As an experienced English speaker, I thought I’d offer this list to beginners and those wanting useful phrases for conversational English.
Yankee Doodle — This is any American, especially a silly one
If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. — This is how Americans encourage others to make good decisions and live their best life now.
I have two guns, one for each of ya. — A friendly greeting for border patrol agents
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room! — A way of asking someone to repeat themselves, typically said forcefully
You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow. — One of many compliments for American women
Yellow-bellied, toffee-hearted, lily-livered — Also compliments
Why, Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave. — A friendly greeting for any pastor, parson, or priest
We’re going to need a bigger boat — Americans often say this when food is placed before them.
All right. That’s all you get for today. Go have fun and don’t drive on flooded roads.
Yet another reviewless night. I am currently reading a book that’s turned out to be just plain sclerotic. But it’s sort of a classic, so I’ll finish it and give it a review – though not one the author would care for, were he still alive. So you’ve got that to look forward to. As for tonight… free association blogging, I guess.
Looking to the right of my keyboard, I behold an object that’s been with me since my father died, in 2000. It’s a souvenir shop item, a porcelain coaster emblazoned with the Walker family crest.
Which is a joke.
In looking around the net for an illustration, I found a lot of sources happy to sell me family coat of arms merchandise. But they’re not all in agreement as to what the Walker coat of arms looks like. This doesn’t mean they’re making it up as they go. It’s because there are in fact several Walker families in Britain, not necessarily related to each other, and they have different crests. I found the one pictured above on Amazon, and it looks relatively – though not exactly – like the one on my coaster.
All these diverse Walker crests have one salient feature in common – they’ve got nothing whatever to do with my family.
My family, as I’ve told you more than is probably excusable, is Scandinavian on all sides, and my paternal great-grandfather (whose name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce) joined his brother, who’d emigrated before him, in commandeering the name Walker.
A name they couldn’t even pronounce, as Norwegians have trouble with the letter “W.”
So having any object with a Walker coat of arms on it is only excusable as an act of whimsy. I’d be ashamed to think anyone thought I took it seriously.
My real family heritage is, like all family heritages, mixed. In the genealogical research I’ve done, I’ve found long lines of people who thought they’d had a good year if they made it through the winter without any children dying. Farmers and fishermen, and the occasional sailor, scraping out an existence on the northern fringe of Europe. Lots of cold winters in my heritage.
The most socially prominent ancestor I’ve documented was a lensmann (bailiff), a little like a local sheriff. There’s some mention of descent from some rich guy, but I’ve never followed that line back. And (as I’ve mentioned before) a couple of my ancestors earned a footnote in the history of Haugean Pietism in Norway.
I know people who can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne. That’s less impressive, though, when we note that historians say pretty much every European alive is descended from that virile monarch. We Scandinavians may not share in that entirely, being on the periphery of the gene pool and somewhat isolated, but I figure I can confidently assume descent from King Harald Fairhair, who is said to have had (at least) a dozen sons.
The historical practical joke that really bids pomp take physic (Shakespeare reference) is that genealogy is a game of converging cones. You’ve got the cone of your ancestors, who double in number with each generation as you go back in time – two parents, four grandparents, etc. Meanwhile you’ve got the demographic population cone, which goes exactly the opposite way – the population of the world (or Europe, in this case) decreases with every generation going back. At some point in the past, you’ve got more ancestors than there are people in the gene pool. How is that possible? Well, many of them do double, or triple or quadruple, duty. You’re descended from them in multiple lines.
It’s at that point that one’s proud genetic heritage gets absorbed, as in some pantheist afterlife, into a great, undifferentiated mass. Any talk of “the best blood” is nonsense. We’ve all got the same blood. Go far enough back, and that uniformity encompasses all continents and racial groups.
If we seek distinction, blood is a pretty poor path to follow. Character is better. Truth and faith are best of all.
