What, "Mad Libs" again?

       Well, unlike yester-DAY,  yester-EVENING was full of fun words with family as I somehow resurrected the Chanukah Mad Libs from last year, and we engaged with it after dinner.

       As you know, the authors supply stories, but with blanks; the group fill in the blanks with their own nouns, adjectives, etc., but don't yet know the story.  Then the leader reads it with our words filled in.  Grandson Micah and Grandpa Don were especially overcome with hilarity by this one:


                                      HANUKKAH AT MY HOUSE

         In my family, each person gets to light one   belly-button   on the menorrah.  Then we sing songs like "  Bananas   of Ages."  Afterward Mom serves   psychotic   treats like potato   porch swings   and doughnuts, and we all eat until our   kidneys   are full.

         Along with   burning    gifts, it's traditional to give money on Hanukkah, so each night my father gives all us kids   17   dollars!  We play games like dreidel and "Toss the   Sushi  ."

         Then comes my favorite part:  We open all the beautifully wrapped   pills   that we bought for one another.  This year I gave my sister some   bar bells   to go with her dollhouse, and I got some   swishing   blocks for my brother.  I can't wait to see what I got this year.  I hope it's a pet  Dubai  . 

(from HANUKKAH MAD LIBS, Price Stern Sloan publisher, 2012) 
For a previous family effort at this madness, go to this site.  

When the Words Run Dry

        What can you do when the words go dry?  Play a bit with the ones you do have, the ones you're using now.  Do they have potential?  Significance, suggestion?  Capability for sense or sensuality or use?

       That's where I am right now, folks.  Daughter and grandson visiting, and I'm fresh out of words for my blog.  On a walk we three took, I had to call for quiet without words from anyone for one full block--there was just too much excitability from a parent a child and an animated animal, their dog.

       I got my peace for a block, the end of which was loudly announced by my grandson.

       And now I am without words.

       So end of block, but not end of writing block, and yet end of blog!

Are Words Things?

       Rabbi Lawrence Kushner reminded me in his book God was in this Place and I, i did not know that the Hebrew word dvar means not only "word" but, surprisingly, "thing."

       Words and things seem  opposite, or at least very different.  Things are of the "real" world, and words are "about" the real world amongst other realms.  Kushner notes that for the ancient rabbis, "Primary reality is linguistic."  The word is the thing.

        Jews do, maybe especially but not uniquely, like to interpret words, play with words, study words, find whole worlds in words.

       Words are for investigation, celebration, creating fireworks, and are eternally chameleon-like, comedian-like--"belly button"--, they do hand-stands and ham-stands, and stand-ups.

       And they are "things" whole blogs can be written, spoken, sung, and visualized about! 

Words to Try to Live Up To

       I came across this saying of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel today, an appropriate one as we approach Thanksgiving Day tomorrow:


      "It is gratefulness which makes the soul great."

Don, the Weather Forecaster

       My weather supplier online, localconditions.com, allows for those who take its services to supply their own neighborhood forecasts.

       Last week I took them up on it after a condition peculiarly horrific had occurred, as it periodically does, in the San Fernando Valley.

       I wrote my forecast, a good deal with tongue in cheek, assuming they'd not print it. 

       When the air has dried to near zero humidity as a result of shouldering, barreling, buffeting, unrelenting Santa Ana winds, ants will pour into our house from madness with the winds, or dryness and no place to quench their thirst.  Fantastic cleaning spray is our best antidote to the inundation.

       My forecast for our neighborhood, which they DID PRINT, was "Santa Anas followed by house ants."

With Apologies to Longfellow

       Between the dark and the daylight
       When the night is beginning to lower,
       Comes a pause in the day's occupations
       That is known as ... the Solar Hour.

    
       Exactly when they should, between sunset at 4:46 p.m. today and darkness at 5:43, the solar lights rimming our front yard and driveway came on, but oh, so symphonically!

       As I finished bringing up the weekly trash barrels from the curb and headed back inside, the three nearest the house were already on.  Would I be able to stand and see the others light up?

       The fourth in line lit up; next the fifth; the sixth and last; with intervals of about a minute, completing the concert on cue, in order! 

