|k| clippings: 2015-11-24 — filled to bursting

WORK

“Take a step forward, lads. It will be easier that way.”

—Erskine Childers (last words to the firing squad assembled before him)

WORD(S)

uberous /OO-bər-us/. adjective. Abundantly fruitful, copious, fertile. Originally referring specifically to supplying milk or food in abundance when referring to breasts or animals/crops respectively. From Latin ūber (abundant, rich). See also French ubéreux and the rare noun form uberty.

“I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid, and uberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information…” (Roald Dahl)

“Vienna’s Mater, its uberous mothering Venus—among the world’s oldest and most perfectly preserved fertility figures—is not to be found among all the Rubens and Bruegel and Roman and Greek and Egyptian antiquities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but rather just across the park, with the mammoth taxidermy and Diplodocus and tektites and diamonds and ores, at the Naturhistorisches Museum—as if the Venus hadn’t merely been dug from the Danubian loess, but had been created by it.” (Joshua Cohen)

“Generally therefore that were to be chosen, which passing silently through ponds and other receptacles, exposed to the sun and air, nearest approaching to that of rain, dropping from the uberous cloud, is certainly the most natural and nursing…” (John Evelyn)

WEB

1. A powerful project, even in photographic form » The ‘Stone’ figures of Point Woronzof

2. All but a few issues of the Guild of Book Worker’s Journal have been digitized and made available for free

3. “Everyone states an interest in craft and skill and ‘creativity’, but what really seems to make a thing stand out on the contemporary internet is a striking blend of the eccentric and the skilful, the intangible qualities of the ‘viral object,’ as opposed to the quiet joy of individual discovery.” » No longer collecting for ourselves

4. Meanwhile, Near Saturn…11 Years of Cassini Saturn Photos

5. Today in 1922, while his appeal was still pending, Irish novelist and nationalist (Robert) Erskine Childers is executed by a firing squad in Dublin. Over the course of his life, Childers—whose novel The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service was one of the earliest espionage novels—swung from avid supporter of the British empire to radical, gun-smuggling Irish nationalist…but his downfall was being caught with a single .32 calibre semi-automatic pistol (ironically a gift from his former friend Michael Collins, from whom he had split over the latter’s role in the Provisional Government of Ireland of Ireland) in his possession. In addition to shaking the hands of every member of the firing squad before his execution, Childers made his young son—who would later become the president of Ireland—promise to seek out and shake the hand of every person who had signed his death warrant.

WATCH/WITNESS

Walt Disney’s Operation Wonderland » The video’s given description says enough: “Some weird man wants to find out how production on Alice In Wonderland is going. We see him enter the studio and given a tour by Walt Disney himself. Storyboards, music, line readings, Alice actress doing homework, live-action rehearsals, multiplane cameras, and Walt riding the Lilly Belle steam train all in one!” » Part 1 and Part 2

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. shares one good idea and one…no so good: “Please get Tom Hiddleston to read [Barbara Ganley’s] 'The Physics of Falling' for your next issue. ¶ And I never thought anyone could ruin the Gettysburg Address. I was wrong.

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