moftly just fome literary & linguiftic bits&bobs
+ a rediscovered frog
NYPL runs a cute little book train under Bryant Park (tbh the only startling fact here is that it only first went into service in 2016) (see also: super cute video of the book train in action!)
obviously this also makes me think of B&H’s overhead conveyer belt
(btw it’s still true that even B&H’s website won’t accept orders on shabbas) (though apparently you can still add items to your cart or wish lists)
probably we’ve all read The Flea by John Donne? You know, the poem where he tries to seduce some lady by arguing that since a flea has already sucked blood from both of them and intermingled it in its body, why not go ahead and have sex too, it’s no big deal, it’s kinda the same as what already happened anyways after all
(because the ladies love being argued into sex, everyone knows that)
anyways, what’s new to me is that there’s reason to believe Donne may have actually intended the visual linguistic pun of printing this particular poem (“…it suck’d me first…”) with the long s
also new to me, the old rules on when to use the long s vs the round s, eg: “A round s was always used at the end of a word ending with ⟨s⟩: ‘his’, ‘complains’, ‘ſucceſs’”
today in not everything is lost
“A team of researchers has rediscovered a frog species which has not been seen in more than 130 years.”
short stories I recently read and enjoyed
Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin - “You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you's there.” And oh, the language, “like the very cup of trembling.”
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid - very very short, a blend of useful advice and stinging criticism from mother to daughter
oh and it’s never a bad time to reread Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants
-ard
-ard is a suffix with meaning: moreso, sometimes with pejorative connotations
Thus we get bastard - a packsaddle son (conceived on an improvised bed), but like hella much so and rudely. And wizards are hella wise. But my actual favorite is stinker (“extended form stinkeroo attested by 1934”!) - with -er being a shortened form of -ard, it’s not really a stink-er as in someone who does a stink, but stink-ard as in hella stinky like whoa.