NURF Said

The word museum comes from Latin/Greek for “temple of the Muses” while to muse comes from Latin for muzzle or snout, originally from bite, so it’s hard to tell whether to expect any given museum to inspire or leave you gaping open-mouthed, or both. “The Past Isn’t What It Used To Be” by Andrew Ferguson (The Weekly Standard, Dec. 15, 2008) is about the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which exhibits the Puffy Shirt from the Seinfeld TV show on a par with the desk Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence. Someone has to make those decisions.

          This fall I went with a group of students to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, so located because the Ohio River was the dividing line between Northern free states and Southern slave states. As a museum, it was disappointing to all of us. The only authentic historical artifact I saw was a slave pen from Kentucky, a log building that held slaves for sale. On the floor inside the log structure was a small pile of unidentified chains, shackles, and manacles with no indication that they were original. I should think not since they were loose; anyone could have taken them. There’s a Lincoln exhibit, mostly reading matter and some illustrations. The most engaging exhibits were an interactive video that let viewers choose their escape route ~ up a tree or through the woods? travel in winter or summer? stop to eat or keep moving? ~ and a video dramatization of the escape of a slave over the river, helped by a white man and a free black man, both real historical figures, who lived on the Ohio side. But that’s more or less TV. There was a large collection of photos of people from all over the world, and as my Chinese student asked, why were they there? The only point I got out of the photo exhibit was that they were not white people. But let us not forget that white people have been slaves too. And there was a very large, colorful fabric wall hanging that depicted in an abstract way the history of black people in Cincinnati, but no one could make much sense out of it. I was interested in the exhibit on modern slave trafficking, but it was closed.

          The NURFC is a huge, beautiful building, but it is not attracting the expected hordes of visitors and isn’t doing too well financially. The city donated the land to the museum, and when the city wanted part of the land back for parking, the museum tried to shake down the taxpayers and sell part of the real estate back to the city, which didn’t go over well.

All in all, the NURFC just doesn’t have enough content to justify its footprint. A museum has to have a point of view, and this one does not do justice to its big story. No wonder it’s called by that catch-all non-word name “center” rather than “museum”.

Parvum Opus Readers

Tim Bazzett wrote:

Didja do yer homework? Timothy Egan is the bestselling author of The Worst Hard Time. I don't think he'd has any trouble getting a book contract.

No, I hadn’t done my homework; when Egan got snarky in the NY Times about non-writers getting book contracts, I got snarky about him and thought he might be jealous of their publication. Apparently not; it was just pure spite against people he dislikes politically. I’m still recovering from the two-year presidential campaign, two years of political over-mendication, and it’s all I can do to remind myself that’s it’s Christmas, and a new year is coming.

Just a reminder here that Tim Bazzett has published several memoirs; he was stationed with the Army Security Agency in Sinop, Turkey, as a ditty-bopper (Morse code guy) and later became a Russian translator. (Fred was in also Sinop, as a Russian translator, before Tim got there.) Find Tim’s books at Rathole Books, and listen to his recorded interview.

          A new PO reader has a blog worth catching, Ed Kelce’s fogdad. Long-time reader Dave DaBee’s sister Suede is a great jazz singer; find her music at suedewave.com. Dave blogs too; which do you want to share, Dave? Computer maven Bob Oberg writes poetry; don’t know if he has a web site he wants us to know about. Kathy Taylor writes an amusing, down-home column, with gorgeous scenic photos, in the Hur Herald; search for Beason News.

I know other readers must have stuff. For the new year, I’d like to list all the web sites, blogs, etc. of Parvum Opus readers. Update me, and I’ll list them here.

Synchronized Spooning on Ice

If you’re up that way, be sure to get tickets to Synchronized Spooning on Ice in the Vancouver Pacific Coliseum (every night through New Year’s Eve). By using that venue, some competitors are hoping they still have a chance of being slated in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, but so far, looks like it’s not happening.

          “If they have wheelchair curling, why not us?” asked competitor Nudge Carhardt, referring to a Paralympic event. “I mean, we don’t need prosthetics.”

          “Now hush,” whispered his wife Swish.

          “I’m just saying,” said Nudge.

Most competitors will be performing on 10’ x 10’ x 3’ blocks of ice towed into the ice arena. Spooning on ice makes for faster moves as the surface of the ice melts. Some competitors (or “spoons” as they’re beginning to call themselves, rather than “spooners”) are urging a permanent move to ice to replace platform beds in competition, but Ned Ferguson and Sheila Urquhart-Ferguson will be using a spectacular waterbed filled with blue water and flashing lights.

          “It’s softer but harder,” Ned joked. “I mean, the bed’s softer of course, but it’s harder to get traction so it’s really just for exhibition spooning. It feels as cold as ice, though. Sucks the heat right out of you.”

