The Southwest Chief

When I'm old and gray and settled down
If I ever get a chance to sneak away from town
Then I'll spend my busman's holiday
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe

The lyrics are by Johnny Mercer and the tune by Harry Warren (who also wrote "Chattanooga Choo-choo"). Here's a film version featuring Judy Garland. There's no more Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, alas, the closest thing we have today is Amtrak's Southwest Chief. And the AT&SF never did go to Santa Fe--directly. The terrain was too rugged and the line went through Lamy, New Mexico instead, and a spur had to be built later to accommodate the capital.

Our fall trip to Philadelphia for NoirCon 2014 will start in Los Angeles with the 2265 mile journey via rail to Chicago. Here's the route map (from Wikipedia):

Yes, that's Kansas. Hence the "Topeka" part. And the "Atchison" as well, although the Southwest Chief doesn't stop there. It crosses the Missouri River and the state line at Kansas City instead, going from KC, KS to KC, MO. The rails nick the southeast corner of Iowa and cross the Mississippi River near Fort Madison on the way to Illinois. Chicago is Amtrak's rail hub, with the Empire Builder, California Zephyr, City of New Orleans, Cardinal/Hoosier State, and Capitol Limited runs all originating or terminating in the Windy City. The Chief passes through Galesburg, Carl Sandburg's birthplace, the one who gave us:

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

We'll find out. Los Angeles and Chicago are the third- and second-most populous cities in the United States. In between are desert, mountains, more desert, more mountains, and plains, lots of plains. There are scheduled stops in Flagstaff about five a.m., Albuquerque about noon, and La Junta, Colorado, about eight p.m. so the mountainous portions of the trip will be in daylight. Freight trains no longer use Raton Pass through the Sangre de Cristos and it is a National Historic Landmark. The scenery should be spectacular. I had intended to take the Zephyr, which crosses the Sierras and the Rockies, but got a better deal on the Chief. I'm looking forward to seeing the Southwest again.


p.s. WordMan™ wanted to know about "busman's holiday." The best I've come up with is from Word Detective. Taking a holiday doing what you do for a living is the basic notion of the phrase and it can be applied to someone who can't seem to put his tools down even on vacation.

Not just for breakfast

Old pal Rykoff brought me rye whiskey for my retirement. One of the things you can do when you are retired is drink rye whiskey for breakfast. And I'm here to tell you, it's good. It seems old Joseph Hooker--he of Civil War General fame--was a Sonoma man. That's California for the geography-challenged, wine country as renowned as the adjacent Napa Valley. Seems General Hooker was fond of whiskey and women, quite the mac daddy of his day, perhaps this explains him getting distracted at Chancellorsville. But that's no matter. It's the whiskey we are talking about. Prohibition Spirits has a 95% rye whiskey called Hooker's House Rye that is made in Kentucky and then aged in Sonoma Zinfandel barrels. The result is spectacular. The bold, spicy quality of the rye is perfectly balanced by the wine flavors. I wouldn't have imagined that mixture myself, so kudos to the lads who figured it out!

On an etymological note, WordMan™ was curious about the assertion that General Hooker is responsible, via his many parties, for the term "hooker" being applied to women-of-the-evening. According to William Brohaugh's English Through the Ages, the term "hooker" for prostitute was in documented use by 1845, when Fighting Joe was only 31 and had yet to serve in Mexico where he made his army reputation. His national renown didn't come until 1863 when he was given command of the Army of the Potomac. The Online Etymology Dictionary agrees that the connection to the General is remote. The venerable Eric Partridge, in his magnificent Origins, makes no mention of it, linking the word to both "huckster" and "hawker" which seem to fit. "Hook" as a verb meaning "to catch" is a very old English word of Germanic ancestry.

Speaking of foreign tongues, I have to give thanks to Andrei, the Rykoff rye-meister in Russian, and haven't a clue. Alas, I like to say, this is why God invented the internet:

Спасибо.

