Parvum Opus 308 ~ Happy Hogmanay

Happy Hogmanay

It’s not midnight yet here, but I already enjoyed the Stonehaven fireball celebration five hours away in Scotland via webcam. Hogmanay is Scots for the last day of the year. All you need for spectacular beauty is fire.

Today I cooked black-eyed peas with smoked pork for good luck, an old southern tradition I picked up from my father. One story is that when the Yankees raided southern farms during the Civil War, they took all the food but left the black-eyed peas (or field peas), thinking they were only food for livestock; thus the good luck was that some food remained. I’ve also heard the black spots represent coins, symbolizing money. In any case, they’re good, good for you, and, no doubt, good luck. Best with cornbread, but I had garlic bread and Irish coffee with mine. Or was it Scotch coffee? I used Scotch.

I’m still working on my New Year’s resolutions, but for now it might be more satisfying to begin to compile a list of good things from my 2008. Just a few:

!!! Chief among them was the trip to Scotland for my son Jude’s wedding to dear Kate (and later a trip to Boston for the reception). Moral: Good times may be fleeting, but life is even shorter, so do the important things at any cost.

!!! I got a new job and quit it. Moral: Even if suffering makes it seem like your life is dragging out longer, cut your losses.

!!! It’s been six years that I’ve been writing Parvum Opus. Thanks to everyone who’s read it and who’s written to me. It has been a pleasure. I hope to continue for at least another half-dozen years. Moral: Keep on doing what you like to do, as often as possible; it puts you in a timeless state.

A Bubble a Day

Bet you can’t pop just one: the bubble calendar is a paper calendar overlaid with bubble wrap, allowing you to pop one bubble a day.

Good King Wenceslas

This Christmas I’ve let “Good King Wenceslas” get stuck in my head. Two good versions on YouTube are one by the Irish Rovers, and another by Blackmore’s Night that gives the lyrics and has some lovely artwork.

What is the sound of paper with no words?

Online publisher Blurb has a page called The Library of Unwritten Books. Does that strike a chord? Got a manuscript in your drawer or in your head? If so, this page won’t help, but know you’re not alone.

Synchronized Spooning Update

Following the numerous holiday exhibition synchronized spooning events, one of the best teams has been sidelined by carpe diem syndrome, an injury caused by too much daily practice. Nudge and Swish Carhardt of Grygla, Minnesota, have been practicing virtually every waking ~ and sleeping ~ moment when they’re not actually performing, leading to repetitive motion injuries in Nudge’s elbows and knees.

“I guess I got so anxious to push for admission to the aught-ten Olympics that I overdid it. I’ll rest up for a week or so and then get back to it, but not as much as before.”

When asked how she managed to escape injury after following the same strenuous schedule as her husband Nudge, Swish said, “Well, he leads. And sometimes he practices alone. I just can’t do it 24/7. Especially at Christmas time.”

Jem Whittle of Ontario continued performing after spraining an ankle a month ago. Nudge Carhardt won’t be out of action very long either. Spoons are made of a tough mettle.

Next Week

Notes I’m saving for next week/year: Do you know the difference between an ex-communist and a former communist? Did you know you can wash suede (not just the special washable suede)?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

I am here

Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I eat dead things (doggy shirt and BBQ apron)

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

ALSO Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears at http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video and music clips of great blues man Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue". And listen to Judy Joy Jones’s interview with Sonny.

PEACE MISSION INDIA blogs the progress of Pastor Roy Jacob’s mission to build churches in India. Now 79, Pastor Roy (who is an Indian) has built 10 churches, and has a girls’ school to rescue girls from the mountains and jungles who otherwise might be married off as children or perhaps sold.

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus ~ Cultivating Commas

Yes, Virginia

Worth reading again is the famous “Yes, Virginia” piece written by Francis Pharcellus Church in the New York Sun in 1897:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little.

