Cartooning Our Wayward Keyboarding

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How many of us have lapsed off to drreamland with a finger on a key?

Poetry is being celebrated this Poetry Month

       One place poetry is being celebrated this Poetry Month is in Tucson's online arts magazine called 3 Story Magazine.  This digital publication can be discovered right here.

       My daughter Elizabeth is one of those people and places in Tucson helping enrich the poetry scene according to the magazine.  Even her dad and his blog (this one) have garnered mentions in the piece.

       Elizabeth's enthusiasm for poetry (and some of her own poems are marvelous) is given credit for prompting the idea for the colorfully illustrated and tautly written text.

       Enjoy a look.

      

"Thank You so Much for Having Me"

       I must listen to a lot of radio talk interview shows.  And it's probably true that it's an odd, horny bent of mine.  But when a female guest is introduced and welcomed by a male radio interviewer, her response is almost always something like,"Thank you for having me."  And I tend to hear that exchange mainly with its sexual implications.

       If it's a male guest, those same words fly right by without my notice.

Thank you, Wind, and Gary Snyder

       as the crickets' soft autumn hum
       is to us
       so are we to the trees
       as are they
       to the rocks and the hills

       It must have been the sound of the wind burgeoning up strong at night here that brought me back these few lines of Gary Snyder.  And I'm thankful.

Apostrophes / Contractions / Cartoons

Please click on cartoon to enlarge

Brooke McEldowney captivates with language, drawing, and story on the web at this location.

"Be yourself; everything else is taken."

       All right, so I was captivated and tickled by this line seemingly "thrown in" to the dialog in the movie Connie and I saw tonight:  While We're Young.

       Such a worthwhile movie about love, and marriage, and having kids (or not), ambition, getting older; about making documentaries:  what's more creative and honest, attending and recording or throwing yourself and what you know into the mix and helping make it happen?

       Ben Stiller has serious Oscar aspirations, or at least I do for him.

       And Noah Baumbach has a movie-and-a-half in While We're Young, I believe.

       And that line again:  "Be yourself; everything else is taken."

       So there was humor and seriousness, and the former sneaks up on you while the latter is taking the foreground.  

 

Horoscoope with a Lift for Every Sign!

"Perfect"

 
        There's a Starbucks barista, whenever I order WHATEVER I order, he perkily bursts out, "Perfect!"   He's the first I heard do this.  I thought it was unique, surprising for sure, and lo and behold, I felt complimented I'd made that choice!!  (And it happens every time.)

        The other day, another restaurant,  my son and I ordering something at a counter,  I again received the ultimate praise.   How discerning can I BE?    How dumb can THIS be?   (Yet I felt, "I ordered the right thing!")

        Just today, called our tax accountant.   Secretary said he was with another client, could he call me back?  "Sure," I said.  "Perfect," she said.  Now, what state of perfection was it that I was able to receive a return call?   (Beginning to think this "perfect" thing is noisome.)    

"liquidambar" ("sweet gum")

        This day's high pollen levels where I live are contributed to by the liquidambar tree, also known as sweet gum.  We have one right down the street from us. 

       It's the resin from the tree that gives us amber after it goes into the earth, capturing plant or insect life into fossils as the resin hardens.  Some amber in sand around the Baltic Sea is 40 to 60 million years old.

       The sweet gum name designates the resin while it is still soft and chewy, but it is mildly bitter rather than sweet, only sweet in comparison with another resin that is extremely bitter!

       The leaves of the tree are multicolored in autumn and handsome, and the dried fruit pods that have given forth resins and sweet gum and finally seeds I have used as an element of  mobiles I've made.

CT; no, Scat Cat; no, CAT Scan

       I saw a CAT Scan today, also known as a CT Scan.  A cross sectional image of a part of the body taken by radiologists. 

       It started out with that intriguing way of saying it in 1975 when it was introduced and known as Computerized Axial Tomography; hence CAT Scan.  The later term meaning Computed Tomography may be the more common one now . . .

       But I'm glad the original still clings on because it's much more fun and memorable!  (I'm glad especially because there really was a reason for that "A" in the middle, not just a fill-in letter to make "CAT" as I had supposed.)

She Heard it Right & Rightly Reveled in that FULL SOUND!

You can find Bil & Jeff Keane's website here.

"Naida" is Way More than Nada

       A part-time care giver arrived at our house this afternoon.  Her first name is Naida (NIGH-duh). We asked her where that name came from.   She wasn't sure.

       Looking up online, it was from Greek, meaning "water-nymph."  Of course, on the Internet you always find other things.

       Connie, Naida, and I were amused to learn  another meaning of NAIDA: . . ."North Alabama Industrial Development Association"!


       I suddenly remembered Diana Nyad, famous swimmer, writer, broadcaster, speaker.  She's broken marathon swimming records.  She got the name Nyad when her mother re-married a Greek-Egyptian of that name and adopted Diana.  I mention this for two reasons: 1. the connection of names both referring to water-nymphs, Diana's most well-known area of achievement; and 2. that Diana's given name is an anagram of Naida.

The Age WE Live In::TEENAGERS Live In

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See these two wonderful cartoonists' work at this site.

March 31st--a Day to Fine-Tune your Ear

       Dad would have loved Mark Swed's story in today's L.A. Times:  March 31st is "Orchestra Day" in Tokyo.   Everyone's out listening to music.

       The Suzuki method of teaching classical music to children post World War II is responsible, creating virtually a nation of music lovers and musicians.

        Almost no foreign musicians are sought for Tokyo's nine orchestras; "home-grown" fill the chairs.  Yet Japanese musicians help populate Europe's and America's orchestras.

       Dad, an 8th grade graduate who treasured education and got this kid finally to obtain a PhD, touted Suzuki's mass teaching methods, and he and Mom visited Japan to see the system at work, finally actually meeting Suzuki.
 
        Nine years ago the Japanese selected March 31 as "Orchestra Day."  Why?  The date in Japanese sounds very much like the sound for the word "ear"!

Passover: A Night of "Observing"

       First Seder.  They say Passover may be the most observed holiday in the Jewish calendar.  I think I know why.

       The Torah not only depicts the dramatic events of the Passover; it simultaneously commands the observance of the event as a Holy Day for the rest of the people's life on earth.


"It was a night of watching unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt; this same night is a night of watching unto the Lord for all the children of Israel throughout their generations..."


