WordWacky

Discovery News reports that monks charged with writing Biblical texts may have been poisoned by the ink they used. Back before the 1500s (when texts started to be printed rather than hand written), a type of mercury, cinnabar, was used in ink for its red hue.

One scientist suggested an entry point for the mercury: 

He told Discovery News “it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line.”

The article goes on to speculate about the diets of the monks and rules out dietary and “medicinal” mercury exposures.

Little did they know that their precision and dedication was killing them, with a scenic stop at mad-as-a-hatter along the way.

Whether you’re queen of the parade or too cynical for rainbows, chances are that if you’re queer, you have an opinion on Pride. For some it’s a day of celebration, others mourning and reflection, and still others, a great reason to get out of the city while the tourists invade. I feel all of those ways, and every year one or other of my opinions is center stage.

This year I’m celebrating. Celebrating nearly two years of marriage, recognized or not, to my wife, whom I love more very day. Celebrating my friends and community. Celebrating the fact that every year we gain legitimacy, get closer to being fully recognized citizens of our own country. This year California. Next year, perhaps my own state will wise up.

But why the word pride to indicate our holiday? Isn’t Pride a sin, and one of the worst, at that?

(more…)

  Just in time for Pride weekend, Tom Spanbauer will be visiting Seattle to read from Faraway Places. Spanbauer’s first book has been reprinted by Hawthorne Press, a cool Portland indie publisher:

All of our titles are published as affordable original trade paperbacks but feature details not typically found even in case bound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks.

The new volume features an introduction by A. M. Homes, who’s a new favorite of mine. From the introduction:

Faraway Places, Tom Spanbauer’s first novel, is not enormously long, but it is a big book. And it is masterly—a near perfect book. Built upon keen observations of human behavior—ranging from God, to farming, the scent of one’s father, the magic of sex and the exact number of steps from here to there—there is enormous originality, drama and spirit to this tale. It is a family drama with a pitch perfect crescendo. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant—and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the storyline builds and then like a well timed firework explodes—surprising, enthralling, captivating.

I’ll be there to get his paw prints on my yet-to-be-purchased copy of In the City of Shy Hunters.

You should be there, too.

Tom Spanbauer
Elliott Bay Books
Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m, Free!
101 South Main Street
Pioneer Square, Seattle

Word - “Ever since people have been able to communicate verbally with one another we’ve had to have had words, and what we call these little pieces of audible communication has had a common name for a very long time.”

Condom - [Editor's note: definitively NSFW, and comes with musical accompaniment, but quite a thorough history of the condom, if you're interested -- and if you can make it past the no minors warning.]

“A variety of Latin etymologies have been proposed, including condon (receptacle),[55] condamina (house), and cumdum (scabbard or case). It has also been speculated to be from the Italian word guantone, derived from guanto, meaning glove. William E. Kruck wrote an article in 1981 concluding that, ‘As for the word ‘condom’, I need state only that its origin remains completely unknown, and there ends this search for an etymology.’ Modern dictionaries may also list the etymology as ‘unknown’.”

Bee - “Old English beo (before 900, in Alfred’s translation of Bpethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae) earlier bio-wyrt, bee wort, a plant (about 700) and Beo-wulf a personal name (about 725, in Beowulf).”

Dagenham - “In this context dagenham is apparently to be taken as a synonym for ‘insane’, by a rather devious etymological route. Dagenham is a town in Essex, England. On the District Line of the London Underground, Dagenham is three stops beyond the town of Barking (after Barking are Upney, Becontree, Dagenham Heathway, and Dagenham East). To be barking mad is to be crazy; and being dagenham is therefore being three steps beyond barking.”

And finally, in honor of the summer, which has returned to Seattle like a deadbeat dad — everyone’s so happy to see him, we’ve forgotten how mad we were:

Swelter - “Latvian is somewhat close to the original etymology with gurt no swelmes (I took a linguistics class once in college where I learned that Latvian is probably the closest to the original tongue from which all the Indo-European family of languages evolved). However, perhaps the closest to the etymological source of swelter in the list above is the Norwegian smelte, (I think of smelting iron) and just one letter difference from svelte.”

Sex sells. It sells breakfast cereal and sports cars. It sells diets and beer. It sells software. Games. Shoes. Pickles. The City. And now words.

Here’s the etymology of umbrella, from Hot for Words:

[Editor's note: While this is technically not unsafe for work, I wouldn't want to be watching it when my boss came by and looked over my shoulder.]

There’s a new breed of sexy — actually, it’s an old breed, but it’s finally been noticed by the mainstream. But I’m not sure that Marina Orlova, a YouTube champion and Wired’s Sexiest Geek of the Year 2007, qualifies as geek sexy. I’m sure there are many of her devotees out there who care not one whit for philology — or any other ology, for that matter, but will watch and learn as long as there’s enough cleavage involved.