Closest Approach

This week the Earth comes closest to the Sun on its annual journey along the elliptical path. The distance between the two bodies drops to a mere 91.4 million miles or about 147 million kilometers. Around Independence Day the Earth will be at its furthest point: 94.5 million miles or about 152 million kilometers. Stick two pins in a piece of cardboard and tie a loop of string between them. Using a pencil, trace out a shape by stretching the string all the way out. What you get is an ellipse:

The two pins represent points called the foci (plural of focus). If the two foci were one point, your ellipse would be a circle. Imagine the Sun is one focus. The Earth's orbit is the ellipse. When the Earth is furthest from the Sun, it is called aphelion. When it is closest, it is called perihelion. "Helios" is Greek for "sun" and "ap-" and "peri-" mean "far" and "close." You can see that the ellipse illustrated is highly exaggerated. The Earth-Sun distance only varies by about three million miles, so if we could view the orbit from space it would look very much like a circle. Most people have a hard time with the notion that we residents of the Northern Hemisphere are closer to the Sun in winter and further in summer. It is below freezing where I live today, for example, and will likely be in the high 80s or low 90s (Fahrenheit) on the Fourth of July. We should conclude, then, that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is not important when talking about the seasons. Three million miles may seem like a lot, but not when you are 90+ million miles away! Every schoolkid ought to know that is is the axial tilt of the Earth that gives us seasons. If you have ever spent time in the Tropics, you know that the day length varies little throughout the year. Whereas we folks who live in the Temperate Zones experience long summer days (and short nights) and short winter days (and long nights). The Earth's axis tilts 23.5º from the plane of its orbit, which is why the Tropic of Cancer is 23.5º north of the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn 23.5º south. This axial tilt means that solar radiation is spread out over a larger area during the Northern winter and thus we get colder weather:

Try this with a globe and flashlight. You'll see the beam will cover more ground when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away (winter) and be more concentrated when tilted toward the light source (summer). This is a simple concept, and it gives us an easy scheme for describing seasonal change. After you get a handle on it, ask your friends what they know. You might be surprised how many of them have no grasp of grade school science. Be a good citizen and enlighten them.

HAPPY PERIHELION!!

Creeping Charlie

A plant with weird little purple flowers is thriving in my lawn. I can tell it is a mint--the square stems and opposite leaves are diagnostic when identifying forbs in the field. As are the bi-labiate (two-lipped) flowers. I was taught the botanical family name for Mint was Labiate, but I see now it is called Laminaceae. Taxonomists are fussy sorts and are always renaming things. The stalks and leaves are reminiscent of cilantro, if cilantro had a hardy, mountain man version of the stuff you buy in the produce section. It is Glechoma hederacea, also known as ground-ivy, cat's foot, or creeping Charlie. The venerable Philip A. Munz called it Gill-over-the-Ground and said it had "retrorsely puberulent" stems which means "backward or downward with very short hairs." How I love botany talk! I note that Munz' magnum opus A California Flora is out of print, so I'm hanging on to my copy. It, like me, came to life in 1959. According to the Wikipedia entry, Saxons brewed with Glechoma hederacea before hops became commonplace, thus one of it's common names is ale-hoof. My encyclopedia of poisonous plants lists it as toxic to horses, but it is supposedly edible by humans either as a salad green or brewed in a tea. Those of you who'd like to help me get rid of it are welcome to all you can pluck out. Bon appetit!

Skepticism

According to Eric Partridge, my word guru, "skeptic" is from Greek and means "doubt." Skepticism is a good thing. In science, it is crucial. Many confuse the meaning of the word with that of "cynic." Having been accused--many times--of being a cynic, I'm used to the mix-up. The ancients who called themselves Cynics ("the snarlers") were contemptuous of society's conventions but nonetheless strove for virtuous conduct. The modern meaning of cynic is one who doubts all motives but selfishness. That is, a person who does not believe altruism exists. This has nothing to do with asking good questions and demanding to see the evidence before making a conclusion. People don't like skeptics because skeptics don't like sloppy thinking. Skeptics like to account for all the possibilities before embracing a course of action. This often comes across as contrariness or obstructionism, but it is really just trying to see things as clearly as possible.

Those in the American political scene who doubt the science behind climate change are called skeptics, but this does a disservice to real skeptics. Real skeptics are not merely deniers. Real skeptics look for flaws in an argument and demand to be convinced with logic and facts. Deniers don't require that sort of rigor. They already have their minds made up and you won't get anywhere with them using silly things like evidence. One skeptical scientist--Richard Muller of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Lab--recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining what his current research has revealed about global warming. His was a sort of meta-research as his team looked at already-existing data and analyzed its reliability. They concluded that the numbers were good--global temperatures are on the rise. They made no statement about whether the cause is anthropogenic, but that wasn't the point of the study. Here's Dr. Muller:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

That's science in a nutshell. If the data is good, it will hold up to scrutiny. If the methods are good, the data is trustworthy. Transparency and openness lead to progress. This is exactly the opposite of politics, where lies and half-truths are the meat-and-potatoes of campaigning. Where secrecy, denial, and re-writing history are the essential skills candidates master. Where visceral responses are more important than analysis and where being brainy is a handicap. Screw politics and learn to think like a scientist!