Note that whoever posted the text of Church’s piece inserted [what]; the original read “They do not believe except they see” (They do not believe anything unless they see it); “what” changes the emphasis to the thing seen. The editor could also have inserted [that] for a different read (They do not believe unless they see or They do not believe without seeing), which is closer to the original, with emphasis on the verb. The original usage is correct although not common today.

The photo image of the original paper shows Virginia’s complete name and address:

Virginia Hanlon

115 W. 95th St.

New York, NY

I found it interesting to look up this address on Google maps. You can’t see the house numbers but the brownstone houses are perhaps the same houses that were there more than a century ago.

Billed

Bill R. sent “So You Want to be an English Teacher” by Evanthia O. Rosati. No, Bill, I don’t. Well, not so much.

I have “created memories” (to use a particularly irritating phrase ~ if you’re creating memories you’re not paying enough attention right now) all semester which I can now consign to my memory bank because I quit the university job. Creating memories in this way is a fine thing to do. I may be able to mine these four months for more ruminations on the state of education, free speech, and political correctness. But a job that frequently woke me up at three in the morning, which F. Scott Fitzgerald told us is always the time in the dark night of the soul, is best made into a memory.

One trivial example of the many irritants built into the academic bureaucracy (though all the irritants were not bureaucratic) was the modern way of entering final semester grades: online. But I couldn’t figure out how to log on. I was asked to sign in with two numbers, a faculty ID and a PIN. I tried various combinations of: the number on my campus ID card; the employee number on my pay stub; my Social Security number, with and without dashes; my university e-mail sign-on and password. The solution turned out to be the SS#, no dashes (which was the faculty ID) and my birthdate (the mysterious PIN). When I e-mailed the IT department for help, they wrote back that security concerns prevented them from explaining it, although I wasn’t asking for the numbers themselves. I had to ask another faculty member to explain it to me.

I ought to start my own school, along the lines of the boarding school described by Jane Austen in Emma:

Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a School -- not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems -- and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity -- but a real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.

What could the inimitable Jane have meant by “elegant morality”?

Bill’s signature tag is:

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. -- Zhongni, Analects

Using language in accordance with the truth of things actually caused me problems in that teaching job.

Also thanks to Bill, I sometimes read a blog, Neptunus Lex, which has a pretty good Christmas Eve entry. A commenter on the blog got all tangled up in too many negatives and came out the wrong end:

After reading your post, I can’t imagine anyone denigrating your ability to author a book that wouldn’t sell.

Can’t, denigrating, wouldn’t: parse it out, or do the math, and you’ll see the problem. It sounds like an insult but that was not the intention.

I myself have the ability to author books that won’t sell, and I do not denigrate that ability because it takes a lot of work. Can’t you imagine me selling, not selling, denigrating, or not denigrating? (By the way, if you think it should be “imagine my selling” etc., not so, because I want you to imagine me, plus appositives, rather than imagine the selling that is mine, etc.)

Cool Christmas

I got some exceptionally cool Christmas gifts this year.

Son Jude and his bride Kate sent a notebook made from a recycled hardback called The English Workshop (1945) that used the cover and a few pages plus acid-free paper in a spiral binding (from Ex Libris Anonymous, http://www.bookjournals.com/). The original owner’s penciled notes remain in the inside cover; can’t quite make out the name ~ Molly Bliefermick? Sounds like a character from Mad magazine. It looks like it was an excellent little English textbook. Here’s a punctuation poem from page 11:

Comma Caution

by Harold Willard Gleason

Be gentle to the comma with its curly little tail

Though dainty and diminutive its power turns one pale

It causes much confusion when neglected or misplaced

So slur it not through ignorance nor hobble it through haste

Expressions parenthetical however or said he

All nominatives of address appositives aussi

Inverted order clauses which come before the main

The members of a series Lizzie Annabel and Jane

Long phrases introductory containing verbal parts

All nonrestrictive elements His hobby which is arts

Dates address in detail 10 Broadway Hartford Conn

Or Saturday June 26 and last to ponder on

The parts of compound sentences Ike hops but Willie flees

All these require commas tucked in their interstices

One may not move a mountain but one may preserve a state

By cultivating commas And tomorrow is too late

“Are you able to punctuate it?” the writer asks. “Is the advice valid?” Of course it is. In other words, for want of a comma a meaning was lost, and for want of a meaning a nation was lost.

