|k| clippings: 2015-11-03 — jam packed cold cuts

WORK

“Too few people understand a really good sandwich.”

—James Beard
—from Beard on Bread

“Enjoy every sandwich.”

—Warren Zevon
—from an interview with David Letterman, February 2008

WORD(S)

futhark (futhorc, futhork) /FOO-thork/. noun. The runic (ancient Scandinavian) alphabet, named after the initial phonemes of the first six runes: F, U, Th, A, R and K. The futhorc is the name of the Anglo-Saxon variant, representing sound changes in Old English for the same six letters.

“Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to the total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual ‘secret’ throughout the Migration period.” (World Heritage Encyclopedia)

“Fairchild tipped the shot to his life and relaxed the craving. The man sitting next to him did the same for himself and waited with his hands in front him on the bar, the black penitentiary futharks on them blurred by trembling.” (Denis Johnson)

“In the Middle Ages, runes were used for divination and casting spells. As is shown in the Anglo-Saxon poem, the H´vam´l of the Elder Edda, it was a basic requirement of a rune master to know how to perform ‘the Sending’. Rune casting was fiercely condemned by the medieval Church as witchcraft and was poorly documented. So we have little knowledge about which futhark (or alphabet) was used by medieval rune readers in Britain or the interpretation they put upon the castings.” (Karen Maitland)

WEB

1. The Wellcome Library Internet Archive already contains thousands of scanned volumes including collections on Sexology and Forensics, with plans to put 15 million more pages into its 19th century medical books archive over the next two years. Absolutely fascinating browsing.

2. Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found. Pair with the inimitable Christopher Hitchens’ Blessed Are the Phrasemakers, on the making of the King James Bible.

3. Dahlia Lithwick on why you should memorize poems. I can’t agree with her characterization that doing so is “kale for the soul,” but I can relate to those moments where “I have stumbled backward into a memory of a stanza or a phrase that suddenly made the moment briefly beautiful, and connected, and deep.”

4. I Love TV Intros collects just what the title says (serious, too-much-time-in-front-of–70s-tv nostalgia alert).

5. Today is National Sandwich Day, celebrating the supposed eponymous invention of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Montagu is said to have invented the sandwich as a convenient means of sustenance while he spent 24 straight hours at the gambling tables (the original sandwich, thus, was roast on toast). I’m willing to believe the story and further believe this should be an internationally recognized day. But I’m also hungry. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that Americans consume more than 300 million sandwiches every day. Linkage: Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches; the world’s longest sandwich (over 2400 feet long); classic ► Mr. Bean making a sandwich.

WATCH/WITNESS

“A look at the hidden power of film props…”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. writes: “Is it just me or do we live in an era of increasing numbers of increasingly bad portmanteau words? Libtards, Chrislam, Cuckservatives?” — Sturgeon’s law applies, I think.

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