          Jem Whittle and Shirl Purley are building their trademark campfire on their own 20’ diameter block of ice and yes, the ice starts to melt under the fire, adding to the excitement of their extreme Cubing the Circle routine.

          “We actually like working on ice,” said Shirl, “because it’s slippery. Our moves are so difficult and I’m thinking we should always work on ice.”

Anniversary

Seven years ago, December 19, 2001, I got an e-mail from Fred, after 26 years. After two solid months of e-mailing, we were engaged. Here are some fragments of poetry that we tagged our e-mails with:

Above, across or back again,

wherever he goes in the world

let him carefully scrutinise

the rise and fall of compounded things.

~ Itivuttaka 120

Stay together, friends

Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

~ Rumi

A cowgirl gets up in the morning, decides

what she wants to do, and does it.

~ Marie Lords, 1876

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Alleged Appalling Acts

In a December 10 editorial, “Appalling acts by the Ill. governor”, the Cincinnati Enquirer took a peculiar tone regarding the [alleged*] crimes of Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich, who wanted to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder. He also wanted to force the Chicago Tribune to fire several editors who criticized him. After detailing Blag the Retailer’s [alleged] misdeeds, the Enquirer editor wrote:

And that’s not even counting the most “heinous” allegation of all ~ that he tried to coerce the Chicago Tribune to fire editorial board members who were critical of him. Is nothing sacred?

Then more paragraphs about the investigation, etc., concluding with:

And by all means, let’s leave those editorial writers alone.

Why the flippant tone? Trying to squelch the press, however seedy the press has become, is just about as serious as selling a Senate seat. If the writer intended to be self-deprecating, instead he (or she) sounds as if the whole story is a bit of a joke.

          The Blagojevich story came up in my classroom, and a couple of my (foreign) students just said he was stupid. Their first reaction was not that he did something reprehensible, but that he was stupid for talking on the phone, where he could be recorded (and of course ought to have known he was being recorded). Then a young man from Senegal said that the U.S. is the most corrupt nation in the world, but wouldn’t say where he got that piece of information. It was more likely to have come from another teacher than from another foreign student, I would guess. I’ve heard from many of my foreign students that their home countries are vastly corrupt; by comparison the U.S. is a safe haven. For instance, you can’t do business in Moldova without bribing government officials; in Mexico, you don’t call the police if you’ve been robbed; in Venezuela, you can get in serious trouble for publishing or broadcasting criticism of Hugo Chavez. Allegedly.

* A reporter called a gunman in the Mumbai hotel that was the recent site of major carnage “the alleged gunman” even as he was standing there on camera with gun in hand. Did the reporter think he might be proved not to have been holding the gun?

Without a Clue

Dave DaBee referred me, or all of us, to a New York Times column by guest columnist Timothy Egan, “Typing Without a Clue”, in which he complains that people are getting book contracts who don’t write or speak well. His examples are Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber (Samuel J. Wurzelbacher), who is also subject to much personal abuse by Egan. Think Egan deeply cares about good writing, or ... did he fail to get a book contract himself? And, does he care about Democrats who get book contracts even if they’re not really writers? Surely he knows that publishing is all about making money, and names in the news have a greater chance of selling books than yet another opinionated blogger. Publishers hire writers to fill the “as told to” or “written with” slot on the cover of books by celebrities who are not writers. (And as much as I’m interested in language, I don’t equate verbal skill with good character. Sometimes it’s quite the reverse.)

          Aspiring writers are always annoyed to find that yet another book by a lesser writer, or in some cases, by a non-writer, is on the shelves. Years ago a friend of mine, who was trying to get started writing romance novels, told me that romance writers were cheesed off because beefcake model Fabio got a book contract. He was well suited to posing for the covers. Yet he got the money while working writers (except his ghost writer) were frustrated.

Christmas Feats

TV ad: “The holidays come but once a year.”

This latest attempt to avoid saying “Christmas” led to this stupidity. Holidays come all over the year (except August), though “the” holidays have a few more crowded together in the winter. But “the” holiday is still Christmas. The “reason for the season” is not the annual tree sacrifice.

          But to show that I’m not a Scrooge about other people’s fear and hostility-based renaming of Christmas, I recommend to you The Real Festivus by Seinfeld writer Daniel O’Keefe, whose father invented Festivus. The book outlines Festivus traditions of “bare-bones celebration of second-rate miracles and hopeless regrets”: the simple aluminum Festivus Pole; the Airing of Grievances where at the dinner table (spaghetti, meatloaf, whatever) participants inform family and friends of the ways in which they've been a disappointment; and the Feats of Strength, when the head of the family is wrestled to the ground and pinned. Is it an accident that the book lists on Amazon starting at $6.66?

