Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.09.11
Dear friends, There was a truly epic opal in the Dearest newsletter this week; even if you think you don’t care about jewelry (and I put myself in that...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.08.11
Dear friends, Although I love words, I don’t get excited by etymologies—most of them are fairly dull. And a word’s etymology doesn’t (or shouldn’t!) have...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.07.11
Dear friends, Notes and Queries never fails to bring me new and charmingly hyper-specific terms: “But generally a "kneeler" is "a small mat upon which to...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.06.11
Dear friends, This week I was trying to explain to a much younger person what it used to be like before large search engines and abundant online archives—how...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.05.11
Dear friends, It’s a Saturday, so I did some regular weekend cleaning and tidying today, and the whole time kept thinking about Wages Against Housework. I...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.04.11
Dear friends, I wish I could start this email off with a cheery "hello from Point Nemo!" But I can't, because it's the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility and...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.03.11
Dear friends, It's the worst day of the transition to daylight saving time today (US, observed): the first work day after the change. I woke up earwormed...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.02.11
Dear friends, London is a city that rewards the reader. It is all reader fan service, as far as I can tell. Literary references lurk in alleys, lounge in...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.01.11
Dear friends, Hope you enjoyed your second new year today (especially if you went to the burning of the Clavie). I think the practice of following several...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.12.11
Dear friends,Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here again is the link to one of my...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.11.11
Dear friends, A long time ago I had a gag website called "November is No New Projects Month" and I think of that every November (no, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo,...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.10.11
Dear friends, I always think of the year as downhill from August, and like anything rolling downhill it accelerates as it goes. I suppose it slams into the...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.09.11
Dear friends, I was lucky enough to visit five really good museums in the last two weeks, so this edition of TILWLUOT might range a bit further afield than...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.08.11
Dear friends, I was lucky enough to see The Mountain Goats the other day here in Portland (and doubly-lucky to be able to do so with my kid). We got there...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.07.11
Dear friends, For a long time I have been trying to find the source of the claim that there was one person in Western history who had read "everything"...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.06.11
Dear friends, I am (gingerly, tentatively, apprehensively, hopefully) traveling soon, to Seoul and Tokyo, and getting ready for the trip is consuming a lot...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.05.11
Dear friends, Would you like to know where to rent a 'big-ass gong'? I didn't think I did, but this post changed my mind. Then I started wondering how much...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.04.11
Dear friends, A nice thing about moving to a new place (and I have found many, many nice things since moving to Portland almost a year ago) is learning about...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.03.11
Dear friends, I did NOT get COVID last month! Whew. I did, however, do a bunch of prophylactic comfort reading, including a few of the novels of Susan...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.02.11
Dear friends, Today I'm in that most modern of purgatories, the time between having been exposed to Covid (and feeling a little iffy, maybe some fatigue, a...