       I hadn't ever before seen even one go on. 

      
(You may find Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" here.)

"Marti(it)al Arts"

       Why do I keep reading "martial arts" as "marital arts"? 

       I much prefer love to war, that is for sure. 

       I think also I see the two as somehow linked.  The marital arts may at times urge either partner to ponder the need for martial arts.   And do the martial arts at times depend upon all the grace and finesse that the marital arts can muster?

       Mixing the two indeed suggests there are arts to the marital state and to sustaining it.

       And raising the skills of combat to the level of "arts" has granted mayhem a luster and finish to take pride in?

       "Marit(ti)al Arts."

"Fillip"

       Yesterday's post found me using a word I hadn't in a long time.   A "fillip" is a small stimulus, perhaps a trifle, an embellishment.

       What I didn't know is what it came from.  It is imitative of either of two things according to different sources:  1.  curling a fingernail up against the thumb and releasing suddenly, a flip or flick against someone's arm, for example, or to propel a small object; or, 2.  a snap made by pressing the flesh of the fingertip against the thumb.

       So the "extended," more abstract meaning derives from something quite concrete and physical and the sound(s) it makes.

       Most delightful was a quote from Byron that the OED was clever enough to find and give us:  "Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip."   

END-OF-THE-WEEK: "Rumination" 1 More Time

         I thought I'd said enough about "rumination" and "cud" on Saturday, November 15 and Sunday, November 9, but this adds a nice fillip to the topic:

Click on comic to enlarge.

(You can find Chad Carpenter's Official Tundra website here.)

"Second Game in a Row"

       To my way of thinking, two games do not constitute a "row."  Even the AHD gives as an example for "row":  "won the title for three years in a row."

       So I have to say nay when the L.A. Times tells us the L.A. Lakers "win their second game in a row."

       But you do have to sympathize with the writer and/or the editor because, though the Lakers have managed to LOSE several "in a row," When they get two consecutive wins for the very first time in a season, you have to be cocky and confident to virtually brazen it through your humiliation as an editor, writer, headline writer or fan.  And if it is the first two in succession, isn't it already leaning toward three,  maybe you should just christen it with an assumed third and call it a "row."

         

"Worshiping Graven Images"

       Thinking of recordings, thinking of recordings of readings of poetry, or performances of music.  I remember believing that there was one best recording of a work of music, say a symphony, knowing in your heart and experience and understanding that THIS was the top...the definitive recording of this work.  No one, no one else, need try, SHOULD try.

       And then I heard Michael Tilson Thomas, now long serving the San Francisco Symphony as its conductor, when posed with this idea about definitive performances, say, "Anybody who thinks there's only one best recording of a work is worshiping graven images!"

       That put thoughts to the contrary I may have had, including about performances of literature or drama, to REST.   PERIOD.

Nonsense Language: 1. Yahk & Tseepy

"The Fifth Season"

       Talking with relative and friend Michael and somehow got onto the clothing business.  I asked Michael if he'd heard of "the fifth season."  He hesitated but thought he knew what it was:  "It's the Christmas holiday season."

       "Well, clothing and other businesses do make a third or 40% of their profit for the whole year at that time, but no, that's not it."

       "What is it?"

       "There's winter, spring, summer, fall . . . and slack."  I told Michael it was the entire joke of a play called The Fifth Season about the "shmata" business I'd seen on Broadway while I was in the Army and attending Information & Education school near NYC.    It was really a show that visiting tired businessmen might have found entertaining.

       But I remembered the joke!  And Michael was laughing at it now.

Joy in the Sounds of French

       Connie's working on a jigsaw puzzle.  I couldn't recall which French painter did the painting.  I thought it was Seurat, but it turned out to be another Frenchman, Renoir. 

       Suddenly I was sounding off with Seur-AT...Ren-OIR...De-GAS!  Surprisingly, though those accented last syllables all end with different consonants, they are all effectually silent, and though the vowels in these final syllables differ, all effectively have the same sound; so it comes out like this:

                      sir-AH   rin-WAH   day-GAH

Engage with the French pronunciation, exaggerate a bit, and have some fun saying them!

