WORK
“Les Fenêtres”
We drive to a window factory and traverse its rooms, the summer night pale as the steeple of a church. Behind each door, you dust locks, turn hinges, dragging your signal flares and your phosphorus glow. A yellow light catches spots in each pane as we count the saints on dim clerestories. Soon I ask, one word at a time, mouthing into the watery dusk: Est-que je ne suis pas une fenêtre? You turn from the work, appalled, our reflections like sand burning into glass. A porous moon stares through the doorframe. The locks say nothing.
—Kristina Marie Darling
—from Scorched Altar
WORD(S)
brumal /BROO-məl/. adjective. Wintry. Belonging to winter. Occurring in winter. From Latin brūmālis (of mid-winter, of the winter solstice); from brūma (winter solstice).
“Between snatches of poetry and penitence you left
the brumal wood of men and women. Snow drove
the butterflies home.”
(C.D. Wright)
“This old Venetian fort dying, the flags, the soldiers like bluebells are your landscape, the hot gleet of summer, the fine mucus, or the brumal bear licking her culprits the baby dogfish.” (Lawrence Durrell)
“But we were now in the very heart of winter, and after much frost scarcely a single wretched brumal flower lingered and languished.” (Thomas Hogg)
WEB
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Here are Dr. Beards’ 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language. A few of my favorite are on there. What words do you find most beautiful, for whatever reason?
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Military Flags from the Grammar Wars of the Mid–21st Century
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Yep…I mostly regret the speed-reading training I took part in when I was young… → The harsh truth about speed-reading
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This should take care of that craving for a quick burger → There’s Probably Poop in Your Burger
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Today is International Press Freedom Day, dedicated to the idea that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” And such a day is sadly still needed following one of the worst years for press freedom ever. Related (and depressing) browsing/reading: the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freeedom Index.
WATCH/WITNESS
Watch ►the making of Japanese handmade paper of Kyoto Kurotani. It’s refreshing to watch a master craftsman at work.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader J. shares a couple of puns (aka paronomasia): “One of my favorites, though not quite precisely exactly a pun (it’s some kind of quantum-entangled syntactical squiggle); but it’s from Townes Van Zandt, so still warms my cockles: ¶ ‘Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.’ ¶ Or a deep cut from All’s Well: ¶ ‘That wishing well had not a body in’t, // Which might be felt…’”
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Reader K. also took up the literary pun challenge: “John Donne was punny. He played on both his own name and that of his wife, Anne More, with his line, ”Thou hast not done, For I have more."
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Reader B. one-ups my Nabokov: “Nabokov loved word play of all kinds, puns included. But Time magazine wins with this headline.”
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Reader C. shares more: "You know Shakespeare was the Pun Master. My favorite comes from the freshly-stabbed Mercutio: ‘ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’
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Reader N. connects WORD to WORK: “Old but nice: ‘Aftermath’ by Longfellow”
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