WORK

Certainly the most destructive vice, if you like, that a person can have—more than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins—is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred’s a subset of self pity and not the other way around, “It destroys everything around it, except itself.”

—Stephen Fry
—from BBC 4 Interview

WORD(S)

acedia /ə-SEE-dee-ə/. noun. Listlessness, torpor, deep malaise, a distaste for the obligations of life or religious practice, the sin of sloth. As Thomas Aquinas put it, a “sorrow of the world.” See also: weltschmerz. From Greek akēdeia (negligence, apathy).

“But for sloth,” said Sir Gawaine. “A tendency towards acedia is his only weakness.” (Thomas Berger)

“Mysteries intrigue her, arrogance depresses her, and she enjoys a drink rather oftener than a doctor might recommend. She is given to occasional bouts of acedia, a sin not encountered in the Ten Commandments; the purpose of life now and then evades her grasp.” (Amanda Cross)

“Hours of acedia, pencil on the desk
coffee in a cup, ash-tray flowing
the window closed, the universe unforthcoming,
Being ground to a halt.”
(John Berryman)

WEB

1. “Sting’s brain scan pointed us to several connections between pieces of music that I know well but had never seen as related before…” → Don’t scan so close to me: McGill researcher scans Sting’s musical brain. Also: the full paper, “Measuring the representational space of music with fMRI: a case study with Sting”. Thanks, Reader M.

2. Book Critics vs. Food Critics.

3. Bryan Alexander—futurist, writer, teacher and fellow bookworm—is rounding up a near-future science fiction reading group of sorts. Strong readers, loosely joined, with great book choices so far. Join in!

4. Following on our earlier link to the Mother Jones expose on private prisons comes news that the Justice Department will stop using them.

5. “Stationery options are so plentiful that a designated paper concierge is on hand to advise customers on selecting the just-right weight, texture, shade, sheen, and thickness.” → A 100-year-old Japanese stationery store lets customers design the perfect, custom notebook

6. From heavy metal bassist (including appearance in the cult film Heavy Metal Parking Lot) to devout Hasidic luthier. → The story of Z.Z. Ludwick.

7. A lagniappe: (with the right font), UPSIDE DOWN can be spelled upside down using letters that are right-side up: umop apisdn

8. The Long History of Olympic Typography: A Debate

9. These Surreal Ancient Alchemy Manuscripts Are Terrifyingly Cool

10. Today in 1979, Alexander Godunov—principal dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet and well-known (in the USSR) actor—defects to the United States while on tour in New York City. Godunov’s defection would indirectly spark an international incident when his wife and fellow dancer, Lyudmila Vlasova, was detained at the airport until U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev intervened and Carter was convinced she was returning willingly. Godunov would serve as principal dancer for American Ballet Theater, which was directed by his friend and fellow defector Mikhail Baryshnikov, and then play a few well-known roles, including a memorable turn in Peter Weir’s film Witness and battling with Bruce Willis in Die Hard. In 1987, Godunov became an American citizen, celebrating with a burger stuffed with caviar. Sadly, Gudonov’s life was cut short by complications from hepatitis and alcoholism. He died in 1997.

WATCH/WITNESS

It looks like embroidery, but Jasmin Sian’s art is composed of ink, graphite and cut-outs from paper lunch bags. Click through and then zoom in. Amazing. [Thanks, Reader S.!]

WHAT!?

A sample from the Spurious Correlations site. Plenty more there. And in the book.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K. on the strange story of Robert Kennicott: “I love the idea of a collector who became collected, like a macabre iron-colored butterfly, pinned somewhere in the bowels of the Smithsonian!”

• Reader T. on Hip Hop Vocabulary: “Dang, dat Wu Tang!”

• Reader B. on last week’s WORD: “Now I’m waiting for an alternate history about the Chrisom Trail.” — Oooof.

A few readers had thoughts on Reader M.’s search for a word representing the feeling when “one reads a book, loves it and then goes to reread it and the magic is gone:”

• Reader S. asks: “How about ‘notslogia’?”

• Reader A. ponders: “libraturity? ¶ lost bookolescence? ¶ a state of post-narratopause? ¶ this is hard!”

• Reader J. suggests: "I don’t have an answer for him, but this gentleman just might: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. — Indeed. Love the DoOS.

• The same (audacious) Reader B. who committed the act of punnery earier notes: “‘readgret’ fills me with horror on all kinds of levels. ¶ One critic (can’t find it now) said the opposite was ‘fundability’, the ability to go back to a text and get more out of it another time. ¶ Maybe what you’re looking for is ‘divestibility’”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

Reader M. has a question for all of you: “What’s bothered me for 15 years is one reads a book, loves it and then goes to reread it and the magic is gone. There is no word in the English Language for this. Do you think your followers might come up with something?”

The only thing I could think of was “readgret” but that’s both an ugly portmanteau and not specific enough…

WORK

After he had defeated the Egyptians in battle and accepted their surrender, Harun-in’-Rashid decided to teach his new subjects a lesson. “Egypt’s rulers called themselves gods,” he said, “and so they were arrogant enough to challenge me. Now they will be ruled by the lowest of my slaves,” and he made Khosaib, a stupid negro, Egypt’s new governor. Khosaib, however, was so stupid that when a group of farmers came to him for help because the cotton they’d planted on the banks of the Nile had been destroyed by heavy rains, he replied, “You should have planted wool instead.”

A pious man heard what Khosaib said and recited these lines:

If knowledge were the measure of all wealth,
the ignorant would live in poverty.
Yet here is a man who should be starving,
and his prosperity leaves the wise speechless-
which proves that getting rich is not a skill,
and who knows why God granted him such luck?
It happens: Sages must stand aside like beggars
for stupid men who are given royal robes.
If an alchemist dies bitter in his failure,
know that somewhere a fool found gold in the trash.

—Sa’di (trans. by Richard Jeffrey Newman)
—found in Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan

WORD(S)

chrisom /KRI-zəm/. noun. A child’s baptismal robe (originally a face cloth) or, upon death before 30 days old, a burial shroud. Derived from pronunciation of chrism, a sacramental balm or oil. From Greek khriein (to anoint). See also chrisomes (children who die in their first month of life).

“Mozart’s pain
I heard then, in the cranny of the hurricane,
As since the chrisom caught me up immersed
I have heard nothing but the sough of the sea”
(John Berryman)

“Christening was a festival with apostle-spoons and a white chrisom cloth, basins, ewers, and towels at the parish church.” (Park Honan)

“The place dripped radiance; was filling like a chrisom with radiance.” (A. Merritt)

WEB

1. This week’s link cluster: the brain. First, the fascinating and sad story of Henry Molaison, the “man who couldn’t remember” and the research into—and ultimately custody of—his brain (Thanks, Reader B.!). Then, a unique brain of a different kind, that of the world’s greatest free-climber, Alex Honnold, who essentially doesn’t feel fear (I become nauseated watching him climb on video). Finally, a glimpse at the plasticity of the brain and a bright future for some victims of paralysis: ‘Brain training’ technique restores feeling and movement to paraplegic patients.

2. And, Reader B. strikes again with CuratedAI, “A literary magazine written by machines, for people.”

3. It just might be that book lovers live longer. But if you’re smart, you should be watching more trashy films. How to find the time? Maybe I’ll just stick with the benefits of being bad-tempered and pessimistic.

4. Which hip hop artists have the largest vocabularies…and how do they shape up against Shakespeare? You might be surprised…

5. The UC Berkeley Chancellor spent $9000 on an “escape hatch” to “provide egress” from student protestors.

6. A nice bit about commonplace books (everyone should keep one!) and a picture of an interesting historical example with hand-cut alphabetical tabs → Commonplace Books and Uncommon Readers [Thanks, Reader C.]

7. A weird case: an artist being sued in order to be forced to claim he is the creator of a painting.

8. The Strangers Project is a collection of over 20,000 anonymous handwritten “journal entries” shared spontaneously by passing strangers. I ask people to write about anything they want—as long as it’s true. [Thanks, Reader G!]

9. American naturalist and Alaska explorer Robert Kennicott’s death was a mystery; 150 years later, his skeleton helped solve it.

10. Today in 1784, Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikhov founds Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska. From this base, the Russians would explore the Alaskan mainland and assert their claim over the territory they would later sell to the United States for $7.2 million dollars…or two cents per acre.