          On a brighter note, one of my Muslim students unexpectedly gave me a Christmas card.

Classical Education

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decline and fall of classical education, the foundation of the traditional liberal arts curriculum, in “The Humanities Move Off Campus”.

It is unfortunate that a degree is necessary for so many jobs that really don’t require that classical education, and certainly few students are interested in a classical education or scholarship in general. They have to pay plenty for what is often wasted education and the curriculum has suffered too.

The Dutch

The Dutch, as you will remember from grade school history, settled New York (formerly New Amsterdam), and left behind place names such as Harlem and the Catskills. They also inspired a number of unflattering idioms:

          did the Dutch = committed suicide

          Dutch treat = everyone pays his own tab

          Dutch uncle = someone who speaks roughly, chews you out when necessary

          Dutch rub = painful scalp massage

Other nationalities have their fair share of opprobrious epithets too, of course. I wonder, though, why the Dutch faded out of public fame, other than leaving us with the sense that the prefix “van” in front of a name means “rich New York family”?

Be Prepared

What to buy for the person who has too much: tourniquet wear. This is a serious line of clothing for people in dangerous professions that has built-in tourniquets that can save you from bleeding to death. Maybe you’ll never need it, but you just might need to know what it means in case it comes up in conversation. Or, you can be the first in your crowd to mention it at your next holiday party.

A Keeper

Here’s a typo you can use: neighborheads. Perhaps “community leaders” comes to mind, but to my mind, neighborheads are the hippies next door. Long ago and far away, “heads” were people who used recreational drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.

Whittle and Purley Update

Synchronized spooning team Jem Whittle and Shirl Purley of Ontario may have more than the usual impediment to getting accepted in the Olympics with their radical Cubing the Circle routine. Adding revolutions around a bonfire to the spin/rotation made it nigh impossible to keep the regulation blanket in place, as required, and it’s not so easy keeping the blanket out of the fire, either. The third dimension of spooning turns ~ something like synchronized somersault rolls ~ makes it totally impossible. Will this disqualify them from competing with other teams now? Or will a new classification of synchronized spooning break out? Watch this space. (Shirl, by the way, is Shirley’s preferred moniker, as she’s informing reporters now. Sorry, Shirl.)

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

T-SHIRTS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

If you build it they won't come (border fence)

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

I am here

Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

I eat dead things (doggy shirt and BBQ apron)

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

ALSO Scot Tartans T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

Impersibility

Dave DaBee noted this old verbal maze ~ try to punctuate this sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Wikipedia explains it, I won’t. I wrote Dave that it seems to me a possible sentence, but an impermissible one, and he suggested that might be “impermossible” but I preferred “impersible”.

Wait and Hurry Up

From a news story that couldn’t have turned out well:

“That person was later rushed to the hospital.”

I Spam, You Spam, We All Scream for All Spam

In “Blacklisted in Cyberspace” in The Washington Post, James McGrath Morris wrote about why his harmless newsletter is occasionally rejected by spam filters, as is mine. A very strict filter might block articles with the word “bre*ast” (asterisk inserted for my protection), for instance, whether it occurs on a porn site or in an article about cancer. Reminds me of the famous dictum about pornography by Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it." He might have said spam.

Multi-Cultural Hoopla

I watched Bride & Prejudice again, a cheerful Bollywood extravaganza that combines at least three major cultural hallmarks: the Hollywood musical romantic comedy; Bombay’s wildly popular singin’n’dancin movie spectacle; and Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice. It works well. India is all saturated color and celebration, including the hijras, transvestites who often provide entertainment at Indian weddings. Most of the main characters in Austen’s book are in the movie, including the long-suffering father, and even recognizable bits of original dialogue. As for the Hollywood strain, Paula Abdul is a greater influence on Bollywood than Fred Astaire, and you probably wouldn’t go home humming any of the songs, but how can you not like beautiful girls, energetic boys, and no problems that aren’t solved by the end of the last reel?

A Holiday Wish

This week’s field trip was a jaunt to the local contemporary arts museum. The students enjoyed the children’s area best, and we all drew little pictures and taped them to the walls. The Saudi student (a princess in her own mind) wrote something in Arabic with a picture of a sword. I asked her what it said, and she said it was Allah is the only God and Mohammed is his prophet, or words to that effect. She told her friend that she had meant to make the sword larger. I didn’t respond because I’m already lectura non grata because of the insensitivity of my questions, but I thought the sword would be instructive to the children who use the art classroom next and who can’t read Arabic. Can you say “Mumbai” (or even “Bombay”), kiddies?