       I always liked the contrasting ways of saying "Julius Caesar":
                      Latin:  YUHL-ius KIE-sahr (harsh to my ear)
                      French:  JHOOL say-ZAHR (oh by far the slickest, coolest)
                      English:  JOOL-ius SEE-zir (somewhere in between).   

END-OF-THE-WEEK: "Rumination" Once Again

       Still ruminating over the word "rumination" from last Sunday's post, I wondered whether I really understood the cow's digestive process the word's based on.  Reading the authoritative sounding account given in Wikipedia, I thought I had not misrepresented "rumination" last Sunday--it would be a word-man's ruination.

       But I also discovered, somewhat alarmingly, that you and I are "monogastric animals."  Or would you rather be a pig, also monogastric, like us, the cow having several compartments to its stomach to top both the pigs and us, but which also means several stages in digestion.  Certain enzymes to break down cellulose are available only in the first compartment, and some food needs to make a trip back up to the mouth for further chewing and full assimilation.

       Let's ruminate on the marvels of nature's ways.

Teenage Shorthand

Click on cartoon to enlarge.

     
       What I love most about this "Zits" strip is Jeremy's muttered teenage abbreviations:  "k" for "OK" many times over.

"Morning Becomes Eclectic"

       "Morning Becomes Eclectic"?  What kind of radio station would gamble to have that kind of title for a music program?  The associations are wonderfully ... high order, you might say:  a play that's probably little known by many, and a word that's probably known by people with some vocabulary, but not by most.  Put 'em together in a crazy, punning, awkward, master-pastiche; they spell KCRW.

       A Santa Monica FM station, public radio.  It produces extraordinary music and talk programming throughout the day.


       Mourning Becomes Electra,  Eugene O'Neill's 1931 modern version of Aeschylus's Oresteia, Electra being a female character.
       "Mourning" loses its "u" to identify an early a.m. radio program.
       "Becomes":  "is suitable to," but also here, "comes into existence."
       "Eclectic"-- (Greek ex, "out," legein, "gather") 1. selecting out from various sources what's best; 2.  heterogeneous.

"Heard Any Good Newspapers Lately?"

        We're back on the air with Los Angeles Radio Reading Service, reading for the blind and print impaired over FM radio.  Reading the newspapers in a two hour daily broadcast.

       We three readers sounded rusty after being off-the air for two to three months in our shift to a new location.  But it was great to be back.  Amazing the lost facility that occurs with disuse of voice and mind. 

       Bravo voice that carries words to ears that listen.

       The title of today's post is the motto of the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service, or, as we say it, LARRS.

Thanks, "Life's Little Instruction Calendar"

      
       "The future comes one second at a time.  That's a quantity of time that most of us can handle."


       (Thank you, H. Jackson Brown, Jr., for your 2014 18th Day-to-Day Calendar.  This and the 2015 calendar can be found here.)

Cartoonist Sem-ANTICS

They may be ending up with fine, funny drawings and comics. . .

click on cartoons to enlarge

. . .but they're starting with wordplay.


       (You can find Chad Carpenter's Official Tundra website here.
         Bizarro can be located at Dan Piraro's "New Bizarro Site.")

"END-OF-THE-WEEK-RUMINATIONS"

       I like these oases at the end of the week.  Nothing really new added.  Just something that may bear on, perhaps amplify, give another bit of texture to one of the week's topics.  A sense of pause and reflection.  Letting there be something of a sabbath from language's never-ending push for attention and understanding and action.

       Of course, "rumination" itself comes from what the cow does with its cud, "chewing the cud," which perhaps comes from a similar Sanskrit word meaning exactly the same thing.  What a good comparison:  to let a topic, a word, go round and around inside one before peacefully, satisfyingly, digesting it.

     

      

Best Pun in the World

       Just recalling the other day, out of nowhere (it seemed), the camping and backpacking store I stopped briefly at to admire its wondrous and welcoming gear and signs when I was going through Flagstaff, Arizona, some years ago.  (The "Peace Surplus" store I find online I think it was.)

       And I'm pretty sure THAT was the backpacking and camping store I read about later which had this wonder-super-wonderful-sign in its window one January:

        "Now Is The Winter of Our Discount Tents"

       (For a reminder of what's being punned on, please click here.)