WATCH/WITNESS

1920’s Surrealist Erotica is Amazingly NSFW. Astonishing photography by Olga Solarics (1896 – 1969) of the Atelier Manassé.

WHAT!?

During the 2004 Olympics in Athens, commentator Mary Carillo put on a segment that started out describing the professional game of badminton…then morphed into a kind of performance art.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on 17 Maps That Will Change The Way You Look At The World Forever: “This is why everyone needs to own a globe. ¶ …I wrote about how baffled I was by the sun setting pretty much in the north. It freaked me out. I think I wrote you a letter about it, because you are in Alaska and probably don’t think twice about it.”

• Reader A. shares a great map resource: “For the map pile: OldNYC - some 80,000 historic images of New York City mapped to their location. There are ways to participate like notifying of images that are rotated and transcribing notes on the back of photos.”

• Reader F. adds: “Lovers of map links might like this little guy, showing ‘the real value of $100’ in each state.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

My thanks to everyone who shared Katexic Clippings with friends…looks like there’s still a place for this email throwback after all!

WORK

"We’ve described how we treat books; now let’s consider how we read them.

When it comes to reading we grant ourselves every right in the book, including those we withhold from the young people we claim to be teaching.

1. The right not to read.
2. The right to skip pages.
3. The right not to finish a book.
4. The right to reread.
5. The right to read anything.
6. The right to escapism.
7. The right to read anywhere.
8. The right to browse.
9. The right to read aloud.
10. The right not to defend your tastes.

I’ll stop at ten. A nice round figure, that also happens to be the sacred number of the famous Commandments. Except this is a list of things you can do."

—Daniel Pennac
—from Better Than Life

WORD(S)

scrivello /skri-VEL-oh/. noun. A small elephant tusk weighing “less than 20 lb,” according to the OED or “of a small size commonly used for making billiard balls” by Merriam-Webster. Likely from the Portuguese, a variant of escaravelho (pin, peg).

“The horn is a small scrivello with a large oblong hole near the point, so as to act as a speaking trumpet…” (Richard Francis Burton)

“The bits of ivory and related memorabilia that his father had kept—tusk tips, a scrivello—had been scattered…” (John Walker)

“At its conclusion, a fearful uproar is made by the scrivello horns, called Kpwen, the sound being like that of a chorus of lusty jackasses.” (J. Alfred Skertchly)

WEB

1. It’s been a week of maps. Here are some for you to explore. Jerry Gretzinger has spent 30 years mapping the imaginary country of Ukrainia in over 3000 8x10 panels. Back in the real, old world, Old Maps Online indexes more than 400,000 historical maps in libraries around the world. Courtesy of Cornell Library, a collection of “persuasive” cartography, or maps “intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs.” And a map burning up social media with its perfect combination of hilarious and absolutely unsupported research, What Cost is each State Obsessed with.

2. Learn to fold an origami elephant, help set a record and support a good cause. → #ElephantOrigamiChallenge

3. “The three lost worlds feature beautiful scenery, moving music, and are inspired by Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, Lord Byron’s Darkness, and John Keats’ When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be.” → Experimental Game Turns Players into Poets and Writers

4. Following a link from a few years ago to PDF editions of Paul Klee’s two Selected Notebooks, now you can browse all 3,900+ pages of Klee’s notebooks online.

5. Braille typography and (conceptual) Braille tattoos

6. Slow cooking. Slow computing. Slow reading. Slow living. Slow TV seems inevitable. → Netflix’s newest show for binge-watching is a real-time knitting marathon

7. Cecilia Levy’s paper art…remarkably delicate art made from old books.

8. I want to live there. → Life Behind the Stacks: The Secret Apartments of New York Libraries.

9. Take a moment to marvel at the 2016 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year winners and honorable mentions.

10. Today in 1934, in United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce, U.S. Appeals Court judges Learned Hand and Augustus Hand (cousins and a story in their own right: Augustus had a hand in some of the court’s most famous rulings on censorship and contraceptives, while Learned is the most frequently cited lower-court judge in Supreme Court history) rule that Joyce’s famous novel was not obscene or libidinous and therefore not pornographic. The ruling makes for interesting reading. Really. A bit of the flavor:

“The net effect even of portions most open to attack, such as the closing monologue of the wife of Leopold Bloom, is pitiful and tragic, rather than lustful. The book depicts the souls of men and women that are by turns bewildered and keenly apprehensive, sordid and aspiring, ugly and beautiful, hateful and loving. In the end one feels, more than anything else, pity and sorrow for the confusion, misery, and degradation of humanity. Page after page of the book is, or seems to be, incomprehensible. But many passages show the trained hand of an artist, who can at one moment adapt to perfection the style of an ancient chronicler, and at another become a veritable personification of Thomas Carlyle. In numerous places there are found originality, beauty, and distinction […] Indeed, it may be questioned whether the obscene passages in Romeo and Juliet were as necessary to the development of the play as those in the monologue of Mrs. Bloom are to the depiction of the latter’s tortured soul.”

WATCH/WITNESS

On August 1 every year, the city of Warsaw stops for one minute in remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the 63-day, failed attempt by the resistance to liberate Warsaw from the Nazi occupation. Related recent reading: Diane Ackerman’s book about an amazing story closely connected to the uprising: The Zookeeper’s Wife.

WHAT!?

Spoken word poetry? Performance art? I do not know (and probably couldn’t tell you if I did).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. makes an apt connection: “I used to teach ‘Shortest Way’ alongside ‘Modest Proposal’, and not just for my 18th-cent class. It’s a nice pair to think about authorial intent, satire, and biography.”

• Reader D. enjoyed the WATCH/WITNESS link: ‘Memory Lane’ was wild! And great! Thanks for sharing it. How delightfully creepy!

• Reader G’s comment is apropos today and before…: “ Life is too short to read a badly written book– unless the story is really, really compelling. But still, badly written is painful and I can’t help but wonder if I am damaging my own voice through the exposure. I used to read every book I started, but this year I am more particular and I am actually rejecting them and not finishing them if the beginning sucks.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

As I feared, this newsletter is leaking readers like a sieve. I assume some of the former Clamorites are happy enough with the website. Fair enough. But if you’re so inclined, I’d appreciate you sharing a link to the newsletter with your real life, Facebook, Twitter and other friends: http://ktxc.to/go !

WORK

Mr. Stocks:

A lottery is a taxation
Upon all the fools in creation;
   And heaven be praised,
   It is easily raised,
Credulity’s always in fashion:
   For folly’s a fund
   Will never lose ground,
While fools are so rife in the nation.

—Henry Fielding
—from The Lottery (1732)

WORD(S)

parnel /PAR-nəl/. noun. A prostitute. More specifically: a priest’s mistress (though who’s to say none of those were love matches?). Often seen in the phrase “tender parnel.” Also rendered as pannell, pernel and others. From Pernel, a shortened form of the name Petronilla which was, at one time, a popular feminine form of the name Peter. Beyond that, the etymology is unclear.

Henry Hankovitch, con guítar,
did a short Zen pray,
on his tatami in a relaxed lotos
his mind on nuffin, rose-blue breasts,
and gave his parnel one French kiss
(John Berryman)

Get you to church and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is; this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber warp, warp.
(William Shakespeare)

WEB

1. The STRONG LANGUAGE blog is a “Sweary blog about swearing” (NSFW, naturally). Highlights include Mapping the United Swears of America & the followup Sweary maps 2: Swear harder, Donald Trump swears a lot and “More man? Plague, plague!”: How to curse like a misanthrope.

2. Technology killed bookstore chains. Can technology save indie bookstores?

3. The Terrible Beauty of Californian Wildfires, as Seen by David McNew

4. Stick that in your cup and drink it… → InStem study finds cockroach milk is next superfood

5. “Fantasies about the future have a troubling effect on achieving actual goals. If positive thinking doesn’t work, what does?” → Don’t Think Too Positive.

6. “We are reduced to quarter rations and no coffee,” he continued. “And nobody can soldier without coffee.” → If War Is Hell, Then Coffee Has Offered U.S. Soldiers Some Salvation

7. The archives of Randall Munroe’s archives of his What If (Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions) series are a great browse [Thanks, Reader A.!]. I recommended the book a few years ago…and still do!