Read some more about Muller and the BEST project here.

Football noir

The Jook is the story of an ex-NFL superstar named Zelmont Raines who has partied away his fortune and is reduced to playing American football in Europe. When the league creates a new franchise in his hometown of LA, "Zee" gives it one last shot and tries out for the team, hoping to make a comeback. Burdened by debt, legal hassles, and an insatiable appetite for pussy and crack cocaine, Raines is the classic doomed noir protagonist. When he gets involved with a cunning and ruthless femme fatale and her absurd heist scheme, it's only a matter of time before his world comes crashing down. Los Angeles writer Gary Phillips puts us right in the middle of the Southland's mean streets, peopling the novel with local hoods, imported gangsters, and big money wheeler-dealers. You can't have an LA story without dreamers and wannabes, as that city, more than any other, sells glitz, glamor, and the high life to countless hopefuls. No matter how many faded stars and failed big shots litter the streets, there are ten to take their place in the great, grasping swarm of climbers that give the city its most distinctive characteristic. Mr. Phillips lays bare not only the moral hypocrisy and phoniness of professional sports, but makes us think about the corrosive effect these million-dollar TV fantasies have on communities and their youngsters in particular. It's a hot, trashy read, with foul mouths and sordid sex, and it's a smart, gripping tale of survival and redemption as well. The Jook is part of PM Press' Switchblade crime fiction imprint. "Jook" is an alternate spelling of "juke," which means not only to dance and party ("juke joint", "jukebox"), but to cut and maneuver on the football field in order to get past a defender and make a play. WordMan™ thought it was a pretty clever title.

Gobshite

My dad's first cousin lives in Sligo, Ireland. He was a wonderful host when we visited that country, hauling us around, introducing us everywhere, giving us insight and opinion on all things Irish. When he talked about someone he didn't like, he invariably referred to them as a "bleedin' gobshite." Of course I though it was the most marvelous insult ever. The Irish version of the Queen's English is full of peculiarities and lovely bits, and I can't get enough of it. Pronouns are particularly fun. You hear the reflexive a lot: "Is it just yourself today?" Or the use of the personal for the possessive: "I reached for me drink." Another of my favorites is "your man" or "your man there," used to refer to some other person. In formal study, the dialect is called Hiberno-English, from the old Latin name of Ireland, Hibernia. There's enough unusual syntax, curious idioms, and colorful vocabulary there to keep WordMan™ happy for the rest of his days. Alas, like all things old, Hiberno-English is dying out. The younger generations have become more and more Americanised (as the Irish would spell it) and the country more global and multi-cultural. TV, the internet, mobiles (Irish for cell phones), and a flood of euros will do that.

Fortunately, there's Irish novelist Ken Bruen and his fictional creation PI Jack Taylor. Jack is "old school" Galway, a keeper of the Celtic flame, and he rails (mostly futilely) against the creeping modernization of his beloved country. We are always meeting old Galwegians who still use the old expressions and follow the old traditions. Cross is the latest I've read--having come across Priest last year--and Sanctuary awaits me on the shelf. The hard-boiled Taylor is rude, rough, lonely, and cynical, like a good noir protagonist ought to be. Despite the fact that the rather straightforward stories are premised on some shockingly savage violence, they are surprisingly funny, and even tender in spots, as our battered hero muses on his life and his many misdeeds. No matter how bad it gets, Jack Taylor manages to gain some measure of redemption and self-respect, at least enough to carry on. And all the while he's a treasure chest of Irish thought, history, and language. I don't know if Mr. Bruen set out to be a guardian of Irish culture, but through the voice of his angry PI, he is, and he manages to do it without pedantry or whingeing.