        In the Hebrew word she-moo-reem, "watching," the merged ideas watching, keeping, guarding, protecting, observing, as in "observance" of Passover. . . .From the Torah itself, we simply don't know how to separate the ancient event of the Passover from the commanded celebration of it!

"OH-oh"

       Me calling our tax accountant's office:  "I'm late on getting our taxes in.  My wife usually does it, but she had an accident and surgery, and unfortunately, I'm doing it this year."

       The receptionist had a wonderful response:  "OH-oh."

       I laughed that she was agreeing with me, but maybe more than that.  It was a little like "Oh, a man's doing it.  Look out.  This incompetence was not due only to inexperience but inherent incapacity."  The thought of that made me laugh louder.   It seemed she didn't have the slightest idea that she might be insulting a client; just acknowledging the obvious and well known.

       Oh, it's a different world these days and a healthier one.  The "OH-oh" was satire at its best.  And I had opened myself up for it with the "unfortunately."

"Innumerable Friend"

       Listening to a wonderful recording I made 33 years ago of a "last" car ride, my wife, teenage children, taking a French visiting student back to the airport after spending wonderful summer months with us as a guest.  It was a happy carful that made me smile with tears throughout its half hour length.

       On the other side of the cassette tape, I placed a recording of May Sarton reading her wonderful poem, "Innumerable Friend," which ends as follows:

                 Build an invisible bridge toward one person.
                 So the slow delicate process is begun,
                 The root of all relationship and then
                 Learn that this stranger has become all men,
                 Flows through the open heart as a great host
                 Of all the human, solitary, lost.
                 His longing streams through the conventions
                 Of diplomats and their meagre intentions,
                 Hunting for home like a great hungry wind.
                 He is the one, this our innumerable friend!

                 Let us forget these principalities, these powers;
                 We are theirs perhaps, but they are not ours.
                 Turn toward each other quietly and know
                 There are still bridges nations cannot overthrow.
                 And if we fight--if we must at the end--
                 These are the bridges we fight to defend.
       
       

Hey, Pal, Try This On for a Palindrome.

        Why do I find myself saying "Sex at Noon Taxes"?

        Do you suppose it's something to do with taxes and I'm doing them for the first time in my life almost, I think?

        Oh, but then I have it all backwards, don't I?  It's really "Sex at Noon Taxes"!

             [pal="back, again"; drome="run"; in Greek, that is]

Words that are "a little bit off"

       One notice of this today by yours truly.

       As I left home to do an errand, I told Connie I was going.  She asked where.  I paused for a couple long moments, couldn't quite think of the store's name, and finally said "Spindles."  Then added, "You know, the place that sells color cartridges for printers, etc."

       When I got there, what I saw above the entrance door was "Staples," which I didn't think was far enough off to feel bad about it; in fact, I felt pretty good.  Really, "staples" are almost as incidental to what they sell there as are "spindles."

     

How the powerful may imperiously use and prevent speech at the same time.

Sunday March 29, 2015

Read more: http://dilbert.com/#ixzz3VqXGg8bN

he does strange things with language

                                       
                                        r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

                                who

       a)s w(e loo)k
       upnowgath
                         PPEGORHRASS
                                                     eringint(o-
       aThe):l
                  eA
                      !p:
     S                                                                 a

                                      (r
       rIvInG                          .gRrEaPsPhOs)
                                                                     to
       rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ingly
       ,grasshopper;


                     e.e. cummings

It's so nice to get personal mail.

       We used to get personal mail a lot in our old-fashioned street mail box.  Now ads,  political pushes for money, and monetary requests from worthy organizations we sometimes wish we didn't support any longer stuff our box.

       And as is the way of the world, Connie and I now find ourselves avoiding our email boxes for exactly the same reason.

       And just when you get some snail mail in an envelope you think you may actually want to read--they have your first and last name spelled right in the address after all--you see what follows your name:

                              Or Current Resident

So much for your "Personal" correspondence.  Maybe you could invite them for a visit to talk about your "current residency". . . over coffee. 




      

Stuck in a Dern and pulled out a Dem

       I've commented on how "r"next to "n" in certain fonts can turn into "m" before your eyes.  So Laura Dern the actress becomes Laura "Dem."  And with some degree of probability, I'd say she is, but still you'd like a name to register as it is, without distortion.

       Today Yahoo's "Top News" on its Homepage included this item as I read it:

  
          "Tomatoes hit Oklahoma, Arkansas, 1 dead . . ."


Once you see the "r" and "n" merged into "m," it's easy for proofreader's error to scoot you right by the "d,"  having already seen it as a "t."

FootNOTE to Sunday March 15's "Language of Birds"

Still Spring, still e. e. cummings

       O sweet spontaneous
       earth how often have
       the
       doting

                  fingers of
       prurient philosophers pinched
       and
       poked

       thee
       , has the naughty thumb
       of science prodded
       thy

            beauty     . how
       often have religions taken
       thee upon their scraggy knees
       squeezing and

       buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
       gods
              (but
       true

       to the incomparable
       couch of death thy
       rhythmic
       lover

                thou answerest


       them only with

                                spring)

451 years ago today Shakespeare was born.

       But no one knew that day what glory his days on earth would bring.

       I remember doing "Is this a dagger that I see before me / The handle toward my hand?"  Macbeth, and not a half-bad job with it in college acting class.  I remember the greatest Hamlet of all time (I was sure) Lawrence Olivier's on film; and his Henry V, stunning!

       I taught the performance of the Bard's sonnets in class and sat in wonderment at them.

       I've performed both Hal and Falstaff in a reading from Henry IV, Part I, alas not that well, but the work lives on, justifiably, whether performers have killed it or made it soar.

       The sound, the rhythm, the characters, the human panoply arrayed before us, to relish, laugh at, be saddened by, and recognize, finally, as ourselves.
     
       HAPPY BIRTHDAY, you lengthily living baby born this day!

             (OK, I'M A MONTH OFF, BUT I WON'T RETRACT MY EARLY ENTHUSIASM FOR THE  BARD THIS FINE SPRING DAY.)

 

and it's spring

       Spring is like a perhaps hand
       (which comes carefully
       out of Nowhere)arranging
       a window,into which people look(while
       people stare
       arranging and changing placing
       carefully there a strange
       thing and a known thing here)and

       changing everything carefully

       spring is like a perhaps
       Hand in a window
       (carefully to
       and fro moving New and
       Old things,while
       people stare carefully
       moving a perhaps
       fraction of flower here placing
       an inch of air there)and

       without breaking anything.


                  e. e. cummings

 baby pomegranate shown by elder(perhaps)hand

      

ISIS, Issa, Issa

       A coincidence of names that were in the news today, all three of them close to one another in sound and spelling.  Two of them have venom associated with them; the third is soft-hearted, playful, and tender as a breeze.

