Being unable to get a newsletter out yesterday meant being unable to observe the anniversary of the death of poet Miklós Radnóti. If you’re unfamiliar with Radnóti, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to learn about him and his tragic and amazing story.

Today, the poem that inspired the poppy as the symbol of The Great War (and thus Armistice/Veterans Day).

WORK

“In Flanders Fields”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
     Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
     In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
     In Flanders fields.

—Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae
—from In Flanders Fields and Other Poems

WORD(S)

pococurante. adjective or noun. Careless, indifferent, nonchalant; a person who is one or more of those. From Italian, poco curante (caring little). Likely inspired by Seigneur Pococurante, a fictional Venetian senator in Voltaire’s Candide.

“Leave we my mother—(truest of all the Poco-curante’s of her sex!)—careless about it.” (Lawrence Sterne)

“Some odd news, which illustrates, let us proudly say, not the pococurante spirit but the sangfroid of our great British nation.” (P. A. Scholes)

“…indifference to matters of importance but concern about trifles. Also used for one who in argument leaves the main gist and rides off on some minor and indifferent point.” (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)

“Casual rudeness? Check. Terminal inefficiency? Check. Pococurante abuse, with precious little to show for it? Check, check. The TSA is the platonic ideal of a government department!” (The National Review)

“It is queer the fantastic things that quite good people will do in order to keep up their appearance of calm pococurantism.” (Ford Madox Ford)

WEB

1. ► YouTube Comment Reconstructions.

2. 19 of the Best Book Covers of 2014. Or are they?

3. xkcd on language nerds.

4. Social Anxiety: Why Artist Amalia Ulman’s Fake “Middlebrow” Instagram Is No Different From Yours.

5. Today is Veterans Day in the US, honoring those who’ve served in the American Armed Forces. Renamed from Armistice Day (the name under which the day is still celebrated in many countries) in 1954, this day is to celebrate all who served, not just those who died while serving…in other words, more than 21 million people. While World War I officially ended on June 28, 1919, which Armistice Day was created to celebrate, fighting stopped on the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.” And, to forestall the kind of arguments I imagine the Katexic Clamor engaging in, there is no apostrophe in Veterans Day as determined by the charter signed by President Eisenhower.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. notes, re: Reader A’s photo of the gorge where the filmic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jumped: “Reader A. took us to the actual jump spot, that is, where the two actors spoke their lines and were filmed. However, the actual, actual jump was performed by two stunt men from a crane into a lake, the cliffs on either side being just matte paintings.” — To which I’ll add that I read that Redford and Newman jumped from the ledge to a mattress below…both could well be true.

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