Not Idling

As you can see, the subtitle of this blog is “Idle thoughts while walking.” In my first post, I established that I’d record any interesting or compelling thoughts I had while taking my daily constitutional. The blog has expanded to reportage of things I’ve seen, weather phenomena, and a number of other totally unrelated subjects, but I try not to stray too far from the initial concept.

When I am walking around the neighborhood, there are a good many things to be seen: houses being torn down, new houses being built (a particular favorite of mine), changing vegetation, and so on. My thoughts range freely and more or less uninterruptedly, and I frequently find myself mentally composing letters, blog posts, technical articles, book reviews, and the like.

During these torrid days of summer, however, I have relied more and more on “the gym” for my exercise, and my thoughts while on the elliptical machine tend to run along the lines of “Will this never end?” And while I am walking on the treadmill, I read. What I mostly read is Newsweek, and, when I am not concentrating on the article I’m ostensibly reading, I am checking the time, distance, and calories burned and wondering if I will be able to finish the current article before I reach the point at which I usually stop.

Not a lot of blog fodder there. When not exercising, though, I have recently been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth. Although I’d always been aware that there was such a novel, I’d never felt any pressing desire to read it until my husband and I visited Kenilworth Castle (or what remains of it) this summer, and our curiosity was piqued. He inquired in the gift shop and learned that of course they sold copies, but the Penguin edition they offered seemed to him to have very small type, so he passed on that. Returning home, we found that the single copy in our library (one of only two in the entire county library system) is a Large Print edition!

This should have been ideal, and indeed it was easy on the eyes. But the book is not exactly beach reading, and I frequently had cause to wish we’d gotten the Penguin edition, which includes historical essays, notes, and a glossary. That last would have been the most useful feature. My husband ended up ordering The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD because he was looking up so many words (and not finding all of them). I found that The Free Dictionary was usually helpful; failing that, Google searches turned up most of the rest.

Scott uses an archaic vocabulary (including words that were archaic even in his own time) that can pose a challenge to the most educated reader, though in most cases the words are for atmosphere only, and their meaning is not critical to understanding or can be deduced from the context. In some cases, Scott seems to have actually made words up. For example, judging from online discussions, the word ferrateen is unknown; speculation is that Scott may have meant ferrandine (a fabric made of silk and wool), or that he had formed the word based on ferret (another fabric) by analogy with velveteen. In other cases he uses a variant spelling (chopin for chopine,
peacod for peascod, puckfoist for puckfist). He uses ingle in a context that suggests that it means “neighbor” or “chum,” but there seems to be no dictionary support for this use. Since one of the characters is a mercer and another masquerading as a peddler, there are many words for various kinds of fabrics; other words describe period clothing or armor. Many of the words are insults. I learned that bots is a disease of cattle, that watchet is pale blue, that a brulziement is a lively argument and a wittol a cuckold, that chough (a kind of bird) is used as an insulting term for a Welshman, and that a stithy is the same as a smithy.

While it cannot be denied that Scott knows how to spin a gripping yarn, I found myself increasingly aware of how much he had twisted and distorted history to his own purposes. The “Historical inaccuracies” section of the Wikipedia article on Kenilworth points out even more discrepancies than I had recognized. In the end, this tainted for me what would otherwise have been a quite satisfying story, told with verve and considerable humor.

Much more to my liking are Susan Wittig Albert’s “Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter,” which are carefully researched and well written and, with a minimum of historical license, present a picture of Beatrix Potter that is quite charming, together with gentle, extremely “cozy” mysteries, suitable for children or adults. I read The Tale of Hobby How while traveling this summer and was so taken with it that, immediately upon my return, I ran to my library for all the rest, and it didn’t take me long to decide that they would be a good topic for a presentation in the library’s Book Review & Lecture Series, of which I am program chairman. Since I was having trouble filling all the slots for the Fall series, I was pleased to be able to slot myself into one of them! Against this presentation, I’ve been reading biographies of Potter and even Albert’s previous novel featuring her, Death at Gallows Green (written with her husband, Bill) under the pen name of Robin Paige. It is proving to be very enjoyable research!

Beyond Comprehension

“How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension!
Psalm 147:5″

These were the words I read on the card.

When I went out to get the paper this morning, I discovered that sometime during the night someone had also delivered a new phone book. An orange plastic bag on our front porch contained “The Real Yellow Pages” (does anyone else think this is the tail wagging the dog?). Inside the house, removing the phone book from the bag, I also found this card, presumably inserted by the contractor who delivered the book.

I turned the card over and saw this:

Words (almost) fail me. This seems to me the ultimate illustration of why copy editors are needed for everything, no matter how small.