First of all, I want to share the movie trailer above. It’s for “Cabrini,” a film directed by the director of “Sounds of Freedom.” Lukas Behnken, son of my old college roommate Dixey Behnken, was unit production manager and line producer for this film (he was also, if you recall, director of the excellent “Mully” movie, a few years back). Dixey himself appears for a microsecond here, as an extra.
Looks good. (I mean the film, not Dixey, who of course has always been a living gargoyle.)
Do you ever wonder what it’s like inside Lars Walker’s head?
Of course you don’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway.
Yesterday morning, I was thinking about an experience I’ve had occasionally in my life and times – one you may have had too.
On a number of occasions, I’ve found information in a book that I wanted (for one reason or another) to remember, in case I needed it again. But when I did need it again, and looked in the book, it wasn’t there. In one particular case, I remember going through the book page by page, and still not finding it.
Of course, there are reasonable explanations. I might have remembered the right information, but assigned it to the wrong book. Or I could have remembered the information wrong.
But I choose not to believe those facile explanations. I think the truth is much simpler.
I blame the Underground Folk.
If you’ve read my novels, you know about the Underground Folk. They’re the Scandinavian elves, but they don’t like to be called by that name. You call them the U.F. (as above), or the Hidden Folk or the Good Neighbors, or some circumlocution like that.
In the classic novel, Troll Valley, we learned that they continue their activities in modern times. Their great purpose – their calling from God according to Miss Margit, the hero’s fairy godmother – is to change history. Real events include all those wonders and miracles and magic that we read about in the legends, but then the Underground Folk come in and remove most of the evidence. That way, most of the proof of the supernatural is gone, and people are left to believe or not based on reason and the calling of the Holy Spirit, not unanswerable manifestations of the supernatural.
I think what happened to me with those books was that the Underground Folk sneaked in and changed the text (this scenario actually plays a part in my work in progress, The Baldur Game).
And why would supernatural beings change the content of books just to mess with me? What divine purpose would that serve?
I say, sometimes even elves just play practical jokes.
It doesn’t take much to raise questions about the English language that the casual user can’t answer. Why do we pronounce bury and berry the same way? Fury and jury look like the way they sound, but not bury.
In Old English, the word for bury was byrgan, and that “y” was pronounced like a short “oo” or “ew” as in took and few. Many other words used “y” and were converted to an “i” spelling. Bridge and kiss are two examples, but bury didn’t follow the normal route and retains, I gather, something of its historic sound. I suppose berry from Old English berie always sounded like we pronounce it today with bright and shallow 21st century American accents.
I learned another thing while looking this up. No, two things. First, the Internet isn’t great at teaching you how to pronounce certain types of words. Ask it how you pronounce the Old English gecyþnisse, and you’ll get this link, which is good. Ask it how to pronounce dryhten. Oh, it’s “driç.ten.” But I want to hear it, not read another spelling of it. And what about the “oo” sound for y’s?
Second, the words apple and berry are the original words for fruit. If the fruit in your hand isn’t a berry, it’s an apple, even as late as Middle English. Bananas in Middle English were “apples of paradise.” Dates to “finger-apples.” Cucumbers were “earth-apples,” and, yes, cucumbers are fruit. Melon developed in Greek from a word meaning “goard-apple” and was used generally for fruit.
Anyway, what else we got?
Crime Novel: A new comedic crime novel is “morbidly funny” and “lighthearted literary entertainment at its best.” City of Angles is playwright Johnathan Leaf’s first novel. You’ll be reading more about it in days to come.
Downgrading Education: “What worries today’s administrators about [great books] is not their purported irrelevance, nor the allegedly harmful language or controversial arguments they contain. It is rather the example they provide of characters like Huck Finn, who preferred eternal damnation to snitching on his friend Jim.”
Favorite Novel: “Simply put, Tristram Shandy is a novel I love, one I’ve reread more often than almost any other. It never wears out . . .” I remember one of my English professors loving it too.
