Parvum Opus 310 ~ Back in Business

I’m back in business. Fred bought a new PC (though someone did throw in his two bits for a Mac), and the notebook straightened itself out with new batteries in the mouse.

Prix Fixe

Anne DaBee, doughty mother of Dave DaBee, wrote:

On New Year's Eve I went, with several family members, to an early dinner at a restaurant that's trying very hard to be upscale, for instance calling itself a Grille. We had a fairly decent meal in spite of the chef's attempt to "improve" everything with fancy sauces ~ the filet tasted like something else that had marinated too long in cough syrup, as did the lamb chops and the sauteed spinach. The worst offense, however, (at least to my mind) was the restaurant's term for their fixed price dinners, in bold print at the top of the menu insert card advertising them. As you and I know, the correct spelling sounds like some sort of male corrective surgery, "prix fixe". Their version was "pre-fix", which made me giggle. The members of my immediate family (daughter and granddaughters) got the joke and giggled with me; son-in-law (a writer!) and his mother didn't. Sigh.

The menu writer could have done worse and ended up with something that looked like an ad for the surgical procedure as performed back in the kitchen. As for grille, it looks like all you have to do to go upscale is add a Frenchy sort of E to a word, and Joe’s Bar and Grill becomes Joseph’s Grille. This Frenchification has old roots in English. Louisa May Alcott mentioned a mid-nineteenth century fad for Frenchifying the spelling of girls’ names: Mary changed her name to Marie, which is a real French name, but Alcott noted that some names like Polly would look silly as Pollie. This was and still is usually a trick for female names, although you do see some Willies and Johnnies. The English Y ending looks more masculine somehow.

Brass Monkey

I thought we’d discussed brass monkeys before in PO, but I can’t find it so maybe it was an e-mail exchange with one of you. David Rogerson sent this item about the expression “freeze the balls off a brass monkey” which doesn’t mean what you think.

It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon on old war ships. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was the problem. The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem ~ how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others.

The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations, called, for reasons unknown, a Monkey. But if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make them of brass ~ hence, "Brass Monkeys".

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey.

Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

It has been that cold where I live for the last couple of weeks. Outside the window the forsythia branches are glittering with ice and piled with snow. Yesterday I cleaned off the car ~ two inches of powder covered by half an inch of ice covered by four more inches of powder.

Sykes Clocks In

Mike Sykes wrote about Auden’s poem on Yeats:

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent

...Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives.

Mike wrote:

You have no idea how long it took me to figure out what that means. Even now I'm not convinced I'm right in understanding it as saying that time worships language and forgives everyone who lives by it. If so, I'm surprised you let the grammar pass without comment.

It seemed to me that in the poem the brave and innocent are held above those who merely live by language and who may have no actual virtues, but are inclined or even determined to be remembered.

I’m not always demanding about grammar in poetry; I assume the last line seems confusing? “It” (language) lives by poets. But the antecedent of “it” isn’t very clear. Could it be Time? Or perhaps Mike thinks the personified “Time” ought to be followed by “who” instead of “that”.

At the inauguration Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander read her poetry, which Stefan Kanfer calls worthy of The Stuffed Owl. I was glad to be reminded of this book, which I’ve owned at least a couple of times. This collection of bad poetry was published in 1930 so you have to go elsewhere for more modern fare. Does Alexander qualify? Let’s look at one example:

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would keep clean and work inside of.

My objection to this is not that she ended the sentence with a preposition, but that bricks usually don’t glitter, and the ones who build glittering edifices usually don’t clean them or work inside them. However, it suits Obama’s own declamatory style.

As for the tech tip about transferring tapes to CDs, Mike said regarding figuring out how to use Audacity:

… I suffer from the suck-it-and-see syndrome as a result of many years of trying to find my way around cryptic help and tutorial facilities, so it's a case of "when all else fails, read the manual" (I remember when software came with manuals ~ I still have one for MS-DOS 5.0 - 1991, almost a collector's item).

I haven’t heard “suck-it-and-see” before; British, you know. It makes me think of a kid picking up a piece of candy off the ground and trying it out (among other things). The alliteration works and it has a good meter. I’d give it a nine.

Lesser Off

“Do those lesser off work less than wealthy?”

The local paper attached this heading to a letter to the editor. I have to assume a newspaper person wrote it since the phrase didn’t appear in the letter. We can say “well off” and “better off” and “worse off” but not “lesser off”. “Lesser” is not the counterpart of “better”. The writer somehow couldn’t bring herself or himself to say “worse off” or anything really clear like “poorer” or “less wealthy” and perhaps felt (thought doesn’t enter into it) that “lesser off” sounded, well, nicer, and ended up with that grotesque line.