8. Once all but left for dead, is cursive handwriting making a comeback?

9. The always awesome Atlas Obscura now has a podcast! And don’t forget their forthcoming book.

10. Today in 1703, Daniel Defoe is pilloried (literally, as in the stocks’ harsher sibling), for publishing his pamphlet The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church in which he satirized Queen Anne’s actions against the non-conformists (“…people in the World, who, now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve…”), arguing they should simply be exterminated (“Crucify the Thieves!”).

WATCH/WITNESS

Watch “Memory Lane,” an automaton diorama by Mark Ryden, in action.

WHAT!?

The Energy of Hair [Thanks, Reader T.!, who adds, “it makes me think about Samson, of course…”]

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• I bet Reader M. isn’t alone: “Am I the only one who just doesn’t feel they get as much out of audiobooks as reading to themselves? Or reading aloud to someone else?”

• Reader B. on Frank O’Hara’s “As Planned”: “Loved that poem. Reminds me of Bukowski. ¶ —signed, fellow epeolator.”

• Reader F. also adores O’Hara: “I’ve read Lunch Poems every year for at least 25 years. It never gets old. It never gets tired.”

• Reader K. must know something about my diagram love: “I bet a Venn diagram of Clamorites and Epeolatrists would be nearly 100%!”

• A different Reader B. wants to lose some FOUND: “FOUND Magazine is excellent. The FOUND podcast is OK. But forget the FOUND app.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

“As Planned”

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don’t you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

—Frank O’Hara
—from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara

WORD(S)

epeolatry /ep-ee-OL-ə-tree/. noun. The worship of words. From Greek epos (word) + latreiā worship.

“A long farewell to Marshall McLuhan, most treacherous of clerks and a threat to all who cherish epeolatry.” (The Observer, 1968)

“Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature…” (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

“He never ran into any other visitors, and generally stayed for an hour or two, reading aloud something he knew Mr. Greene, in his arcane epeolatry, would have approved of…” (Erik Hoel)

“I’m a book-bosomed literarian guilty of epeolatry and bibliosmia, which means I ALWAYS have a book with me, I’m educated, and I worship words and smell books.” (Fortified By Books)

WEB

1. I suspect many Clamorites are already fond of Found magazine, which collects “FOUND stuff: love letter, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, receipts, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life.” Now, behold the FOUND podcast, which is super enjoyable. The first episode centers around a found letter by a man who wants to become the “Asian Oprah…”

2. Miniature milestone as Russian claims new record for world’s tiniest book

3. Many people talk about music as if it has universal traits. Not so much. “Dissonance” is in the mind’s ear of the beholder. Pair with the podcast episode “The Ballad of Tin Ears”, a fascinating look at tone-deafness (genetic and imagined), and one man’s quest to sing even a little bit better.

4. Welcome to the positive lexicography, an evolving index of ‘untranslatable’ words related to wellbeing from across the world’s languages.

5. 17 Maps That Will Change The Way You Look At The World Forever

6. Datagasm, on "micro-targeted digital porn … pushing human sexuality into some seriously weird places. Pair with the not-porn-but video Orgasm Faces in Slow Motion.

7. Chuck Lorre’s list of words that confuse the CBS censor.

8. “The Strand Bookstore has included a literary matching quiz in its job application form since the 1970s. Here are some quizzes from years past. Can you match the authors and titles? Beware of trick questions.” → Test Your Book Smarts [[Via Reader C. and Reader K.]]

9. Ebook sales drop by nearly 10%; downloaded audio up over 40%!

10. Today in 1911, Hiram Bingham “discovers” Machu Picchu, often (mistakenly) called “The Lost City of the Incas.” Bingham was led to the ruins by Melchor Arteaga, a local farmer, and his 11-year-old son Pablito, who actually guided Bingham along the main ridge. I’m deathly afraid of heights, so mostly content with fabulous books like Mark Adams’ Turn Right at Machu Picchu, in which Adams attempts to re-create Bingham’s original expedition. You, intrepid Clamorite, might want to visit before it collapses…or not. Or just sit back, relax and check out Machu Picchu in 16 Gigapixels.

WATCH/WITNESS

This sloth selfie still owns the Internet.

WHAT!?

Marie Osmond talks Dada and performs Hugo Ball’s 1916 Poem “Karawane”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• From Reader L.: “I welcome YOU back with greedy brain arms. The weird reverse arrows in the WEB section? Not so much.” — As you can see, that was a short-lived experiment.

• Reader B. on private prisons: “A scourge that isn’t going to get better anytime soon no matter who is elected.”

• Many thanks to all the readers who welcomed us back. Please keep comments and suggestions coming!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

And…we’re back! Did you miss us?

Welcome to the first issue of the new weekly(ish) edition of Katexic Clippings. After more than 300 issues and almost 300,000 clickety-clicks on our links it was time for a change. So here we are, complete with brand new website. I hope my absence made all your Clamoring hearts grow fonder.

WORK

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

—Arthur Schopenhauer
—from Essays and Aphorisms (translated by R. J. Hollingdale)

WORD(S)

tittle /TI-təl/. noun and verb. A point or mark used as a diacritical. For example the dot atop the lowercase ‘i’. In early horn-books, a series of dots (⋰) indicating an omission. More generally, the smallest part. Also to whisper or gossip (see tittle-tattle). From Latin titulus (title, or in the medieval sense a stroke or accent).

“Time on the farm is the time of the wide world, neither a jot nor a tittle more or less, Resolutely I beat down the blind, subjective time of the heart, with its spurts of excitement and drags of tedium…” (J. M. Coetzee)

“Some amusement was elicited in literary circles by the predicament of a woman who was delivered of a son old enough to be her father but it served to deflect Mr. Tracy not one tittle from his dispassionate quest for scientific truth. His acumen and pertinacity have, in fact, become legendary…” (Flann O’Brien)

“—But for heaven’s sake, let us not talk of quarts or gallons —let us take the story straight before us; it is so nice and intricate a one, it will scarce bear the transposition of a single tittle; and some how or other, you have got me thrust almost into the middle of it—” (Laurence Sterne)

“It is now I shall speak of me, for the first time. I thought I was right in enlisting these sufferers of my pains. I was wrong. They never suffered my pains, their pains are nothing, compared to mine, a mere tittle of mine, the tittle I thought I could put from me, in order to witness it.” (Samuel Beckett)

“…there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.” (James Joyce)

WEB

1. My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard ← The clichéd description “searing expose” is fitting. Man’s inhumanity to man.

2. Step Inside the World’s Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare) ← “…within Alnwick’s boundaries, kept behind black iron gates, is a place where visitors are explicitly told not to stop and smell the flowers: the Poison Garden, home to 100 infamous killers.”

3. I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything ← Way, way more interesting than I expected. [Via Reader C.]

4. I Tried a Medieval Diet, And I Didn’t Even Get That Drunk ← “I drank diluted wine at dinner, and sometimes at lunch; I ate bread at almost every meal; I sought out richly stewed meat whenever I could. The regimen was not just about what to eat, though, and I also followed its prescriptions for daily life.”

5. Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age

6. Analyzing the language of Heavy Metal with Natural Language Processing ← The least metal word? “Particularly.”

7. New Evidence on Van Gogh’s Ear… ← Now with contemporary medical sketches…

8. Candle Flames Contain Millions of Tiny Diamonds

9. This Barista May Be the Best Coffee Artist in the World

10. Today is the third International #Firgunday, in which participants share compliments and pride for others, mostly on social media. If you’re having trouble figuring out what to say, there’s a Firgunator that will help. According to the founders, “Firgun (pronounced FEER-GOON, פרגון), is a Hebrew word that means an act of kindness performed solely to make another person feel good.” Wikipedia says the word “describes genuine, unselfish delight or pride in the accomplishment of the other,” or “a generosity of spirit, an unselfish, empathetic joy.” I want every day to be #Firgunday.

WATCH/WITNESS

Idem Paris - David Lynch’s short film on the art of making lithographs

WHAT!?

Exit Mundi: A Collection of End-of-World Scenarios

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Thanks to Reader T., Reader B., Reader R., another Reader B., Reader C. and Reader K. for asking about my unplanned-then-extended hiatus.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.

