Things I learned while looking up other things, 2020.3.11
Hi friends!
This edition has exactly zero coronavirus content. (But you should wash your hands after reading anyway.)
While reading about a new literary prize for women and nonbinary people, I saw this showstopper quote. (Please pause and take a deep breath before reading.) "Carol Shields earned Hanover College’s top writing prize when she graduated from the Indiana school in 1957. She did not, however, receive it. The committee gave the prize to the second-place student instead. Because he was a he. He would need to make a living, the thinking went, and the prize would help."
This edition has exactly zero coronavirus content. (But you should wash your hands after reading anyway.)
While reading about a new literary prize for women and nonbinary people, I saw this showstopper quote. (Please pause and take a deep breath before reading.) "Carol Shields earned Hanover College’s top writing prize when she graduated from the Indiana school in 1957. She did not, however, receive it. The committee gave the prize to the second-place student instead. Because he was a he. He would need to make a living, the thinking went, and the prize would help."
"One in every 14 California jobs is at a nonprofit. We employ more people than the construction industry." (from the CalNonprofits winter newsletter [PDF link])
"Commissioned by the BBC in 1960 to produce material for broadcast, Gysin's results included "Pistol Poem" [video link], which was created by recording a gun firing at different distances and then splicing the sounds."
I've been reading a bit more about the Korean language lately, and am fascinated by the idea of gukja, Chinese characters created in Korea, used for Korean terms (the Japanese equivalent is called kokuji).
Another lackadaisical task I've set myself is to try to clear out some of the digital kipple that piles up in dusty online corners. (I have stuff in Evernote that is coming up fast on its tenth birthday ...) One agéd note was just this one link: Portmanteaur. Do with it what you will. Also: this useful random name generator!
Part of the de-kippling (and also part of a kind of GYST organizational push) includes me trying to put together a list of stuff I've written (for the convenience of my eventual literary executor), which led to the extremely happy accident of finding my story "Not Waving But Drowning" from the Machine of Death anthology mentioned on TVTropes, as an exemplar of "Pretentious Latin Motto"! (Which is Extremely On Brand™️.)
If you are not a fan of Samuel Johnson, you probably want to unsubscribe quick-like, as I have embarked on a project to read something about or by my man SJ every day, and if there were ever a Quotable Writer Leaderboard, hoo boy, Johnson is at the TOP. Re-reading one of my favorite books about Johnson (Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing) led me back to Rambler 122, which leads off with this bit:
Presented without comment: "With that in mind, who wouldn't want to dress up in Roman soldier armor and embody a soldier in the greatest army the world has ever known?" (Okay, maybe if you did it this way.)Nothing is more subject to mistake and disappointment than anticipated judgment concerning the easiness or difficulty of any undertaking, whether we form our opinion from the performances of others, or from abstracted contemplation of the thing to be attempted.
Do you have a strong stomach and enjoy papal shenanigans? (You probably need the first to do the second just on general principles ... ) Then you will almost certainly like this link to the Cadaver Synod (in Latin, the Synodus Horrenda), sent in by Jez Burrows. Protip/spoilers: if you exhume a pope, interrogate his corpse, declare his papacy null, and throw his body in the Tiber, don't be surprised if people turn against you! (Also, it is somewhat unclear from that Wikipedia article what the current stance of the Roman Catholic church is on trials of dead persons. Does the ruling of John IX forbidding it still hold? How would you even look this up?)
This was the best random word I got on Wordnik this past month: cootling.
If you find cool things while looking up other things and need to share them, I'd love to see them! Just hit 'reply'. :)
Your friend,
Erin
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