TV Tray Snacks

I saved these just for you off the T and V:

!!! “…There’s a level of uncomfortability…” I don’t remember where I heard that, but wouldn’t you think the speaker might have stopped (also erroneously) at “uncomfort”? Is there an ability to be uncomfortable?

!!! In a report on the terrific crash-landing of a jet in the Hudson, reporting no deaths but some injuries: “…in one case, [there were] a few broken legs.” I’ve never seen more than two at a time and few has to be at least three. What do you think ~ insurance scam? Munchausen’s Syndrome? Rabid lawyer?

If You Were a Font, What Font Would You Be?

If you like little personality quizzes, here’s one that not only gives you a personality but tells you what type font goes best with it. And it’s PBS sponsored.

I ran across a spelling test too, and did not get 100%. I’m a pretty good speller but I have to look up words that end in ant/ent and ance/ence and a few others.

Wyeth Dyeth

Andrew Wyeth died on January 16, 2009, at the age of 91. I link to this particular blog post mentioning his death only because the writer used the past tense instead of the barbarous “Wyeth dies” as appeared on nearly all the other news reports.

Unwheeled

It suddenly occurred to me that as far as I know, American Indians did not invent or use the wheel. Searching online, I found that writers are so anxious not to denigrate Indian cultures that they’ve come up with a raft of rationales for this omission, obviously feeling that in this case different isn’t obviously just as good ~ Indians didn’t need wheels; they invented wheels but only for things like the Aztec calendar, not for transportation (but a circle is not the same as a wheel); they rolled things on logs (but, no disks with axles); they had the wrong animals for hauling things with wheels (but pulling a travois was no problem); the terrain was wrong (although there’s an enormous variety of terrain in America).

In any case, considering that the wheel is used not only for transportation but also in many tools and machinery, the lack of a wheel is a serious inhibition to many kinds of development. That matters only if you value technological development, of course. You may argue that it is unnecessary or even destructive, but nevertheless, the wheel made possible all sorts of things, including two of my favorites, cars and computers.

While I was cruising around looking for something more enlightening about this bit of non-history, it also occurred to me that any words in Indian languages meaning wheel would have to be recent additions, but I didn’t get too far there. However, you can find some online translators and dictionaries, for example this one for the Ojibwa.

COREX

There was a bad link to a story I put online (Word document), but I’ve fixed it. The Wish Book is a light fantasy involving old Sears catalogues and shopping, a clandestine burial and a murder trial, and mystery and romance.

FLASH! BAD LINK NOW GOOD FOR THE WISH BOOK:

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free to read online or download as a Word file.

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 2009. 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 309 ~ Away With Words

A Way With Words

Like you need more stuff to fool with on the Web. Never the less, this one looks like fun although I haven’t yet had much time to spend on it: A Way With Words, a public radio program about language with sound files, text, comments. (Not to be confused with “Away With Words”.)

Unfortunate Words

A friend says the Post Office is “excessing” his position, which means he may or may not retire early. I haven’t heard this particular euphemism before, nor have I heard “excess” verbed. Why not stick with eliminating the position, which is at least grammatical? And yet one might prefer to be thought of as an excess rather than part of the process of elimination. There is such a thing as a glorious excess; it is a luxury.

Movies That Start With P

!!! The Prestige: Although “prestige” makes a good title for a movie about rival magicians, the term actually is part of a trilogy of terms, the three main steps of a magic trick: step one is the pledge, or set-up; step two is the turn, when an object disappears, for instance; step three is the prestige, when the object reappears or perhaps changes form. From Latin roots, of course, and related to prestidigitation, the illusion of fingers. Therefore, prestige in the sense of status is also a sort of illusion or delusion. (Interesting side note: David Bowie plays Nicola Tesla.)

!!! Perfume: Another period piece, this movie is about a man with an abnormal sensitivity to smell, who becomes a serial killer of beautiful young women who smell good. In the extra commentary added in the DVD, someone (not sure if it was producer Bernd Eichinger or director Tom Tykwer) said the movie is not good or evil, it is amoral, not unmoral, it is beyond moral standards. He (Eichinger or Tykwer) apparently thinks he is beyond moral standards, but in fact the purely selfish murder of innocent humans for the sake of satisfying a desire is by most moral standards in the world immoral, despite the fact that the murderer invents the world’s greatest perfume which leads to a large-scale though temporary orgy. Or is it beyond moral standards because the man had an unhappy childhood? What do you have to do to be considered immoral?

