PARVUM OPUS
Number 217
Dear
Miss Manners,
My Mother and Aunt offered to plan a baby shower for their sister-in-law.
Note the capitalization of "Mother" and "Aunt" but not "sister-in-law". If the writer thought you should capitalize names of relations, she may have thought it only applied to close relatives, or perhaps to relatives you like best. But you don't capitalize those words at all unless they are used as a proper name, not a common noun: for instance, "Mother, is that your aunt in the photo?"
I'm listening to Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee on CD in the car this week, a good book about trucks, tow boats, and other freight carriers. McPhee rode with truck driver Don Ainsworth, whose father was editor of a magazine called Screw Machine Engineering, "a magazine title which would have been improved by a hyphen" says McPhee. Homework assignment: Place the hyphen in the correct place.
Did you know "Knock Knock" jokes originated in Shakespeare? In Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3, the porter is drunk and complaining about answering the door, anticipating first a farmer, an equivocator, and then an English tailor, prefacing every gripe with "Knock knock" until he finally opens the door for Macbeth.
It occurs to me that the only people who don’t make a living wage are the dead. Everyone else who is working is alive. Got to get a new term for it; I'm thinking plain old "low wage". The phrase is designed to evoke emotion, it means nothing.
Today is the Ides of March; beware. Says www.dict.org, "The word is said to be derived from the Tuscan, iduare, in Latin dividere, to divide, because the day of ides divided the month into equal parts." This means that the ides is on the 15th in March, May, July, and October of the Roman calendar, and on the 13th of other months, which were of different lengths. For a thorough and thoroughly confusing explanation, look up ides at http://www.dict.org/.
Why should we beware of the Ides of March? Because Julius Caesar was killed on that day. I'd say beware of the very idea of March. We've had a few beautiful warm days but today it's gone back to cold and gray and threatening.
Speaking of warnings, here's a comment that appeared with a rating and review of the movie Amazing Grace: "suggested slave anguish". That is, the movie did not depict the abuse of slaves in the 17th century slave trade, but it alluded to their suffering. As I recall, the movie showed people with tragic faces, and showed the hold of a slave ship while someone described the horrendous and lethal conditions of the voyages. That description is more than a suggestion, but less than a visual depiction. How much warning should be required about a movie about the slave trade? Or any movie. It's a little late, but Gone With The Wind could come with a warning that it depicts the abuses of slavery insufficiently. Just in case you weren't sure what to think about it.
Heard on TV news: "We don't have details on that crash but we are efforting that." Yes, we have made verbs out of nouns. Yes, sometimes it's OK to do it. This is not one of those cases. It's unnecessary (just say "we are trying"), and it's jarring and ugly besides. When your speech or writing calls attention to the words rather than the ideas, the words had better be really good.
Al-Hurra is a U.S.-sponsored TV news program to counteract Al Jazeera, broadcasting news to Iraq and other Arab countries and to Europe, pro-American of course. Sort of like Voice of America. The original producer was a Muslim American. He's been replaced by former CNN producer Larry Register, who immediately remade Al-Hurra into a platform for anti-American and terrorist voices. To say Al-Hurra is U.S.-sponsored means it's paid for by our taxes. I'd rather not pay to let people call me Satan on TV. That's is Al Jazeera's job, and we don't have to pay them to do it.
Saint Patrick's Day is Saturday. The Gaelic Slainte is a toast meaning "to your health", pronounced something like "slahn-ja". Enjoy yourself, don't drink green beer, and read this 8th century Irish poem, which was recited in a scene in the movie The Dead.
It is late last night the dog
was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in
her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird
through the woods;
and that you may be without a
mate until you find me.
You promised me, and you said a
lie to me,
that you would be before me
where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three
hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a
bleating lamb.
You promised me a thing that was
hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver
mast;
twelve towns with a market in
all of them,
and a fine white court by the
side of the sea.
You promised me a thing that is
not possible,
that you would give me gloves of
the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of
the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk
in Ireland.
When I go by myself to the Well
of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my
trouble;
when I see the world and do not
see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in
his hair.
It was on that Sunday I gave my
love to you;
the Sunday that is last before
Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading
the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to
you for ever.
My mother said to me not to be
talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for
telling me that;
it was shutting the door after
the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the
blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on
the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in
white halls;
it was you that put that
darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me;
you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me
and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you
have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you
have taken God from me!
~ Anonymous, 8th Century
Ireland, translated by Lady Augusta Gregory
______________________________________________
HUR HERALD
Parvum Opus is
now being carried by the Hur
Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun
County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10,
2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.
Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5
1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5
each (includes mailing).
/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young
computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for
his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But
when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing
concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.
/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.
THIS IS
REALLY NEW! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who
sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion
to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.
WHEN SONNY
GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard
Street Blues Band at www.sonnyrobertson.com and www.youtube.com/rondaria, with
his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".
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 ON AMAZON : It is the glory of God to conceal a
thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2
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.
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Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. 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 reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. 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.