Maundy Thursday

They don't call it Maundy Thursday anymore, sticking with the more palatable Holy Thursday. "Maundy" is a fine old word with not much going for it these days. WordMan™ has a fondness for such things. "Maundy" comes to English via Latin, mandatus being the past participle of mandare, meaning to entrust or to order. Mandatus is also a noun, meaning a command (you can see the obvious root of "mandate"). Thus Christians are mandated to be holy, I reckon. To fulfill the command of John 13:34 ("love one another as I have loved you"). To wash the feet of the poor (John 13:1-17). Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for Maundy Thursday offers an alternative etymology for "maundy," saying it comes from mendicare (French mendier) meaning to beg. Apparently the English king distributed alms to the poor on that day, filling the "maundsor" baskets of the less fortunate ahead of the Easter feast. Now that's more like it, a fine old controversy for grey-bearded Oxford dons to thrash out with their grad students.

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), marks the end of the festive time--Carnival--after the Epiphany and before the fasting and prayer season of Lent. In English-speaking countries, it was often called Shrove Tuesday. "Shrove" is the past tense of "shrive," meaning to confess and obtain absolution. (You can also say "shrived.") Partridge says that "shrive" is from the Old English "scrifan" meaning to prescribe a penance on. So if you haven't done your penance, you better hop to it. It is Ash Wednesday after all--no more partying until Easter!

Welcome to Twenty-ten!

We've managed to get past the awkward aughts. Did you go around, like me, saying "aught-five" and "aught-seven" and such? Probably not--I'm a lot geekier than you. You likely said "oh-five" and "oh-seven." That's reasonable, most folks say the Big One that hit San Francisco was in "ninteen-oh-six." Which ought to be a lesson to us. We say "seventeen" for the 1700s, "eighteen" for the 1800s, and "nineteen" for the 1900s. So what are we going to say for the 2000s? "Two-thousand?" I don't think so. Are you really going to say this year is "two thousand-ten?" Perhaps an abomination like "two-oh-ten" is more your liking.

No matter. This is year Twenty-ten.

Next year we'll say "twenty-eleven," and after that "twenty-twelve," "twenty-thirteen," and so on. There, you see? WordMan™ was there when you needed him.

Felicem annum novum.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

Pete Seeger was on to something when he tacked his famous line to the poem from Ecclesiastes. "To everything there is a season" is how chapter three of the King James Version starts, and it goes on to talk about birth and death, love and hate, and peace and war. If King Solomon was the author of those lines, then he managed to pen a number one pop hit (via the Byrds)! Not bad, eh? Today the autumnal equinox marks the start of fall in the northern hemisphere. Even the redoubtable Eric Partridge (WordMan™'s hero) admits that the Latin autumnus--the adjectival form being autumnalis--is "of obscure origin." He suggests it might have come from uertere (later vertere), the verb meaning, naturally, "to turn." Here in the State of Jefferson the 40 ºF mornings are evidence enough that we are turning from the warmth of summer to the cool of autumn.

Synchronicity

I'm not going to get all-Jungian on you, don't worry. Most of that "meaning" stuff is, in my view, ascribing more significance to events than they deserve. But I'm a skeptic, and a bit of a crank, so take it for what it's worth. Regardless, WordMan™ digs "synchronicity" because of its Greek root: khronos. The word means "time" or "age." According to Partridge, the verb form is khronizein, and that forms a compound with sun- (with, together) to make sunkhronizein. Thus we have "synchronize" in English, whence comes "synchronicity." Recently, for reasons I'm not quite sure, I became interested in a film I saw many years ago called Dark City. It is a unique piece of work: part noir, part fantasy/SF, part philosophical rumination. In all, it is enjoyable and engrossing. The central theme is illusion vs. reality. The main story line is the creeping awareness by one individual that something is wrong with his life--his memories have been suppressed, and his gradual awakening shatters his safe, comfortable world and forces him on a quest for the truth. I also recently picked up an old paperback novel, Time Out of Joint, by the SF master Philip K. Dick. It was written in 1959--my birth year--and the central theme is illusion vs. reality. The main story line is the creeeping awareness by one individual that something is wrong with his life--his memories have been suppressed, and his gradual awakening shatters his safe, comfortable world and forces him on a quest for truth.

Coincidence? Or synchronicity?

Actually, I could give a shit. But it was pretty cool. Both works, the movie and the novel, were not only well made, but fun and thought-provoking. By the way, the PKD site I linked to above is excellent. I'm going to add it to my list.

