Three things from DAH.

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I'm seeking the point. 

First up this week, Nag …  
The noun nag meant horses (usually older or worn-out ones) centuries before it meant persistent complaining, or those who persistently complain. Referencing a horse as a nag doesn't sound loving, but human nags are often nagging out of love. "I wouldn't complain unless I cared." I haven't ever said that, but I can imagine doing so. I think my mother sometimes nagged me when I was an indolent youth, but I haven't experienced much nagging since. I'm just distracted, I suppose, by the disparate meanings of the word. The horse nag comes to us from Middle English or Dutch. A word for a small horse. The human nag comes from an Old Norse word meaning "to moan." In my dreams there's a little horse moaning on and on at me.  
Nagging – Just My Little Way of Saying "I Love You"

Second up this week, Notion …  
A notion's much like whimsy, which must be why I get a notion at least daily, usually when my mind wanders. Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers drifted out of my mental ether when I was thinking about racism in America. I thought about Tom Wolfe, and another of his work's: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (apropos of not much: my father's med school research work included consideration of lysergic acid diethylamide). Then I thought about Ken Kesey (because of Wolfe and Furthur and LSD), and I wondered where the title of Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion came from. Well, it's from Goodnight, Irene, a song first recorded by Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter in 1933: 

And now I want to watch the Paul Newman directed movie. If only the little horse would stop moaning about all the other things I should be doing. I'd be free to muse on big trees and small people. 
Roger Ebert's movie review of Paul Newman's "Sometimes A Great Notion"

Third up this week, Negociant …  
What I imagine most people imagine when imagining winemaking: A fellow in overalls who grows some grapes and makes them into wine in a stone barn in his vineyard. That's not the sort of wine business I'm involved in, which sometimes makes explaining what we three partners are doing confusing. We're negociants. We buy unfinished wine and juice and raise them up (élevage) in tank and barrel before bottling and selling our Napa Valley wine (A Gardener's Path). There are lots of negociant variations in the world of wine. Negociants have been around for a long, long time. In my case, we're aiming to produce Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that tastes more expensive than what our customers pay for it. 
What is a Wine Negociant?

And a bit more:

How to Triumph Like a Girl
by Ada Limón

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.

And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

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