Things I learned while looking up other things, 2020.7.11
Dear friends,
Ever since I learned that Hialeah used to be part of what was called the 'Humbuggus-Pokeymoonshine' section of the Everglades northwest of Miami, I can't stop imagining a fictional "Humbuggus P. Moonshine, Esq.", Florida swamp salesman.
The Lillian de la Torre Johnson/Boswell mystery stories I mentioned a few installments back are (as expected) great. They include not just actual Johnson quotes bent to the service of the stories, but lovely cant examples, such as running-smobble ("snatching goods off a counter, and throwing them to an accomplice, who brushes off with them") and sky farmers ("Cheats who pretend they were farmers in the isle of Sky, or some other remote place, and were ruined by a flood, hurricane, or some such public calamity: or else called sky farmers from their farms being IN NUBIBUS, ‘in the clouds.’").
In addition to all the Johnsoniana, I picked up a biography of Schiaparelli (and by "picked up", I mean "took from my bedside stack where it has been languishing for at least two years") where I discovered that Schiap, at one point, had black patent leather curtains in her showroom. (I have SO MANY questions about this.)
I think baseball is a colossal waste of time, but learning about my hometown minor league team's rebrand has given me such joy: "After 14 years under the Warthogs nickname, the Winston-Salem organization announced its name change on December 4, 2008. Winston and Salem became one city in 1913, and the “Dash” symbolizes the special connection that these two communities created more than 100 years ago and still strengthens each day." (I guess "the Winston-Salem Hyphens" just didn't have the same ring.)
"The state, in an infant, of acquiring a strong voice"—of course you need a word for this, and that word is 'hirquitalliency'. (I remember this stage of child development. It did not include much sleep.)
"Some German-speaking typographers call these [words with double letters] ‘schnapps-words,’ an endearing tribute to boozy double-vision."
"Pierre de Massot, a French surrealist poet and a convinced Communist, was nonetheless 'passionately pro-American on all international questions and for his breakfast each morning drank a bottle of Coca-Cola instead of a cup of café au lait, which he despised as being old-fashioned and chauvinist'."
A link to save in case things get even worse: "apparently you can produce six hours of electricity with one liter of urine".
Hoping you and yours are safe and well,
Your friend,
Erin
Ever since I learned that Hialeah used to be part of what was called the 'Humbuggus-Pokeymoonshine' section of the Everglades northwest of Miami, I can't stop imagining a fictional "Humbuggus P. Moonshine, Esq.", Florida swamp salesman.
The Lillian de la Torre Johnson/Boswell mystery stories I mentioned a few installments back are (as expected) great. They include not just actual Johnson quotes bent to the service of the stories, but lovely cant examples, such as running-smobble ("snatching goods off a counter, and throwing them to an accomplice, who brushes off with them") and sky farmers ("Cheats who pretend they were farmers in the isle of Sky, or some other remote place, and were ruined by a flood, hurricane, or some such public calamity: or else called sky farmers from their farms being IN NUBIBUS, ‘in the clouds.’").
In addition to all the Johnsoniana, I picked up a biography of Schiaparelli (and by "picked up", I mean "took from my bedside stack where it has been languishing for at least two years") where I discovered that Schiap, at one point, had black patent leather curtains in her showroom. (I have SO MANY questions about this.)
I think baseball is a colossal waste of time, but learning about my hometown minor league team's rebrand has given me such joy: "After 14 years under the Warthogs nickname, the Winston-Salem organization announced its name change on December 4, 2008. Winston and Salem became one city in 1913, and the “Dash” symbolizes the special connection that these two communities created more than 100 years ago and still strengthens each day." (I guess "the Winston-Salem Hyphens" just didn't have the same ring.)
"The state, in an infant, of acquiring a strong voice"—of course you need a word for this, and that word is 'hirquitalliency'. (I remember this stage of child development. It did not include much sleep.)
"Some German-speaking typographers call these [words with double letters] ‘schnapps-words,’ an endearing tribute to boozy double-vision."
"Pierre de Massot, a French surrealist poet and a convinced Communist, was nonetheless 'passionately pro-American on all international questions and for his breakfast each morning drank a bottle of Coca-Cola instead of a cup of café au lait, which he despised as being old-fashioned and chauvinist'."
A link to save in case things get even worse: "apparently you can produce six hours of electricity with one liter of urine".
Hoping you and yours are safe and well,
Your friend,
Erin
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