WORK

I was struck by what you say in your letter about having been to Nuenen. You saw everything again, “with gratitude that once it was yours” — and are now able to leave it to others with an easy mind. As through a glass, darkly — so it has remained; life, the why or wherefore of parting, passing away, the permanence of turmoil — one grasps no more of it than that.

For me, life may well continue in solitude. I have never perceived those to whom I have been most attached other than as through a glass, darkly.

—Vincent Van Gogh (translated by Arnold Pomerans)
—found in The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

WORD(S)

demonifuge /də-MON-ə-fyoozh/. noun. Something used to exorcise a demon. More generally, something that can serve as protection from, or ward off, evil spirits. From Latin daemōn (evil spirit, deity, idol) + -fuge, a common method of creating English nonce-words from Latin (e.g. vermifuge).

“…as she turned and the black cape swirled you could see, within, the simple ways the simple shape (legs, hips, haunch, waist) can be made to shine on the reptile eye, and burn on the reptile brain. The glamour: charms, rhombs, wishbones, magic rings -gramarye, sortilege, demonifuge…” (Martin Amis)

“The wood of the peach tree is a demonifuge, and Taoist priests use if for making the seals with which they seal their talismans and amulets.” (Charles Williams)

“Charlotte F. Otten notes that androsaemon (‘man’s blood’) was a real herb, famous as a demonifuge.” (John Leonard) anything

WEB

1. Photo Sleuth: Early Photo Sleuths In the Dead Letter Office

2. A little geeky, but interesting → On creating web sites that exist simultaneously as books

3. Lighthouse Traveling Libraries

4. A neat little gewgaw… → (Audio)Visualizing the Billboard Top 100 since 1956

5. Today is Cinco De Mayo. Celebrated primarily in the United States and Mexico, Cinco De Mayo began as a relatively minor holiday celebrating the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War but—like Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day—has become a significant American celebration (often mistaken by we gringos for Mexico’s Independence Day) of Mexican culture. The battle it celebrates, in which 2000 hastily assembled Mexican soldiers defeated more than 6000 French troops was much less important strategically than it was symbolically…and as a rallying point for Mexican morale.

WATCH/WITNESS

Adam Donnely’s Site-Specific Cameras project uses pinhole cameras built from on-site materials to capture images of those places.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on speed reading: “I could never understand the reason for speed reading: why hurry through what should be a more leisurely activity. Woody Allen said it best about speed reading, ‘I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.’”

• Another Reader B. on ‘Brumal’: “Brumal is a splendid word. Reminds me of the French Revolutionary calendar’s month of Brumaire, which took over the October-November overlap.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Les Fenêtres”

We drive to a window factory and traverse its rooms, the summer night pale as the steeple of a church. Behind each door, you dust locks, turn hinges, dragging your signal flares and your phosphorus glow. A yellow light catches spots in each pane as we count the saints on dim clerestories. Soon I ask, one word at a time, mouthing into the watery dusk: Est-que je ne suis pas une fenêtre? You turn from the work, appalled, our reflections like sand burning into glass. A porous moon stares through the doorframe. The locks say nothing.

—Kristina Marie Darling
—from Scorched Altar

WORD(S)

brumal /BROO-məl/. adjective. Wintry. Belonging to winter. Occurring in winter. From Latin brūmālis (of mid-winter, of the winter solstice); from brūma (winter solstice).

“Between snatches of poetry and penitence you left
the brumal wood of men and women. Snow drove
the butterflies home.”
(C.D. Wright)

“This old Venetian fort dying, the flags, the soldiers like bluebells are your landscape, the hot gleet of summer, the fine mucus, or the brumal bear licking her culprits the baby dogfish.” (Lawrence Durrell)

“But we were now in the very heart of winter, and after much frost scarcely a single wretched brumal flower lingered and languished.” (Thomas Hogg)

WEB

1. Here are Dr. Beards’ 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language. A few of my favorite are on there. What words do you find most beautiful, for whatever reason?

2. Military Flags from the Grammar Wars of the Mid–21st Century

3. Yep…I mostly regret the speed-reading training I took part in when I was young… → The harsh truth about speed-reading

4. This should take care of that craving for a quick burger → There’s Probably Poop in Your Burger

5. Today is International Press Freedom Day, dedicated to the idea that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” And such a day is sadly still needed following one of the worst years for press freedom ever. Related (and depressing) browsing/reading: the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freeedom Index.

WATCH/WITNESS

Watch ►the making of Japanese handmade paper of Kyoto Kurotani. It’s refreshing to watch a master craftsman at work.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. shares a couple of puns (aka paronomasia): “One of my favorites, though not quite precisely exactly a pun (it’s some kind of quantum-entangled syntactical squiggle); but it’s from Townes Van Zandt, so still warms my cockles: ¶ ‘Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.’ ¶ Or a deep cut from All’s Well: ¶ ‘That wishing well had not a body in’t, // Which might be felt…’”

• Reader K. also took up the literary pun challenge: “John Donne was punny. He played on both his own name and that of his wife, Anne More, with his line, ”Thou hast not done, For I have more."

• Reader B. one-ups my Nabokov: “Nabokov loved word play of all kinds, puns included. But Time magazine wins with this headline.”

• Reader C. shares more: "You know Shakespeare was the Pun Master. My favorite comes from the freshly-stabbed Mercutio: ‘ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’

• Reader N. connects WORD to WORK: “Old but nice: ‘Aftermath’ by Longfellow”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

Question…what are your favorite literary puns? Musical puns? Others?

Comment…Shakespeare’s anniversary was last Saturday…expect some Shakey-related links this week.

WORK

i.
he sat
on the edge of his bed
all night

day came
& he continued to sit there

he thought he would never be able
to understand
what had happened

—Robert Lax
—from Love Had a Compass: Journals and Poetry

WORD(S)

paronomasia /pair-on-ə-MAY-zee-uh/. noun. A play with words using words that sound alike but have different meanings. A pun. Perhaps the most famous example in literature are the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York,” in which the “sun” also refers to Richard himself, a son of the house of York. Paronomasia, in fact, can be broken down into five types…which I leave as an exercise for the Clamor. From Latin, from Greek paronomasia (play upon words which sound similarly), from paronomazein (to alter slightly, to call with slight change of name).

A few more examples of (literary) paronomasia:

“You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—” ¶ “Talking of axes,” said the Duchess, “chop off her head!” (Lewis Carroll)

“We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.” (Vladimir Nabokov)

“You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless, of course, you play bass.” (Douglas Adams)

“What is majesty, when stripped of its externals, but a jest?” (Edmund Burke)

And some thoughts on paronomosia, high and low.

“The point of paronomasia is that a mere accidental phonetic relationship assumes the appearance of a semantic relationship.” (Wolfgang Müller)

“Paranomasia: words that are unrelated but sound alike, placed in proximity for the fun or pleasing sound of it. Kissing cousins-in-law, couples that look good in public (or on paper) but aren’t, in fact, compatible. Not croce/crochet (false friends), but a place for the plaice or traditore-traduttore. The heart’s hurt, if you stretch it.” (Rachel Cantor)

“Paronomasia is a kind of verbal plague, a contagious sickness in the world of words…” (Vladimir Nabokov)

WEB

1. Which Shakespeare Play Should I See? An Illustrated Flowchart

2. Leaving the clickbait headline intact… → People obsessed with grammar aren’t as nice as everybody else, study suggests

3. The Guardians Shakespeare 400 series is chock-a-block with interesting articles, columns and quizzes.

4. The Medieval Death Bot tweets “real deaths from medieval coroner’s rolls.” [Indirectly via Reader B.]

5. Today in 1859, U.S. Congressman and General Daniel Sickles is acquitted of murdering Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key (composer of the “The Star Spangled Banner”), becoming the first person to successfully employ a defense of temporary insanity. Sickles, himself a serial adulterer, had suspected his wife of illicit liaisons before, but she’d successfully denied the accusations until an anonymous poison pen letter arrived…spurring Sickles to force his wife to write out a confession before he ran out and shot the unarmed Key multiple times. Newspapers at the time called Sickles a “hero” for “saving women from Key.”