Protagonist

The Greek dramatists gave us protagonist, the lead actor or main character. There's not much more you can say than that about Tommy Russo in Jason Starr's Fake I.D (HCC-056). He's the principal figure in the book, as well as the narrator, and you spend a lot of time with him. He's a loathsome sort, one of those completely self-absorbed types who sees all other people as merely levers to open up doors for him. He's also delusional--he thinks people like him, or ought to like him because he's good-looking and charming. He also believes, hilariously so, that owning a racehorse will transform his life. Riches, fame, respect, Hollywood parties, and all the other trappings of celebrity status will magically appear once he joins the exclusive fraternity of horse owners. The guy's a loser. The only thing he has in abundance is chutzpah, and I hesitate to use that lovely Yiddish word because it has a humorous, even likeable connotation for me. And Tommy Russo is neither funny nor likeable. So why write a book about a loser? Lots of novels have heroes, not merely protagonists, but noir fiction is different. You don't have to have good guys. What you have to have is tension. And Mr. Starr does that very well. Fake I.D. both grips you and repels you. The action is simple, direct, linear, and not at all surprising. But it is handled deftly, the suspense building chapter-by-chapter until the shit hits the fan and the protagonist meets his fate. I was reminded of Jim Thompson, especially books like The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280, where we go along for the ride with rather unsavory protagonists who seem to think the world exists entirely for them. All three of these works are bleak--you feel like you need a shower when you're done or the psychoses will rub off on you. But they are also surprisingly funny. Sure, it is a dark sort of humor, but that's why they call it noir, no?

BTQ

I'm a bit of a stickler for usage, and often find myself riled by abusage. I'm not over-zealous, but I try to be correct. When I find that I've committed a diction sin or grammatical error, I like to work on it and rid myself of it. One of the many, many phrases in English that had a narrow, specific meaning or usage at one time but has morphed into a less precise, broader-applied phrase is "begging the question." There is a blog--well, a website, at least--that attacks this abusage and points us to the proper path. It is called Beg the question: get it right. Just this morning I improperly used BTQ in a comment on a blog post. I meant to say "raises the question," but lapsed into an idiomatic mistake and used the aforementioned BTQ. Blog posts are timely, ethereal things. Tomorrow there is a new post and the old ones are forgotten even if they are carefully archived and catalogued by Google. Comments are often conversational, and the grammar, spelling, and diction mistakes they exhibit are more than anything a result of the hurried, off-the-cuff nature of that form of expression. But I don't like that: I appreciate proper English. So I was chagrined by my casual mistake. "Begging the question" means to assume something is true simply because you've stated it. It is a logical fallacy, a weakness in an argument, a bit of rhetorical cluelessness. "I don't like hamburgers because they aren't any good" is begging the question. You are asserting the truth of the statement without any foundation. Alas, this usage is perhaps obsolete in our fast-moving times, but it got WordMan™ off his duff for today, at least!

Averted vision

The crescent moon was about three days young last night, hanging up high in the western sky in the evening twilight. It was just a bit below the Pleiades, and I could see Orion looming to the left (south) and Taurus and the Hyades nearby as well. I love this time of year when the winter stars are setting, what better way to say spring is here? Friday night the moon was too low on the horizon--I've got a lousy view to the west what with the hills and the neighbors and the trees, and Saturday we had a thick, grey layer of clouds obscuring any celestial sights. I stepped out to see Luna when the sky was still blue and then later when it was inky-dark. I noted that if I looked directly at the moon the Pleaides would fade away, and then when I looked askance at the whole scene the cluster seemed to jump out into my field of view. This technique of averted vision is well-known to skygazers and astronomers, and takes advantage of the fact that the light-gathering capabilites of the eye are somewhat off-center. (Here's a couple of links that go into more detail.)

The Latin verb verto (principal parts: verto, vertere, verti, versum) means "turn," and the related compound averto (-tere, ti, -sum) is, obviously, "turn away." The past participle of verto is the familiar versus, which has come to mean "against," in the sense of "opposed to" in English. (WordMan™ strikes again!)

