Word of the Day, or, Why I Love Etymology

From dictionary.com, emphasis mine:

sar·don·ic

adjective

characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a sardonic grin.

Origin: 1630-40...alluding to a Sardinian plant which when eaten was supposed to produce convusive laughter ending in death

"Explosion-Covered People"

Check out this article (and portraits!) from NPR's Picture Show blog, "Voices of the 'Explosion-Covered People.'" It's well worth the five minutes, if only to learn about the elderly woman who has been providing comfort-water to A-bomb victims for decades now. This type of documentation is even more critical given that many of these people didn't feel comfortable talking about their experiences until very recently, towards the ends of their lives.

Tangentially (and I will write about this in more detail soon), the phrases "explosion-covered people" and "comfort-water" enchant me. I don't speak Japanese--never studied it at all beyond the survival basics necessary for a trip to Tokyo once over New Year's--and maybe that's why. I'm convinced that true fluency is indicated only when you are able to appreciate poetry, as poetry depends on deviation from what its readers and listeners expect from a language. If you haven't internalized the expectations, you won't understand what falls outside of them. The bittersweet side of this is that until you're at that point (or at least, it works this way for me), just about everything rings poetic and leads you to consider the what/how/why and the strange beauty of what is being expressed. Once you're able to fully appreciate poetry, that pan-poetic awareness has been lost, necessarily.

And then head on over to Wikipedia, where the sidebar will tell you that today is St. Osgyth's day (as observered by Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox types). Muse on how you've never seen this name before (despite a full year of studying Anglo-Saxon) and check out her life story, circa 700 AD. Take a moment to wonder about what life was like at that point in British history--post-Romans, right? Pre-Normans, for sure; you know that much. Ponder what else might have been going on. Finally, read about her demise: killed by Viking marauders. How very appropriate of her! 

If you do all of this, you have experienced for yourself my lazy Sunday morning browsing.

Searching for Similes

I love Mark Twain. I was doing an internet search to figure out what other people had used to complete the phrase "dart like a ____," and one of the first results took me to a page out of a Dictionary of Similies from 1916. This page contained many of the usual suspects, such as:

Darted like an eagle.             —Aneurin
Darted … like an arrow aflame.             —Joseph Conrad
Darted like a skimming bird.             —Joseph Conrad

And others that made me smile, like:

Darting like glittering elves at play.             —Mary M. Fenollosa   Darted away like a bird that has been fluttering around its nest before it takes a distant flight.             —James Fenimore Cooper

And still others that rely on a familiarity with things that might be just a tad out of date:

Darts on like a greyhound whelp after a leveret.             —Walter Savage Landor

Shakespeare even weighs in, timeless as he usually is:

Their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins of desolate society.             —William Shakespeare

But the medal goes to Twain's simile, listed last, and a welcome relief from all of these romantic, flowery, natural images and--as one is wont to get from Twain--straight to the point:

Darted away like a telegram.             —Mark Twain

What We Saw on the Subway

Well, on the tunnelbana, techinically. Stockholmers love their dogs, and every third person seems to have one. Unlike in the US, though, the vast majority of dogs you'll see here are purebred. While I've heard of cat shelters for unwanted kittens, there just doesn't seem to be the same kind of pound system for dogs that is so ordinary in other places. A large part of the reason, I'm told, is that dogs here are really expensive (well, aren't all purebreds from reputable breeders?), and maintaining one once you've got it isn't cheap either. The goal is that only those who really want dogs will make the effort to go out and get them. I can't argue with that--the less often a dog is a snap decision, well, the less often the equal and opposite snap decision might be made.

We see them everywhere. They are definitely around outside, walking, usually with their owners but sometimes in one of those amazingly well-behaved dog-walker packs. And lots of dogs get to ride the subway, too. We once saw several huskies of varying ages (Matt started getting really excited about the baby dog, and I was being all snarky and reminding him of the word "puppy"--that is, until I shifted in my seat and saw the baby dog being held by its owner and subsequently melted), and that was the most exciting thing until recently, when we saw one of these GIANT guys:

To give some sense of scale, male Leonbergers (and that's what we saw), can get to 170 pounds, although they average 140-150, according to Wikipedia. This one was sprawled on the train car floor, and although he was being very calm and demure, he took up all the room between the facing seats and part of the aisle.

Now when we have the what-kind-of-dog-should-we-get fantasy conversation, this guy definitely makes the list. Apparently as long as you walk them a couple times a day, they'll sleep at your feet, they love people, and they don't eat cats. Once I can get Matt to commit to taking charge of the poop scooping duties--hey, I do the litterbox--I'm all in. (With apologies to owners of long haired dashhunds, those dogs are not on the list...we can't be like EVERYONE else in Ostermalm. How would we ever tell ours apart at the dog park?)

"Lacking Vital Elements"

I'm really enjoying watching the Chinese press react to the London Olympics. (Watching secondhand, it must be said: I'm functionally illiterate in that country.) While I can't claim to totally get either culture, being an English major who's lived in China does give me a bit more insight than each has about the other. And this New Yorker article captures a very Chinese sense of bafflement at, as Evan Osnos puts it, the fact that "...anyone is bothering to try hosting the Games again," much less, you know, putting hospital beds and sheep into their opening ceremony.

Check it out.