      ISIS is every day on and in the news.  Pretty hard to miss.  But then Darrell Issa (pronounced ICE-uh) was also on the front page today.  Replaced as head of the House Oversight committee, even Republicans thought he used his position egotistically, smugly attacking President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, e.g., on the first day of "his" investigations using vehement, caustic rhetoric.

       So I couldn't help noticing that another prominent name was also on the front page, in fact the SAME name--Issa--(this time pronounced ISS-uh), the Japanese writer of Haiku: 

             I must turn over . . .                            Buddha on the hill
       Beware of local earthquakes           From your holy nose indeed
             Bedfellow cricket                                Hangs an icicle 



            

      

"Agreement" of Subject and Verb . . .Hmmmm

       I'm still hung up between wanting to say things the right way and realizing the normal course of language is change.

       Here's a TV HIGHLIGHT from the L.A. Times the other day:


       CRIMINAL MINDS  The fact that none of the victims of a Wisconsin serial killer have any apparent link to one another confounds the pattern-seeking Rossi . . .


       Knowing that "none" is short for "no one" and that it's the subject of the verb "have" troubles me. "None" is singular.  The plural "victims" is not the subject of the verb, sitting there as object of the preposition "of."  I think I'd change the verb to "has" and "one another" to "any other."  See what you think.

       But maybe I'm just a "pattern-seeking Rossi" confounded by natural changes toward comfortable expression.

       

"Troglodyte"

       Jerry Brown, our redoubtable governor for the second time in my life, held news conference on the steps of the national capitol and observed:  "About immigration reform the Republicans are at best troglodyte and at worst unChristian,"  prompting some KPCC-FM commentators this morning to note that Brown has to get away two or three thousand miles to make pithy, newsy comments he seldom seems to make in California.

       OK, your faithful language lover had to refamiliarize himself with the word troglodyte (having looked it up at least once before):  Merriam-Webster helps with Greek trogle, "hole, cave" and dyein "to enter."  So either "a member of a primitive people dwelling in caves" or "a person resembling a troglodyte (as in reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes)."

Initials: First, Last, and Always

       How all the initials in the world seem here and ready for use to those ready to use them.

       Tomorrow our PT will be here and ready to work with Connie.  The RN might make it too or will at least receive a phone call from us to make a report.  She'll want to know about the BP and whether a BM occurred.

       A later doc appointment will require a CT Scan beforehand, which as mentioned earlier keeps me remembering CSPAN and thinking of CPAP.  And if anyone knows what some of them refer to, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

Therapy has a meaning and has two sides to it.

       Noble work of Connie in doing her PT today.  Concentration of efffort, in sitting, standing, exercising legs, working with a walker, under the tutelage of skilled physical therapist.

       Words, demonstations by therapist, "no"s, "yes"es, "goods," Connie copying, putting foot forward 'stead of backward, then catching the placement being requested, missing, "no," "that's it, yes"; resting between efforts just sitting, breathing, "in nose, out the mouth." "Stand, now we'll walk outside, down to the mailbox," negotiating the two stairs, exact movements for balance, safety, security.

       Therapist, to us all:  "She did good today!"

Joy in Writing?

       There's joy in writing, maybe more post-writing than beforehand or in the process.

       I was thinking this when I finished writing the "mocking birds" post yesterday.  How much it felt like the end of each day's writing of my Ph.D. dissertation: 

       Not really thinking you had it or had much of value to say and at the end of the day's writing, realizing you're much happier you wrote this than not having ventured it.  It was much better than you thought it was going to be!

      

The Language of Birds

       Our mocking bird(s) is raucous and ever-present these days, and no doubt even moreso since I added hearing aids.  The high pitches have returned, almost with a vengeance, and birds are definitely within that range.

       Of course, the mocking bird is multi-lingual; almost any sound other birds can make, he can make and probably make it better and more profusely.  The bird of imitation speaks lots of tongues fluently.  Do you?  Do I?

       And the mocking bird is not really mocking in the sense of making fun of or treating with derision, but imitating.  Today it seemed to me he's engaged in "international commerce" amongst not only birds of a feather but birds of all breeds.

       And yes there was some sense of  competition, outspeaking and maybe bluffing the other voices, playing "king of the hill" or "trees";  one-ups-manship and "power singing" were going on here!

         [Please visit this post now.] 

Just a Spoonful of Gall

       My phone company sent a letter: Thank you for changing your payment plan to online.  If you haven't made this change, call this number immediately, or your payment will be changed to online. 

       That's the substance and a fair share of the wording.

       I don't remember doing that, and I don't think I did.  I''m sure it's cheaper for them to have it online and probably cheaper and faster for me to do it that way.  But is this "force feeding" method--"Here, the spoon with the syrup is half way down your throat; if you don't want it, don't swallow RIGHT NOW!! or it's GOIN' DOWN."

       Is this nice?  Is it acceptable business practice?  Is it LEGAL to change your customer's method of payment without his or her requesting it?!    

'tsinaname?

       A care-giver temporarily in our home offered up her first name as "Maricor"--strange sounding to my ears and Connie's.  She said it was unusual and short for Maria Corazon, which she said was too long hence Maricor.  I guess one could come to love that name. 

       In any case, it's her name and her preference for identifying herself, but Connie and I both loved the sound of the full name, perhaps especially with "corazon" meaning "heart" in Spanish.  Maricor is actually from the Philippines.  Perhaps there are mixed feelings about a Spanish heritage by some Filipinos.

Rushin' Rant

       Seeking a certain word on the way home in traffic, I came up with several others on the way to finding it:

It's the rush that comes from new love, it's the rush of water over Niagara Falls,  it's the bum's rush, it's Rush Limbaugh, it's the rush of rain streaming down the sewer drain, it's the rush of wind through the trees, it's the Russhhh-un Dance by Tchaikovsky, it's the rush on college campuses of fraternities and sororities, it's the blush of the flush with the rush of blood to the cheeks . . . yes, but it's actually rush hour.  

C.O.P.D.