"And do make it a great day."

       A call from the nurse by answering machine to remind of a doctor's appointment.  The nurse's final words surprised one to hear::  "And do make it a great day."

       OK, it's a medical appointment; a positive closing statement is not necessary or expected.  "Have a great day" is a cliche and out of place in any case.  But a sign-off that's a thoughtfully different twist warmed me to hear and brought a smile.

       I think the main reason is the contrast between "have" and "make," a reminder that I'm the one who's responsible for causing the great day to occur!

"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 6

       As I said several days ago, it could be the big splash that performers like Bennett and Gaga have made with their recent album or the PBS special they did together around a week ago, but I've been thinking again of how old songs come back to us, what exactly prompts their recall to us, and  an obvious way I haven't precisely mentioned is hearing that song sung by a great singer.

       So thanks, Lady Gaga, and maybe especially, thanks, Tony Bennett:

The music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Dorothy Fields were composed in 1928, one year before the "official" beginning of the Great Depression.  That likely had something to do with the popularity and sustained appreciation of the song "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby."  And today too?

(Now if you want to watch Tony and Lady do their studio video version of the song, click here.)

"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 5

       Whether by verbal, visual, or rhythmic association, all of these times that I caught the moment which engendered the song were relaxed occasions:  getting ready for tennis, eyeing food in the grocery, on a pleasure trip, taking a hike, at home while opening the refrigerator door or after running, or at ease with my wife.

       And I’m retired.  It helps to be relatively carefree for those good old songs to find their way back and come welling up into voice.  But when they do, it's also good to remember that we owe it to the great songsters:  composers, singers, lyricists, the ones who created the songs of our lives!

"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 4

       Maybe the most surprising song prompter is rhythmic association, not the exact word itself, but the rhythm of a word.

       While looking in the fridge to see if I had enough frozen yogurt:  “This’ll do,” I said out loud.  The rhythm of it (pitches too?) reminded me of “Over There,” and I was off singing it.  I wouldn't have recalled this  even five minutes later had I not purposely tried to catch it.

       After a morning run, I noticed a book of Connie's, and something happened when I mumbled the author's name:  "Lovesy."  “Kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again, It’s been a long, long time.”  The rhythm of “Lovesy” transferred itself by the alchemy of memory and association to “Kiss me,” and I was suddenly singing with great delight!


            (Click on this post for a good instance of rhythmic association.)   (I even sing it for you!)

  

"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 3

       Beside verbal association, there's just seeing things, visual association, that brings a song back.  Spying chestnuts in a grocery store leads to "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."  (Thank you, Nat King Cole.)

       I look up one night on a pleasure trip and there's a very good moon up there, not full yet, but very bright and shining, hanging all by itself in the sky:  "Full Moon and Empty Arms."  (Actually, thank you Tchaikovsky, originally.)

       While taking a banana out of the fridge, a singing commercial comes back:  "Never put bananas in the refrigerator, no no no no."  (Little thanks to Chiquita Banana who I think misled us with that one.  I leave 'em in till the day before I use them, to preserve 'em, then bring 'em out to regain their warmth and flavor.)

"Coming Back Like a Song," Part 2

       I discovered three associations that bring back songs to me:  verbal, visual, and rhythmic.

       Driving along, hot sun coming through window on an early May day,  I say, "Oh, that feels SO NICE."  I hear myself saying it, then suddenly I'm singing, "You'd be SO NICE to come home to."

       Connie asks me what's wrong with the pants that need sewing.  I say, "The seams, the seams, it seems."  Then I'm off singing, "Seems like old times, having you to talk with."

       One day Connie mentions she thought she'd heard rain, but it wasn't raining.  A couple minutes later I'm singing, "Soon it's Gonna Rain."

       Dressing for tennis one morning, I muse "only five hours sleep," it transposes immediately into "Only five minutes more, give me five minutes more, only five minutes more in your arms."

          (For another verbal example I posted, including the song itself, please click here.)

      Red letter day.  Blog's 2nd anniversary.  Happy Birthday, Blog. 

"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.