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By Anatoly Liberman

Hubba-hubba is dated slang, a word remembered even less then groovy and bobby-soxer. To my surprise, even my computer does not know it. And yet it was all over the place sixty and fifty years ago. Its origin attracted a good deal of attention soon after World War II and then again in the eighties. (more…)

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She's 19 today! 

When did that happen???

And this is the first birthday  where she hasn't at least "popped in" for  a little celebration.   So I'm going to bring the celebration to her!



We're thinking of you here, babe!  In fact, Dad found these for you . . .



 . . . you know . . . so you can give my one humongous suitcase back?  LOL
These will be better for toting back and forth to college anyway.  And taking on the little trips, like the American College Theater Festival you're at now!

Hope you're having fun!

Love you babe! 

My pumpkin has one last final today,

then she's heading for home!!!

We can't wait to see her!

In other news . . . I did a tiny bit of work on George's story last night.  It's shaping up fine.  And it looks like I'll get even more work done on it tomorrow.  We have another storm passing through tonight . . .

6 to 9 inches folks!!

6  to 9  !!

I'm off to get some food now before it arrives.

Writing has been very slow lately.  Even when I do "make" time, my brain refuses to put  it's Christmas thoughts on the shelf for a couple hours.  

For example (because you know I always have one!)  I open George's story, read a couple chapters, make a couple notes.  Before I know what I'm doing, I'm dialing my sister. 

Where are the Christmas festivities on the 23rd/24th. Did the guys know the Pat's/Dolphin game was moved to 4pm?  Aren't they nuts for going and freezing!?  Who's house am I staying at?  What should I bring for dinner? 

 Once I have my answers, I go back to George's story.  

Half an hour later, A calls.  Finals are next week, and she's ready for them.  But she can't wait to get home.  She wants her own shower.  She wants to hug Cookie.  She can't wait to antagonize B by using his spy gear against him.

I reassure her that we're counting down the days too.  I go back to George's Story.  All of a sudden my mind screams, "the pizzelle maker!  You never ordered the pizzelle maker!"

Sigh.

So, I'm sorry to say, I have no writing news to report.

But I will have pizzelle's by the weekend.

Let me show you B's latest creation!  It's much more interesting than my writing life at the moment!

His latest school project was to create a continent.  It had to be based on realistic latitude and longitude coordinates.  Wherever he "discovered" it, he had to make sure the plants and animals were indigineous   indigeneous   belonged in that climate.




Meet, Hydro Island!  Located in the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia and southwest of Hawaii, this island was discovered by B. D. Wight and his group of explorers in 2015 on June 16th at 12 o'clock.  B.D. was actually on his way to see dino fossils in Hawaii when he spotted the island.  He set down his helicopter to investigate.

B.D. and his crew, Jack, Mike and Brent, found sea eagles circling above and crayfish in the lakes.  Some spots were forests, some spots were plains.  He studied the island for a couple months.

By 2020, Hydro was on the official world map.



Okay then, I'm off to get ready to sub.  Then I have church youth play practice.  Then I have to walk a couple miles to keep the snacks I can't resist off my hips.  Theeeeeeeen, I think I can get back to polishing up George's story. 

I think I need a nice long vacation on Hydro!!! 

Anyone want to join me?

As if my daughter justplayalong doesn't get enough theater in her life, she and her boyfriend BC have decided to organize a summer theater!

Where does she get her energy?

They've already asked their high school theater director if they can use the stage there, and she agreed.  All proceeds after expenses would go toward her drama program.  It's A and BC's way of saying Thank You for all Mrs. R's past . . . and (now) continuing . . . support.

And the really amazing thing?  They plan to do this on top of their 40 hour summer work week.

Yes, as her mother and employer I already checked into that.

Way to go A and BC!  I look forward to watching this process!

By Anatoly Liberman

A correspondent found the sentence (I am quoting only part of it) …stole a march on the old folks and made a flying trip to the home of… in a newspaper published in north Texas in 1913 and wonders what the phrase given above in boldface means. She notes that it occurs with some regularity in the clippings at her disposal. This idiom is well-known, and I have more than once seen it in older British and American books, so I was not surprised to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). To steal (gain, get) a march on means “get ahead of to the extent of a march; gain a march by stealth,” hence figuratively “outsmart, outwit, bypass; avoid.” The earliest citation in the OED is dated to 1707. As far as I can judge, only the variant with steal has continued into the present, mainly or even only in its figurative meaning. (more…)

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I'm off to spend the weekend with A, Mom and my three sister's.  

I'm bringing my writing along . . . but I'm not sure if it will see the light of day.  You know how sisters can be when they get together!

A's play is going well.  She's loving the college theater life!  The stage and theater she's working in is new to her, seats on all four sides, I hear.  I won't say too much more because she hopes to take some pictures and blog about it. 

I'm bringing her the camera to do so!

Poor B . .. . he hates it when I go away without him.  Look at what he built to replace me . . .




Pretty clever, huh? 

All with recyclables.

1.  I sent a picture book sub to Blooming Tree Press back on Wednesday; Shoes.
     With 1,000 submissions already received by their office, I know my little manuscript is a long shot.
     But I write quirky stuff.    So I figured, Why not?

2.  I was a guest teacher Monday - Thursday this week.  Those rolling balls of dog hair I mentioned
      back on Monday?     Well, they've taken up arms and are threatening to overthrown the house. 
      I told them to go ahead . . .
      but first they'd have to defeat the piles of mutant laundry.

3.  Next week at this time I'll be flying driving down the highway to spend the weekend with
      My Mom, my sisters and my little girl.  Her first college play, Dante's Death is being performed
      and I can't wait to see it!  WooHoo! A girl's weekend!

4.  I mapped out a new PB this week while my students were at recess or in  their "specials". 
     When the rolling balls of hair and the evil laundry are vanquished,
     I will tackle this new PB titled, Maxwell.

5.  It's a three day weekend!!   I hope to add to George's word count significantly.
   

From My Favorite Sounds from A to Z

From My Favorite Places A to Z

Earlier today we posted a Q & A with Allan V. Horwitz, co-author with Jerome C. Wakefield, of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder. Below is an excerpt from the book which uses Willy Loman from Death of A Salesman to show how our perceptions of sadness have changed over time.

The Concept of Depression

The poet W. H. Auden famously deemed the period after World War II the “age of anxiety.” For Auden, the intense anxiety of that era was a normal human response to extraordinary circumstances, such as the devastation of modern warfare, the horrors of the concentration camps, the development of nuclear weapons, and the tensions of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Were Auden still alive, he might conclude that the era around the turn of the twenty-first century is the “age of depression.” (more…)

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In our last installment, I noted that the increasingly common spelling of minuscule as miniscule is not just your average typographical error: it makes sense in a new way, since the respelling brings the word into line with miniature, minimum, and a whole host of tiny terms using the mini- prefix. It might not be correct from an etymological standpoint, since the original word is historically related to minus instead of mini-, but most users of English don’t walk around with accurate, in-depth etymologies in their heads. (Sorry, Anatoly!) Rather, we’re constantly remaking the language by using the tools at our disposal, very often by comparing words and phrases to other ones we already know. If something in the lexicon seems a bit murky, we may try to make it clearer by bringing it into line with our familiar vocabulary. This is especially true with idioms, those quirky expressions that linger in the language despite not making much sense on a word-by-word basis. (more…)

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