     One of those diseases that, no matter how many times I hear the name, I come up blank on what it stands for.  COPD.  Yes, I get the drift on what's being affected; it's somewhere North of asthma, but however accurate the descriptors for the ailment these initials signify, the words quite stubbornly get lost upon my memory.

       Yes,  the beginning might protrude through and unveil "Chronic Obstructive . . . " but then, the remainder of this high class Latinate/Greek body wracker will stay hidden.

       In fact, the whole COPD might as well be the Colorado Police Department as anything intelligible I can come up with.

       All right, finally, "Chronic Obstructive"--(if memory permits)--"Pulmonary Disorder."

       Or, as I gasped to the attendant medicos in emergency the night the flu felled me, "can't breathe." 

Getting moving again.

       Jogging, exercising, body on the move, blood working, tired, but things churning.  I need it.  Connie needs walking, legs moving.  She's returned from a health set back, but going through mail, sorting, throwing, attending, enjoying being home and ready to work for a healthy comeback. 

       Also grabbing the news and catching up on Downton Abby.

       No way to tell you how good it is to have her back where she belongs.

Thanks to friends who saved their BEST birthday cards for me!

       Good friends joined together to gift me and help celebrate an 85th birthday.

       The two birthday cards they sent from the two couples had front cover quotations that make you smile, and then drop your jaw a bit with the mind-opening imagination/inventiveness of the expressions:


       "Living on earth is expensive but it does include a free trip around the sun every year.  Happy Birthday."


       "Birthdays are good for you.  Statistics show that people who have the most live the longest!"
                                          (Larry Lorenzoni) 


 

Mark, riding Barabak, Lassoes a Word

       There are musical elements in language that sneak up on those who put words together which  may hardly, if at all, be noticed as having contributed to the flare of the writing.

       Consider this paragraph today by political writer Mark Z. Barabak of the L.A. Times about Bernie Sanders:


       "He is angry, righteous, waving his arms, hollering and contemplating a run for president, which is why 150 Iowans have turned out on a numbingly cold evening to hear Vermont's independent U.S. senator vent."

     
        I just know Mark Barabak didn't consciously choose, but unconsciously, what I'd call the perfect word to end his paragraph.  It's a strong verb, definitely apt,  but I'll betcha anything a little musical genie tapped Mark to find the word that lassoes the first two and the last two letters of "Vermont"!

      

"Nonchalant"

       Somehow the word was uttered in an appropriate context between my son and me last night, and I simply wondered where it came from.  No ready root came to our minds.

        A good time for the dictionary.  You're right if you thought a French origin is involved.  Chalant  meaning "warm" coming from Latin way back calere, "heated" or "hot."  So "not warm or heated."  And "cool" is even a synonym.

Pronunciation-itis--Wanting to get it right

       
       When outstanding LA Times classical music critic Mark Swed goes kind of crazy for a new performer, it's time to sit up and take notice.  Yesterday's Headline and sub-headline respectively?  "Get ready for Mirga mania," "Conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla wows in fiery L.A. Phil concert at Disney."

        By my count, the surname of the new female assistant conductor of the Phil appeared in the article 16 times.  My inner ear was going daft by about the 5th until I hypothesized a pronunciation something like GRAH-zin-ite TIE-la.

        The review didn't give the apparently correct pronunciation of this name we're all going to be contending with until its 16th and last printed appearance:  GRA-chin-tee-eh TEE-la.  The sound you hear is the tinkle of my imagined pronunciation shattering into pieces.

      

"Who(m) am I speaking to?"

       On the phone this morning, I needed to know the name of the party I was speaking to so I could ask for her when I called back later.  Which word would you choose, "who" or "whom"?

       I always convert such a question into a statement to "solve" it:  "I am speaking to who(m)."  I change the words to "he" and "him" and ask myself which sounds right.  If the answer is "him" as in this case, I know the "right" choice is "whom."

       But what did I actually say?  "Who am I speaking to?"

       For one thing, having two "m"s so close together ("am") is awkward to say.  For another, whatever the "rules" about objects of prepositions, common usage is, and should be, a great arbiter of what is permissible in language.   

"Familiar"

       Getting out on the road this morning in my car, at a nearby stop sign I pondered freeways vs. city streets, and either way, it occurred to me that what we like is the familiar, the paths and routes we know, have used often . . . the familiar.

       And I wondered why we use and choose the word "familiar" to characterize such cases.  Of course, for the associations the word contains.  What is usually most close to us, most long term and far back in immediate personal relationship to us?  Our family members, who else!  And what better word to suggest any long-term unquestioned relationship in which the other seems to know us just about as well as we know the other.

       It's "familiar."

Repetition Is a High Order Use of Language

       In traversing by car from Sylmar to my house, I'm moving on one freeway very quickly to another freeway and then going under two other freeways before arriving home.

       It's a new route to me, and because I'm not only switching freeways but have to avoid exiting onto two other freeways while remaining on the second, I find myself talking to myself about which lane I should be in at each stage for best and safest driving.

       Maybe it's my age, but I need this kind of self-talking to reenforce choosing the correct turns and eschewing the wrong ones.

       Sometimes one feels dumb or nutty trying to learn something new and repeating and even rehearsing it to oneself to set it in memory.

       But for me it's a high order use of LANGUAGE!

Distraught . . .

       When a patient is leaving a hospital, he or she goes through dis____?

       Funny how the other day the word I came up with was "dispatch."  Well, one is being dispatched into another state regarding one's health.  But I knew that wasn't the word I was looking for.

       The next thing I came up with was "disgorge."  Wait a minute.  Though that might be what's happening, someone's kind of being "spit out" of the system, that wasn't right either, and it sounded horrible.

       (Need I go back to my post connecting "gargle" and "gargoyle" as both coming from the same root meaning "throat"?  And "gorge" too.)

       But of course, of COURSE.  The word I was looking for was "discharge."  Why do I need to go round Robin Hood's Barn to get where I'm going??

Simple question: What do you call someone who has committed a misdemeanor?

       Mm-hmm . . . mm-hmmm . . . Clock's ticking . . . clock's ticking . . . all right, one who commits a misdemeanor is . . .  a misdemeanant.

       Sounds funny to me.  But host Warren Olney on KCRW's "To the Point" wouldn't use a word like that without knowing it was right.

       Olney was speaking with several law enforcement folks, including police chiefs and former police chiefs, and when they started using the word too, I knew it must be correct.