The first thing to strike me, of course, was “You are going to like are work.” I confess that I don’t always distinguish “our” from “are” as carefully as I should in speaking, but I certainly know the difference in writing!

Then I was struck by “Mr. & Mrs. Smith Granicrete.” After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” must be the name of the company (analogous to “Smith & Sons Tile”) rather than of the contractors, but it still has an odd ring.

Passing over such minor technicalities as the superfluous period after “installer” and the defective spacing of the phone number, the email address is just sad. Quite aside from the misspelling, its inappropriateness for a countertop installer is pathetic. As far as I know, Yahoo email addresses are free; why not get one just for the business?

It is beyond comprehension to me that someone would try to promote a business with these cards. The telling detail here, though—which shows up better in the scanned image than on the card itself—is the perforated edge. The cards are homebrew, printed on a desktop inkjet printer. There is no shame in that: I print my own business cards as well. One reason I prefer to print my own is that I can print a single sheet of ten and, when they are used up, change the content as needed. In this instance, I would say several changes are needed before another batch is printed.

A Christmas Parlor Game

Today as I was walking I amused myself by singing (or trying to sing) Christmas carols. This is an eye-opening exercise. I’m one of those who sing along to most hymns—but especially Christmas carols—with only half an eye on the hymnal because “I know the words.” What this boils down to in principle is that, given the first half of any rhyming couplet in most common hymns, I can supply the rest, so I can manage to follow along without noticeably losing my place.

It’s a bit different when you’re cast out entirely on your own. Try it. Start singing any familiar Christmas carol and see how far you get. If you’ve been attending church or listening to the radio or Christmas CDs during Advent, you’ll almost certainly manage the first verse without difficulty. But what comes next? How much of these traditional carols do you really know? And can you keep the verses in order? “We Three Kings” is a fairly easy one because it has a logical structure (though I did struggle trying to come up with the wording about frankincense); others are less well organized. And you may find that some are a lot more repetitive than you realized (and not always in a good way). The syntax of “Once in Royal David’s City” defeated me; I hadn’t realized that it begins with two dependent clauses and no independent clause, so I was looking for a word that wasn’t there. And very oddly (though perhaps less oddly if you realize I was once a Latin teacher), I had to resort to the Latin words of “Adeste Fideles” to come up with the correct ones for “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

If you find yourself sitting around with a lot of relatives on Christmas afternoon, too full of turkey or ham or whatever to budge from the sofa, you might suggest this to them as a sort of parlor game. You might even divide up into teams and brainstorm to see which team can provide the most correct verses of a given carol. You may be surprised at what you remember—and what you don’t.

Short Take

Today my walking route included a house where a child’s birthday party was being held. As I passed the inflatable castle, I saw a “clown” (striped shirt, multi-colored fright wig) leading a small crowd of short people in the singing of “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” He gripped the shoulders of a child I assume was the birthday boy, encouraging him to sing louder, but he didn’t seem to be getting a lot of support from the other partygoers. There’s no telling how many animals had already been imitated, but they’d reached “Woof, woof,” as I passed and were moving on to “Quack, quack.”

As I drifted out of earshot, I heard what turned out to be their last verse: “Old McDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had an alligator…” An alligator? Really? (Turns out the sound an alligator makes is “Chomp, chomp.”

The Names They Are A-Changin’

On my walk this morning, as I passed the salon where I get my hair cut, I noticed that someone had hung over the doorknob a plastic bag of magazines. [An aside: The bag was the type known as a "Thank you" or "T-shirt" bag. The first I understand: the generic bags are printed with just "Thank you!" instead of a merchant's name. But why "T-shirt"? The shape of the bag much more nearly resembles the other kind of undershirt, the kind called an "athletic shirt" or "singlet." I guess "undershirt bag" didn't sound nice.]

The bag was from a certain giant discount retailer that advertises “Always low prices.” Seeing this reminded me that I had recently been taken aback by a surprise move on the part of this retailer. For years I have been correcting “Walmart,” “Wal-mart,” and even “Wall-mart” to “Wal-Mart.” The company’s logo actually used a five-pointed star between the parts, but for general use a hyphen sufficed. The first time recently that I ran across a reference to “Walmart,” I assumed it was an error, but the other night I saw a commercial from the company itself that clearly showed that its new moniker is “Walmart.” It will undoubtedly take time to roll out new signs and rebrand everything in sight. I see that the “Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.” Web site still shows the old logo (and the favicon of the site is a blue star). On the other hand, Walmart.com has the new logo, including the six-pointed yellow starburst (flower) as its favicon. Wikipedia has one foot in both camps (it should be noted that probably the corporate name will not change even though the branding does).

