Today’s Bizarro:
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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
Author Archive
The fatal bookpile
September 28, 2017Two lx profs and two psych profs walk into a surgery center
September 27, 2017… and a combat over brains and minds ensues. Well, no. Actually:
… and they talk about the infirmities and indignities of growing old. Kim Darnell (senior lecturer in psychology at Georgia State for many years) took me (adjunct professor of linguistics at Stanford, professor emeritus of linguistics at Ohio State) to the Surgery Center at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, where we ran into Eve Clark (professor emeritus of linguistics at Stanford) and Herb Clark (professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford). Usually shop talk would have ensued, but in the context our minds were on the rickety bodies of the three senior members of the group. (Kim is one generation younger than the rest of us.)
The birthday singing
September 27, 2017
(#1) … Loud thanks to our alligator king
A hymn of praise — the venerable Old Hundred — here presented as sung by a Floridian singing school in the shapenote singing tradition. Yes, the singers happen to be alligators, but then Sacred Harp and similar traditions are noted for their hospitality to all those come to sing.
The composition is a little gift to Steven Levine (who is, among many other things, a Shape Note singer), on the occasion of his birthday, today.
Ice Dance in the garden
September 26, 2017(About plants and their names.)
A row of handsome grassy plants at the Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, like these:
Carex morrowii ‘Ice Dance’, a sedge (rather than a grass).
Black bread and pickled herring
September 26, 2017Kim Darnell, on a grocery shopping run for me, came across a line of very thinly sliced, dark, dense, intensely-flavored rye breads from the German company Mestemacher — one variety marketed as “Natural Fitness Bread”:
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She was tickled by the name, and also remembered bread like this with pleasure. As did I: the black bread (Schwarzbrot, sometimes called Bauernbrot ‘peasant bread’) of my childhood. A platform for cheese, sliced smoked meat, and (especially) pickled herring (herring in sour cream was a great favorite of mine).
Tied up in paisley
September 26, 2017Yesterday, from Steven Levine on Facebook:
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Not too long ago the Steven Levine necktie museum received a significant donation from the Arnold Zwicky tie archives, which included a goodly percentage of paisley ties spanning a few decades. From what I’ve seen, there have been takes on paisley prints on neckties going back to the 20s and I’m pretty sure you can find them currently. This polyester tie seems seventies to me.
In the faggot zone
September 26, 2017From Kyle Wohlmut, a pointer to the 7/28/15 piece “Mapping the United Swears of America” on Stan Carey’s Strong Language blog. I missed it the first time around, but now to give some credit to Stan and the research he reported on.
From this research, this map on usage of the vulgar slur faggot (explanation to follow):
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The 5-paragraph essay
September 26, 2017The Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal from the 24th:
A potentially useful aid to writing, turned into a rigid framework, and so pretty much guaranteed to turn students against the task (not to mention the craft) of writing.
As for the strip, it’s bitterly pessimistic. About schooling, about learning, and about the state of writing in everyday life.