WATCH/WITNESS

Scanned in its entirety, The First Book of Jazz is a charming little book by Langston Hughes (illustrated by Cliff Roberts).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. has a (sad) point: “‘Aftermath’ is especially grim if we think of its application to mass casualty incidents, with humans being mowed down/under. All flesh is grass, eh?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

• Those that belong to the emperor
• Embalmed ones
• Those that are trained
• Suckling pigs
• Mermaids (or Sirens)
• Fabulous Ones
• Stray Dogs
• Those that are included in this classification
• Those that tremble as if they are mad
• Innumerable ones
• Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
• Et cetera
• Those that have just broken the flower vase
• Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

—Jorge Luis Borges
—classification system for his imaginary Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

WORD(S)

aftermath /af-tər-math/. noun. Today’s WORD is familiar but its etymology may not be. Aftermath is derived from the Old English math (a mowing, a crop), which combines mow and the suffix -th (a suffix that forms nouns from verbs denoting a process or action) in the same way as the commonplace grow + th does. So aftermath is literally a “second mowing,” which has come to more generally mean consequences or conditions arising from an event, most often an unpleasant one.

“…the certainty and authority that I heard reminded me of the plain, less-than-enthusiastic report of a documentary, which is the tone of voice of those undoubting parts of the Bible. ¶ ‘I NEVER HEAR THE EXPLOSION. WHAT I HEAR IS THE AFTERMATH OF AN EXPLOSION. THERE IS A RINGING IN MY EARS, AND THOSE HIGH-PITCHED POPPING AND TICKING SOUNDS THAT A HOT ENGINE MAKES AFTER YOU SHUT IT OFF; AND PIECES OF THE SKY ARE FALLING, AND BITS OF WHITE-MAYBE PAPER, MAYBE PLASTER-ARE FLOATING DOWN LIKE SNOW. THERE ARE SILVERY SPARKLES IN THE AIR, TOO-MAYBE IT’S SHATTERED GLASS. THERE’S SMOKE, AND THE STINK OF BURNING; THERE’S NO FLAME, BUT EVERYTHING IS SMOLDERING.’” (John Irving)

“…And ‘Do not go’ cry the dandelions, from their heads of folly / And ‘Do not go’ cry the yard cinders, who have no future, only their infernal aftermath / And ‘Do not go’ cries the cracked trough by the gate, fatalist of starlight and zero // ‘Stay’ says the arrangement of stars…” (Ted Hughes)

“Sometimes reporters will speak of wanting to spend the night at Puerta del Diablo, in order to document the actual execution, but at the time I was in Salvador no one had. ¶ The aftermath, the daylight aspect, is well documented.” (Joan Didion)

WEB

1. Typewritten Typewriter.writer..ter…

2. Your health tip for the day → Mounting data suggest antibacterial soaps do more harm than good

3. And your mental health tip for the day. → UC Davis spent thousands to scrub pepper-spray references from Internet

4. The evidence continues to grow → Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say

5. Today in 1824, poet, beauty, would-be king of Greece, minor Don Juan and author of the epic poem “Don Juan,” and perhaps the first rock star style celebrity, George Gordon “Lord” Byron, dies of fever and (probably) sepsis in Missolonghi, Greece, where he is planning a siege in support of Greek independence. In his short 36 years, Byron became one of the most admired and imitated poets in England, fathered at least three children (including Ada Lovelace who would become famous as a mathematician and her work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine, making her essentially the first computer programmer), had a long series of scandalous affairs with cousins, some famous women (and probably some men) including Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s half-sister and, it is thought, his own half-sister, and became a legend in Greece for his valiant fighting for Greek independence. “Byronic” has come to mean a combination of romance and arrogance, cynicism and darkness—and physical beauty—that is both fascinating and repellent.

WATCH/WITNESS

Enjoy the Jastrow illusion. One of my all-time, mind-bending favorites. See also: some more information and examples.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. suggests: “If you liked Koyaanistocksi, I would like to recommend Samsara.” — I assume you mean the film? In which case I heartily second your recommendation.

• A different Reader B. has his clever cap on: “It’s only ‘aphetic’ for now. Soon it will become merely ‘phetic’.” — I see what you did there…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of ‘Man’ is an animal who writes letters.”

—Lewis Carroll
—from The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll

WORD(S)

aphetic /ə-FED-ik/. adjective. Pertaining to, or the result of aphesis (coined by OED editor Sir James A.H. Murray), the loss of an unaccented vowel at the beginning of w a word forming a new word. For example, tender—as in the coal-car on a train—is aphetic for attender, and cute is aphetic for (seriously) acute. From Greek aphienai (to let go, dismiss).

“Words with lost prefixes (socalled aphetic forms—a term coined by James A. H. Murray) may coexist with full forms, and their affinity is then felt. For example, lone and squire are aphetic doublets of alone and esquire.”

“The scarcity of Groser, grocer, is not surprising, for the word, aphetic for engrosser, originally meaning a wholesale dealer, one who sold en gros, is of comparatively late occurrence.” (Ernest Weekley)

“Space is ‘an area, extent, expanse, lapse of time,’ the aphetic of Old French espace dating to 1300…” (World Heritage Encyclopedia)

WEB

1. One of the best pieces I’ve seen about the (lack of) nutritional science, the problem of the scientific establishment and the entanglement of industry and food. Amazing. → The sugar conspiracy

2. Perhaps you can replace all that sugar with a single cube or two… → LSD could make you smarter, happier and healthier. Should we all try it?

3. I must have the book; until then, this illustrated article will have to do. → A Visual History of Typewriter Art from 1893 to Today.

4. If you can figure out how to make it work, radiooooo is an interesting way to explore and discover music from around the world.

5. Today in 1865, United States President Abraham Lincoln is shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln would die early the next morning. Booth would be cornered and killed (possibly by a self-inflictec gunshot wound) nearly two weeks later. Read Whitman’s elegy, “O Captain! My Captain!” Read Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address.

WATCH/WITNESS

Trailer for Godfrey Reggio’s Koyannisqatsi reconstructed shot-by-shot with modern, watermarked stock footage.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S. drops some knowledge on the Clamor: “Dretch is also, curiously, a type of demon in D&D. Knowing Gygax’s love for words like dweomer etc., I’m assuming he got it from Chaucer or Malory.” — Dweomer, or the variations popularized by Tolkien—dwimmer and dwimor—are great words!

• Reader L. muses: “Enjoyed the Dorothea Tanning list–she was also a poet and this reads like a list poem. ¶ Wonder if drech is related to dreck? But the latter has a Yiddish derivation.” — Though the ultimate origin of both dreck and dretch remain unknown, it doesn’t appear they are related. Dreck’s origins seem to be in the Old English þreax (rubbish) and Greek σκατός (dung)…"

• Reader A. is near Tanning’s old haunts: “Sedona Journal? ‘forum for those who wish to speak to us from other dimensions and realities.’ ¶ That’s just an hour up the road. Crystals and red rocks and hippies turned capitalists.” — Yeah, I probably should have specified ‘Tanning’s journals while in Sedona!’ But that description isn’t too far off the mark from some of Tanning’s art…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

Perils

1. Peril of Being awake
2. Peril of white
3. Peril of Personal Daintiness
4. Peril of the abstract
5. Peril of the wind and the sea
6. Peril of remaining
7. Peril of the Party
8. Peril of Reply
9. Peril of [erased]
10. Peril of longing
11.  
12.  
13.  
14.  

—Dorothea Tanning
—from Sedona journals, 1947–1949

WORD(S)

dretch /DRECH/. verb or noun. To loiter, dawdle, or linger; one who does any of these. Also to vex or torment, particularly through dreams. A word ripe for rehabilitation! For some readers, the dretch are “seven-foot spider-like creatures” in Garth Nix’s Seventh Tower fantasy series. From Old English dreċċan (to vex, torment, torture).

