WORK

“Modern Major-General’s Song”

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news—
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I’m very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General…

—W. S. Gilbert
—from The Pirates of Penzance

Read the rest of the song’s lyrics, with annotations, and accompanying video at Lit Genius

WORD(S)

petrichor /PET-ri-ker/. noun. The pleasant smell that comes with the first rain after a long, hot dry spell. Also, the liquid mixture that collects during that rain and is responsible for the smell.

“The diverse nature of the host materials has led us to propose the name ‘petrichor’ for this apparently unique odour which can be regarded as an ‘ichor’ or ‘tenuous essence’ derived from rock or stone. This name, unlike the general term ‘argillaceous odour’, avoids the unwarranted implication that the phenomenon is restricted to clays or argillaceous materials; it does not imply that petrichor is necessarily a fixed chemical entity but rather it denotes an integral odour.” (Nature, 1964)

“I’d rather get my own hit of a hot driveway, thunderstorm-doused, the hissing wet that brings the earthworms up on asphalt: petrichor on a paddle…” (Brian Bouldrey)

WEB

1. On the Roofs is a site dedicated to exploring the views from rooftops all over the world. Very high roofs. In other words, people taking photos that give me the heebie-jeebies. Most recently, Hong Kong rooftops. There’s also video, like this climb of the 650 meter (2132 foot) Shanghai Tower.

2. This Is Not a Vermeer™: a five part series on art, forgery, authenticity and ownership. I’ve become allergic to Medium, but this is a good series. Can’t wait for the fifth and final installment.

3. Treat yourself to four mesmerizing minutes of master ceramic artist Lee Hyuang Gu at work. Watching artists at work is a fine form of meditation.

4. Redesigning The Book. Adam Greene’s “Bibliotheca” project is realizing the material design of the Bible as a collection of literature: four volumes with no verse numbers or annotations, all built on two custom typefaces using the kind of layout you’d expect for a big novel.

5. Today is Pi Approximation Day, aka 22/7. Meet the man who memorized and recited the first 100,000 digits of π (and creates stories from them). Or watch the trailer for the creepy movie. Or sing along to the “Pi Song” (to the tune of “American Pie” of course).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Perhaps people still love poetry after all…just not poetry books?

• Reader T responds he was glad to see his “old friend” palimpsest show up as a word of the day, but that “no discussion seems complete” without mentioning its use in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court:

“The first part of it—the great bulk of it—was parchment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still—Latin words and sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently.” (Mark Twain)

Which, for some reason, reminded me of the first time I saw the word in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow:

“…spies with foreign hybrid names lurked in all the stations of the Ottoman rump, code messages in a dozen Slavic tongues were being tattooed on bare upper lips over which the operatives then grew mustaches, to be shaved off only by authorized crypto officers and skin then grafted over the messages by the Firm’s plastic surgeons…their lips were palimpsests of secret flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each other.” (Thomas Pynchon)

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