Thanks to Reader Z. for today's WORD and the accompanying pictures!
What doesn’t slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself. Or at least to discuss it. There isn’t enough discussion in the world.
—Cesar Pavese (translated by R. W. Flint)
—from The Beach (La Spiaggia, 1941)
parablepsis /PAIR-u-BLEP-sis/. noun. In which a scribe miscopies a text due to looking to one side, or away, or simply skipping lines in the original. Also, archaically-but-aptly, “false vision.” From the Greek paráleipsis (to neglect, omit or “look askance at”), from para- (beside, parallel to) + blepsis (sight).
An example from the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition currently hosted at The College of St. Scholastica:
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“Frederick Wiseman’s film, ► Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, goes behind the scenes of one of the greatest knowledge institutions in the world…”
¿ YES or B.S. ? is a simple game where you attempt to decipher fact from fiction. Apparently a related podcast is coming soon.
We each have to chart our own linguistic paths. Teen Vogue’s “How to Use Gender-Neutral Words” is a curious mix of the old and new (linguist Debbie Cameron thought so too) regarding one of the more difficult terrains. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but among other things I do intend to start using nibling to refer to nieces and nephews because…cute! || Related: Talk the Talk’s episode on ► Kinship Terms, which get real complicated real fast.
Speaking of complex issues of language, discussion of “singular they” is all over: the OED Blog provides a brief history (only back to 1375), in the Boston Globe the always-fab Kory Stamper writes of its history and future and in Lexicon Valley John McWhorter observes that ► it’s time to embrace singular they (and that the whingeing about it is baseless).
Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica or Ariel?
Reader A. writes in, regarding the dangers of being a Victorian librarian: “I’d suggest that working in a library remains a dangerous profession too.” Subsequent email prompted them to share another amazing related link: was Napolean poisoned by his wallpaper? || See also: Some Books Can Kill.
Years ago I shared how a chance opportunity to see Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester was an epiphany for me. Now the Victoria and Albert Museum has put the first of five volumes (collectively known as Codex Forster) online. || Previously: the Codex Arundale.
In more recent, but still long overdue science news: Jocelyn Bell Burnell was robbed of the Nobel Prize; 30 years later she has won the $3,000,000 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. And she’s donating the winnings to the U.K.’s Institute of Physics.
This thread: i noticed there was a blank wall at mcdonald’s so i decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It’s now been 51 days since i hung it up.. Don’t miss some of the hilarious examples of other guerilla art in the comments.
Today in 1942, Japanese aviator Nobuo Fujita takes off in his submarine-based seaplane just off the coast of the Oregon/California border and flies over Brookings, Oregon on his way to dropping the first—and paired with his second attack a few weeks later, the only—enemy bombs ever to reach the continental United States. Intending to start massive fires and draw resources away from the Pacific theater, Fujita’s thermite bombs exploded but the flames fizzled due to extremely wet weather. Fujita would first visit Brookings 20 years later, where he attended peace ceremonies and presented the city with a 400-year-old samurai sword—a family heirloom—which he planned to use to commit ritual suicide if the people were still angry. Instead he was greeted generously and would visit multiple times, donating money for books for children and planting trees that are now part of a historic trail leading to a historical site where the bombs landed.
I’ve mentioned Jana Dambrogio’s “letterlocking” site and video channel here before, but it’s worth re-visiting because both are packed with new information and videos on letter folds, real and fictional, from the beautiful “butterfly lock” used by Mary Queen of Scots to send her last letter—just six hours before her execution—to a secure method used by Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster to Dumbledore’s will as seen in the film Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 1.
Part of the first Antarctic Biennale, “the Arriba! installation by Paul Rosero Contreras was conceived as a kind of tropical time capsule, taking us back 50 million years to when Antarctica itself had a temperate climate.”
Reader M.: “I enjoy your newsletter so much! ¶ I wanted to suggest this […] Interesting method of presenting data about gender in the top 100 AU picture books.” – Thank you! That is a fascinating presentation…of some sometimes sad facts.
Reader T: “I may be developing an obsession with the ukulele player [in Young Adults].”
Reader B: “Another sapid banquet from Katexic Kitchen. Thank you.”
Reader G. with a comment/poem:
I don’t know why exactly
maybe because it sounded so true
but your “work” made me cry a little.
Because when all is said and done,
the hardest thing of all is just to keep going,
every day, day after day after day.
Especially when there is no courageous battle
to be fought, no occasion
in particular to rise to.
Nothing, but that ruthless,
endless grind, that drags
us down and kills us
in small pieces,
that disappear
unnoticed, unremarked into the abyss
of yesterdays.
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