Butter No Parsnips

An excellent podcast series for those who like words and rabbit holes: Butter No Parsnips, with Emily Moyers and Kyle Imperatore. Virtually every episode begins with a word and moves to explorations of etymology, history, and culture. Unlike some language-focused podcasts that exude forced hilarity, this one feels like a conversation between learned friends who can genuinely crack each other up (and who wear their learning lightly). Highly recommended.

I started with an episode that’s an exception to the usual format: an interview with Bob McCalden, chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society.

Wordle STARR

My Wordle starts with STARE, but twice in recent weeks my index finger has — oops — typed STARR instead. (No spoilers: that’s the April 4 Wordle to the left.) Starr is not to be found at the American Heritage Dictionary or Merriam-Webster. Nor is it to be found at dictionary.com or Wordnik. But starr is indeed a word, or several words, all arcane. (As well as the last name of a not-arcane drummer.) The Oxford English Dictionary has four entries. Here are short versions:

With reference to medieval England: a Jewish deed or bond, esp. one of release or acquittance of debt; a receipt given on payment of a debt.

As an Old English variant of star :

Any of the many celestial objects appearing as luminous points in the night sky; esp. any of those which do not noticeably change relative position.

As an archaic variant of stare :

With distinguishing word or words: any of various other birds resembling or related to the starling (or formerly thought to be so).

As a Scottish and English regional word, now rare :

Any of various coarse seaside grasses and sedges, esp. Ammophila arenaria (family Poaceae) and Carex arenaria (family Cyperaceae).

Pretty arcane, no? I’ve written to the Times to suggest that starr be removed from Wordle’s word-hoard.

By the way, that Wordle grid shows a trick I find helpful: adding a word with a known letter in two positions. Thus CYNIC and CIVIL, followed by CLIMB, which might have turned out to be CLIFF or CLIME — though it couldn’t have been CLIME if I’d typed STARE.

AP <3 M-W

For the 2024–2026 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook, the dictionary of choice will change from Webster’s New World College Dictionary to Merriam-Webster (Poynter).

I’m not sure what “Merriam-Webster” means here: Webster’s Third? The Collegiate? The online Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, based on the Collegiate but with significant updates? The online Unabridged, which requires a subscription? And why do I need to know?

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

“The ’Clipse” redux

You don’t have to be in the path of totality to enjoy “The ’Clipse.” It’s a piece of Timmy and Lassie fiction that I wrote in 2017, after the last solar eclipse that passed through Illinois. “The ’Clipse” is both tongue-in-cheek and genuinely reverential, if that’s possible. I think it is.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

And four more pieces of Lassie fan-fiction
“The Poet” (with Robert Frost) : “Bon Appétit!” (with Julia Child) : “On the Road” (with Tod and Buz from Route 66) : “The Case of the Purloined Prairie” (with Perry Mason and friends)

BILLI RDS

[232–234 West 37th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Back in the Garment District. When I first spotted those windows, I thought the ascended letter might be a B. Billi Bros., wholesale fabric distributors? After all, it’s the Garment District. Then I looked more closely.

Google Maps shows a fifth floor added to the building. In August 2022 the first floor housed two fabric companies, one or both now defunct. The second and third floors, which once housed Kay-Atkin Co. (buttons) and BILLI RDS, were available to rent: 929-434-7018.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Kay-Atkin: so spelled in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Kate Chin Park, a maker of crosswords and furniture, is a solid sender, difficult, misdirective, punny, and blessedly free of trivia and strain. Please, more KCP Stumpers.

I began with 22-A, four letters, “Be crawling” (easy, I think) and 37-A, thirteen letters, “Paradoxical ‘I know,’” which I knew had to be the answer I was writing in. And was.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, ten letters, “Not actually.” More difficult to see than one might think, I think.

9-A, six letters, “What some pie crusts are.” Uh, FLAKEY? LARDED?

11-D, four letters, “Unit of outer space.” A good example of the puzzle’s unstrained misdirection.

17-A, eight letters, “Comes back.” See 11-D.

