September 11, 2026
[I started this posting a few days ago, but was balked from moving ahead by bad juju in both Facebook and WordPress. The curses magically lifted on 9/9. So I’m back on task now, but it’s 9/11 (25th anniversary) and apparently I’m going to be weeping non-stop all day, while I plug away at my work. Life lurches on]
Yet another birthday present for me, small but touching: two small enamel lapel pins: one in the form of a flag, one a plain rectangle (both are just an inch across):
(#1) The flag pin
(#2) The rectangle pin
Both of them from the program director Manalee Shukla here at Avant (a friend I’ve posted about several times, because we share a pleasure in the culture of her native land, India, and because she appreciates my injecting a note of gay spice into the Avant experience (meanwhile, I’ve warned her that her two bicultural kids are about to finish a transformation into entirely American boys; I have plenty of sociolinguistic stories from personal experience as well as the literature — all that professional preparation turns out to be genuinely useful in daily life).
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Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Flags, Gifts, Homosexuality, Logos, Moral worlds, My life, Penguins, Quotations, Rainbow clothing, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
September 8, 2026
🎶 🎶 It’s 9/8, Anton Dvořák’s birthday (1841), which will serve as a lead-in to a fabulous performance of music (by Purcell, not Dvořák) that Ellen Kaisse e-mailed to me as a (9/6) birthday present, stroking one of the passions — for music — that animate my life (two others I have recently posted about: the multiplicity of languages, cultures, subcultures, and life histories; and moral purpose — yeah, that one sounds like swaggering, but I really mean it)
Before I leave AD, a note on him from my 1/27/24 posting “Spillville”:
let me recommend the Wikipedia article on Dvořák, for its detailed telling of a remarkable life, of great talent, a lot of pluck, a fair amount of luck, generous humanity, and the benefit of champions, advocates on your behalf (in this case, primarily Johannes Brahms)
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Posted in Dancers, Events and occasions, Language and the body, Music, Teaching, Writing | 1 Comment »
September 7, 2026
You say it’s your birthday / We’re gonna have a good time
— the Beatles, Birthday (1968, from The White Album)
[evoked for me in e-mail by Brian Joseph]
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻 for (US) Labor Day, the flexed biceps of a manual worker (like my two grandfathers: Bethlehem Steel (maternal), Textile Machine Works (paternal); Melchior Zwicky doubled as a small-farmer as well). I’m two generations down and have ascended, as a professor and writer, to the status of scholar and artist rather than worker and peasant — socioculturally if not financially in the upper middle class. With a thick veneer of high culture, but also fiercely egalitarian. It’s a balancing act.
Birthday greetings. I now veer onto something completely different (but hang on; things will come together): amidst the great avalanche of well-wishing for my birthday, #86, yesterday, an especially charming pair that came as a package. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Academic life, Bilingualism, Events and occasions, Language and culture, Languages, Linguists, Music, My life, Names, Ohio State, Social class, Social life, Teaching and learning | Leave a Comment »
September 6, 2026
The big scheme is Pleasure as Therapy: something I do for pleasure (or play or engaged curiosity) turns out to be excellent therapy, alleviating some affliction of mine or extending my life. These are unintended, but gratifying, consequences. Gravy.
Previously on this blog, the story of my singing Sacred Harp hymns in communities of shapenote singers, a practice that moves me deeply, sometimes taking me into an ecstatic state. That’s the pleasure. Then my pulmonologist — who had me using breathing apparatus to strengthen my lungs — discovered this and said that my singing full-out was much better therapy than his, and I should do it as much as possible, ideally some every day. I see this as getting a prescription to eat cake. Or, to pick a different metaphor, go for the gravy.
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Posted in Age, Language and medicine, Lexical semantics, Linguists, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Play, Social interactions, Social life | 2 Comments »
September 5, 2026
It’s Labor Day weekend in my country — unofficially serving also as the end of summer — and we are supposed to be celebrating ordinary working people (OWP). Eventually, I’ll grind into the tangled mass of sociocultural attitudes and practices clustered around the concept of OWP in America, but today I’m starting with the small and personal.
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Posted in Art, Clothing, Events and occasions, Homosexuality, Humor, Language and religion, My life, Names, Penguins, Portmanteaus, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
September 4, 2026
Well, the special birthday zone, embracing my 9/6 birthday and the 10/26 birthday of my first male lover, Larry Schourup, a time suffused with delighted memories of our coming together in the spring of 1969, the way that changed both our lives, and how it led to a lifelong affectionate friendship, rewarding for both of us (we exchanged e-mail yesterday, 57 years after those days).
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Posted in Events and occasions, Friendship, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Memory, My life | 4 Comments »
September 4, 2026
Two absurdist anthropomorphized animal cartoons from the latest New Yorker (of 9/7/26, the Dolly Parton issue): Jared Nangle’s beaver resolutely doing what it’s programmed to do; and Joe Dator’s mountain goat trying to take a NYC cab to the nearest precipice.
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Posted in Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Personification, Routines and rituals, Slogans | Leave a Comment »
September 4, 2026
Today’s (9/4) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro offers an elegant but complex pun:
Model chip (the snack), pun chimp (the ape) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
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Posted in Language and animals, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Puns, Toys and games | 2 Comments »
September 3, 2026
(fecal matters in street talk; you might find it offensive)
Previously on this blog, in my 9/1 posting “Send in the rabbits”:
Made it back to my apartment, at which point the enema kicked in and I pretty much exploded with shit, everywhere, in piles. Vast amounts of cleaning up to do, and I still have to get someone in to scrub my workroom carpeting, which is beyond my (dis)abilities.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 3, 2026
Another little posting on the minutiae of my daily life. Today: housekeeping.
Every day is housekeeping day.
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Posted in Art, Language and the body, My life, Work | Leave a Comment »
