Austen

"The more I see of the world,
the more I am dissatisfied with it;

and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters."

- Elizabeth Bennet

element

My little sister is a freshman at Wheaton, and she's happy and idealistic.  Her blog is fun to read.  So, I'm nostalgic for college days through her.  She writes of her favorite lit. professor:

 
Dr. Ryken is also a very funny man. I'll "regale you" [she hasn't taken my advise on pruning her vocabulary apparently] with some of his most common expressions. I write them down in the top margin of my notes.

"I know you'll handle it with your characteristic maturity." [har har]
"I knew you'd be reasonable and see it my way."
"We need to go bing, bing, bing." (when he's looking for answers to his questions)
"I hear pleasant murmuring sounds." (when answers are quiet and not confident)
"Did you hear that, class?" (in a deep, growling voice)
"Tuck it away."
"Consider it done."
"This is Wheaton, where students write their own ticket."
"This is Wheaton, where every answer is right."
"Try it on your roommate."
"Am I not more to you than ten late arrivals?" (when everyone stares at the tardy student)          

I thought I ought to pick up some of those expressions…especially the last one:  "Am I not more to you than 10 moms walking on the sidewalk out the window!??"

I really love it when you can tell that someone Really loves what they are doing, and they are in their element.

I've been feeling a bit out of my element lately. 

 
*sigh*

 

 

Eliot

And certainly, the mistakes that we mortals makes when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. (Middlemarch 85)

word of the day

portmanteau

a word that fuses two or more other words together to give a new meaning.

i.e.:

• wiktionary, my new discovery today, along with this word
• the loathable ginormous (which I would argue needs a hyphen)
• SeaTac
• Alsask (a city on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan)
  
• and spork

coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass.

Lone Ranger and Tonto

As I'm preparing to teach about the Wild Wild West,
the words of this Dylan song keep spinning 'round my head:

Bob Dylan's Blues

Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto
They are ridin' down the line
Fixin' ev'rybody's troubles
Ev'rybody's 'cept mine
Somebody musta tol' 'em
That I was doin' fine

Oh you five and ten cent women
With nothin' in your heads
I got a real gal I'm lovin'
And Lord I'll love her till I'm dead
Go away from my door and my window too
Right now

Lord, I ain't goin' down to no race track
See no sports car run
I don't have no sports car
And I don't even care to have one
I can walk anytime around the block

Well, the wind keeps a-blowin' me
Up and down the street
With my hat in my hand
And my boots on my feet
Watch out so you don't step on me

Well, lookit here buddy
You want to be like me
Pull out your six-shooter
And rob every bank you can see
Tell the judge I said it was all right
Yes!

"As for me"

said the little prince to himself,
"if I had
fifty-three minutes
to spend as I liked,
I should walk
at my leisure
toward a spring of fresh water."

why I love Steve Inskeep the best

Morning Edition drones into my ear each morning as I attempt to wake up.  Sometimes, I catch pieces of the news and manage to distinguish them from my dreams.  And every once in a while I hear things funny enough to wake me up...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14194579

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15111023

(you don't have to listen to the full story, but you at least gotta listen to the last 30 seconds of each clip)

the little prince,
suspended in my sidebar
is too cute to do away with.

I hope the re-placement of the birds facilitates easier reading.
note: another use for the hyphen is to connect a prefix with a word which would otherwise have a different meaning. hyphens are fun.

Texas pt 3

moving onward...

When we woke up in the morning, we understood what it meant that our campground was in the Chisos Basin. We were literally in a bowl of mountains. We saw some deer bound through the campsite.

The place was pretty deserted Friday night/Saturday morning, but the following nights it was filled up for the 4th of July weekend. Daniel and Anna filling up the water jugs.

After we had breakfast and got ready for the day, we set out to explore the park. We drove up out of the basin, over the mountains and caught the view:

Daniel, who of course had slept through our entry (which was in the dark anyway), was duly amazed, and his face was priceless. (and he was willing to reproduce it for me to photograph.)

Anna's face was maybe a bit fake. (but so cute anyways)

but Mark slept through it.
Generally, if we were in the car, he'd sleep.

I think the first thing we needed to do was buy ice. The was pretty much a continual concern. It was, to put it mildly, hot there. Big Bend is simply really hot, and I'd recommend visiting it in April (besides the weather, more plants are in bloom then). A shadeless 105 degrees is brutal, and generally our thoughts, while outside, were consumed with finding shade or air conditioning. We went to the visitors center and walked around the small "garden" that had cacti labeled. I tried in vain to learn the plants so I could recognize them later. The photo to the right has, I think, as nice shot of some vegetation. The tall plant on the left, the signature plant of Big Bend NP, is the octillo, and it's not a cactus. It has the neat quality of being able to be cut off and stuck in the ground to regrow, and farmers would use it as a fence. In the foreground, hiding under the brush, you can see the prickly pear, which is a very common cactus. This one has fruit on the top, and that is probably the edible stuff. (I may perhaps sound knowledgeable there, but I have just about exhausted what I know...)

Our next destination was the Rio Grande in the southwest corner of the park. The kids slept through this stop, and Milan waded into the river...a bit far for Elizabeth's comfort, as I recall. But she was willing to photograph me in it too. It looks like I'm a lot farther out than I really am. It was moving quite fast, and as you can see, very opaque. It looks like we're really close to Mexico, but it's just an illusion of the camera. It was a ways away, and if I tried to swim it, I would get swept a good ways down stream. Plus, that's illegal.

We went to another fort and refreshed ourselves with a cool drink. The kids woke up and we had lunch. Then they climbed on an old locomotive.