23-A, six letters, “Prime directives, sometimes.” I tried to think of an answer related to interest rates.

30-A, four letters, “Preceder of body work.” My first thought was DENT.

30-D, ten letters, “Players’ positions.” See 17-A.

31-A, thirteen letters, “It holds a lot at the dinner table.” Really clever.

32-D, five letters, “Refuse passage.” My first thought was of a someone thrown off a bus or train.

40-D, three letters, “Silence, possibly.” Brilliant, and for just three letters.

48-D, five letters, “Small club.” Having seen a similar clue a week or two ago, I was not fooled.

53-D, three letters, “Shortened yardstick.” The clue redeems the answer.

58-A, six letters, “Crown molding?” I laughed, loudly.

61-A, eight letters, “Many happy returns.” Yet another example of the puzzle’s unstrained misdirection.

My favorite in this puzzle: I know it has to be 37-A.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Helen Keller’s sources

The New York Review Books volume of Helen Keller’s writing, The World I Live In (2012), has a few pages of notes identifying sources for quoted material, but many such passages are left unidentified. Having looked up the unidentified bits in Keller’s prose (thank you, Google Books), I thought it appropriate to share them here, for anyone who might looking. They reflect a great breadth of reading and are someimes quoted imperfectly, from memory perhaps, or from a faulty source.

Format: quoted material, page number in the NYRB edition, source. I have left poetry unlineated where Keller quotes it without line breaks.

From The World I Live In (1908)

“there’s a sound so fine, nothing lives ’twixt it and silence” (10)

A sound so fine, there's nothing lives
’Twixt it and silence.

James Sheridan Knowles, Virginius, 5.2 (1820)

*

"Kind letters that betray the heart’s deep history,
In which we feel the presence of a hand” (16)

Kind messages, that pass from land to land;
Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history,
In which we feel the pressure of a hand —
One touch of fire, — and all the rest is mystery!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dedication to The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

*

“dormouse valor” (10)

To awake your dormouse valor, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your liver.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601–1602)

*

                                                        “may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite” (96)

                                                Jehovah Lord,
Make room for rest, around me! out of sight
Now float me of the vexing land abhorred,
Till in deep calms of space my soul may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Finite and Infinite” (1850)

*

“put life and mettle into their heels” (105)

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.

Robert Burns, “Tam o’Shanter” (1791)

*

“idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean” (105)

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1834 text)

*

“high and disposedly” like Queen Elizabeth (106)

Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England (1840–1848). When Sir James Melville, envoy from Mary, Queen of Scots, was asked by Elizabeth which queen was the better dancer, Melville said that Mary danced ”not so high or disposedly“ as Elizabeth. Strickland takes that to mean that Mary danced like ”an elegant lady.“

*

“a rakish craft” (110)

’Twas Fiddledeedee who put to sea
With a rollicking buccaneer Bumblebee:
An acorn-cup was their hollow boat —
A rakish craft was their acorn-boat

Madison Julius Cawein, The Giant and the Star: Little Annals in Rhyme (1909)

*

From “Optimism: An Essay” (1903)

“the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest” (136)

Thou are the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, eternal word!

William Cowper, “The Task” (1785)

*

“the evil but ‘a halt on the way to good’” (136–137)

The world an image of the divine, everything perfect of its kind, the bad simply a halt on the way to the good.

Richard Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy from Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time (1893). From a chapter about Nicolas of Cusa.

*

“labored, foredone, in the field and at the workshop, like haltered horses, if blind, so much the quieter” (138)

The dull millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind foredone at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-horses, if blind so much the quieter?

Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (1837)

*

“Now touching goal, now backward hurl’d,
Toils the indomitable world” (141)

Now touching goal, now backward hurled —
Toils the indomitable world

William Watson, “The Father of the Forest” (1912)

*

“There are no substitutes for common sense, patience, integrity, and courage.” (144)

Harvard Baccalaureate Sermon, June 18, 1899. Author unidentified.

