For Connie

                                                                              

Siri and I Had an Exchange

     Siri (who will answer your questions on Apple's iPhone) said that one of the questions I could ask was, "Where's my sister?"

     So I asked, "Where's my sister?" 

     Siri responded that she couldn't find a listing for my sister, what was her first and last name?

     I said, "No, you're right, I don't have a sister.  I don't."

     And Siri responded, "Who am I to say otherwise?"


     In all this, I spoke; and Siri texted.
 

And Cummings is Still Coming at You

     This is the whole passage that precedes my previous entry. 


A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.


      Cummings also has a poem that begins (and is titled) "Since feeling is first."
 

EEK, E.E. Cummings is Coming at You

  
     It currently graces the splashy TV tube in our living room, not only in word, but in voice, of inimitable poet E. E. Cummings.  Yes, it's on a car commercial, but if the recorded voice weren't recognizable, (as it is to me), the words in their form, in their manner, would be.  Not to mention their dignity, their intensity, their "hold off the world" insistence, their truthfulness:

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

         I found the source of the Cummings quote at a wonderful website called "Brain Pickings"; you can find it too at brainpickings.org, "The Courage to Be Yourself."   

      

Is it never too late to use the old words?

 You really are getting up there in years when you mention in conversation something is "Newfangled" and realize just how oldfangled that word sounds.

Actually "newfangled" IS the older word (14th century), and "oldfangled" is first found in 1842 as patterned after"newfangled."
 
Merriam-Webster tells us both words derive from Old English fangen, "to take or seize."  

My 2019 entries pick up tomorrow on Feb. 7, 2019.


 

Life rolls on, and we note it as it does.

       I opened the door of our bedroom this morning to allow Connie more easily to steer herself and her new rollator out to the hallway and into the living area of our house.  Connie is speedy once she gets going.

       I told her, "I feel like I'm letting the bulls into the lists."

       She laughed.

I think this must be a rare compliment

       "You've always made me feel safe," Connie said to me recently.

       I told her that made me feel very good.


       It does.

Oh, Don, that's too much; or is it just right?

      
       Connie does like having an orange and a half each morning, and her helpers and I feel obliged and sort of honored to present them to her in neatly cut portions circled around a plate.

       When Connie said to me, "No one does that as perfectly as you,"  I said, "Everyone loves beautiful order; otherwise I'd accuse them of being anti-symmetric."

For this twister we ask elephants' forgiveness.

       Lo and behold, returning with a single tongue twister to my blogly rounds, I immediately came across a truly malevolent one in an L.A. Times article about a local acting class.  One of the teacher's favorites to get her students' lips and teeth and tongues going with precisely articulated syllables (hmm, that's not a bad one itself) is a twister I had never run into before:

       "eleven malevolent elephants"

       Have a try on that, friends, and you too might take the stage and achieve Hamlet's advice to speak the speech "trippingly on the tongue."

       I personally fell acropper several times before I even got one out right.  For this baby, speed may come only after slow tries and then, possibly moderate ones?


 

"Honestly, officer, it wasn't the wine that made it hard to talk."

       Reading our new dishwasher manual, I discovered we had a special plastic gizmo to hold and keep wine glasses from breaking while neatly cleaning out vestiges of wine in the glasses' inner recess.

       Even better, it brought me an irresistible tongue twister:

             "stem safe shelf"
     
       Five times fast?  Three times?  Even two?
  
   

"Untenable, Inescapable, Irreplaceable"

       Charles Mc Nulty's review of Long Day's Journey into Night recently in the L.A. Times used three uncanny words to characterize the heartwracking, entangled life of that play--about author  Eugene O'Neill's own family.

       Speaking of the relationships amongst Eugene, his mother, his father, his older brother, which the play is at pains to draw upon, McNulty says they are "untenable, inescapable, irreplaceable."

       Those words could not be better chosen or more accurate, as Connie and I recall so distinctly from our witnessing of the play almost 60 years ago on Broadway. 

       McNulty's words all begin with negative prefixes, but each suggests the terribly vital part nuclear family relationships play in every person's life.

I'm with you, Chase!

       I don't think I was the only one who had an emotional twinge February 11th to read on front page of the L.A. Times Sports section in a  little side capsule:

       Utley re-signs 
       with Dodgers

       Before I saw that as a positive thing I would very much want to learn about a big fan favorite, I read it with pangs and a small heart-drop.  Did Chase Utley "resign"?!  Oh, no.  Finally the other possibility clicked in:  did Utley re-sign a contract with the Dodgers for another year?  The story on page 7 made it clear that he'd be back.  Yippee!!

       "Re-sign"?  "Resign"?  Don't play with my heartstrings!  Those words (if there is such a word as "re-sign"), are too close to kid around with.

        

My Kind of Magazine

I really don't think I thought any of this stuff was sexy in school.  I just was intrigued!

In "Hollywood" Everyone Has a Calling Card

       A kind of calling or publicity card with a photograph of the dentists was available for pickup at Connie and my dentist's office today.

       I picked one up.  A square, shiny card with all the pertinent information, and this smiley, sunny day outdoor, suit-and-tie, color photograph of the dentists.

       Only one thing curlicued my eyebrows a bit--this phrase--"emergencies welcome."

       Oh, I guess I know what they intended.  But isn't that a little too eager and crass sounding?  Smacks of another professional breed, doesn't it, certain lawyers given to ambulance chasing?  

No Way to Pronounce This Restaurant Confidently

       "Shogun Sushi."  "Shogun Sushi."

      
       Especially if you say it with alacrity:


       "Shogun Sushi Shogun Sushi Shogun Sushi"



It's those "easy" Tongue Twisters again.  Does the vowel have an "h" in front of it or not?!

A Quadrant? AN Octant? Wait a Minute.

       "Have a quadrant or an octant," I said to Connie, bringing her 12 equal portions of her morning orange and a half.

       She laughed.  I said, "Or would Khan approve?"

       Connie's been studying fractions online at the Khan Academy, which is available to all to teach arithmetic and math, apparently very effectively.

       I had just cut those slices myself and came up with what they were:  the 8 parts of the whole orange and the 4 parts of a half orange--hence in my mind and language usage, octants and quadrants.

        Connie got it and was amused at my putting fractions to practical application and immediately began figuring out what the fractions really were. . .

Take a Leap; the Vacuum is Fine

       So many outlandish things are appearing in the newspaper with Trump, and so much is he associated with and approving of world-wide business transactions, that I guess I wasn't shocked and even willing to believe the lead headline in the L.A. Times Business section on January 10th, 2017:


               MARS IN DEAL FOR PET HEALTH CHAIN


       Interplanetary dealing?!

       No, it's just the YUGE candy bar, etc., company I remember from my youth:  Mars, Inc.

"Do Make It a Good Day"

       There's a department at Kaiser Permanente which leaves a phone message to remind you of an upcoming appointment.   The nurse always ends with the same few words:

       "Do make it a good day."

       That stops/me/in/my/tracks/.  How different from just "Have a good day."
   
       Both sentences are imperative with an implied "you" as the subject, but "Have a good day" rings for me as "(I hope you experience) a good day."  "Make," however, with its auxiliary verb "do," creates a special message and emphasis:

       "Oops!  This "good day" is up to me?   I can cause it to happen??  Indeed, that's the only way it will???"

        That message helps me turn my day in a better direction, and I don't see how it wouldn't for anybody.   

"Mapping" the Body in Song Lyrics

       Listening to great old songs on radio.
     
       In "All of You,"  Cole Porter has a guy declaring the many beautiful parts of his girl friend.  The line that struck me was "The East, West, North, and the South of you."  I thought that's brilliant, but I hadn't heard what went before.

       On the Web I found the line preceding was "The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you."  "Mouth" didn't sound quite right . . . except to rhyme with the wonderful line that followed.

        Porter could have written "breasts" in the preceding line.  Then he'd have "The North, South, East, and the West of you," a more pedestrian order, and "breasts" probably was unpublishable in a song at the time.

       Besides, the South is the most interesting "part of you" he could name.  Save it for last!