So how about some sex with your Kierkegaard? Why should sex be banished from the intellectual world? There’s not a carbon-based intelligence on the planet that can’t trace its roots back to sex. Are we so taken in by the Judeo-Christian split of the exalted and the base that we shun such unholy minglings? Cheeseburgers are evil. Unhand that jerky, it’s Friday!

Frankly, Marina’s not my type, but the ongoing video etymology series is a great idea, and she’s found a way to get a whole lot of viewers — 70 million YouTube views!

It’s not a question of the ends justifying the means, but more of a marketing coup. Even if I’m not the target audience, I have to respect the results.

by Anne Carson

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book marks, without an ember of doubt, the first time I’ve ever felt burned by my lack of education in the classics. I approached this book ready to feel cowed and lost, so I was enthralled when that was not the case.

I understand Geryon intimately, for I, too am a red creature.

From a forgotten notebook of mine:

“On my steady diet of nicotine and coffee, my thoughts grind (like bad teeth) into points. I am a sharp-shaped thing. A needle, an arrow, I cut. I can touch rage: rage that was the only sprig of life on the barren potato farm; rage tucked into the left work boot for the dark walk home from the plant; rage channeled into the line of a razor’s making, at first invisible, then blessed red. We all know the color of rage. Red will unmake me.”

Geryon’s red is a different hue, as has my own ripened with age. Passion. Shame. Love. The interior exposed and vulnerable. Heat. Longing. Did you know longing was red? Do you know how close you are to knowing that?

Like the terrestrial crust of the earth
which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul
is a miracle of mutual pressures.

Fuck Herakles. That bitch and his arrogance, never seeing the deep red interior of his jailbait trick. Winning is blindness. Winning is empty. Winning is lonely, even with a joint in one hand and a cock in the other. It is through losing that we learn to make bread in the volcano’s eye. It is through returning that we get wings.

Anne Carson, thank you for making a hero of the vanquished, for turning a flat story over and finding the life growing beneath it.

Geryon stood upright
within the rayon planes of his brother’s sports jacket. Sweat and desire ran
down his body to pool
in the crotch and behind the knees. He had been standing against the wall
for three and a half hours in a casual pose.
His eyes ached from the effort of trying to see everything without looking at it.
Other boys stood beside him
on the wall. The petals of their colognes rose about them in a light terror.
Meanwhile music pounded
across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being
a self in a song.

“What is time made of?” Geryon asks frequently.

Fear of time came at him. Time
was squeezing Geryon like the pleats of an accordion.

And:

…A man moves through time. It means nothing except that,
like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

What does this thoughtful young artist have against time? We might think it’s his death — we all know his demise is assured before reading the book, or at least once we find out he goes up against Herakles:

on the other side of the world somewhere Herakles laughing drinking getting
into a car and Geryon’s
whole body formed one arch of a cry — upcast to that custom, the human custom of wrong love.

But here Carson has turned the story around — it’s not death Geryon waits for, but heartbreak. And heartbreak, as we all can’t help but know, is red like thunder.

View all my reviews.

Two more independent bookstores bite the dust. One is in the heartland, Bookstore on West 25th Street, Cleveland, OH. From The Plain Dealer:

About 18 months ago, the landmark store was in code blue and failing fast, but patrons and friends of owner Mike O’Brien held a rent party, giving the place a new life.

The revival, however, was short-lived. Now the old Mecca for suburban intellectuals and urban poor people — who for decades browsed among the high wooden shelves and the 25-cent rack — is in its final hour.

It’s not hard to imagine that independent bookstores disappear from lower income neighborhoods before richer ones. The anecdotal evidence I can provide from my own life confirms this, and it makes sense that the richer the neighborhood, the more they can support a specialty store. However, it’s tragic to imagine books as objects inaccessible to the poor.

And in Berkeley, CA, Cody’s closed its doors on June 20. From the Berkeley Blog:

I have been a longtime fan of Cody’s Books in Berkeley. It was a great independent bookstore with a big selection and very knowledgeable salespeople that supported local authors. It also brought a lot of great speakers to Berkeley, many of whom I had the privilege of hearing talk in a small, intimate space, and many of whose visits resulted in posts on this weblog. It was one of the institutions that enriched the city, kept it intellectually stimulating, and made it a great place to live.

In the good news section, a different bookstore called Amazon - not referring to the online giant, but a little feminist bookstore in Minneapolis - got saved at the last possible moment. The closing sale had already happened, but the new owner, Ruta Skujins, is thrilled to get started again. Quoting the new owner, Amy Goetzman at MinnPost.com says:

“‘I belong to several online literary groups, and I kept hearing about these great bookstores closing, in places like Iowa and Boston. When I heard that Amazon was closing, I thought, ‘No, that can’t happen,’ ‘ she said. ‘I talked with Barb Wieser [manager and most veteran employee of the cooperative] back in February about gathering a group of investors, but it just didn’t come together, so I gave up on the idea. But it bothered me.’