“…What sholde I drecche, or telle of his aray?” (Geoffrey Chaucer)

“We all … were so dretched that some of us leapt out of our beds naked.” (Sir Thomas Malory)

WEB

1. A fascinating Kickstarter with some photos worth perusing even if you don’t want to contribute → The Last Resort: The Strange Beauty of Soviet Sanatoriums

2. In the land of unintended technological consequences… → How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

3. The Creative Writing of the Internet’s Premier White Supremacist Forum

4. “we compiled the number of words spoken by male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever.” Result: interesting but not at all unsurprising. → Film Dialogue from 2,000 screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age

5. Today in 2007, the first United States Postal Service “Forever stamp,” AKA the Liberty Bell stamp, goes on sale. Forever stamps are sold at the current first-class rate but guaranteed as full postage regardless of subsequent rate increases. Known in philatelic circles as non-value indicator (NVI) postage, the Forever stamp has expanded to all other types of stamps, including postcards, international, etc. In 2015, more than 9 billion forever stamps were sold. However, given that the value of a Forever stamp is purposefully tied to inflation—yesterday the value of the standard first-class stamp decreased by two cents—they are an unwise choice for significant monetary investment.

WATCH/WITNESS

“YOU will say this looks like a book. But you will find it is a lot more besides. It is a Puppet-show in which you move the little hero and heroine where you want to go. It is a Treasure Hunt where you have to seek the chest of gold and jewels. It is a Maze through which you and the children will find your way—and perhaps lose it…”

Is Treasure Hunt, a 1948 book by Alan George described as a “maze in volume form,” the first Choose Your Own Adventure book?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “I don’t think it is clear from the definitions provided that the cantle is also a feature of the sporran, being the decorative metal opening to the fuzzy creature.”

• Reader K.: “I can’t tell if the Émile Zola snippet was for me or if I’m just hopelessly self-centered…”

• Reader B.: “Sulphurata Hyper-Oxygenata Frict is the best name in the entire universe. ¶ I think I shall apply it to a kitten.”

• Reader M.: “I love ‘Bless your heart’ with the heat of a thousand connotative suns. Very few phrases are as contextual or as flexible. It’s a many faceted socio-linguistic gem.”

• Reader J.: "Love the South. ¶ ‘Thanks hon. …’ ‘Thank you!’ … ‘Bless your heart.’ ¶ Want to see more of this in action? ►The Meanings of Thank You.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit… And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can’t ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery—oh yes! as much of that as you like—and bullets into the bargain!”

—Émile Zola
—from Germinal

WORD(S)

cantle /KAN-təl/. noun. A corner, edge or slice. Also, the raised rear of a saddle, opposite the pommel. In Scots dialect, the crown of the head. Also, in verb form, to cut into quarters or otherwise divide. From Old French, diminutive of cant (edge, corner).

“Limbs like so many whip lengths, and then he’s settled between cantle and horn.” (Alyssa York)

“‘If I shot that Brodell toad may this saddle mold up and rot and stink and get maggots, so help me God.’ She turned to pat the cantle and back to me. ‘Is that good enough?’” (Rex Stout)

“Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.”
(William Shakespeare)

“My cantle will stand a clour wad bring a stot down.” (Scott F. Nigel)

WEB

1. “It’s precisely the vagueness of ‘they’ that makes it a not-so-ideal pronoun replacement.” → Who’s ‘They’? (consciously couple with this long list of nonbinary identities)

2. “Musical experiences are inherently social, scientists tell us, even when they happen in private.” → When You Listen to Music, You’re Never Alone

3. Books cooked – literally – in punning recipes based on writers’ names

4. 17 images of famous writers and/or their workspaces

5. Today in 1827, John Walker documents the first recorded sale of his newly invented “Sulphurata Hyper-Oxygenata Frict” (AKA friction) matches, replacing the extremely combustible—even explosive—chemical combinations used in matches until then. Those early matches were responsible for so many fires that they were banned in many cities and even some entire countries. Walker, who was already wealthy, refused to patent his invention thus receiving no real profit from it. In fact, he wasn’t even given significant credit for his soon ubiquitous invention until after his death. Incidentally, matchbook (and related paraphernalia) collectors—all Walker’s children in some way—are called phillumenists and have an interesting vocabulary of their own to describe their obsessions, including innerboxes, outerboxes and the ultra-collectible skillets.

WATCH/WITNESS

This made me think of Reader M., but all of us non-Southerners can benefit: ► “Bless your Heart” (decoded). So maybe I wasn’t being complimented as often as I thought when I was last in Georgia?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Patrick Kindig’s prose poem [last issue’s WORK] was sinuous & slithery, creepy & comforting. So good.”

• Reader L.: “Loved the chart of Supernatural Collective Nouns and shared them with my online SFF writer friends, who also did. Also shared that publisher’s Genre Fiction Generator—even better!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Self Portrait”

In the dream, I am holding my grandmother’s leg like a tube sock filled with batteries. I am trying to fit the bones back together but neither the bones nor I have learned how to do this. We wobble. The leg rolls between us like an egg and we are praying nothing will tear. My grandmother is there too. She is watching me fumble with her body and smiling. Leave it, Patrick, she says. Let me tell you that story about the priest and the pianist again. I keep guiding her bones into each other, edge against fractured edge, listening for something to click.

—Patrick Kindig
—from Willow Springs #77

WORD(S)

hanko /HONG-koh/. noun. A stamp, most often made of stone, wood or bone, traditionally used in Japan and China in place of a signature on official documents. Hanko come in three types: one for casual use—usually self-inking and thus portable and easily available for signing for mail deliveries and such, one for banking and an official, registered, version. Hanko are also known as chops in colloquial British English. See detailed information about hanko. From Japanese han (seal, stamp) + ko (literally child, but also a suffix used to form nouns).

“I met Miyoshi-sensei’s father once, at my welcome banquet at a Chinese restaurant. The mayor presented me with my hanko, a narrow bamboo cylinder carved with the characters for my name.” (Melanie Watrous)

“Originally the use of these circular or square ink stamps was limited to the aristocratic classes, but in the Edo period the use of hanko to prove identity became more common. By the Meiji period (1867–1912) laws requiring people to use hanko to mark official documents made them ubiquitous.” (John Walker)

“This time, however, rather than having a large brush in his hand, he had replaced it with a very small, one-inch square hanko…” (Peggy Keener)

WEB

1. Remarkable! → Microsoft and the Rembrandthuis museum have collaborated on a project that analyzed Rembrandt’s entire catalog and then used “deep learning algorithms” on the data to produce the “Next Rembrandt” painting. It reminds me of a radically sophisticated version of Gene Kogan’s neural-network based Style Transfers series.

2. Dimly Lit Meals for One, sharing “heartbreaking tales of sad food and even sadder lives.”

3. Sad and fascinating and full of feels → The ballad of Fred and Yoko: How one of the world’s foremost Beatles collectors died homeless on the streets of Little Rock

4. Network visualization: mapping Shakespeare’s tragedies Fun graphics and a free downloadable poster.

5. Today in 1614, Pocohantas—born Matoaka, known as Amonute—marries John Rolfe, becoming “Rebecca Wolfe” and solving Rolfe’s vexing conundrum of marrying a “heathen.” Pocohantas (sometimes translated as “playful one”) was the daughter of Wahunsonacock, known as Powhatan to the English, the supreme chief of a network of tribes whose relationship with the English colonists was, at best, tense. In 1613, the English abducted Pocohantas, hoping to negotiate a peace settlement with her father that included freeing some English captives. Powhatan eventually agreed, but by then she had converted to Christianity and reportedly fallen in love with John Rolfe. Though the captives were not released, nearly 8 years of cooperation between the English and the Powhatan followed—a time now called “The Peace of Pocohantas.” In a letter requesting permission to marry Pocohantas, John Rolfe wrote:

“[I am] motivated not by the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation … namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout…”

WATCH/WITNESS

Andy Woodruff’s Beyond the Sea series of maps shows what’s really across from you when you stare out over the sea. Hint, it’s not necessarily what you think. The article contains many larger images and fascinating details about Woodruff’s map-making process.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. comments and queries: “Thank you for another wunderkammer. ¶ The Stout quote: do you know who’s speaking? The rest of the sentence sounds like Archie.” — You got it…it’s Archie in conversation with Fritz. And those passages always make me hungry, gulosity or no…

• Reader C. on Trollope, reading and memory: “Trollope is so right about the generally feeble nature of human memory. I wonder if the real distinction between most great writers and scientists and the rest of us isn’t simply better memories. Not necessarily in the most traditional sense of exact recall, but in a more generalized and significant capacity?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“That I can read and by happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left, – something dim and inaccurate, – but still something to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.”