And finally, a brief presentation of Rockwell Automation’s retro encabulator in easy to understand, common sense jargon.
Breaking News: A sequel demo was released last year, “living proof that leveraging existing assets is not plagiarism.”
Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
The inner office was, however, empty when Joss entered. It was only after he had banged cheerfully on the desk with a paperweight, at the same time shouting a jovial “Bring out your dead,” that Mr. Duff came in from the little balcony outside the window, where he had been attempting to alleviate his dyspepsia by deep breathing.
“Aha, J. B.,” said Joss sunnily. “Good morrow.”
“Oh, you’re there are you?” said Mr. Duff, making no attempt to emulate his junior’s effervescence.
The managing director of Duff and Trotter was a large man who, after an athletic youth, had allowed himself to put on weight. In his college days he had been a hammer thrower of some repute, and he was looking as if he wished he had a hammer now and could throw it at Joss….
“You’re late!” he boomed.
“Not really,” said Joss.
“What the devil do you mean, not really?”
“A man like me always seems to be later than he is. That is because people sit yearning for him….”
The first book of P. G. Wodehouse I ever bought was the collection The Most of P. G. Wodehouse, published by Simon & Schuster back in the ‘70s, which included the novel Quick Service as a sort of extra (it remains the most reasonably priced way to get this book, so that’s the link I’m using). Thus, Quick Service was the first Wodehouse novel I ever read. I enjoyed it immensely then, and did again on re-reading. Especially because its main character is surprisingly different from most of your Wodehouse heroes.
The plot of the story is extremely tight and complex, but cutting back to the essentials, we start at Claines Hall in Sussex, which now belongs to Mrs. Howard Steptoe, an American millionairess, and her husband. Also in residence is her poor relation, Sally Fairmile, who serves as a sort of secretary. Sally has just gotten engaged to young Lord Holbeton, another guest at the manor. The problem is that under the terms of his father’s will, Lord Holbeton can’t touch his inheritance yet without the approval of his trustee, Mr. J. B. Duff of Duff and Trotter’s exclusive grocery store in London. Sally suggests that she go talk to Mr. Duff, and see if she can’t charm him.
But when she arrives at Duff’s office, she finds not him but our hero, Joss Weatherby, an artist who works in the advertising department. Joss immediately falls in love with her. When she’s gone, Duff reappears, having learned, through eavesdropping, that Joss painted a portrait of a Mrs. Chavender, which now hangs at Claines Hall (where Mrs. Chavender just happens to be a current guest). Duff was once engaged to Mrs. Chavender, he says, and it occurs to him that her face, with its haughty sneer, would make a wonderful poster for the store. He then fires Joss, but Joss heads off to Claines Hall, to take a job as Mr. Steptoe’s valet (a job that Sally mentioned is open). His plan is to steal the portrait, get his job back, and marry Sally.
There may be other heroes like Joss Weatherby in other Wodehouse stories (my memory sometimes fails, and there are a lot of stories), but such an energetic, bright, confident type isn’t the Master’s usual fare. Uncle Fred and Uncle Galahad were probably something like this in their youths. “Aplomb” is the word that best suits Joss. It makes no difference whether he’s discovered swilling his boss’s sherry, breaking into a French window, or perched on a chair, cutting a painting from its frame, he is never dismayed. His self-confidence only ebbs in those moments when he contemplates his unworthiness of the woman he loves. And then only briefly. Joss Weatherby is a great tonic for the depressive reader.
Quick Service is a tremendous story, and everyone should read it.
I picked up another Dave Barry book, offered at a bargain price. Short review: I enjoyed Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down. I had a suspicion it would be funny, and it was. (The title, by the way, refers to a couple essays on modern, low-flow toilets.)