       Either that or Olney's erudition had them buffaloed, and they copied him, not wanting to appear dumb.  But the latter's not true; they sounded quite bright themselves.

       Nevertheless, if one who commits a felony is a felon, why isn't a person who commits a misdemeanor  . . . a misdemean? or as son David said, a misdemeano? ( Or, as I thought of later, misdemeanie.)

A Fortunate Shortening

       I had fun with KCRW's program called "Morning Becomes Eclectic," certainly a strange title for a daily music broadcast, but also appropriate.

       Yesterday I realized more fully why its host doesn't mind using its initials to refer to it:  "MBE." 

       The whole title is not only an unusual combination of words, but taking "eclectic" alone, the [k] sound of the three "c'"s  is produced in the back of the mouth, all other sounds in the word are produced in the front; hence a "mouthful" to say.  Try it aloud s-l-o-w-l-y to see.

       But the very shortened MBE flows swifter than a mountain stream:  Say "M" and your mouth ends with lips closed, "B" begins with lips closed and ends with the sound of "ee," which is the last initial.   

         

      

Film School--the Dream Lives On!

       Ah, the blacktop is so fresh and smooth, the white lines so sharp and contrasty, as you head into Hollywood on the Hollywood Freeway.

       Before you enter the famous capital of U.S. cinema, there's a road sign put up by the city, I believe, announcing that "New York Film Academy" is just off the next freeway exit.

       Couldn't help wondering what appeal that might have here in the heart of Hollywood, especially considering the two coasts' competition, if not enmity.

       Not much further along, just inside the actual Hollywood limits, another road sign displays itself:  "Los Angeles Film School."    If you didn't get sucked in by the first sign, maybe here you would find "the real thing."

       I'm presuming "Hollywood Film School" had already been taken.

       

It's His Industry, All Right

       Granted there's limited time for getting words about the Oscars accurately onto paper when the show happened Sunday eve, and the L.A. leading newspaper has to get oodles of quotes, photos, and observations into the public's hands only a few hours later.

       A little muff here and there is almost inevitable.  But it's nice when the uncaught mistake also reenforces the intentions of the statement.

     
       "Reese Witherspoon was all smiles as she stopped to chat on the red carpet.  The best actress nominee for "Wild," a film she also produced, said that at this stage in her career, her priorities have changed.  'It's about creating strong women's roles in his wonderful industry.'"


       "This," was no doubt intended, but women's relative lack of power in Hollywood was later a target during the ceremonies as well.      

"Home" has seldom meant so much.

       
       The most touching thing said tonight on the Academy Awards was during the acceptance speech for best lead actress in a film.

       Julianne Moore said several very good things including that people who have Alzheimer's Disease "need to be seen" so that "we can find a cure."  But I speak of what she said to her husband at the end:  "I thank you for giving me a home."

       It was very simple, but somehow replete with meaning.  What might have been questioned in several ways . . . "You're thanking him for giving you a house to live in?"  "Wait, he can't just give you a home, you have to contribute to that; don't you make a home together?" . . .

       All that seemed to dissolve in the openness, directness, and sense of fulfillment that enveloped it.

"Speaking in Tongues?"

       Daughter Elizabeth is in town.  This morning, I let her finish a text message she was sending before I would tell her what I wanted to.

       She pummeled on swiftly both thumbs flying, and it was a LO-O-O-N-N-G message.

       When she finally stopped, I found myself saying, "You have speaking thumbs."

       Her return to me, I think, surprised us both, and it was slick as they come.

       "Speaking in thumbs," she said.

"CPAP" Looks and Sounds a bit Soviet, Doesn't It?

       Son David called today, and I asked him, "Did you try on and use your C-SPAN"?

       Now I knew that was wrong, but it was something like that and C-SPAN was as close as I could come.  It's CPAP, a machine with a mask you wear which helps you breathe better and improve your sleep.

       David said, "Yes, C-SPAN, those politicians, that'll put you to sleep."

       And, he added, you can't help when you look at the letters themselves seeing  the word "CRAP," one short diagonal line different.

Want to Name a Lipstick Color?

       My wife asked me today to bring her a "red" lipstick, choose one at a drug store for her.

       I found a red bunch grouped together by a single manufacturer and proceeded to choose, trying each with just a touch on a finger or hand for looks.  The name "Tropical Coral" caught my eye (maybe my ear too, I just realized "coral" is embedded in "tropical"), and when I touched it to me, it looked like "Connie's color."

       Taking it to the register, I looked at what I had, and it said "Volcanic."  Confused, I went back and discovered someone put this one in the "Coral" column.  I tried the real "Tropical Coral" and didn't like it.

       So "Volcanic" it was.

       Connie approved!

       She should only be happy I didn't bring her "Flamboyant Flamingo."

     

      

Poet Philip Levine Dies at 87, 1928-2015

        Philip Levine was most noted for his poems about work and working class people who, he said, were hardly present in poetry.

        His obituary by Steve Chawkins in the L.A. Times today says that for years, Levine expressed bafflement over poetry without people in it:


       "There's a lot of snow, a moose walks across the field, the trees darken, the sun begins to set, and a window opens," Levine told a Paris Review interviewer in 1988.  "Maybe from a great distance you can see an old woman in a dark shawl carrying an unrecognizable bundle into the gathering gloom."

       When people do appear, he said, "their greatest terror is that they'll become like their parents and maybe do something dreadful, like furnish the house in knotty pine."


       That's a critique of certain poetry that reveals what room there was for poems of the kind Levine himself would and did create. 

Where the Caption and the Photo are a Perfect Match

       From the joyous L.A. Times series on the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  This part on YOLA, started not only by the Phil for Gustavo Dudamel but to help entice him to become the Phil conductor, makes you proud of the orchestra and of Los Angeles.

       This particular picture gives "in the flesh" the full meaning of the caption that underscores it.

Click on photo to enlarge

Where the Letters DO What the Word MEANS

Cover of UCLA EXTENSION Catalog

                                    Please click on image to enlarge.                  

LA Phil Musicians Speak Up in Images

       An orchestra's language is music, but the musicians have a way of using words to evoke the orchestra's character.

       Tympanist Joseph Pereira says, "The percussion is sort of the orchestra's backbone.  The strings are the beauty and the face, the brass is the soul and the woodwinds are the heart."

        David Howard recalls the "physical feeling" that attracted him to the clarinet when he was thirteen:  "I love the way the instrument takes air from me."  Howard says his bass clarinet is "more of a character actor than a leading man."