—Anthony Trollope
—from An Autobiography

WORD(S)

gulosity /gyoo-LOS-i-tee/. noun. Gluttony, voracity, greed. From Latin gulosus (gluttonous). See also: esurience and gulous.

“Yet I have heard him, upon other occasions, talk with great contempt of people who were anxious to gratify their palates; and the 206th number of his Rambler is a masterly essay against gulosity.” (James Boswell)

“‘Gulosity’ is a fine neologism, and the character is an amusing moral invention. But it is clear that when the great lexicographer looked into his mirror he [Samuel Johnson] did not see Dr Samuel Gulosulus.” (John Sutherland)

“Sure he’s in danger. Gulosity. Forget it. What the dickens is that thing?” (Rex Stout)

“And what about the writing on the villa wall? The word ‘pig’—is that some comment on Purdy’s gulosity?”

WEB

1. What do you call a group of pixies, trolls, incubi or griffins? All these and more in The Stoakes-Whitley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns.

2. Lead ink from scrolls may unlock library destroyed by Vesuvius

3. “The linguist discusses how technology shapes culture and culture shapes words.” → Language Leakage: An Interview with Sarah Thomason

4. Fascinating to watch a bunch of smart folks at MetaFilter answer a simple question. → What is the critical book for your hobby/passion? [and what is yours?]

5. Today in 1917, the United States takes possession of the “Danish West Indies,” since renamed the Virgin Islands. The US bought the islands—the prominent Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas along with 50 smaller islets—for $25 million in gold, primarily for the strategic value of their location near the Panama Canal. Though two other groups inhabited the islands historically, by the mid–15th century the Carib people, who originated from the Orinoco River in South America, had decimated the earlier populations. The Caribbean Islands derive their name from these people from whom we also get the word cannibal, derived from Caribal, the name given to them by the Spanish. Though it must be noted that despite being known as fierce warriors, there’s little evidence that the Carib warriors ever ate their victims.

WATCH/WITNESS

An intriguing, sometimes disturbing, photoset of nearly 100 vintage postcards (the apostrophe catastrophe in the title notwithstanding) of historical “beauties.” Some of the shots are glamour, some boudoir, some probably considered erotica. Warning: a few are somewhat NSFW.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. advises the Clamor: “I bet many of your readers will skip today’s poem [James Reidel’s “Miley Cyrus or Manatee?”] because of the title. They really shouldn’t. What a great poem!”

• Reader D. writes in: “Thank you for the global version of Stand by Me. I did not know of the site or the movement, but I do now. I’ve been listening to the other songs, too.”

• Reader S. has misgivings: “Jeremy May’s book jewelry is, as you say, stunning. But am I the only one that has a hard time getting past the destruction of old books in service of their new decorative purpose?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Miley Cyrus or Manatee?”

What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s sea-green glass,
What had a but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of a muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.

—James Reidel
—from Poetry (March 2016)

WORD(S)

aporia /ə-POR-ee-ə/. noun. The expression of doubt. Talking about not being able to talk about (or decide) something. A perplexing, difficult matter. From Greek aporos (impassable). The first quote is an example of aporia:

“A virginal air, large blue eyes very soulful and appealing, a dazzling fair skin, a supple and resilient body, a touching voice, teeth of ivory and the loveliest blond hair, there you have a sketch of this charming creature whose naive graces and delicate traits are beyond our power to describe.” (Marquis De Sade)

“Friends would diagnose me with a really bad, likely terminal case of aporia, but I suspect that my condition isn’t so uncommon, that a little tribe of others feels, each in their own way, just as mystified and baffled as to direction as I do.” (Charles D’Ambrosio)

“Compression to five minutes’ duration would create some serious information loss, and perhaps some lacunae and aporia, but this was unavoidable given the situation.” (Kim Stanley Robinson)

WEB

1. For 26 more days you can stream Samuel Beckett’s “All That Fall” from BBC Radio 4.

2. “Stunning” isn’t hyperbole. → Artist Excavates Discarded Books to Transform Their Pages into Stunning Jewelry

3. An AI-Written Novella Almost Won a Literary Prize

4. Not the Bernie bird, but… → Little bird uses a linguistic rule thought to be unique to humans

5. Today in 1973, months after the release of their hit song ►“The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone’” is released, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show do make the prominent magazine’s cover, albeit in caricature form with the caption “What’s-Their-Names Make the Cover.”

WATCH/WITNESS

A global musical collaboration. Beautiful. → Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around the World

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. caught me out: “Juxtapose! Psychobiotics and musical neurons. The more we know about our brains the less we know about ourselves and our selfs. And yet yet yet I find myself in these links and poems and bites. ‘What is found there’ indeed. I see you. And what you did. Thanks for all of that.”

• Reader W. asks: “Does caducity come from the same source as ‘caduceus’, the symbol of physicians?” — I’ll note first that the Caduceus isn’t the symbol you are looking for…that would the Rod of Asclepius. As to your question, Nick Humez answered this better than I ever could: “No relation. ‘Caduceus’ comes from kerukeion (note the shift of R to D: easy with a single-tongueflap [as distinct from trilled] R) A kerux was a herald or messenger and the kerukeion (‘thing-pertaining-to -heralds’), usually painted white, was the emblem by which he would be instantly recognizable as such. The persons of heralds were sacrosanct (they were under the protection of no less than Zeus himself, as part of the whole hospitality rule system) and you weren’t supposed to harm them even when they came from the enemy’s lines. (I believe this is the origin of our present-day convention of the white flag of truce.) ¶ Caducity is from Latin cadere, ‘to fall.’ Nothing to do with the caduceus unless you drop yours and then trip over it.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

I think your friend who is against books and reading is quite right.

Lao-Tzu says: true words are not pleasant, pleasant words are not true. The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise.

The Brahmanes say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the greatest precepts the smallest good deed.

—Leo Tolstoy
—from a letter to Percy Redfern, February 23, 1903

WORD(S)

caducity /kə-DYOO-si-tee/. noun. Senility, infirmity. Being perishable or transitory. Also, frailty or a tendency to fall. In legal vocabulary, the “lapsing of a testamentary gift.” From Latin caducus (liable to fall, perishable), from cadere (to fall).

“Winter: Temple of caducity. ¶ Eroded by lichen, the low branches have fallen. And no encumbrance midway up. No snaking of vines or ropes. You can roam about at leisure between the senile masts (all crinkled and lichen-cloaked like old Creole men), their locks entangled in the heights.” (Francis Ponge)

“…the flesh and the stone – the erect and the super-incumbent – the upraised sickle and the sickle brought down – the pooling shadows and the puddling blood – the Heavensent and the Hell-bound – the caducity of flesh and the endurance of stone…” (Nick Cave)

“Indeed, ‘descent’ is an apt word, for he is descended now, through a combination of caducity and destitution, to a very low condition.” (Geraldine Brooks)

WEB

1. Freedom APA, an “alternative amateur press association” with quarterly mailings for members, is “intended to be fun & embrace the spirit of amateur journalism, zine making, letter writing, graphic arts, mail art, DIY printing, poetry, homemade music, creative projects, podcasting & more.” I’ve seen a few comments that their first few mailings were delightful. → Announcing FREEDOM APA

2. “Why do our brains contain music-selective neurons?” → Your Brain’s Music Circuit Has Been Discovered

3. Debilitating illnesses in literature, ranked

4. On “psychobiotics” and the question, “can we soothe our brains by cultivating our bacteria?” → Microbes can play games with the mind

5. Today in 1976, the Argentinian military’s right-wing executes a coup d’état, overthrowing President Isabel Perón (who had inherited the position not even two years before), and extending and intensifying the Argentinean “Dirty War”. The military junta, which was installed with the United States’ complicity would murder (“disappear”) up to 30,000 people during its rule. Not coincidentally, US President Barack Obama has just announced he will be declassifying secret files related to US involvement in the Dirty War.

WATCH/WITNESS

80 seconds of an ostrich chasing two cyclists on an Australian coastal road. Because…ostrich of amazing size and speed! Related: How Johnny Cash was nearly killed by an ostrich in 1981, How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich and Meanwhile, in a Chinese Zoo, a Man Bit an Ostrich to Death.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “I love the tight drastic turns between lines in [Peggy Shumaker’s poem] ‘Turnstone’.”