After this we attempted a hike. I believe it was our only real attempt, and I say it was a valiant effort. We stopped at a trail along side the road to walk down into a canyon. Mark was put on Milan's back and Daniel and Anna were outfitted with water. But really, it was just too much. I got some great photographs of the adventure. But prominent in my memory is this image of Anna: very uncomfortable, and very unhappy. (Anna tried to later convince me she could have done more and would have liked to go on a real hike.) Here are the good photos:

in the canyon

not sure if we'll make it out...

and we're nearly there now (but inconsolable)
i think this is my favorite shot of Daniel:
he looks so small in the vast landscape



on to part 4

Texas pt 2

Last June I headed out to Texas, excited about Big Bend and getting to be with these kids. It was good to be heading west again, but I had to try not to think about California. Just the thought of going all the way to the Pacific Coast makes my heart strings tug.

Instead I listened to new songs about Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. And the downpours took my full concentration. I clicked some pictures to document the journey.

I found the Louisiana countryside beautiful while listening to Mo Leverett.
















And I got a good kick out of the sign: Drive Clean Across Texas. Because I aimed to.

When I arrived in Texas, we had a lot of packing and sorting to do. It was a complicated mess of packing, because we had piles of things to be taken camping, piles of things that we were borrowing for camping, piles of things to be gotten rid of/returned, piles of things to be thrown out, piles of things we'd want in the car for the trip to NJ but not with us camping, piles of things to be packed that they'd want access to in NJ, and piles of things to be packed tight till Prague. And I didn't know much about what qualified. And with three kids moving around, stuff got moved around too. At one point we gave the kids a bowl of ice cream and stuck them in an empty bath tub so we could get some work done for 20 minutes. Then Elizabeth gave them a bath while Milan and I finished another suitcase.












The night before we left, we picked up the rental van for the journey and loaded up all the cars with boxes and bags to be left at a friend's house while we camped. We dropped off our cars at about 10pm and started to head home...till I realized I left something important in my car, like my National Park Pass... When we got home we stuck the kids on their makeshift camping beds, and proceeded to load the car for camping. That's when we realized how much we had (much of which simply didn't need to come with us, but we had to empty the apartment). I think we got to bed about 2 or 3, and woke up at 5 or so, loaded the sleepy kids in the stuffed car, and got on the road. Later that morning we stopped for breakfast at a MacDonalds, drinking their coffee and eating an assortment of goodies made by Elizabeth: for Mark, it was a "cracked egg." Daniel and Anna were piled to their elbows in stuff, but they look pretty cheerful:
It was a long day driving. I didn't realize how long it takes to drive 600 miles with three kids. It takes longer. Yes. Hmm. But we took a route through a town the name of which I can't remember...to see historic Texas. We saw a fort, which didn't look to me like a fort at all, but was just a bunch of buildings. I guess a fort in the middle of the dessert doesn't have to be fortified, because you can see anyone coming for miles. We stopped again at dinnertime to buy groceries, eat dinner, and repack the car. Then we attempted to leave town, but we had to stop at the edge of town to use the potty. And then Anna realized she left her stagecoach toy bought at the fort, and her daddy was so nice to turn around and we got it.

Thus, we arrived at the park at about midnight. Maybe 11...it was late, and it was dark. It was a long drive that evening. Daniel and Anna were awake most of the way, and they were anxious to be there. My memory of those miles that slowly went by was that the road had a peculiar dip. Signs said something about flooding, but we couldn't figure out why you'd want the road to dip into a flood. Nevertheless, this west-Texas phenomenon would give the kids something to occupy them. Anna either loved it or hated it. She either demanded another one, or demanded there be no more. (Neither which Elizabeth had any control of, but I suppose that doesn't occur to a four-year-old.) Generally she was capricious and determined like that. Her opinion might change in a minute, but whatever she felt, she felt strongly. It proceeded to grow dark, and the landscape began to change. Daniel and Anna were still awake when we entered the park's boundary, and they sure didn't understand how we could be there, but not there yet. I guess they fell asleep in the last few miles. Mark, on the other hand, slept the evening through, and was wide awake when we were trying to set up the tents. Apparently he didn't want to go to sleep when everything had gotten settled, which was a problem for Elizabeth and Milan. I lay out my tarp and settled under the stars (praying for no scorpions).

on to texas pt 3

etymology

Angie shared some interesting word origins. I did know of Spoonerisms. I like those. But the others were new.


The expression of something being laced with poison is strange. Lace is a pretty delicate thing, and I wonder how it came to be the term for drink poisoned.

This brings me to a Half-handed Cloud song:

Belly, what a waste
And eating all in haste
Not knowing that it's laced
Poison that I can't taste

We hold tasting fees
He's got us where he please
Not seeing where he sees
We're being pulled on skiis

Then save your front door
Not locked, open wide
despite being poor
We're rich as his bride

Danger to us
He fashioned a sail
Took me out of the gale
And so I'm his bride,
But then so is my wife
And daily to abide
He keeps us on the ride

(i can't always tell if i'm hearing the lyrics right. i sure wish he'd post them on a website.)

The next simple song is so good too:

Parent-free I will not leave you
Children rest secure
I'll send the Comforter
Out -ooo oo

verbifying

Who woulda thunk?

In his book "Word Spy," Paul McFedries writes that Google's attorneys send journalists who use google as a verb a stern letter that cites examples of appropriate ("I used Google to check out that guy I met at the party") and inappropriate ("I googled that hottie") uses.

but the NYTimes article continues:

It's beyond obvious that Google's lawyers are fighting a losing battle. And they should relax. Not only is "I googled that hottie" great publicity for the company, but it's fresh and funny and an excellent example of how anthimeria gives English an invigorating slap upside the head. At this very moment, the language is being regenerated with phrases like my bad, verbs like dumb down and weird out...

by Ben Yagoda who wrote a book that I think might be interesting: If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse.