WORK

I like the looks of farm dumps, almost always filling a ditch in a pasture. What is no longer good for anything—from an Oldsmobile with a frozen crank to storm-tossed sheets of corrugated roofing—gets pushed off the edge, or over a hill, or onto a cleft in a pasture, where time has been waiting in rain-gray coveralls with his cutting torch lit, its flame as red as a late September sumac leaf. For it’s always September in these heaps of rust and brown, with field mice and rabbits setting up house for bad weather, claiming the driest tin cans or the dome of a fender.

—Ted Kooser
—from “September”
—found in The Wheeling Year

WORD(S)

deliquescent. adjective. Melting or liquefying by absorbing moisture from the air. Melting away through growth or decay. Humorously: dissolving in perspiration. Popularly (mis)used as a synonym for simply dissolving or melting since, in most cases, one doesn’t really want a friend or lover to literally deliquesce.

“A ghostly figure of the Virgin Mary… It was ghostly because Mrs. O’Callaghan had taken it into her head to give it a vigorous scrubbing and this had taken off the paint. It had also taken off most of the left cheek, so that the Virgin now hoved in her shadowy corner, chalk-white, leperous and deliquescent.” (T. H. White)

“For a moment horrible doubts troubled Mr. Hoopdriver. Had that handkerchief been a dream? Besides which he was deliquescent and scarlet, and felt so. It must be her coquetry—the handkerchief was indisputable.” (H. G. Wells)

“Down the gangway they inched, and stepped on to Iberia: deliquescent macadam. First on board, thought Mother, as they exchanged the smell of ship for the smell of coach.” (Martin Amis)

“I wanted to please her. I wanted her to admire me. I wanted her to deliquesce in my arms, helpless with astonished desire and adoration. I did all the foolish things an old man does when he falls in love with a girl.” (John Banville)

WEB

1. “Passenger Shaming” (photos). I’ve met too many of these travelers.

2. “The ‘Bi-literate’ Brain: The Key to Reading in a Sea of Screens” is based on very soft science (when any), but attention to our reading habits is good. Pairs well with: “Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress”.

3. It’s a good time of year to learn why birds fly in “V” formations. It’s both simpler and much more complicated and interesting than you might think.

4. ► Alan Kitching and Monotype is “a short film that offers a behind-the-scenes look at Kitching’s studio and collection of physical type, as well as his work creating a set of posters that pay tribute to the centenary of five hugely influential graphic designers.”

5. Today is, of course, Hobbit Day (Both Bilbo and Frodo were born on September 22; if you know enough of the differences in Gregorian and Shire calendars to dispute this, just…shush.), the cornerstone of Tolkien Week. Feel free to celebrate with Hobbitian parties and act as if it were Talk Like a Hobbit Day but, please, for all our sake’s, don’t go barefoot. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. writes: “I love the piece by Kronovet. What I love even more is the strange mysterious place it seems to come from.” — Me too! It’s that mysterious place where so many prose poems (or whatever you want to call them) originate…

• Reader K. shares a discovery: Hyung-Min Yoon’s The Book of Jests, which transforms a prayer book from 1515 (illustrated by Albrecht Dürer) into a contemporary political joke book. He writes: “It’s a fascinating work in itself, and the review is a good one, not only ruminating on the changing role of the book in the 21st century, but changing predilections in art and beyond. And, to top it off, it includes a video of the artist’s hand turning each of the pages, not only showing each, but translating the jokes, many of which are very funny.”

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