Then last week, Skujin’s partner ran into Barb at a concert, who told her the 38-year-old store had lowered its price but had not found a buyer, and was now in its final days. ‘I called Barb the next day, we met last Thursday, came to an agreement, shook on it, and I still can’t believe it, but I own a bookstore,’ said Skujin.”

Unconvinced that these stores are worth saving? For a great discussion on the many-pronged value of independent bookstores, visit Thoughts on Books, a blog by an employee of a publishing house.

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fiction in which a writer is the protagonist bores me. Faulting the author for too little imagination, I imagine the protagonist to be an ill-veiled version of the real person, the author. Indeed, the protagonist of Diary of a Bad Year is a writer, a writer who is perhaps named Juan C. (The author’s name is John Maxwell, or J. M. Coetzee.)

That’s my own personal bias, not any kind of objective truth — but here’s another piece of much more reputable advice that this book ignores. Don’t build a book around your political agenda. Not only does Coetzee do this, he does it completely blatantly, with little narrative intertwined.

The protagonist has contracted with a German publisher to contribute to a collection of of six authors’ “Strong Opinions.” Those opinions, such as “On Language,” and “On Intelligent Design,” are short non-fiction passages from an old man to the world he finds himself living within.

About assigning the opinions of Señor C to Coetzee, The New Yorker says this:

Many of the protagonist’s essays are reproduced in the novel we are reading. Naturally, the reader wants to make Coetzee’s novels confessional, to claim these opinions as his rightful children. But Coetzee explicitly complicates the question of his paternity, so that these books read less like confessions than like books about confession.

This is an idea I consider, but at best I see Señor C as a self-conscious exaggeration of the author, not as being of an entirely different character than the man who created him. As Coetzee is notoriously reclusive, we may never know how closely the two resemble each other.

But there’s something else much more compelling in the book’s structure. Below each page of the writer’s “Strong Opinions” is a footnote of sorts, finally the narrative we need to hold our interest through this barrage of editorial. The story that surrounds the writing of the opinions is told by the writer, in the first person.

And both are good. Both are engaging, and if we prefer the narrative (which is generally limited in page real estate to less than a third, and often ends leaving white space), we are soon rewarded with more — a third section on each page representing our romantic-platonic leading lady, also told in the first person.

About the opinions I won’t say much, except that I agreed with many, including some harsher reviews of our American Empire. What’s very interesting in the reading of the book is that depending on the story that is taking place, the opinions seem more or less valid — as you grow to know the writer, your opinion of his opinions changes and adjusts. Ultimately, you are left to miss the author’s narrative voice altogether, left with only his opinions and those of Anya, his typist. Could this be the demise of us all, survived only by our strongest opinions and others’ somewhat misinformed ideas about us?

Reading this book is an experience I recommend. Its engaging, lively structure contains a story of its own.

View all my reviews.

Here’s a graphic of the top 300 most common words in this blog, as of yesterday.

Make one of your own at Wordle. [via Bombast and Thunder]

Maverick - “Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick died 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves.”

Barrow/borrow pits and the Mormon R - “Mormon settlers who came West from Missouri brought with them a dialect that pronounced the letter ‘o’ as ‘a’ if the letter were followed by an ‘r’…”

Linguists call the phenomenon ‘the Mormon R,’ and it used to be commonplace in rural areas of Utah and in eastern Idaho ..

So Fort Hall was pronounced Fart Hall … Orange was arange … And borrow became barrow…”

Israel: “Over the past three thousand years, the name ‘Israel’ has meant in common and religious usage both the Land of Israel and the entire Jewish nation. The name originated from a verse in the Bible (Genesis, 32:2 where Jacob is renamed Israel after successfully wrestling with an angel of God. Commentators differ on the meaning of the name. Some say the name comes from the verb śarar (’to rule, be strong, have authority over’), thereby making the name mean ‘God rules’ or ‘God judges’. Other possible meanings include ‘the prince of God’ (from the King James Version) or ‘El fights/struggles’.”

Immaculate: “The crowding of the cone cells at the back of the eye where the image forms has a consequence that when the eye doctor looks into your eye, the part where the cone cells are most dense looks a little more yellow.

About 150 years ago, or maybe a little longer, physicians gave this yellow spot a name.

They called it yellow spot;

But in the Latin they liked to use that came out as macula lutea.”

Budget: “A bougette was typically used for carrying coins around, so the term became linked with the money which you had available at any one time, hence ‘budget’.”

Hamartia: “Hamartia is an element of greek drama which stands for ‘missing the mark.’ In modern lit, hamartia refers to a character’s “fatal flaw” though some say this is an incorrect use of the term as intended by the Greeks.”