[the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls]
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also,with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
….the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
—E. E. Cummings
—from Selected Poems
fugacious /fyoo-GAY-shəs/. adjective. Inclined to flee. Fleeting, transient, evanescent. In botany, things that last for a short time, usually petals or leaves. From Latin fugere (flee).
"As I climbed the Cliffs, when I jarred the foliage, I perceived an exquisite perfume which I could not trace to its source. Ah, those fugacious universal fragrances of the meadows and woods! Odors rightly mingled! (Henry David Thoreau)
“At a bus stop bench she sat him down. ‘Whatever is happening between us is fugacious,’ she told him, knowing he would understand. It was Saturday, and fugacious had been Thursday’s word.” (Vendela Vida)
“The glowing ember in the furnace, a red sun dying before my eyes, turning fugacious, turning to gas, in my memory lives on, dies each night in its beauty.” (Bill Green)
“They seem to enjoy their new-born freedom, and flutter in the March wind like tethered butterflies. Their happy day, however, is soon over; their fugacious petals shrivel in three or four days. The leaves are rush-like, ribbed, and sheathed.” (John Wood)
“You are a senseless frivoler, a fugacious gid, an infamous hoddydoddy; you are a man with the hoe with the emptiness of ages in your face; you are a brother to the ox, with all the dundering niziness of a plain, ordinary buzzard added to your shallow-brained asininity.” (John Kendrick Bangs)
The pictures of this fascinating event make me unaccountably nervous. → The Strangest Desert Festival In the World Makes Everyone’s Mad Max Dreams Come True [Via Reader B.]
“The rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated. Whose interests does that serve?” → The Automation Charade. Pairs with: The Robots Are Coming To Las Vegas.
The Good Place is one of my favorite television shows. Today I learned that creator Michael Schur (also co-creator of both Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) directed the ► video of the Decemberists’ “Calamity Song”, which is based on a section of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest…which Schur owns the film rights to.
I’m a fan of reading in all its many modes and guises, but it’s worth nothing that neither paper or digital are perfect. → Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well
Are almost all scientists wrong about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? → The Nastiest Feud in Science
“The question of who is alive and who is dead is not new, but the answer is one that has changed historically.” → Who is Dead?. See also: 25 Death Masks of the famous and infamous
Keith Houston delves into the long history of emoji and what led to them. → Emoji, part 1: in the beginning & Emoji, part 2: what went before
Two really fine pieces of long form journalism that held me rapt this week. → From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia & The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail
A meander for your eyes (and occasionally your taste buds). → Lauren Ko’s Geometric Pies & Dinara Kasko’s Origami Cakes & Dragon Scale Bookbinding & Sylvie Facon’s Book Spine Dresses & Inside the psychiatric hospitals, churches and fields of China – in pictures
Today in 1894, poet, painter and essayist Edward Estlin “E. E.” Cummings is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Known for his experimental language and typography, many of Cummings’ poems are traditional, even formal at heart (like today’s WORK, which is a sonnet). Previous linkage: Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, listen to Cummings read three of his poems. They also have 85 of his poems online. Thanks to the LibraryThing community, you can browse the titles in Cummings’ own library.
► Fauve is a raw, powerful 16-minute film that is the cinematic equivalent of a fine short story. Stark, beautiful and terrible.
At the other end of the emotional spectrum, I could watch ► Attack of the Tumbleweed on a loop for hours.
Reader B.: “Podcasts are still thin enough on the ground that this has become a running joke in some podcasts. Tanis, for example, has many quick scenes where the narrator patiently tries to explain to interviewees what they are. ¶ pie de grue!”
Reader T.: “Don’t think we didn’t see you slip that interrobang in this week’s newsletter!” – Who me‽
Reader G.: “Maybe some of the winners of the 2018 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus awards would convince some of your podcast-skeptic friends?”
Reader S.: "Came across this bit in Babel on xenonyms and thought your readers might like it:
Hungarian, for instance, is a xenonym of Magyar, which is the Hungarian word for the Hungarian language. In the days of the British Empire, the British were notorious for using xenonyms in favour of native place names. Hence, Mumbai was changed to Bombay and Chennai to Madras. This latter example demonstrates how xenonyms can be used to subjugate a native language.
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