Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.07.11

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                            July 11, 2022

                Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.07.11

                        Dear friends,

I'm playing another round of "is it allergies or is it Covid?" today—I've advanced to the league where you go and take a fancier Covid test while simultaneously taking more allergy meds. (It's a like an immune system battle royale over here, and hopefully the final scene is me standing triumphant in the arena holding a trident over my head.) 

I'm also playing Tower of Hanoi, but with my bookshelves. I'm sure there's some AI where I can upload a picture and it will tell me the perfect balance between "keeping books on related topics together" and "efficient shelf arrangement to handle a six-inch spread between the tallest and shortest books" but in the meantime I'm just shifting tomes back and forth (uh I just realized that the dust involved just might be part of the allergies problem above ...).

Anyway, for this issue? episode? aside? of Things I learned while looking up other things I'm just going to include a few items that I came across while shelving and re-shelving books, such as: 

Somehow I have an (unread) copy of How He Got Over, which is a 1918 self-published book by Rustum H. M. Mehta of Bombay, and which is supposed to be a novel of English domestic life. His preface says both that he is "only a boy of seventeen" and that he has not been to England, so he's "drawn this picture out of inspiration". I can't find much about it, don't remember how I got it, and the first few pages have "majestic hills" situated five miles outside of London, so I might move this up the TBR pile a bit out of pure curiosity. 
According to A Concise Dictionary of Canadianisms, moose milk is either 'home-distilled liquor' or a mixed drink which includes milk and rum (which is also called English drink).
In Personalities of Language, I learned of the Silent League, "organized among U. S. Navy men by Chaplain Carroll Q. Wright in 1903", and included men who "'solemnly agree to discourage Profanity and Obscenity everywhere so long as they live.'" (Supposedly Wright gave out ten thousand tokens of membership.)
According to Alfred Harcourt in his publishing memoir Some Experiences, when he wanted to publish Carl Sandberg's first book, Chicago Poems, he was told to get the approval of Professor Trent of Columbia. Harcourt, thinking that Trent, "of an older tradition", would be shocked by some of the "pretty raw meat" of Sandberg's book, took out a few of the poems he thought would "bother" Trent before sending the manuscript for approval (which was received). He didn't admit this until after his boss, Henry Holt, and Professor Trent were both dead.
In the 17th edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (edited by John Ayto), the Furry Dance is a spring festival in Helston, Cornwall on 8 May (sometimes moved a bit if that day falls on a Sunday or Monday). ("Furry" here may be related to a Latin word meaning 'festivals' or a Cornish word meaning 'feast'.) "Hundreds of dancing couples try to weave in and out of all the houses, if possible entering and leaving through different doors, as this brings extra luck." The dancers all wear lily-of-the-valley, the flower of Helston.

And that's just looking at a few shelves ... 

Stay well, stay safe—

Your friend, 

Erin

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