Mossback & Guinness

You might have heard the expression "mossy back" or "mossback" to refer to a stubborn, old-fashioned person who is set in their ways. According to Webster, a mossback can also be a large, sluggish fish. Presumably the fish is large because it is OLD. The term is applied to turtles that have lived so long they've collected a colony of algae on their shells. Old-growth conifers are often much the same--their trunks are covered with a thick, mossy pelt. In the west, a mossback is a deer or other large game animal like an elk or moose that has a rack so big the withers are shaded and the hide there can support a small forest of mosses! Which brings me to Mossback IPA from the Etna Brewery. (How's that for a segue?) I've blogged about these fellows before and their wonderful beer. I had a couple of pints of Mossback IPA at my local pub last night. It is my beer of choice these days. Dark amber, intensely hopped, yet smooth and drinkable, this brew is a local treasure, and Dave the Barman knows we get cranky when he doesn't keep it stocked. Last week we had a St. Patrick's Day fest at the pub, lots of Guinness and Celtic music, and my pal Jon M. came up with a new combo. He's not a Guinness man, but he got into the spirit of things by asking for a half-pint of the black brew to be floated on top of a half-pint of Mossback IPA. We looked at this lovely creation and thought about what to call it. We barely started brainstorming when the obvious answer sprung forth--simultaneously--from our lips :

'Back-n-Tan

Ablation cascade

Now there's something for WordMan™ to get excited about! Ablatus is the perfect passive participle of aufero, the Latin verb meaning "take away" (infinitive: auferre). In English, to ablate is to remove, to wear away, or to erode. An ablation cascade is an extraterrestrial event, analogous to a chain reaction, where the debris from a collision or other explosion spreads throughout the orbital domain causing massive destruction of spacecraft. One satellite goes "boom" and the bits hit another and it goes "boom" and the bits hit another and so on and so on. Though I suppose "boom" is the wrong term in the silence of space, I expect you get the idea. This thought was triggered by my favorite website, Astronomy Picture of the Day (aka APOD) and its story about the collision between Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 in low earth orbit above Siberia on 10 February. This is supposedly the first such occurrence of satellites colliding. It is amazing when you consider the vastness of space, even more amazing than submarines colliding in the ocean. An actual ablation cascade would render space travel impractical. But this event does remind us of the reality of space debris and its hazard to spaceflight. Thirty years ago a nutty rock band called Devo penned a lovely tune about a man who lost his girlfriend to falling space junk. (Skylab had recently broken up and its bits tumbled earthward.) Who knew how prescient they were?

Space Junk (G. Casale & B. Mothersbaugh)
She was walking
all alone
Down the street
in the alley
She never saw it
When she was hit by
Space Junk
. . .
It smashed my baby's head
And now my Sally's dead

Septuagesima

The three Sundays before Lent are Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima. Roughly, they are seventy, sixty, and fifty days before Easter Sunday. This year Easter Sunday is on April 12th. If you include today--Septuagesima Sunday--and Easter Sunday in the count, you get 64, 57, and 50 days. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, Septuagesima is the 9th Sunday before Easter. So the idea of "the 70th day" is a bit of a stretch, but the old name has stuck around. I have a missal from 1966 called The People's Mass Book, which is still in print apparently, in a new edition. It says (p. 32):

Originally, these three pre-Lenten Sundays were celebrated to ask God's protection against enemy armies invading Rome.

Septuagesima is the feminine form of septuagesimus, the Latin ordinal corresponding to LXX, or "seventieth." How about that? WordMan™ was hanging around, looking for work, and the third Sunday before Lent just dropped in his lap.

Earthglow

The beautiful pairing of Venus and the crescent moon last night got me thinking about earthglow. WordMan™ reminded me that earthshine is the proper term, but I like mine. Our planet reflects sunlight, and that reflected light illuminates the surface of our satellite. That's why we can see the entire face of the moon during the crescent phase. It is one of my favorite sights. "Glow," according to Partridge, is of Norse-Germanic origin, making it an old, old English word. I like the thought that some ancient Viking might have formed the same sounds as he looked heavenward and pointed to the faintly-lit disk above him.

Before their time

Thanksgiving Break. I'm on holiday. Tonight? American Rhythm with Craig Faulkner on Jefferson Public Radio, 89.3 MHz on the FM dial. And a couple of fingers of Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (batch 284, bottle number 08847). Mmm-mmmm!

Tonight's theme is "Died Too Young." Sam Cooke. Patsy Cline. Buddy Holly. Bobby Darin. Charlie Christian. Too many others--it's a long list. Mr. Faulkner calls his program "The Gourmet Oldies Show" and refers to his source material as "American vernacular music."

Vernacular got WordMan™ fired up. Partridge says it is "of obscure origin," possibly Etruscan, coming to us through the Latin vernaculus, "born in one master's house." In other words, a slave. Bartleby says the word means native tongue, local speech, or common dialect.

The tunes are great. The whiskey's fine. I'm on vacation.

Talk to you in a week.