I don’t suppose that this change should surprise me. Snappy names, free of punctuation, are more Web-friendly and look clean and modern. But I can’t help reflecting on a bygone era when staid, formal names connoted strength and stability. In those days, the name of my father’s stockbroker was Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Bean. I thought this was a wonderful name. When it became Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, I didn’t feel it had quite the same cachet. Now, of course, it’s just Merrill Lynch.

There was a time when an ambitious young lawyer or accountant or stockbroker who became a partner in his firm would aspire to senior partner status and perhaps even eventual recognition in the firm’s name. He might have to wait for a few other senior partners to drop off the twig, but sooner or later, if he worked hard and didn’t blot his copybook (and especially if he married the boss’s daughter), he might see his name added to the top of the letterhead. Those were the days when the firm’s receptionist might wear herself out just answering the phone.

And the names used punctuation—commas after the names, the last two joined by an ampersand. Such niceties are now entirely passé. Firms generally first drop the commas, then the ampersand. Some companies then start to run the names together: Smith, Kline & French becomes Smith Kline & French, then SmithKline & French; now it’s GlaxoSmithKline. I have stock in JPMorganChase (or at least that’s what’s on the dividend checks; apparently the name is actually JPMorgan Chase & Co.). As a result of the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, a Big Four accounting firm is named PricewaterhouseCoopers. A long-established publisher (also as a result of mergers) is now HarperCollins. (Presumably someone will have the sense not to try Merrilllynch.)

These are the kinds of names that make life difficult for editors and typesetters. Not only do they have to be carefully verified, but they pose hyphenation problems. Still they are preferable to contrived names (actually logos) that use unconventional punctuation. The star in Wal-Mart is one example. Another came up recently in a report I was typing. It seems that a certain appraisal firm wanted to be known as “Butler¨Burgher.” (In case that doesn’t come through for you, the central character is a small diamond.) I faithfully reproduced this usage in my report (although I thought it looked stupid). I would have preferred to use some more typographically friendly form, but I was unable to determine that there was a standard one. Others had referred to the firm as “Butler Burgher,” “Butler-Burgher,” “Butler & Burgher,” “Butler+Burgher,” “Butler*Burgher,” and so on. Ordinarily, I would consult the company’s Web site for guidance (usually at least the contact address will use standard characters), but alas! the firm is no longer in business.

Just one more example of the challenges that face copy editors!

Update: I see that Bill Walsh has written about the Wal-Mart “refresh” in his blog. He links to a Wal-Mart press release that in turn links to a page showing the evolution of the Wal-Mart logo.

Celebrity, Neologisms, and the Weirdness of Dreams

For a number of years I’ve been corresponding fairly regularly, first by mail and now by email, with Gene Owens, a journalist formerly with the (Mobile, Alabama) Press-Register and now semi-retired and living in South Carolina. Gene writes a column that is published in our paper as “Bubba’s English” and elsewhere as “Greasepit Grammar.” As a frequent contributor, I’ve achieved a modest amount of local celebrity. Even people I’ve never met will recognize me by name as “Bubba’s Fairhope friend” or know that I am a “grammar maven.” Whenever Gene uses one of my contributions, I can count on at least a couple of people mentioning it to me. Once even my husband (who I thought never read the column) startled me by saying, “Well, I see you made it into print again today.” This can add a certain fillip to an otherwise dull day.

Apparently now this celebrity is extending to my nights. Twice lately I’ve had dreams in which someone pointed out to me a newspaper article in which my name came up in reference to a question about the meaning of the word “nezerity.” In at least one case, the word seemed to be in some way related to Star Trek. The more awake I become, the more preposterous this word appears, but in the dreamlike semi-wakefulness that followed the dream, I seem to have decided that the word meant “a non-zero amount.”

As I walked today, I considered further how absurd this notion is. In the first place, I hasten to say that there is no such word as “nezerity.” Although Google turns up two hits for the word as a name, it’s extremely unlikely that I would have run across it this way. It doesn’t even look like an English or Latinate word. And, to the extent that it (to me at least) seems more likely to suggest a quantity rather than a number or amount, it doesn’t make sense, since “zero” is a word related to number, not quantity.

So where on earth (or outside of it) did the word come from? The human brain is mysterious enough even when it is conscious, but the things we come up with in our dreams can still astound us. I suppose it is a good thing, overall, that our capacity for self-entertainment seems to be unlimited, and it is probably also a good thing that our dreams give us such oddities to wonder about.