Also, because of a tip from reader and Fred’s friend Herb H., I got a great little Gretsch guitar in the discontinued Americana series, all the better because it has writing and pictures on it. I have the Sundown Serenade model. I’m slow about learning music but I’m going to play with this adorable, non-threatening instrument, thanks to Fred (and Herb).

Next Year

This will probably be the last PO of the year unless I manage to shift my schedule back to Wednesdays, as was my original intention. In either case, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas or anything else, and I wish you a very healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year. (Don’t believe all the news. There’s more than meets our uncomprehending eyes.)

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus 306 ~ On Mendication

NURF Said

The word museum comes from Latin/Greek for “temple of the Muses” while to muse comes from Latin for muzzle or snout, originally from bite, so it’s hard to tell whether to expect any given museum to inspire or leave you gaping open-mouthed, or both. “The Past Isn’t What It Used To Be” by Andrew Ferguson (The Weekly Standard, Dec. 15, 2008) is about the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which exhibits the Puffy Shirt from the Seinfeld TV show on a par with the desk Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence. Someone has to make those decisions.

This fall I went with a group of students to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, so located because the Ohio River was the dividing line between Northern free states and Southern slave states. As a museum, it was disappointing to all of us. The only authentic historical artifact I saw was a slave pen from Kentucky, a log building that held slaves for sale. On the floor inside the log structure was a small pile of unidentified chains, shackles, and manacles with no indication that they were original. I should think not since they were loose; anyone could have taken them. There’s a Lincoln exhibit, mostly reading matter and some illustrations. The most engaging exhibits were an interactive video that let viewers choose their escape route ~ up a tree or through the woods? travel in winter or summer? stop to eat or keep moving? ~ and a video dramatization of the escape of a slave over the river, helped by a white man and a free black man, both real historical figures, who lived on the Ohio side. But that’s more or less TV. There was a large collection of photos of people from all over the world, and as my Chinese student asked, why were they there? The only point I got out of the photo exhibit was that they were not white people. But let us not forget that white people have been slaves too. And there was a very large, colorful fabric wall hanging that depicted in an abstract way the history of black people in Cincinnati, but no one could make much sense out of it. I was interested in the exhibit on modern slave trafficking, but it was closed.

The NURFC is a huge, beautiful building, but it is not attracting the expected hordes of visitors and isn’t doing too well financially. The city donated the land to the museum, and when the city wanted part of the land back for parking, the museum tried to shake down the taxpayers and sell part of the real estate back to the city, which didn’t go over well.

All in all, the NURFC just doesn’t have enough content to justify its footprint. A museum has to have a point of view, and this one does not do justice to its big story. No wonder it’s called by that catch-all non-word name “center” rather than “museum”.

Parvum Opus Readers

Tim Bazzett wrote:

Didja do yer homework? Timothy Egan is the bestselling author of The Worst Hard Time. I don't think he'd has any trouble getting a book contract.

No, I hadn’t done my homework; when Egan got snarky in the NY Times about non-writers getting book contracts, I got snarky about him and thought he might be jealous of their publication. Apparently not; it was just pure spite against people he dislikes politically. I’m still recovering from the two-year presidential campaign, two years of political over-mendication, and it’s all I can do to remind myself that’s it’s Christmas, and a new year is coming.

Just a reminder here that Tim Bazzett has published several memoirs; he was stationed with the Army Security Agency in Sinop, Turkey, as a ditty-bopper (Morse code guy) and later became a Russian translator. (Fred was in also Sinop, as a Russian translator, before Tim got there.) Find Tim’s books at Rathole Books, and listen to his recorded interview.