         Principal bass player Christopher Hanulik says "The job of the bass section is to lay down a sound as plush as a carpet for the rest of the orchestra to float upon."    

        

      

"Scampi"

       Made a very good shrimp scampi dinner by Bertolli this evening (from an aluminum bag, with very nice sauce) but wondered what "scampi" meant.  Connie thought it was "garlic."

       Not too  clear from different sources, but I like etymology online dictionary by Douglas Harper's origin as the plural of Italian scampo meaning "prawn," but ultimately from Greek kampe "a bending, a winding," from the Proto-Indo European root kamp- "to bend."

       Those prawns, those shrimp, those scampi, they do bend!

"Wolfgang"

       Of course, most of us have come across the name "Wolfgang," but it hasn't before occurred to me to wonder what it meant, German, but . . .

       In a piece in the N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine for February 8, 2015 by Alex Hoyt, a weekly "last words" page under the rubric Lives, Hoyt wonders about a strange and interesting uncle of his who passed away named "Wolfgang."

       As Hoyt comes to know more about his mysterious uncle, he writes "the more appropriate the name Wolfgang seems--his solitude; his status as our family's Mozartian genius; his lupine, booze-fueled midnight mood swings."

       The word means "wolf" "going."

       It is sometimes chosen by English speakers to honor the musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  It is not among the 1000 most commonly chosen names for a boy.

"____ en Costa Rica"

       My underwear says on it "Hecho en Costa Rica."  I knew right away that it should be pronounced [ETCH-o].

       Someone asks, "How did you know?"

       Because in Spanish the "h" is Shilent!


                         [Somehow I think this post was influenced by Mutts                                    the comic strip.]

End-of-the-Week Rumination: Brevity, Abbreviation, Even Initials Only

       The previous week reveals me not coming close to my usual limit of 135 words per post.

       More things to do around house with assuming some obligations Connie typically takes greater part in:  shopping, meal making, cleaning up, picking up.  The back is holding her back with healing the first order of the day.  I'm glad to be doing these things, but shorter takes, I suppose, on the blog, for now, seem to be the result.

       Shorter may be better; and shortest may be best.  Look over the past week.

What's BLT to you?

       To me BLT is a "bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich."

       To my wife Connie after yesterday's mnemonic lesson to help her painful back, BLT means NO "Bending, Lifting, Twisting."

       Thanks, physical therapist Randy, for those letters to heal-by.   

Don't ask . . . don't tell.

       Did you know that the word "alumni" is just one letter short of . . . "albumin"?

       If you're caught by words, this kind of observation can happen to YOU.

       .

     
       

As I remembered it . . . (Yesterday's Haiku)

                         Hokushi's Haiku
                        (my remembering)

                      Moon on the pine tree
                   I hang it . . . and take it off
                      And I smile each time


                           Hokushi's Haiku
                      (translation found online)

                       The moon is on the pine:
                   I keep hanging it--taking it off
                        and gazing each time.

My Remembering of Hokushi's Haiku

Prf and Phb: Optional surgeries?

       Prefrontal lobotomy and  Phlebotomy.   It's probably a good idea to figure out the difference between these two before you have either one done.  

       
      

What is the password for your ID; no wait!

       Codes and passwords and ID numbers.  We have such a pile of them sitting before us at the computer that, having just gone through it to find more info online about a bill to us, I had to pour through every 3"x5" scrap of note paper and STILL couldn't find it---the needed one.

       "Aw, heck, let's wait till the bill comes in the mail," I say to Connie; she agrees.

       

XLIX

       OK, so our great local sportswriter beat me to it in text.

       "Super Bowl XLIX--the game whose Roman numerals make it sound like a laxative--" Bill Plaschke wrote in The Times today about the Big Game.

       Yessss.

       But isn't it ridiculous?  These pretentious Roman Numerals that must be summoned each year, and refigured--let's see, "L" is 50 and since the "X," which is 10 is before the L, that means take 10 away--so 40--and then X with an "I" which is one before it, takes away one, leaving 9:  49.  

       It's like the game is carved in stone, which, I suppose isn't too different after all from Gwyneth Lewis's Welsh/English poem on Friday seemingly carved in stone or brass in the side of a building to celebrate two great languages.  

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: Living with Words and Wonder

       I guess that's it.  Just finding these, words and wonder and, yes, even worry all clung together in life, bound around your daily existence and the new things you find each day as well, such as the doc "Language Matters," opening out and folding in the world, and there you are surprisingly bundled right along with it.

"I'll meet you under the WORDS," Gwyneth Lewis, former National Poet, Wales

       The northern tier of land in Australia, Aborigines, a man who is the last speaker of his language; across the miles, Welsh, the tongue under fire and pressure to be liquidated, only through struggle vindicated and now on equal footing with English; Hawaii, lonely islands mid Pacific, the language shunted aside and forbidden, but struggling back in the mouths of school children speaking only Hawaiian.

       "Language Matters" in being a people's identity, its culture, its roots, its place; to see these exemplars, knowing 6,000 languages exist, 3,000 are endangered and could be gone by century's end; to see the place (the beautiful landscapes, animal life, and where water meets and laps and licks), and to realize how native words are the very grit and gristle of these human lives in their surrounds.

       ALL this is evoked and cherished and intelligently uncovered in this wonderful documentary, both frightening and courageous! 

       You may watch this film online at this PBS location.

"Language is a lens through which we see the world."

       Too much struck with poet Bob Holman's beautiful journey in the documentary mentioned yesterday to even find the words to begin talking about "Language Matters" these few minutes after the close of the film on PBS.

       Let the phrase I quote and use as the title of today's post be its signature phrase till I can gather my thoughts about it.

"Language Matters"

       Just musing what a privilege it is to wander among words.  There are multiple languages, of course.  And last two days, news of Google's huge advances in translating from one language instantaneously into numbers of others, into spoken word and text simultaneously!

       And a wonderful documentary (I'm recording from PBS TV tomorrow evening) called "Language Matters" on dying languages being learned and memorized by non-native speakers of them to preserve, to honor, to respect the cultural meanings and contributions embedded in those tongues worth preserving.

       Horizons are made to be succeeded.

"GDKNOWS"

       Surprise license plate seen today:  GDKNOWS.

       My feeling is the owner of that plate is very proud of it and pleased to know he or she and no one else got it.

