|k| clippings: 2015-08-13 — one or a dozen a day

WORK

You don’t have to keep going down to the river, you know. It’s not always a pleasant place. Bears were sighted there recently. The spring floods have uprooted so many trees. Don’t forget the strange man with a dog. He was soaking wet, the man. Was he talking to himself? You shouldn’t be running away like that. Personally, I think with all this rain, the ground is hurt. It’s doing things that won’t support us, falling away in places. You’re going to put your foot down one evening without looking and the ground won’t be there. Is this what you want? You’ll be tumbling down deep into a hole, asking yourself over and over, Well, Well?

—James Haug
—from “Three Poems”
—found in jubilat (No. 27)

WORD(S)

bibulous /BIB-yoo-ləs/. adjective. A heavy drinker; an alcoholic; related to, or resembling, drunkenness. More generally, an absorbent material. It feels like there should be a portmanteau in here somewhere about one who is drunk on books. See also: bibulously. From Latin bibulus (readily drinking), from bibĕre (to drink).

“‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ did not immediately become the national anthem; though it was written by Francis Scott Key during the Battle of Fort McHenry in 1814 (and set to the tune of ‘To Anacreon in Heaven,’ a British drinking song celebrating a bibulous Greek poet who is said to have choked to death on a grape)…” (Anne Fadiman)

“The hovel on Ferry stood, or, rather, leaned at a bibulous angle on a narrow street cut across at an oblique angle by another narrow street, all the old wooden homes like an upset cookie jar of broken gingerbread houses lurching this way and that way, and the shutters hanging off their hinges and windows stuffed with old newspapers, and the snagged picket fence and raised voices in unknown tongues and howling of dogs who, since puppyhood, had known of the world only the circumference of their chain.” (Angela Carter)

“The incumbent, the Professor at that time, was an old man bibulous by nature, who had been driven still further into his cups by the insubordination of his pupils.” (William Faulkner)

WEB

1. The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum is on track to digitize everything in its collection (more than 215,000 objects) by late next year. As it goes it is exploring ways of sharing those collections through its online collection database. For example (via Reader M.), explore some of their bookpapers, book covers or many other types. Or by color. And many more. Oh, and geeks will enjoy the explorations and behind-the-scenes look in the Cooper Hewitt Lab blog.

2. The Clamor knows I’m a list-buff and think everyone else should be too. The Wikipedia List of lists of lists will help a lot in that cause [via Reader C.].

3. I’ll just leave this one right here for you to figure out → No one will ever read this but

4. Typophiles and font-freaks will enjoy this gem from the Internet Archives, including “Type Design: A Homily” by Frederic Goudy and other interesting tidbits, each set in a new typeface. → Ars Typographica Vol 1, No 4 - An Occasional Miscellany

5. Today in 1422 (according to some sources), William Caxton—the first English printer and the man who brought the printing press to England—is born. The first book he printed was Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales…two edition of which, from 1476 and 1483, can be viewed online. Naturally, Caxton was the first English retailer of printed books in London, producing and selling, among other titles, the first English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

WATCH/WITNESS

Just one of many classic advertisements for Thorazine. It’s for hyperactive kids, the nauseated, the senile, the excited, the anxious… For the love of all that’s holy to you, stay away from the rest of the WHALE site.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L. would know: “Old geeks might know about the earlier updated Devil’s Dictionary 2.0. And only geeks will get most of it.”

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