A new PO reader has a blog worth catching, Ed Kelce’s fogdad. Long-time reader Dave DaBee’s sister Suede is a great jazz singer; find her music at suedewave.com. Dave blogs too; which do you want to share, Dave? Computer maven Bob Oberg writes poetry; don’t know if he has a web site he wants us to know about. Kathy Taylor writes an amusing, down-home column, with gorgeous scenic photos, in the Hur Herald; search for Beason News.

I know other readers must have stuff. For the new year, I’d like to list all the web sites, blogs, etc. of Parvum Opus readers. Update me, and I’ll list them here.

Synchronized Spooning on Ice

If you’re up that way, be sure to get tickets to Synchronized Spooning on Ice in the Vancouver Pacific Coliseum (every night through New Year’s Eve). By using that venue, some competitors are hoping they still have a chance of being slated in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, but so far, looks like it’s not happening.

“If they have wheelchair curling, why not us?” asked competitor Nudge Carhardt, referring to a Paralympic event. “I mean, we don’t need prosthetics.”

“Now hush,” whispered his wife Swish.

“I’m just saying,” said Nudge.

Most competitors will be performing on 10’ x 10’ x 3’ blocks of ice towed into the ice arena. Spooning on ice makes for faster moves as the surface of the ice melts. Some competitors (or “spoons” as they’re beginning to call themselves, rather than “spooners”) are urging a permanent move to ice to replace platform beds in competition, but Ned Ferguson and Sheila Urquhart-Ferguson will be using a spectacular waterbed filled with blue water and flashing lights.

“It’s softer but harder,” Ned joked. “I mean, the bed’s softer of course, but it’s harder to get traction so it’s really just for exhibition spooning. It feels as cold as ice, though. Sucks the heat right out of you.”

Jem Whittle and Shirl Purley are building their trademark campfire on their own 20’ diameter block of ice and yes, the ice starts to melt under the fire, adding to the excitement of their extreme Cubing the Circle routine.

“We actually like working on ice,” said Shirl, “because it’s slippery. Our moves are so difficult and I’m thinking we should always work on ice.”

Anniversary

Seven years ago, December 19, 2001, I got an e-mail from Fred, after 26 years. After two solid months of e-mailing, we were engaged. Here are some fragments of poetry that we tagged our e-mails with:

Above, across or back again,

wherever he goes in the world

let him carefully scrutinise

the rise and fall of compounded things.

~ Itivuttaka 120

Stay together, friends

Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

~ Rumi

A cowgirl gets up in the morning, decides

what she wants to do, and does it.

~ Marie Lords, 1876

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus 305 ~ Allegedly Happy Holidays

Alleged Appalling Acts

In a December 10 editorial, “Appalling acts by the Ill. governor”, the Cincinnati Enquirer took a peculiar tone regarding the [alleged*] crimes of Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich, who wanted to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder. He also wanted to force the Chicago Tribune to fire several editors who criticized him. After detailing Blag the Retailer’s [alleged] misdeeds, the Enquirer editor wrote:

And that’s not even counting the most “heinous” allegation of all ~ that he tried to coerce the Chicago Tribune to fire editorial board members who were critical of him. Is nothing sacred?

Then more paragraphs about the investigation, etc., concluding with:

And by all means, let’s leave those editorial writers alone.

Why the flippant tone? Trying to squelch the press, however seedy the press has become, is just about as serious as selling a Senate seat. If the writer intended to be self-deprecating, instead he (or she) sounds as if the whole story is a bit of a joke.

The Blagojevich story came up in my classroom, and a couple of my (foreign) students just said he was stupid. Their first reaction was not that he did something reprehensible, but that he was stupid for talking on the phone, where he could be recorded (and of course ought to have known he was being recorded). Then a young man from Senegal said that the U.S. is the most corrupt nation in the world, but wouldn’t say where he got that piece of information. It was more likely to have come from another teacher than from another foreign student, I would guess. I’ve heard from many of my foreign students that their home countries are vastly corrupt; by comparison the U.S. is a safe haven. For instance, you can’t do business in Moldova without bribing government officials; in Mexico, you don’t call the police if you’ve been robbed; in Venezuela, you can get in serious trouble for publishing or broadcasting criticism of Hugo Chavez. Allegedly.