       Of course it's a phrase that can express frustration--"God and nobody else could possibly know that because I sure don't."  But it's also an expression of faith that if or when no one else does, God does know.

       The missing "O" is in keeping with long tradition from the Torah that God's name cannot be said, only "stand-ins" for it.  So English will often show as "G-d" to honor that.

       If a government-required identification can make food for thought and wonder while it's at it, something worthwhile has happened. 

"PUWN-yapple"

       It's hard for me to see or hear a certain word without thinking of my mother's story of herself and her sister Rose when they stopped at a drug store for a treat on the way home from school.

       Mom, her four sisters and brother grew up in America, learned English as a first language.  So it's understandable the two couldn't keep from laughing when a man came up to the soda fountain near them and asked for a "PUWN-yapple sundae."

       The counter guy couldn't catch it and asked, "What was that?"  "A PUWN-yapple sundae.  PUWN-YAPPLE."

       The man spoke Yiddish natively, no doubt.  But Ida and Rose got the lecture of a lifetime from their dad when they told the story that night at home.  "Don't make fun and hurt a man's feelings!"

"Next Time, Fail Sooner."

       "Life's Little Instruction Calendar" has got me going, got me thinking.  Just four words it had to say on a recent day:


                          "Next time, fail sooner."


       Fear of failure stopped me from trying, hurting, learning, more than once.  But maybe the failures later would have been avoided had I done so.

"Pineapple"

       As Connie had me bring home a pineapple the other day, it made me ask, "What does either pine or apple have to do with pineapple?"

       Apparently it's the look of the fruit, its resemblance to a pine cone that got the "pine" part of it.  How about "apple"?  Why not just "pinefruit"?  I don't know, but since "pine" can be traced back to Indo-European pele, meaning "fat," it's possible, though there's almost no likeness to an apple, it was a way of saying, "This is delicious like an apple, but a much fatter piece of fruit."

       Speculative at best, but it's funny how we like to have answers to questions like these, even if they're a bit "wild blue yonder"ish.

"Number Our Days"

       Parts of my medicine are more easily kept track of today than heretofore.  I have some asthma inhalers.  No more dividing inhalations per day into total number of puffs in inhaler to determine what day the medicine will run out, then marking that day in my engagement calendar!

       No, sir.  Now I have a number-counter.  Press, receive meds, and watch the number on the counter reduce by one!  Get to zero, and you need a new inhaler.  No more figuring.

       "Number Our Days" can now take its original referent and profound meaning:

                  Teach us to number our days aright,
                  that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

                            Psalm 90, Verse 12

"ho-mo-phone"

       I'm a speech kind of guy--so I'm subject to  this kind of mistake, which I just spied on a previous post:  "cite" for "site," speaking of a website.

       Who can always remember that there's site and there's cite and there's sight?  And the root meanings of cite and site don't really help you distinguish and understand much about the difference and the "rightness" of one or the other.

       And just today, I'm picking up my first hearing aids which are by "Siemens," and of course in my head are rolling around "seaman's" and "semen's"; you want a sentence?  OK, a "seaman's" favorite place is at sea, and "semen's" very sticky.

       Look, these are . . . both groups . . . "Same sound" words = "homophones."   Same sound words homophone. 

       And suddenly all I can think of is "ET phone home." 

"Hop in the icebox, give mir a glaz milk."

      Got a good few hours of peaceful sleep due to my doc's nice prescription for a liquid medicine. It had 3.8 per cent alcohol and some codeine to help me sleep to shake some leftover symptoms from the flu.

       I woke up, but feeling good, half way through the night and decided another couple teaspoons wouldn't hurt.

       All I could think of was the anecdote our company clerk told me during Korea.  He had worked as a bus boy in the Catskills, and he smilingly remembered the little old Jewish lady who in the late evening would call him over and say, "Hop in the ice box, give mir a glaz milk."  It was a nice night-cap for her.

       For this little old Jewish guy, the cherry-flavored liquid was filling the bill. 

"Broken Windows" : : "Broken Letters"

      There may be an analogy between the “broken windows” crime philosophy and those half hour daily lessons they give Alzheimer’s patients in numbers, reading, writing, and simple organizing tasks.   [See post of Dec. 17, 2014.]

      Police found that arresting street guys for accosting cars at stop lights, expecting  money from drivers for wiping their windows, helped prevent larger crimes.  Repairing broken windows helps prevent a sense of deterioration creating an atmosphere that further destruction or theft is OK.

       “Take care of the little stuff that’s wrong, and the bigger stuff gets taken care of too.”

       When the “little things” that were wrong with the Alzheimer patients . . . the lost facility of  adding numbers, reading words, signing their names, putting things in rows, writing today’s date . . . when these elementary things improved, gradually they could remember better, and attend more to how they dressed, and interact more with others, and even return to former favored activities, gone for years.

       [Please visit this follow-up post of Dec. 21, 2014.]

"Hygiene"

       My dental technician ended her recent hour with me by saying, “Your hygiene is very good as usual.”  I was complimented, of course.  But I had a niggling reservation for some reason.

       I just realized it’s because “hygiene” had a different meaning earlier in my life.  I think maybe we studied hygiene in 7th or 8th grade.  It had more to do with personal body cleanliness, as I recall it.
 
       Oh, well, my teeth are personal, albeit half manufactured, and it is something I personally take care of, gladly, (now that I’m retired and have time to do it).  So “hygiene very good”?  compliment received, compliment taken!

       Word does come from Greek, and a Goddess was named it, Hygeia, “healthy living.”

              [To find what kids in their teens ARE thinking about re                                "hygiene basics," visit this cite.] 

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: Need an MD?

                           Poetry Equation of the Week

                                 Morbidity : Disease : : 
                                  Mortality : Decease

Morbidity and Mortality

       OK so the flu vaccine hasn't done its work too well this year (couple witnesses to that in this house; yet we're glad we took it, and we'll do it again next time--minimum?  no harm done, with possible benefits, and to our minds, multiple benefits over the past many, many years).

       BUT . . . when they give out these statistics on how much of each demographic group has been affected and in what ways, old, young, hospitalizations, deaths, they do it in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  Couldn't they separate the two?!

       I'm sure I'm in that report:  I spent one night in the hospital.  The "morbidity" OK.  Time enough for the other when it's needed!
 

            [Morbidity is 1. a diseased symptom or state; 2. the incidence of disease within respective groups.]

