PARVUM OPUS

 

Number 197

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TRAVELOGOS

 

May I?

Just got back from driving 2,200 miles in two weeks, and I didn't notice any funny signs, but to "Bridge may be icy" I now reply (to myself), "But you may not be icy." I used to get confused by the signs that say "Bridge may freeze before roadway" because I read "before" as referring to space (in front of) rather than time (earlier than).

 

Rosy-Toed

Coming home we drove west, which inspired a variation on Homer:

 

Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, Telemachus rose and dressed himself. He bound his sandals on to his comely feet, girded his sword about his shoulder, and left his room looking like an immortal god.

 

By the time we headed west, we were more like this:

 

Now when the child of evening, rosy-toed Twilight, appeared, Fred and Rhonda fired up the GPS and hit the highway looking like they had another thousand miles on them, and maybe in them.

 

GOA

I like to pick up local newspapers when I travel, and enjoyed reading pages of the Hull, Massachusetts, police log in The Hull Times. I have little justification for sharing anything from it in PO, except for new (to me) acronyms:

 

8:21 a.m. Nantasket Ave. caller reports a "Cujo" dog in front of the store and people are afraid to leave. ACO/Goldman reports dog GOA.

 

The animal control officer found the Cujo dog gone on arrival. Hull's police are mostly busy with animals, distressed drivers and boaters, troublesome groups of youths ("yutes" in Boston) who smoke, drink, steal, and build bonfires, and with out-of-control and confused older people who assault their relatives, get lost wandering around town, have medical emergencies, and lose track of their youths ("female called E911 twice asking why her son's phone is busy"), all the ordinary human troubles that require policing.

 

Lousy T-Shirt

Finally, I came up with new T-shirts for my CafePress shop: "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." Don't ask me why. There it is.

 

PUBLISHING NEWS

 

Oh Joy

Joy of Cooking 2006 75th Anniversary Edition is out, and the reviews say it's more in keeping with the earlier books; they say the 1997 edition wasn't as good. I learned to cook with the 1975 edition, and also from my neighbor Cherri. I could follow a recipe but didn't understand the processes so my freelance cooking was iffy. For instance, I thought I could make gravy by stirring all the ingredients together at once and heating them up. JOC is great for explaining basics, which is what I needed (rather than, say, the 1997 edition's Thai recipes). The edition of a book ~ not to be confused with a reprint ~ often does make a difference. An old college friend once told me that Animal Farm had been released in an edited version. He said he'd compared an old edition with the new one, which somehow had been edited for political reasons. Since the entire story is an anti-communist fable, I can't imagine how it could have been edited. Maybe he picked up a kid's edition, or more likely he was on a paranoid alcoholic trip.

 

Engrish

I just bought a copy of a book of Joys of Engrish. I've written about Engrish before, the strange forms of English so popular on Japanese retail products, and have included the following rather lovely T-shirt poem in PO before.

 

This wants to show

the continuation

of a dream

for them,

even if the day

which bursts

into flames even

if it rains and

a wind blows

and a calm night

are the ends

in the world.

 

I sent it to my son Foy, who works in a museum bookstore, and he replied:

 

A couple weeks ago, an old Japanese woman used an electronic translator device to ask for something. The device translated her Japanese simply into the word 'color'. Eventually, I figured out she was looking for oil paints. I wonder if a lot of these Japanese t-shirt poets are using these same devices.

 

Very likely. Some of my Japanese students use them ~ I've never had a Spanish-speaking or other student use one.

 

Oh You Beautiful Doll

The holiday Dover catalog arrived, and new on their list is a paper doll book of ~ take a deep breath and say Om ~ the Dalai Lama. Seven dolls and 22 costumes. I might have to buy it. They also have a Pope John Paul II paper doll book available online. Only four dolls and 19 costumes, but the Dalai Lama book includes his parents.

 

RAMBLING PROSE

 

What do the words in bold below have in common?

 

"Alternative" tabloid format Cincinnati paper City Beat objected to the heavy security for Dick Cheney when he visited Cincinnati, which a writer said was like treating the president and vice president like demigods. Yet a young musician living in Europe wrote to the Slate.com advice column about what to do when people he meets say that the President ought to be assassinated, and automatically assume he agrees. Connect the dots. I've been with people, friends or strangers, who automatically assumed I agreed with them: racist, anti-male feminism, various war positions, pro or anti-religion. It almost feels rude to correct them. If a religious person thinks you're a nice person, they think you are religious. If an atheist or agnostic thinks you're intelligent, they assume you are not religious. You might both get heated about free speech, for instance, and find that you're each talking about free speech by different individuals.

 

Most of us who remember the Kennedy, Kennedy, and King assassinations would prefer to stick with the voting system for administration ~ not regime ~ change. (By the way, thanks to Herb H. for tipping us to an excellent interview with Dion of Dion and the Belmonts ~ "I Wonder Why," "A Teenager In Love," "Runaround Sue," "The Wanderer". You may also remember Dion's assassination song, "Abraham Martin and John." You can listen to the NPR interview online, and it's well worth it. Now I want to buy his new album.)

 

During the Vietnam war, someone asked me if I thought President Nixon should be assassinated. I didn't like him or the war, but my view even then was that it wouldn't make things better, and it would be wrong. Who wanted more assassination after what had already happened to us?

 

These extreme reactions are fed by the exaggerated rhetoric we hear all the thing, especially pre-election. Recently the southwestern border Minutemen were prevented from speaking by a mob after being invited to Columbia University, which "deplored" the incident but did nothing to stop it. Oddly enough, a web search turned up nothing on the first few pages on this story by the major TV networks, other than Fox. Online, Revolution, Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, calls the Minutemen a lynch mob. No lynchings have taken place. Let us at least be literal, literally.

 

The word inflation in play now can be dangerous, but at the very least, things like calling the administration worse than Nazis or calling for assassination makes reasonable discussion of facts and principles difficult to impossible. Ask a survivor of a Nazi death camp if Bush is like Hitler. When I was only about 10, I got hold of a book written by a Jewish doctor who'd been in a concentration camp. There were photos. Reading it changed me forever. Unless you're Mark Twain, exaggeration is lying. In perilous times, exact legal accuracy is usually preferable to the metaphorical buckshot that usually accompanies strong opinions and strong emotions.

 

THE EDUCATION FRONT

 

And I do mean front. In England a 14-year-old schoolgirl was arrested on charges of racism (is that a thought crime?) because she wanted to change study groups after being placed with a group of students who spoke Urdu.

 

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SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" shirts in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

 

SEARCH IT OUT

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

 

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

 

If you buy books from Amazon using the link below, I'll get a tiny commission, and I'd appreciate it.

 

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

 

 

 

 

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