*

“whose bones lie on the mountains cold” (145)

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
        Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold

John Milton, Sonnet 18 [On the Late Massacre in Piedmont] (1655)

*

“Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth this autumn morning!” (152)

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning!

Robert Browning, “James Lee’s Wife” (1864)

*

“fashion of the smiling face” (153)

And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face.

Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon” (1888)

*

“Drill your thoughts,” he said; “shut out the gloomy and call in the bright. There is more wisdom in shutting one’s eyes than your copybook philosophers will allow.” (153)

He records in his early diary how he said to a friend, depressed by painful reflections, “Drill your thoughts — shut out the gloomy, and call in the bright. There is more wisdom in ‘shutting one’s eyes,’ than your copy-book philosophers will allow.”

Letters of John Richard Green, ed. Leslie Stephen (1901). Green was an English historian.

*

“pasteboard passions and desires” (154)

After our little hour of strut and rave,
    With all our pasteboard passions and desires

James Russell Lowell, “Commemoration Ode” [Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration] (1865)

*

“They are more precious than gold of Ophir. They are love and goodness and truth and hope, and their price is above rubies and sapphires.” (158)

Biblical phrasing. For instance: “It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire”; “No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies” (Job 28:16 and 18, King James Verson).

*

“the achievements of the warrior are like his canvas city, ‘today a camp, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few pit-holes and heaps of straw’” (159)

Truly it is a mortifying thing for your Conqueror to reflect, how perishable is the metal which he hammers with such violence: how the kind earth will soon shroud-up his bloody foot-prints; and all that he achieved and skilfully piled together will be but like his own “canvas city” of a camp, — this evening loud with life, tomorrow all struck and vanished, ”a few earth-pits and heaps of straw!”

Thomas Carlyle, “Voltaire” (1829)

*

“paints yet more glorious triumphs on the cloud–curtain of the future” (160)

Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour, but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloud-curtain of the future.

Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times” (1829)

*

From “My Story” (1894)

“though fled fore’er the light” (166)

’Tis as the light itself of God were fled —
So dark is all around, so still, so dead;
Nor hope of change, one ray I find!
Yet must submit, though fled fore’er the light,
Though utter silence bring me double night,
Though to my insulated mind
Knowledge her richest pages ne’er unfold,
And “human face divine” I ne’er behold
Yet must submit, must be resigned.

Morrison Heady, The Double Night (1869). Heady was a deafblind poet. The Double Night is a long poem, dedicated “to the Shades of Milton and Beethoven.”

*

“How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid” (171)

Of all the beasts he learned the language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid,
Talked with them whene’er he met them,
Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

*

“Into each life some rain must fall” (177)

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Rainy Day” (1842)

*

“Love, — no other word we utter, Can so sweet and precious be” (179)

Trust —no other word we utter
    Can so sweet and precious be,
Tuning all life’s jarring discords
Into heavenly harmony!

Herbert Newbury, “The Sweetest Word” (1867)

*

“Love is everything! And God is Love!” (179)

These words seem to be Helen Keller’s own. They are introduced thusly: “Every day brings me some new joy, some fresh token of love from distant friends, until in the fullness of my glad heart, I cry: ‘Love is everything! And God is Love!’”

Three related posts
Helen Keller on horizons : On lines : On tolerance

Too many movies?

We knew that we may not have watched too many old movies when the Criterion Channel feature 1950: Peak Noir had two movies — count ’em, two (of seventeen) — that were new to us, Born to Be Bad and The Damned Don’t Cry.

And now we’ve watched them both, and once again, we may have watched too many old movies.

A related post
Too many movies?

“A time outside our experience”

At the zoo. Mr. Palomar looks at the crocodiles. They lie asleep or “sleepless in a dazed desolation,” moving from time to time, then becoming motionless again.

Italo Calvino, “The order squamata.” In Mr. Palomar, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harcourt, 1985).

Related reading
All OCA Italo Calvino posts (Pinboard)

Fishwife sardines

Fresca alerted me to the existence of Fishwife sardines. Such beautiful packaging. I have never seen these sardines in stores, but I will be on the lookout.

Thanks, Fresca.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)