It was odd that, though this book only came out around the turn of the millennium (which doesn’t seem that long ago to me at my age), it describes a palpably different world. This was before 9/11. Before Covid-19 and the Lockdown. Many of the everyday annoyances that Barry jokes about here seem to come from a long-ago, golden age when you could be annoyed when little things went sour, because they usually went okay. Most of the time.
Memories, memories.
Here’s a few excerpts:
So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.
**
The reason Congress did not get around to ordering an audit any sooner is that it has been extremely busy with its primary functions, which are (1) spending money; (2) declaring National Cottage Cheese Appreciation Week, and (3) authorizing the IRS to hammer taxpayers for inadequate record-keeping.
**
Q. When should I arrive at the airport?
A. You should arrive two hours before your scheduled departure time, so that you will be among the first to know that your flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems.
**
The most stressful part [of registering for a baby shower] is picking out the stroller. Today’s baby stroller is an extremely high-tech piece of equipment, comparable in complexity to the B-1 bomber, but more expensive.
When you enter Gatorland, the first wildlife you see is—Spoiler Alert—alligators. A buttload of alligators, dozens and dozens of them on wooden platforms surrounded by water. They are sprawled haphazardly, often on top of each other, as if they’re having a wild reptile orgy, except that they are not moving. Some of them look like they have not moved since the Reagan administration. It’s like the Department of Motor Vehicles, but with alligators.
I spent 11 years of my own life in Florida, so I feel a certain ownership in the place. Thus I share with Dave Barry the slight pang that comes when I read yet another story about “Florida Man,” the archetypal doofus who does something magnificently stupid and self-destructive in the sun. In his book, Best. State. Ever., Barry provides both an apologia for, and an appreciation of, the state where he’s made his home. And, oh yes, it’s also very funny.
Most of the “Florida Men” you read about, Barry notes, actually come from someplace else, and it’s Florida’s misfortune that having water on three sides makes it difficult for them to find their way out. But that doesn’t alter the fact that strange things do go on in Florida. He proceeds to provide “A Brief History of Florida” and then to report on personal visits to a series of tourist sites that I, though I lived there a while, never got around to myself:
The Skunk Ape [Research Center]
Weeki Wachee and Spongeorama
Cassadaga
The Villages
Gatorland
Lock & Load Miami
LIV (a Miami nightclub that was hot at the time), and
Key West.
The book is, as mentioned, very funny, featuring Barry’s signature style of strategic exaggeration. It might have been funnier if it were crueler, but Barry seems to genuinely like the people he meets, and he has no intention of humiliating them.
The most striking part of the book, for this reader, was the description of The Villages, a group of large, planned communities for the elderly. All the houses look alike, and all the people seem to be alike too – they live for golf and early bird specials, and they dance – a lot – like nobody’s watching. It almost comes out sounding like a pleasant gulag, where dying people go to deny their mortality.
Kind of the perfect finale for Baby Boomers, when you think about it.
Best. State. Ever. is a very funny book. Cautions for language, drugs and mature themes.
Those hours that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there, Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere. Then, were not summer’s distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
— Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5, on the fading beauty of summer and distilling it into perfume to preserve it. Applies to making jams and canning vegetables too.
Sovereignty: Faith from Staton Island writes maybe her personality or being a first-born or Chinese heritage or being a mom has trained her expect to serve others all the time. “At church events, standing in line at Panera, on elevator rides with strangers, reading an email, as long as another person is in my physical or mental space, I’m “on.” Unless I’m completely alone, and sometimes even when I am, I can’t help being vigilant for needs I may be called on to meet, sensitive to what demands my presence may similarly impose on others.”
So, it’s a great relief to her that God needs nothing from us. “That he who made all things, owns all things, and doesn’t use his creation to supply his needs. Rather, he is ever the gracious Giver, ever the joyful Benefactor in our relationship, the Source of life itself.”