Name Game

In “The Name Game - Inuit or Eskimo?”, Steve Sailer explains the difference between Inuit and Eskimo, leaving me back where I started: I always said Eskimo, but did I mean Inuit, and how would I know, and is someone going to hit me if I use the wrong word now?

            But it is useful to learn two more names tribes use to refer to themselves that mean We Are the Ones: the Khoi are “the people” (the erstwhile people of South Africa); the Inuit are the people; and the Tsalagi are the true people, even if you call them Cherokee, which I’m thinking is an attempt at phonetic pronunciation of the same name: “ts” possibly was or is pronounced something like the English “ch” sound, “l” and “r” are confused or interchangeable in some languages, and the hard “g” is very close to “k”. And vowels can go any direction. So I don’t see what it matters whether you say or spell Cherokee “Tsalagi”. My Cherokee ancestry does not object.

God Speeden

From Overheard in New York:

Girl to boy: “I just got this computer software that's supposed to, like, speeden my reading comprehension.

This girl must have been flashing on the “en” participle ending that still exists in sweeten, whiten, enlighten, brighten, the Appalachian relic “store-boughten”, and other words. It does not, however, exist in “speeden”.

Tuesdays

You probably know the stores called Tuesday Morning and the restaurants called Ruby Tuesday. The Ruby Tuesday web site says the chain was started over 30 years ago, and though it doesn’t say so, I assume it was named after the 1967 Rolling Stones song. Tuesday Morning closes regularly and re-opens on selected Tuesdays with new merchandise. Their web site has even less info than Ruby Tuesday’s, but surely the store name has a connection with the Crosby Stills Nash Young song “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”: “Tuesday morning, please be gone I'm tired of you” ~ unless, of course, it had something to do with actress Tuesday Weld. Can you think of any more businesses named for popular songs of recent decades, particularly with “Tuesday”?

Christmas Books

*** The movie A Christmas Story has become another holiday classic (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”). I just picked up a collection of the quasi-autobiographical stories by Jean Shepherd that the movie was based on, also called A Christmas Story (ISBN 0-7679-1622-0). Writing about the Red Ryder air gun ads that so entranced him as a boy, he also wrote about an old lady in New York who carried a sign saying “Disarm the Toy Industry!” which coincidentally resembles a G. K. Chesterton essay I happened to read recently, “The Terror of a Toy”.

*** A new book that might be useful to you is No Tech Hacking, by Johnny Long et al, is about security (and breaching security) that doesn’t require high-tech skills, obviously. Some of the chapters are Dumpster Diving, Tailgating, Shoulder Surfing, Physical Security, and Social Engineering. And it has photos! I recommend it, and it might be good for anyone on your Christmas list who’s concerned about security, or who wants to be a criminal. Profits from sales go to charity.

Metaphor Mix

William Safire wrote something good, as usual, on mixing metaphors in the NYT.

Neurtsy

Names Disney rejected for the Seven Dwarfs:

Awful, Baldy, Biggo-Ego, Biggy, Biggy-Wiggy, Blabby, Burpy, Busy, Chesty, Cranky, Daffy, Dippy, Dirty, Dizzy, Doleful, Flabby, Gabby, Gloomy, Goopy, Graceful, Helpful, Hoppy, Hotsy, Hungrey, Jaunty, Jumpy, Lazy, Neurtsy, Nifty, Puffy, Sappy, Sneezy-Wheezy, Sniffy, Scrappy, Shifty, Silly, Snoopy, Soulful, Strutty, Stuffy, Sleazy, Tearful, Thrifty, Tipsy, Titsy, Tubby, Weepy, Wistful, and Woeful

“Neurtsy”? Would that be a cross between nuts and neurotic?

Synchronized Spooning Update

This week synchronized spooning team Jem Whittle and Shirley Purley of Ontario debuted a new move in practice sessions that will blow everyone else out of the water ~ if they can pull it off again when Whittle recovers from a sprained ankle. They call it Cubing the Circle. Whittle and Purley already upped the ante by revolving around a bonfire while rotating. Their performance has been described as a two-person Busby Berkeley production number. Now the pair are jumping over the bar they set by adding 360 degree turns in a third dimension: not only do they pivot individually around an imaginary line extending the length of each of their bodies, which from the audience perspective looks at a distance as if they are remaining in one spot, they also revolve around the fire while doing this, thus moving from a point to a line to traveling in a flat plane. Now they are piercing the third dimension, by inserting vertical rolls: picture a pair of hoop snakes coiling and uncoiling. Whittle and Purley haven’t yet worked out the finer points of this new addition, but it will be interesting to watch.

TELL ME A STORY!

Read The Wish Book, a novella by Rhonda Keith, free online.

New interview with bluesman Sonny Robertson.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.