• Reader M. on Peggy Shumaker: “I’ll never forget hearing Peggy Shumaker read at a reading you dragged me to in the early 90s. Hearing her and Lucille Clifton read changed my life. I became a poetry fan then and there.”

• A different Reader M. on last issue’s WORD: “I really didn’t need to see the word ‘meatus’ while in a meeting. But I’ll just run with it…”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Black Turnstone”

Far away you twist,
turn, count all the reasons not
to love. By the lake
a bird I have no name for
splits the air before my face.

—Peggy Shumaker
—from Salt River Review (Vol. I, No. 1, Winter 1997–98)

WORD(S)

meatus /mee-AYT-əs/. noun. A natural bodily passageway or its opening, such as the external auditory meatus (the ear). From Latin meātus (passage), from meāre (to go, pass).

“He has an arrival routine where he skips the front entrances and comes in through the south side’s acoustic meatus and gets a Millennial Fizzy® out of the vending machine…” (David Foster Wallace)

“…in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays…” (David Sedaris)

“He had produced a razor from some abyssal pocket and was lovingly whittling a live match. This when pointed according to his God he used to pierce a deep meatus in a fresh cigar…” (Samuel Beckett)

WEB

1. “…we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison … Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.” → The CAPTURED Project

2. @LitCritTrump reviews literature in Trump’s signature, staccato style. My favorites: The Great Gatsby and The Odyssey. Pair with Donald Trump’s Gettysburg Infomercial.

3. These experiments with prose, poetry and prose poetry are exciting…and scary. I routinely wonder, while reading concīs submissions, if I’m being subtly trolled with work composed this way. → Adventures in Narrated Reality: New forms & interfaces for written language, enabled by machine intelligence

4. Extremely Shortened Versions of Classic Books For Lazy People

5. Today in 1952 (or so the Interwebs tell me), poet Peggy Shumaker is born in La Mesa, California. Peggy is known for her many achievements as an artist and promoter of poetry—in addition to publishing seven books (so far), she was an Alaska Writer Laureate, founded Boreal Books, received an NEA fellowship and did time as the President of the AWP Board of Directors—as well as the intensely high regard felt by legions of students who became significantly better writers and readers (and her other students, like myself, impervious to the labors of even the best teachers) thanks to her long tenure as professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Further reading: in Poetry, more in Salt River Review, in Verse Daily and two pieces in Northern Review. Listening: ► Peggy Shumaker in the University of Arizona Poetry Center Audio Archives (a splendid resource!). And I highly recommend getting your hands on some of Peggy’s books, particularly BLAZE, her collaboration with the equally fab Kes Woodward.

WATCH/WITNESS

Oscar Oiwa inside his installation “Oiwa Island 2,” a “massive, 360-degree drawing made with black permanent marker on a 40-ft diameter inflatable vinyl dome.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. isn’t from Limerick, but…: "I think it was in an old Art Linkletter book of Kids say the darnest Things that some kid told him:

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to get her daughter a dress
And when she got there her cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter I guess

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard but there was nothing in it. She kept looking, in all the corners, but nothing. Her dog looked at her balefully. He was used to this. She didn’t mind so much for herself but she felt bad for the dog. The dog was depending on her. She knew she had to leave the house to get food, but she didn’t want to. She stood in the doorway with her coat on for a long time.

—Jessy Randall
—from There Was an Old Woman

WORD(S)

battledore /BA-təl-door/. noun. A wooden paddle for beating clothes or inserting objects into an oven. A hornbook; an ABC book; a children’s primer. A light bat used with a shuttlecock in “battledore and shuttlecock,” a forerunner to badminton. Possibly from Provençal batedor (beating instrument), from batre (to beat), from Latin batter (to beat).

“Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going.” (Honoré de Balzac)

“Battledore and shuttlecock’s a wery good game, vhen you ain’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin’ to be pleasant.” (Charles Dickens)

“An alternative form of the horn-book was the ‘criss-cross row’ which was shaped more or less like a crucifix. This strand of teaching reading developed into the battledore.” (Michael Rosen)

“I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling Papa…” (William Makepeace Thackeray)

WEB

1. “A visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers” that is super fun to play with → EarthWindMap

2. I’m looking forward to having this technology available on my computer (and phone, tablet, etc.) → Man Combines Random People’s Photos Using Neural Networks And The Results Are Amazing

3. Origin Unknown: Anatoly Liberman’s quest for the history of lost words

4. The Academy of Book Cover Designers ABCD16 Award Short Lists and Winners

5. Today in 1950, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, announce they’ve discovered/created Californium, then the world’s heaviest element. Besides being bombarded with Calcium ions to create the excellently (and temporarily) named Ununoctium, the only heavier element, Californium is used to start nuclear reactors, prospect for gold and silver, search for flaws in weapons and even to treat some kinds of brain and cervical cancers. But not cheaply: in addition to the usual dangers of radioactive materials, it costs at least thirty-million dollars to create 1g of Californium.

WATCH/WITNESS

Guy Laramee creates incredible, intricate landscape sculptures using old books.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “Love it [Cid Corman on Leonardo]. Muscular description of a muscular mind.”

• An interesting link from Reader B.: "The Slate Money podcast had an interesting linguistic turn just now. They wanted to know where the word ‘transmogrify’ came from, and what ‘mogrify’ means. ¶ Very end of: Slate Money on citizenship, women on boards, and workaholics. — I should email the answer…though it’s not particularly interesting!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

All of Leonardo’s “science” is touched with magic. We cannot help feeling within the intensity of his anatomies—his renderings of atmosphere—of chiaroscuro—his water curls—his fascination with turbulent interfaces—horses and men embattled—trees torn by winds—earth ravaged by flood—something always of body. Something that is irreducible and alive—even at its most lifeless core.

This can only mean mortality.

This is what grabs us finally in his obsessive concern with the pubic hair of life. The indomitable thrust of weed and flower out of dead rock. This reads deeper than Wasteland. There is a grace in his gracefulness—his compulsion yields intelligence. He will see—he will know—he will share with us. All lives and all dies.

—Cid Corman
—from “The Sense of Art”
—found in Where Were We Now: Essays & Postscriptum

WORD(S)

dehiscent /də-HISS-ənt/. adjective. Gaping. Rupturing. Ripe to bursting. From Latin dēhiscĕre (gape, yawn).

“…I cannot begin to tell you how strange the sentences with their riders and enclosures of information were to me, how blank they seemed, and then as if blankness were dehiscent in some mind garden, the blankness split open and was vague with not quite credible scenes…” (Harold Brodkey)

“I think of his earlier compositions where into the body of the musical statement he incorporates a punctuation of dehiscence, flottements, the coherence gone to pieces…” (Samuel Beckett)

“…I stitched the dehiscent wound as he yelped in pain, telling myself he’d had it coming. ¶ Nobody has it coming.” (Paul Kalanithi)

“That plain casket gone deep in earth, while the other stood a man’s height above the earth, anticipating dehiscence, ready to shell in falling…” (William Gaddis)

WEB

1. The brain can be a punny thing… → The curse of the people who can’t stop making puns

2. How to Write a Letter (Your User’s Manual)

3. What’s the deal with the…vertical ellipsis? And the comments are enlightening (imagine that)! → Miscellany № 70 — ‘⋮’, ‘⌨’ & ‘¶’

4. The secret Nazi history of porcelain

5. Today is the Ides of March, March 15th on the Roman calendar, and 2060th anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Portico of Pompey, famously predicted by the haruspex Spurinna. Romans numbered days of the month by counting backward from three fixed points of the month: the Nones, the Ides and the Kalends. The Ides were associated with the Roman’s greatest god, Jupiter, and the Ides of March marked the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (Latin annus, from which we derive words like annal and annual), concluding the festivities welcoming in the new year. Nowadays the date is most strongly associated with Caesar’s death, though much of the popular knowledge about the dates—and the killing of Caesar—is inaccurate or outright wrong [Thanks for the link, Reader C.].

WATCH/WITNESS

Wow. The first poem made me weep. Ross Gay reads two poems from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• In a comment that could refer to aperçu or the solar eclipse—or both—Reader T. writes: “Omigod! Totality! ¶ (That’s what she said!)”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.