* A reporter called a gunman in the Mumbai hotel that was the recent site of major carnage “the alleged gunman” even as he was standing there on camera with gun in hand. Did the reporter think he might be proved not to have been holding the gun?

Without a Clue

Dave DaBee referred me, or all of us, to a New York Times column by guest columnist Timothy Egan, “Typing Without a Clue”, in which he complains that people are getting book contracts who don’t write or speak well. His examples are Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber (Samuel J. Wurzelbacher), who is also subject to much personal abuse by Egan. Think Egan deeply cares about good writing, or ... did he fail to get a book contract himself? And, does he care about Democrats who get book contracts even if they’re not really writers? Surely he knows that publishing is all about making money, and names in the news have a greater chance of selling books than yet another opinionated blogger. Publishers hire writers to fill the “as told to” or “written with” slot on the cover of books by celebrities who are not writers. (And as much as I’m interested in language, I don’t equate verbal skill with good character. Sometimes it’s quite the reverse.)

Aspiring writers are always annoyed to find that yet another book by a lesser writer, or in some cases, by a non-writer, is on the shelves. Years ago a friend of mine, who was trying to get started writing romance novels, told me that romance writers were cheesed off because beefcake model Fabio got a book contract. He was well suited to posing for the covers. Yet he got the money while working writers (except his ghost writer) were frustrated.

Christmas Feats

TV ad: “The holidays come but once a year.”

This latest attempt to avoid saying “Christmas” led to this stupidity. Holidays come all over the year (except August), though “the” holidays have a few more crowded together in the winter. But “the” holiday is still Christmas. The “reason for the season” is not the annual tree sacrifice.

But to show that I’m not a Scrooge about other people’s fear and hostility-based renaming of Christmas, I recommend to you The Real Festivus by Seinfeld writer Daniel O’Keefe, whose father invented Festivus. The book outlines Festivus traditions of “bare-bones celebration of second-rate miracles and hopeless regrets”: the simple aluminum Festivus Pole; the Airing of Grievances where at the dinner table (spaghetti, meatloaf, whatever) participants inform family and friends of the ways in which they've been a disappointment; and the Feats of Strength, when the head of the family is wrestled to the ground and pinned. Is it an accident that the book lists on Amazon starting at $6.66?

On a brighter note, one of my Muslim students unexpectedly gave me a Christmas card.

Classical Education

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decline and fall of classical education, the foundation of the traditional liberal arts curriculum, in “The Humanities Move Off Campus”.

It is unfortunate that a degree is necessary for so many jobs that really don’t require that classical education, and certainly few students are interested in a classical education or scholarship in general. They have to pay plenty for what is often wasted education and the curriculum has suffered too.

The Dutch

The Dutch, as you will remember from grade school history, settled New York (formerly New Amsterdam), and left behind place names such as Harlem and the Catskills. They also inspired a number of unflattering idioms:

did the Dutch = committed suicide

Dutch treat = everyone pays his own tab

Dutch uncle = someone who speaks roughly, chews you out when necessary

Dutch rub = painful scalp massage

Other nationalities have their fair share of opprobrious epithets too, of course. I wonder, though, why the Dutch faded out of public fame, other than leaving us with the sense that the prefix “van” in front of a name means “rich New York family”?

Be Prepared

What to buy for the person who has too much: tourniquet wear. This is a serious line of clothing for people in dangerous professions that has built-in tourniquets that can save you from bleeding to death. Maybe you’ll never need it, but you just might need to know what it means in case it comes up in conversation. Or, you can be the first in your crowd to mention it at your next holiday party.

A Keeper

Here’s a typo you can use: neighborheads. Perhaps “community leaders” comes to mind, but to my mind, neighborheads are the hippies next door. Long ago and far away, “heads” were people who used recreational drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.

Whittle and Purley Update

Synchronized spooning team Jem Whittle and Shirl Purley of Ontario may have more than the usual impediment to getting accepted in the Olympics with their radical Cubing the Circle routine. Adding revolutions around a bonfire to the spin/rotation made it nigh impossible to keep the regulation blanket in place, as required, and it’s not so easy keeping the blanket out of the fire, either. The third dimension of spooning turns ~ something like synchronized somersault rolls ~ makes it totally impossible. Will this disqualify them from competing with other teams now? Or will a new classification of synchronized spooning break out? Watch this space. (Shirl, by the way, is Shirley’s preferred moniker, as she’s informing reporters now. Sorry, Shirl.)

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

I am here

Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I eat dead things (doggy shirt and BBQ apron)

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

ALSO Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

Click Here for Beautiful Rustic Log Furniture

Click Here for Barnes & Noble

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears at http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video and music clips of great blues man Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue". And listen to Judy Joy Jones’s interview with Sonny.

PEACE MISSION INDIA blogs the progress of Pastor Roy Jacob’s mission to build churches in India. Now 79, Pastor Roy (who is an Indian) has built 10 churches, and has a girls’ school to rescue girls from the mountains and jungles who otherwise might be married off as children or perhaps sold.

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus 304 ~ God Speeden

Impersibility

Dave DaBee noted this old verbal maze ~ try to punctuate this sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Wikipedia explains it, I won’t. I wrote Dave that it seems to me a possible sentence, but an impermissible one, and he suggested that might be “impermossible” but I preferred “impersible”.

Wait and Hurry Up

From a news story that couldn’t have turned out well:

“That person was later rushed to the hospital.”

I Spam, You Spam, We All Scream for All Spam

In “Blacklisted in Cyberspace” in The Washington Post, James McGrath Morris wrote about why his harmless newsletter is occasionally rejected by spam filters, as is mine. A very strict filter might block articles with the word “bre*ast” (asterisk inserted for my protection), for instance, whether it occurs on a porn site or in an article about cancer. Reminds me of the famous dictum about pornography by Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it." He might have said spam.

Multi-Cultural Hoopla

I watched Bride & Prejudice again, a cheerful Bollywood extravaganza that combines at least three major cultural hallmarks: the Hollywood musical romantic comedy; Bombay’s wildly popular singin’n’dancin movie spectacle; and Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice. It works well. India is all saturated color and celebration, including the hijras, transvestites who often provide entertainment at Indian weddings. Most of the main characters in Austen’s book are in the movie, including the long-suffering father, and even recognizable bits of original dialogue. As for the Hollywood strain, Paula Abdul is a greater influence on Bollywood than Fred Astaire, and you probably wouldn’t go home humming any of the songs, but how can you not like beautiful girls, energetic boys, and no problems that aren’t solved by the end of the last reel?

A Holiday Wish

This week’s field trip was a jaunt to the local contemporary arts museum. The students enjoyed the children’s area best, and we all drew little pictures and taped them to the walls. The Saudi student (a princess in her own mind) wrote something in Arabic with a picture of a sword. I asked her what it said, and she said it was Allah is the only God and Mohammed is his prophet, or words to that effect. She told her friend that she had meant to make the sword larger. I didn’t respond because I’m already lectura non grata because of the insensitivity of my questions, but I thought the sword would be instructive to the children who use the art classroom next and who can’t read Arabic. Can you say “Mumbai” (or even “Bombay”), kiddies?

Name Game

In “The Name Game - Inuit or Eskimo?”, Steve Sailer explains the difference between Inuit and Eskimo, leaving me back where I started: I always said Eskimo, but did I mean Inuit, and how would I know, and is someone going to hit me if I use the wrong word now?

But it is useful to learn two more names tribes use to refer to themselves that mean We Are the Ones: the Khoi are “the people” (the erstwhile people of South Africa); the Inuit are the people; and the Tsalagi are the true people, even if you call them Cherokee, which I’m thinking is an attempt at phonetic pronunciation of the same name: “ts” possibly was or is pronounced something like the English “ch” sound, “l” and “r” are confused or interchangeable in some languages, and the hard “g” is very close to “k”. And vowels can go any direction. So I don’t see what it matters whether you say or spell Cherokee “Tsalagi”. My Cherokee ancestry does not object.

God Speeden

From Overheard in New York:

Girl to boy: “I just got this computer software that's supposed to, like, speeden my reading comprehension.

This girl must have been flashing on the “en” participle ending that still exists in sweeten, whiten, enlighten, brighten, the Appalachian relic “store-boughten”, and other words. It does not, however, exist in “speeden”.

Tuesdays

You probably know the stores called Tuesday Morning and the restaurants called Ruby Tuesday. The Ruby Tuesday web site says the chain was started over 30 years ago, and though it doesn’t say so, I assume it was named after the 1967 Rolling Stones song. Tuesday Morning closes regularly and re-opens on selected Tuesdays with new merchandise. Their web site has even less info than Ruby Tuesday’s, but surely the store name has a connection with the Crosby Stills Nash Young song “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”: “Tuesday morning, please be gone I'm tired of you” ~ unless, of course, it had something to do with actress Tuesday Weld. Can you think of any more businesses named for popular songs of recent decades, particularly with “Tuesday”?

Christmas Books

*** The movie A Christmas Story has become another holiday classic (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”). I just picked up a collection of the quasi-autobiographical stories by Jean Shepherd that the movie was based on, also called A Christmas Story (ISBN 0-7679-1622-0). Writing about the Red Ryder air gun ads that so entranced him as a boy, he also wrote about an old lady in New York who carried a sign saying “Disarm the Toy Industry!” which coincidentally resembles a G. K. Chesterton essay I happened to read recently, “The Terror of a Toy”.

*** A new book that might be useful to you is No Tech Hacking, by Johnny Long et al, is about security (and breaching security) that doesn’t require high-tech skills, obviously. Some of the chapters are Dumpster Diving, Tailgating, Shoulder Surfing, Physical Security, and Social Engineering. And it has photos! I recommend it, and it might be good for anyone on your Christmas list who’s concerned about security, or who wants to be a criminal. Profits from sales go to charity.

Metaphor Mix

William Safire wrote something good, as usual, on mixing metaphors in the NYT.

Neurtsy

Names Disney rejected for the Seven Dwarfs:

Awful, Baldy, Biggo-Ego, Biggy, Biggy-Wiggy, Blabby, Burpy, Busy, Chesty, Cranky, Daffy, Dippy, Dirty, Dizzy, Doleful, Flabby, Gabby, Gloomy, Goopy, Graceful, Helpful, Hoppy, Hotsy, Hungrey, Jaunty, Jumpy, Lazy, Neurtsy, Nifty, Puffy, Sappy, Sneezy-Wheezy, Sniffy, Scrappy, Shifty, Silly, Snoopy, Soulful, Strutty, Stuffy, Sleazy, Tearful, Thrifty, Tipsy, Titsy, Tubby, Weepy, Wistful, and Woeful

“Neurtsy”? Would that be a cross between nuts and neurotic?

Synchronized Spooning Update

This week synchronized spooning team Jem Whittle and Shirley Purley of Ontario debuted a new move in practice sessions that will blow everyone else out of the water ~ if they can pull it off again when Whittle recovers from a sprained ankle. They call it Cubing the Circle. Whittle and Purley already upped the ante by revolving around a bonfire while rotating. Their performance has been described as a two-person Busby Berkeley production number. Now the pair are jumping over the bar they set by adding 360 degree turns in a third dimension: not only do they pivot individually around an imaginary line extending the length of each of their bodies, which from the audience perspective looks at a distance as if they are remaining in one spot, they also revolve around the fire while doing this, thus moving from a point to a line to traveling in a flat plane. Now they are piercing the third dimension, by inserting vertical rolls: picture a pair of hoop snakes coiling and uncoiling. Whittle and Purley haven’t yet worked out the finer points of this new addition, but it will be interesting to watch.

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

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Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.