levine pointed out in her one-woman show the peculiarity of the sign in a San Fernando Valley place of business:


                             "Ears Pierced While You Wait"


What?  There's some alternative?  "Yeah, I want to leave 'em.  I'll be back in an hour."

"Origin Unknown"

       Comparing  notes with friend Heide on some words and definitions, etc., our exchange prompted me to say the following to her in my email:

       "I guess one of the things I most like to find in a definition is 'Origin Unknown.'  I like it that language itself can keep plenty of secrets from nosy linguists and lexicographers."

       

"WHAT FOOD DESERT?"

       The  L. A. Weekly article claims that despite common thinking the San Fernando Valley has plenty of good restaurants.

       I am thrown into cognitive dissonance by that title.  How do you spell [DEHZ-urt] and [de-ZURT]? 

       Consider what double-letter consonants are supposed to do to pronunciations:

                super = [SOOP-er]
                supper = [SUHP-er]

                rabies = [RAY-bees]
                rabbies = [RAB-eyes]

                ladle = [LAYD-uhl]
                ladder = [LAD-er]

Single-consonant-ending first syllable--the vowel is a long one; double the consonant--the vowel becomes shortened and flattened.

       But look at "desert" and "dessert."  The arid, dry, land with one "s" is  [DEHZ-urt].   The sweet end of a meal with two "s"s is [de-ZURT].

       And then put "food" with "desert"?!  The association is irresistible.

       Pardon me, English, if I just go around mumbling sometimes. 

"Stalactite" / "Stalagmite"

       One way to remember which word is which:

please click on cartoon to enlarge

       My way to remember as a kid was "stalactite" is on the ceiling; "stalagmite" comes up from the ground.

       But what are the derivations?  Both come from Greek stalassein, "to drip."  Not much there to help in distinguishing the two words.  So maybe my childhood mnemonic device should stand.

       For more Dan Piraro "Bizarro," you may find him here.

Pun-loving Cartoonist Again

       Now there's a pun worth wading through the cartoon for.  You can find the website for the comic, including Daily Panels for the last 30 days by looking here.

"WELTANSCHAUUNG," "WELTSCHMERZ," "ZEITGEIST," Part 5

[In fact, if the Zeitgeist is replete with Weltschmerz, your Weltanschauung will likely be decidedly gloomy.]

      Maybe this is why, though we can translate these words and find approximate equivalents in English, the aura they have around them is not reflected in American ebullience, resilience, and, indeed, the "quicksilverness" of our attitudinal life.  Do we stick with anything long enough and penetratingly enough to pin a Zeitgeist on it?  Or to savor a Weltschmerz?  Or discern and develop a Weltanschauung?

       Sorry.  Americans just don't have a word for it.

"WELTANSCHAUUNG," "weltschmairts," "zeitgeist," Part 4

      "Weltanschauung" (VELT-an-shauhng), another lovely German word to get your mouth around, obviously begins with "welt" also.  The last part of the word, "schauung," shares the root with our word "show."  What we have here is a "world view," a "perception of the world," "a particular philosophy or view of life. . .of an individual or group." (OED)

       As I said, all three words seem to be evocative of large scale moods, transcendent, universal mantles cloaking wide swaths of humanity.  Is there something more inherently Germanic and European that makes these words cluster, and perhaps something more darkly "Old World"?

       In fact, if the Zeitgeist is replete with Weltschmerz, your Weltanschauung will likely be decidedly gloomy.

"weltanschauung," "WELTSCHMERZ," "zeitgeist," Part 3

       "Weltschmerz" (VELT-shmairts), wonderful sound, translates to "world pain," and our word "smart" as a stinging pain is akin to that second syllable just as "world" and German welt share kinship (Merriam-Webster).  Weltschmerz is "sadness over the evils of the world, especially as an expression of romantic pessimism" (AHD).

       Thus attuned to misery and human suffering, you'd be experiencing Weltschmerz, related to but a good deal stronger than what President Jimmy Carter referred to in America as "a malaise."

"weltanschauung," "weltschmerz," "ZEITGEIST," Part 2

       What do these words mean?

       "Zeitgeist," (pronounced with long "i" in both syllables and a hard "g") translates to "timeghost," loosely, the spirit of the time:  "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era" (Merriam-Webster).

       English "ghost" and German "geist" are kin as you can tell.  Interesting that zeit and "time" also share the same root with one another, as does "tide" (AHD).  And as we know, "Zeit and tide wait for no man."

       So we ask, "What's the Zeitgeist?"  What are the guiding themes, the informing spirit of the age?

Weltanschauung, Weltschmerz, Zeitgeist, Part 1

       Mentioning "yahrzeit" in yesterday's post reminded me of the essay I wrote on three German words:


       When I was doing a lot of heavy graduate school reading, I used regularly to run into certain italicized words that fascinated me.  I really didn't know what they meant (except from context, by which we can always tell exact meaning, right?), such words as weltanschauung, weltschmerz, and zeitgeist.

       I knew vaguely that they had to do with an aura, an outlook, a whole cast of feeling.  Maybe (now that I've looked them up) I'm even exaggerating the degree of comprehension I had.  What I did know was that there was something that could only be expressed by these foreign words, that nothing in English would quite suffice.

"Yahrzeit" / ("Anniversary")

       My mother's yahrzeit was today. We lit a memorial candle for her.  Connie and I read aloud a short prose piece and a poem from among her writings, recalled some things we remember about her, told her a thing or two about her great grandson, watched the candle flicker and glow a while, put her book back on the shelf, let her candle be a reminder of her throughout the day.

       The word "yahrzeit" hung with me a bit.  It contains the two Yiddish/German words yahr "year" and zeit "time"; it is the time to mark the year anniversary of a passing in Judaism; I realize as I say this the redundancy.  "Anniversary" has the same derivation:  out of the two halves of the word from Latin,  the "turning" of a "year."  

"Zits"' Uncanny Cartoonists

click on image to enlarge

       Don't think I've ever seen such wonderful dialog, conveying the "crowding" of a conversation by overlapping balloons!  So inventive, believable, and funny!  Bravo, Scott and Borgman,  whose "Zits" website can be found here.

"Bestrewn"

       I woke to this backyard sight with a word seldom used by me coming to mind simultaneously:

"Bestrewn"
Click on image to enlarge.