WORK
“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”
—Emily Dickinson
—from a letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross (April, 1873)
WORD(S)
gongfermor /GAHNG-fər-mər/. noun. One who removed human excrement from privies and cesspits, sometimes selling the waste as fertilizer (metaphorically akin to too many contemporary professions). From Old English gang (to go), used to refer to a privy, or its contents, since the 11th century, appearing in Ælfric’s Homilies c1000 A.D. See also: gong farmer, gong-fayer, gong-fower and gong scourer.
“A stink was in my nostrils. Malacia’s gongfermors were at their nocturnal work, emptying privies.” (Brian Aldiss)
“The financial accounts for many noble households reveal routine payments to gongermors, men who made their living by digging out and carting away the solid waste that accumulated in these pits and dishes. The payments also show that a gongfermor was a well-paid profession.” (Paul B. Newman)
“Walking around the streets of England, France, and most other European countries remained a distasteful business for some time, although it did give rise to the profession of being a nightman or scavenger, latter terms for a gongfermor.” (W. Hodding Carter)
“The poet is no less than a gongfermor, a farmer of cesspits, hired to collect the sewage only to sell it as fertilizer, profiting doubly from dung. Is that what poetry is , the barrel latrine, the cesspit of our imaginings, where all the detritus and filth is ejected only to be recycled for the common good…?” (Susan Signe Morrison)
WEB
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"Her pupils know better than to use a boring word like ‘said.’ As Ms. Shelton put it, ’‘Said’ doesn’t have any emotion. You might use barked. Maybe howled. Demanded. Cackled. I have a list." [No! Just…no!] → ‘Use More Expressive Words!’ Teachers Bark, Beseech, Implore
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The Last Message Received contains “submissions of the last messages people received from ex-friends or ex-significant others, as well as from deceased friends, significant others, and relatives.”
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How the Hidden Track Faded from Recorded Music. [Via Reader C. who describes it as “a fun one that talks about hidden tracks and works as a nice reflection on the way technological change impacts media production.”]
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Today in 1803, poet Emily Dickinson is born. Famously reticent to publish during her lifetime, Dickinson is now widely regarded as one of America’s most important poets…though like many pivotal poets, some of her best poems have been, to ill effect, hammered into the ears of young readers to the point they are sadly unappreciated. So, unstop your years and enjoy: ►Tom O’Bedlam reading “Because I could not Stop for Death”, the Dickinson Electronic Archives, the other Dickinson Archives and the 1924 Complete Poems. And though I’m not the biggest Billy Collins fan, I do think he hit a home run with “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.” Bonus, a few funnies: Potential Names for Christian Rock Bands Taken from Lines in Emily Dickinson’s Poems and The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems, in which you will find translations such as the old chestnut poem #314 (AKA “hope is the thing with feathers”) translated to, “Hope is kind of like birds. In that I don’t have any.”
WATCH/WITNESS
![Flammable! [click to view]](https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5800/23032664564_0b1f8ec030_d.jpg)
“Post this notice where appropriate” → from Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader B. on his John Lennon moment: “I was living in New York at the time. I joined the crowd that squeezed behind the police barriers opposite the Dakota. They were singing Lennon songs in the drizzling rain. I quit the group and walked up Central Park West crying, with my eyes concealed by the brim of my hat and tears camouflaged by raindrops.”
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And Reader S.: “Your marking of John Lennon’s assassination was touching. Lennon’s death is one of those fixed points in history for me–one that I always seem to mark with the same emotions that overwhelmed me that day. It also made me think about the lack of attention that 11/22 received this year. I suspect it’s because I am of the last generation (12 in 1963) who was aware enough of the world at that time to experience Kennedy’s assassination so viscerally. It’s telling that those occasions are so remote in occurrence and so far apart temporally, vis a vis our current increasing numbness to public acts of violence. Part of me wishes I were numb, but it just gets worse.” — I just turned 45. The indelible moments of public tragedy for me: John Lennon’s murder, Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, Kurt Cobain suicide and 9/11. I wonder what moments are indelible in my childrens’ minds?
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Reader C. strikes back: “You know I love a good commonplace book. But that’s not why I came here. I came here to debate Benjamin Warfield. The phrase, ‘God of Gods, Light of Light, very God of very God’ is not battology, but poetry. Each iteration does mean something different, and the intended cumulative effect is awe.” — Fair point! Warfield’s next words on the subject were, “Don’t you see that this is a song, more suitable for singing than to serve as a formula of confession?”
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