|k| clippings: 2015-03-04 — it is me; it is you

WORK

How can you answer that boy?

“You don’t,” says Mrs. Junius Finn, glad to say a few words. “You don’t have to answer them. God didn’t give out tongues for that. You answer too much, Faith Asbury, and it shows. Nobody fresher than Richard.”

“Mrs. Finn,” I scream in order to be heard, for she’s some distance away and doesn’t pay attention the way I do, “what’s so terrible about fresh. EVIL is bad. WICKED is bad. ROBBING, MURDER, and PUTTING HEROIN IN YOUR BLOOD is bad.”

“Blah blah,” she says, deaf to passion. “Blah to you.”

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster’s or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

—Grace Paley
—from The Collected Stories

WORD(S)

redamancy /RED-ə-mun-see/. noun. Mutual love and reciprocal affection. The act of loving someone in return. From Latin redamāre (to love in return). See also: redamation.

“It was redamancy. It was heaven. It was peace. It was more than he could have ever hoped for or wanted.” (Tommy McMahan, from Hero of the Day)

“Where Christ is not exemplified, in three conformities: in his death, in his life, in his redamation.” (Thomas Jones, from Of the Heart and its right Sovereign)

“Redamancy is distinguished from most of the other words about love in that it is one of the few that specifies reciprocity.” (Ammon Shea, from Reading the OED)

WEB

1. ►“Magnets And Origami Combine To Make A Flock Of Dancing Cranes”

2. “In a large new analysis of more than 2,000 popular recipes, data scientists have discovered perhaps the key reason why Indian food tastes so unique: It does something radical with flavors, something very different from what we tend to do in the United States and the rest of Western culture. And it does it at the molecular level.” → “Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious”

3. Apropos in light of last issue’s WORD (lalochezia) and presumably true of many words besides “ow!” → Saying ‘Ow’ Really Can Ease Pain

4. Beautiful books in abundance → Bettina Pauly’s book art portfolio

5. Today in 1791, the Vermont Republic becomes simply Vermont, the 14th U.S. state. Among other things this small (approximately 1/74 the size of Alaska) but awesome state can boast about are 1) it was the first to partially abolish slavery, 2) its maple syrup production (at nearly 1/2-gallon per person) is the highest in the country, and 3) Montpelier remains the only U.S. capital city without a McDonalds. The Green Mountain State, as I am assured it is sometimes called, also claims talc as its state mineral (I didn’t even know there were state minerals) which it produces at a volume second only to California. Thank about that next time you take a powder. Vermont is (or was) the home of President Calvin Coolidge, Alison Bechdel, Annie Proulx, Rudolph Ruzicka, Hayden Carruth, Neko Case, Grace Paley, Maria Von Trapp and last, but certainly not least, Reader B., one of my favorite people and a regular reader of—and commenter about—this little newsletter.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. writes: “Speaking of Dr. Seuss, your readers might enjoy ‘Dr. Seuss’s World War II Political Propaganda Cartoons’.”

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