Another little posting on the minutiae of my daily life. Today: housekeeping.
Every day is housekeeping day.
Archive for the ‘My life’ Category
Keeping house
September 3, 2026My name
September 2, 2026I’m attached to my FN Arnold — because it comes from my father and grandfather, who I am pleased to honor. But (as I’ve written about many times on this blog) in the modern US, it comes with a load of awkward associations, and people are inclined to see it as somewhat weird, funny — maybe, ugh, foreign. So they misremember it, as something more palatable to them.
Just this morning alone, in quick succession, I was addressed as:
Albert, Harold, and Donald
I could start a law firm for us.
(Correcting people just annoys them — legitimately, because it breaks whatever kind of everyday interaction we were having.)
This is the sort of thing that led me to develop my alter ego Alex Adams (more postings on that). But Alex is there for (various) special occasions, not for everyday use. I do treasure Alex, but he’s a different guy.
Meanwhile, I have had to learn that I might be expected to respond to pretty much any trochaic male name (there are more: Arthur and Herbert, especially, but I’ve occasionally gotten Aaron and Henry, too). You learn to be flexible. But this morning I felt the powerful surge of anti-Albert revolt. When it came to Donald, I wanted to snap back: CALL ME ISHMAEL, the outcast.
(My father, in these very circumstances, just took his college nickname, Zip (an admirable name for him), and used it for everyday purposes all of his life; everybody, including my mother, called him Zip, and when my man Jacques came into the family as a second son for him, Jacques called him Zip too. Of course.)
Low spark
September 1, 2026🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for September, in the middle of another run of AZ-connected birthdays (not of famous people, however admirable; but of (still living) people who are important to me): 8/27 Ken Rudolph of soc.motss (85); 8/30 Ellen Sulkis James, a long-ago companion of mine on the staff of the Reading (PA) Eagle (86); 8/31 Benita Bendon Campbell, dear friend since Princeton in the 1960s and my connection to the late Ann Daingerfield (Zwicky) (90); 9/2 Mike Jankulak of soc.motss (57); and 9/6, yes, me (86)
9/1 came to me with a morning name: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys — from what experiential or mental source I know not. But with a shiver of delight.
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)
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 …