Swimming pool. Callipygian young man climbing out of it. David Hockney’s California dream. The painting:
(#1) Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool
Till I see my Peter walking away
August 29, 2026
A pun of impossibility
August 29, 2026Also elegantly minimal. Yesterday’s (8/25) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon:
An Etch A Sketch drawing of an Escher drawing; /ɛšǝ(r)/ Escher (rhotic for me, not for most BrE speakers) vs. /ɛčǝ/ Etch A, so primarily, fricative vs. affricate at same point of articulation (as in sheep vs. cheap or wish vs. witch) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 — see this Page)
Intertwingularity
August 27, 2026Now, there’s a mouthful.
From Mike Pope, mail on 7/24/26 about how I sorted the books in my new apartment (described in my posting that day on “Sorting”):
— MP > AZ: Would you describe your system as intertwingular?
— AZ > MP: The short answer is yes, but I didn’t have the concept or the label for it until you asked the question. So, thank you.
beclowning ourselves
August 27, 2026Journalist Alex Wagner on MS NOW a little while ago:
We are so beclowning ourselves
(The intensive Gen-X so is just a bonus; AW was born in 1977, and Gen-X is roughly 1965 through 1980)
That’s beclown ‘make a fool of’ (perhaps clumsily). With a modest number of cites to be found, but uncommon enough to strike many hearers as a colorful coinage.
Fresh beginnings, rebirth, resurrection
August 27, 2026Some weeks back, in midsummer, I sat at my worktable as night drew to an end, when sunrise broke out magnificently in my window wall (see photo #1 in my 8/25 posting “Where I live”) and filled me with joy at the gift of a new day. Also triggering an avalanche of musical associations — conveying fresh beginnings (as here), or rebirth (both of them in Schubert lieder, to come below), or (as in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, also to come below), resurrection. (There’s more, lots more; I’ll list only a tiny sampling, from the odd trio of Haydn, Grieg, and Grofé — ok, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, they’re not))
Why we teach
August 26, 2026A brief exchange on Facebook a while back (5/27/26) that I think is worth bringing to a wider audience. From Lynne Murphy (University of Brighton, in the UK), testily:
Hey, students who thought they could skip seminars after they “knew” what they were going to write their essay about.
You were wrong, and I’m taking some pleasure in pointing out all the connections you missed between different aspects of our module.
A pleasure I would have been happy to forego if you’d only come to class …
A musical interlude
August 26, 2026About my daily life, because I’m so backed up in things to do that I’m just picking little stuff out of a hat. (The incidental good news is that my lab tests were very pleasingly improved, and I’m now starting, eek, a very slow withdrawal from prednisone; think good thoughts about woolly mammoths for me.)
Meanwhile, I took an early break in my sleep last night, to search, I don’t really know why, for material on the dog books of my childhood.
I did indeed speed-read (and barely comprehend, though I got Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear for life) all of Shakespeare at the age if 9, of my own volition, but I also adored imaginative fiction for kids. Dr. Doolittle, Freddy the Pig, every Oz book there was. And books about noble dogs. My West Lawn PA companion for several years was a sweet mutt dog (part terrier, the rest mystery). Spot / Spotty (not an imaginative name, but fitting).
Out of this I will produce soon a posting on what we all called at the time LadADog (three syllables rushed into a ball). And Albert Payson Terhune. But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting is about the music that Apple was playing for me when I went on my computer dog search around 9:15 pm last night.
Billions of dollars in parrots
August 26, 2026Little Poll Parrot
Sat in his garret
Eating toast and tea.
A little brown mouse
Jumped into the house
And stole it all away.
— nursery rhymeIf you like the parrots and getting caught in the rain
If you like making love at midnight under the trees on the cape
Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for, write to me and escape
— The Parrot Song
Well, yes, tariffs (by Canada, against those levied by the Grabpussy administration of my country), not my misheard parrots. But I was taken by the idea of billions of dollars in parrots, bright parrots in the air.
And so was led down the psittacine path of associative memory. Some highlights on the path …
Standing out
August 25, 2026This morning, I went to get a bunch of lab tests done at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (for a nephrologist consultation tomorrow) and discovered that a lot of the phlebotomists recognized me, greeted me enthusiastically by name, and asked about my life since they had last seen me. The thing is, I’m really visible (well, I also remember them, and facts about their lives too; they’re interesting people, and the question “How did you end up working here?”, while they are drawing my blood, elicits some extraordinary stories). Almost always wearing stunningly gay clothes (today, rainbow-flag track shorts and a honking big rainbow-colored DEI t-shirt).
(#1) The DEI shirt
The PAMF staff find these clothes cheering, which is indeed one of the things they’re for.
This makes me happy.