State of Education Report

!!! The UK Telegraph has an article about why poor teaching causes children to loathe books. Novelist Susan Hill gets e-mails from students who can’t understand her books, and moreover rudely and abusively ask her to write their papers for them, which is a different category of problem.

Other People’s Book Reviews

!!! The December 22, 2008 Weekly Standard reviews A Great Idea at the Time by Alex Beam, about the Great Books project of the 1940s and ‘50s. It sneers a bit at the plan to publish and promote the reading of a core curriculum of selected great books. The subtitle is “Furrowing the American middlebrow” but I say better a middlebrow than no brow at all. The same issue of the magazine reviews Racing Odysseus by Roger H. Martin, a college president who took a sabbatical for one year at St. John’s College in Annapolis, where the entire program consists of discussion of these Great Books. The reviewer seems torn between thinking Martin’s a fool for trying to recapture his youth and acknowledging that there’s something to be said for the life of the mind.

!!! Also in the 12/22/08 Weekly Standard, Joseph Bottum writes that many popular Christmas carols with odd grammar aren’t actually archaic. Some songs written in the 19th century were intentionally trying to sound archaic or “traditional”. Example: In “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” Bottum explains the grammar, supposed and real, of that title, and discusses “the which” in the line, after the baby Jesus was laid in a manger, “the which his Mother Mary did nothing take in scorn.” To me the odd phrase is “did nothing take in scorn”, not because of the grammar but because there’s no reason to think Mary was scorning anything. Bottum was asked to write his own “old sounding” Christmas carol and says it’s not as easy as it seems. (Carol correction: Somehow last week I inserted the wrong link to one version of Good King Wenceslas.)

!!! In the 12/29/08 National Review, John Derbyshire writes about H. L. Mencken’s contempt for politicians and love for language, and quotes an obituary poem by Auden about Yeats:

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent

...Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives.

This strikes me as being rather cynical, or perhaps bitter; it’s hard to believe it was meant as praise of the poet Yeats. It suits Mencken better.

Conversational Piece

According to a TV show, one thing you might like to buy is a floating alligator head with eyes that light up. You can put it in your swimming pool or garden to repel vermin, and it’s a “conversational piece” according to the perky hostess. What kind of conversation might you have with a life-size imitation of an alligator head (to borrow a phrase from Lorelei Lee in the Anita Loos book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)? Scary.

Dear Prudence

You may recognize the origin of name of this Slate.com advice column in an old Beatles song. A recent letter begins:

I am a college professor and administrator who often makes a great deal of appointments with students, staff, faculty, and people interviewing for new positions.

I don’t know what this professor’s subject is, but how could any college professor say “a great deal of appointments” instead of “a great many appointments”?

Here’s another, less obvious point of grammar: “I am a college professor and administrator who often makes....” Should it be “make”? “I am one ... who makes” sounds right. But the predicate nominative is plural: “professor and administrator who make”? Of course only the one person makes appointments, regardless of whether he works in two capacities. “I” is singular, first person: “I make.” Does “who” refer back to “I” or to “professor and administrator”? Should it take a singular or plural verb? What if it were just “I am a professor”? Then the third person singular verb, makes, would be obviously correct. “Who” can be singular or plural (I am a person who makes appointments; we are people who make appointments). Of course the professor is speaking as a single person, in this case, the third person, “who”.

&%*!@+?#

We’ve discussed bad words here before, and the difference between profanity and obscenity. William Safire in “Bleeping Expletives” goes further and explains profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, epithets, and imprecations. What’s your preference?

Silk Purse

The Winter Silks catalog helpfully explained that "you can't make a silk purse from a sow’s ear” “may be derived from the French word sousier, a cloth coin holder used by peasants. Therefore, you can’t make something as fine as a silk purse from a tattered sousier.” Maybe you can’t in France, but it has been done in the USA, at MIT, where else.

Peaceful Transfer of Meme

I’ve mentioned the Bush meme before, that body of true and false ideas automatically associated with the name George W. Bush. It seems a new Obama mini-meme is in the making among America-bashers around the world, replacing or standing beside the Obamessiah meme. It remains to be seen whether thrills will continue to run up and down our own journalists’ legs, and for how long.

Tech Tip

You can convert your cassette tapes (and other media) to digital files and then transfer them to CDs by downloading the free program, Audacity. Get the right audio cable and you’re ready to save all those deteriorating tapes. Audacity is pretty easy to use. Then you can use something like RealPlayer to burn the files to CD.

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.