May your eyes take in and your mind comprehend

National Geographic <== That organization's magazine's name rings through the centuries (now) as a bastion for the perfect photograph of distant places, scenes, animals, people, insects. Belches of fire from earthly openings below the crust; rushing, raging rivers; along with quiet moments of peaceful tranquility are all shown in its pages. This annual contest seems to distill the best of the best for passive viewers to take in and gasp at pangs of feelings evoked about what we see.

Enjoy!

Comments welcomed.

English is dead!!

I really enjoy critical essays like this one on the ways folks are misusing our native language these days. We sometimes forget that our forebears did exactly the same thing. There just weren't as many folks around to criticize the results. And spellings seemed to be even less standardized than they are now.

The wife and I played the very enjoyable word-based card game called "Quiddler" for lunch. We had at hand a very official Scrabble Dictionary (4th Edition) that we use to arbitrate our games. Having a dictionary that is ONLY filled with legal words for our game is so superior to using a standard dictionary and STILL arguing over words that, once we got this one in our hands, we haven't looked back.

So, if all I've said makes sense to you and you enjoy words, playing with words and having FUN with words, PLEASE read the link at the top sentence of this post.

Comments welcomed.

Whither wander modern words?

This article tells of some trials and tribulations of modern dictionaries and old ones, too. I have spent some non-small portion of my life with my nose in one or the other of these books: hardbound, paperback, Spanish-English, unabridged, collegiate, even elementary or Scrabble. If you like words and wordplay, read the article. If you value your dictionary and wonder if it will be around some day soon, read the article.

Comments welcomed.

Ogden Nash, poet extraordinaire

I found this page of his poems today, posted by his relatives. It is hard to go at his poems straight on, as he always found an oblique view to give you, most often leading toward the laughter end of the scale.

I recall seeing his poems first in high school American literature class. Although I thought at the time I didn't like poetry, I instantly had a rapport with his words. I laughed and savored the lines again and again. They certainly resonated with my lifelong affinity for playing with words, as he never failed to generate totally new words that fit his rhyme scheme. He also used ordinary, day-to-day words in ways that dressed them up for show, still managing to put on a patina of fun in his use of them.

Whether or not you've read his work before, check out the link above for some word fun.

Comments?

Write, then lose...or is it the other way?

Today, I happened on a blog post by a fellow who writes for a living. Nothing wrong with that business, but he has a good head of steam up about wanting to hang onto his material that he's written. I have had a similar set of haps and mishaps through the time since I began writing on a (now ancient) Heathkit H-89 computer, with its "ten-sector, 5 1/4" floppy diskette" to the period of filing documents written on 8 gigabyte thumb drives about the size of half a Wrigley's stick of Juicy Fruit gum. They all suffer from being easy to lose, easy to destroy, and hard to permanently identify with the contents stored on them. In addition, the technology moves so fast, one has to spend a significant chunk of time just moving what one has written from one level of technology to the next, before the older mode of storage just becomes so obsolete there don't easily exist means to read the writing.

Comments from those who have the same trail of tears?

Word Jazz - Ken Nordine

There are are those who listen ... and then there are those who listen and SPEAK. Ken Nordine is one of the latter. I've been following his works for decades. His 1950's LP "Word Jazz" and all its derivative works have fascinated me as long as I've known and heard of them. Being a person who spends much time with words, those who play with them have my immediate attention.

Ken has a new Web page here. If you are lucky, you can find his material to purchase or podcasts to download. If you try them out, see if you can find a time when you aren't busy thinking about other things. They DEMAND your full attention...and then some. He layers his words with multiple recording tracks and adds sounds and music till you can just barely contain the entirety of all he says.

I had never exposed my mother to his work. One day we were driving to San Angelo from Austin. To escape her incessant talking during the drive, I had retreated to a small tape recorder and earphones. I borrowed some tapes of the Word Jazz program from a ham buddy to play on the trip. I started laughing so uproariously, she asked me what in the world I was listening to. I placed the earphones on her "helmet hair" fresh from the hairdresser and over her ears. She listened for the next 30 minutes. Several times I had to urge her to speed back up to normal highway speeds. The program so enthralled her that I'm sure she forgot almost all around her. After it was over, she expressed intense liking for his work.

In addition to his own page, there are examples of his work on this page: search for his name. Some are from his album "Colors": they are "Yellow;" "Cerise." This one, "Seratonin," concerns those scary little pamphlets found in scary drugs you are prescribed. And here is a transcription of a portion of an interview with him on his inspiration for the word work. Here is a Chicago Tribune piece on him, his work and his accompanist, Howard Levy.

I have friends who really dislike his work. And I have friends who feel as I do. Try him out and see what you think...and comment.