            [morbus L. = "disease"]

"Verklempt"

       It started with Connie and my talking about how “unkempt” the bed was lately:  our laziness.  Then it moved on to “verklempt,” probably from former Saturday Night Live comic Mike Meyers rather than a word we would have used.  It’s Yiddish for “clenched” or "choked," emotionally overwhelmed.

       And it’s pronounced more with an “f” than a “v”:  [fir-KLEMPT], but an expressive word it is! 

       “I’m verklempt!”  Nothing to do with “unkempt,”  but a mate’s being that way might make the partner verklempt! 

"Lackluster"

       Hearing a performance being described as "lackluster" made me aware again of the peculiarity of a word composed of a verb and a noun, the whole word becoming . . . an adjective.

       It reminded me of the wonderful word "stick-to-itiveness."  In this case we have a verb, a preposition, an impersonal pronoun; the "ive" makes it an adjective; and the "ness" makes the word finally--a NOUN.

       Praise the gods of language--they pull off some mighty tricks!

            (For my tribute to the latter word's fortitude, please visit my post on stick-to-itiveness here.)


       [There was no blog hiatus; I kept doing one each day.  But I guess my flu confusion knocked the blog off-kilter, and I couldn't figure how to enter anything till son David came over and solved it for me.]


     

"Protected Health Information"?

       Last paragraph of a "form" at a hearing-aid business, which is apparently requesting my signature of "consent":


      "You have a right to request that we restrict how we use and disclose your protected health information for the purpose of marketing, treatment, payment or health care operations.  Depending on the nature of your request, we are not required by law to grant your request.  However, if we do decide to grant your request, we are bound by our agreement.  You have the right to revoke this consent in writing, except to the extent we already have used or disclosed your protected health information in reliance on your consent.
       _____________________________      
                                   Signature
                         _______________
                                       Date"
                                     

       This speaks of "your protected health information" twice, but doesn't it sound suspiciously like I'm being asked to sign my consent to leaving such information "unprotected"?  In any case, I couldn't sign it for the reason I gave them:  I didn't understand it.
                                                  

Addendum on "Influenza"

       The real "working" part of that word influenza is what we call it for short, "flu."

       Again as might be figured out, it comes from a root meaning "flow," suggestive of water running.  It's not only water that moves, as we might say, "fluently," "fluidly," but also what happens in "influence," whether by the stars (see yesterday's post), or, perhaps the way the disease moves not only within the body, seemingly everywhere to make itself felt, or, moves from person to person so easily -- it virtually flows -- and readily exerts its influence.

      

"Influenza"

       "Flu" is making the rounds.  It's short for Italian [inflluenza], meaning "influence" as you might surmise.

       The reason?  Apparently when these widely spread epidemics of malaise and sickness took place, It was felt and believed to be due to the influence of the stars.

Names? I've got two or three for you.

        I told Kineetha our dental technician that  I came up with a way to remember the new dentist's name, "a Door Jamb" because his name is Dr. Adorjan.

       Thinking about names while Kineetha cleaned, I recalled that someone I knew who worked with student records at the University of Minnesota told me the funniest name she came across in the thousands and thousands she'd seen was . . . Assinida Willinshitter.  Kineetha laughed, and I couldn't keep from it even while Kineetha resumed. 

       As I left, I realized I didn't know the long-time receptionist's name.  I asked.  "Dina," she said. "Dina?" I said. "No.  Dina."  "D-I-N-A?" I spelled.  "No.  GEEE-na."  "Oh, Gina," said I, "I've got a 2 o'clock hearing appointment too."  Lots of laughter from GINA.

       And I had it.

Language As She's Spoke by Yogi

       I wrote of receiving The Yogi Book by Yogi Berra, and here are a few of my favorite inimitable "Yogi-isms" as cited (and sometimes "explained") in the book:


                            "We were overwhelming underdogs."

 "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to                                                         stop them?"

                            "The future ain't what it used to be."

                     "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to                                                                   yours."


       Not a bad ballplayer either.

              

End-of-the-Week Ruminations: "Trying"/"Trying"

       Re the title of yesterday's post, I started without the bracketed "It's," added it later.

       Yes, often news stories have a background, complications, reversals, saying "no" to something that went before, and we have to keep attempting ("trying") to understand the various stages of contradiction that went into TODAY'S News.  (Already that story is outdated as a new state law went into effect January 1st allowing licenses for illegal immigrants.)

       "Try" (verb) comes from Old French [trier], to "sort," "pick out," "sift," what a reporter and editor do and we need to follow in order to understand.  And that sorting and that following can be "trying" (adjective) for reporters and readers, "severely straining the power of endurance" (Merriam-Webster).

       Both meanings can apply here.

[It's] Trying to Understand the News

        Wanting to avoid a party, your spouse tells you, "You can't not go!"  Meaning?  You have to definitely go.  Two negatives make a positive.

        With complications in law and twists in events, newspaper accounts have LOTS of negatives:

       "A state appeals court panel Friday overturned a ban on the Los Angeles Police Deparment's controversial vehicle impound policy that restricts when officers can seize the cars of unlicensed drivers."

       I count SIX negatives (not only "no" or "not" is negative):  "overturned," "ban," "impound," "restricts," "seize" and "unlicensed."   I can't untangle it here, but it's about whether it's fair for people who legally cannot get driver's licenses to be fined and punished for driving without a license.

       Six negatives = positive!  Turns out it is unfair, and (most) illegal immigrants are free from fines and punishment for driving!  

click on comic to enlarge

(The L.A. Times story with the sentence above can be read here.)

The Turn of a Year, the Return of a Haiku

       It was while looking for another haiku yesterday that I found Ann K. Schwader's wonderful "year's end" poem.  Having come up with that haiku and placed it on the blog, I then remembered the exact words of part of the one I was looking for, tried it out on the Internet and FOUND the new year's poem I had been searching for.

       Besides a great sense of humor and humility, Issa's sensitivity and compassion seem boundless:

                                       THE ORPHAN SPEAKS:
                                         THE YEAR-END PARTY...
                                         I AM EVEN ENVIOUS
                                       OF SCOLDED CHILDREN

So glad to have discovered and rediscovered haiku worthy to end the old year and begin the new one.  If they happen to strike notes of self-effacement on the one hand and compassion on the other, I'm thankful for both reminders as the year turns.


(This translation of the haiku by Issa is from Japanese Haiku by Peter Beilenson, which can be found here.)