“If he needs nothing from me, I can pray— really pray, not worrying about my anxiety or anger or foolishness swaying his judgment or burdening his mind. I don’t need to hedge my request in polite, calculated consideration of his limited supply of patience and help.” (via Keith Plummer)
Lincoln: “Where did Lincoln stand in the vanguard of antislavery and abolitionist advocates, and did he change his views over time?” What can we learn from the many African-American visitors Lincoln received in the White House? Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church said, “President Lincoln received and conversed with me as though I had been one of his intimate acquaintances or one of his friendly neighbors.” (via Prufrock News)
Quaint Photos: “There’s a small hotel/ With a wishing well/ I wish that we were there together.” Here’s a photo essay of the Stockton, New Jersey hotel that inspired that Broadway song.
LOTR: You were asking yourself the other day what characters from The Lord of the Rings would order from a coffee shop, weren’t you? Kaitlyn has your answer. “Merry Brandybuck orders an Irish Cream Cold Brew with cold foam and cocoa powder sprinkled on top.”
Photo: Library (Allegretti Architects), Saint Joseph, Missouri. 1991. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Today started out kind of gray, but it gradually grew brighter and warmer. Right now it’s just about a perfect spring evening.
Got an amusing letter, from a friend. I’d give his name, but maybe one shouldn’t throw names around on the internet. Though one feels one ought to cite one’s sources.
Anyway, the letter came as a surprise. It was a one-page, photocopied missive, telling about what he’s been reading, and about being on vacation in Oregon. He said he found himself near the town of Merlin, Oregon. And he had a bunch of USPS dragon stamps.
He couldn’t resist sending a letter with a dragon stamp and the postmark, “MERLIN.”
Something inspired me to look up a distinct definition for the word brunch the other day, and I happened upon this piece from Punch magazine in 1896. Merriam-Webster says the earliest brunch is believed to have appeared in print in 1894, and this aligns with that claim.
“According to the Lady, to be fashionable nowadays, we must “brunch.” Truly an excellent portmanteau word, introduced, by the way, by Mr. Guy Beringer, in the now defunct Hunter’s Weekly, and, indicating a combined breakfast and lunch. At Oxford, however, two years ago, an important distinction was drawn. The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is “brunch,” and, when nearer luncheon, is “blunch.” Please don’t forget this.
Tis the voice of the bruncher., I heard him complain, “You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again! When the clock says it’s 12, then perhaps I’ll revive, Meanwhile, into bed, yet once more let me dive!
“The last meal I had was 3:00 AM.; I’m a writer, so please don’t such habits condemn! This cross between supper and breakfast I’ll name, If you’ll let me, a ‘suckfast’ –and ‘brupper’ ‘s the same!”
It goes on to lesser effect. What else do we have?
Lewis on Science: C.S. Lewis understood the limitations of science better than many scientists. Michael Ward writes:
What is frost to someone who has never encountered it? What is a degree of frost? Ordinary language would be more helpful in explaining the situation: “Your ears will ache … you’ll lose the feeling in your fingers” etc. The word numb will convey more than any number.
However, what Keats tries to convey in his poem can’t be rendered as a thermometer reading. It is not univocal or universal; we can’t translate his poem into, say, Japanese without loss or at least alteration. And yet if we want to know just what it feels like to go outside and breathe the bitterly chill January night air, Keats paints for us a very vivid and sensible picture. He communicates knowledge to us that the ordinary and scientific ways of speaking leave out.
And this video by Rachel Oates, “Atticus Is Everything Wrong With Modern Poetry,” is an amusing criticism of a published writer who appears to have turned his Instagram posts into a paper-published thing.
Commercials: “If I were endowed with wealth, I should start a great advertising campaign in all the principal newspapers. The advertisements would consist of one short sentence, printed in huge block letters — a sentence that I once heard spoken by a husband to a wife: ‘My dear, nothing in this world is worth buying.’ But of course I should alter ‘my dear’ to ‘my dears.’”
Photo: The Big Shoe, Bakersfield, California. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
