Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
–“First Lesson,” by Philip Booth
Too much work, too much work, too many deadlines…
Has anyone else been enjoying the new pokemon game recently?
I wish the thread title wasn’t so appropriate.
I’m thinking about substituting a more uplifting poem. The Kokonspiracy can’t afford to wallow in gloom and doom. There’s work to be done!
Am doing it. Well, sort of. I mean, I’ve boiled down a presentation I don’t feel motivated to do into a list of lacklustre lemmas, insipid identities and arduous arguments. That’s progress, right? </jk
Nah, it's not that bad, just a bit dry and technical. And confusing.
Maybe “Invictus”?
I discovered where my university library keeps all of the mountaineering books!
In section GV199.8-GV200.3?
Which is the final shelf in the eastern reading room on the sixth floor.
I’ll file this information under “where to find Kai.”
Not with the homework I have this week, sadly.
On Friday, I found a copy of “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” in my school’s library, which had not been checked out since 1967.
Oh man, this was one of my favorite things at our university library! I generally was checking out obscure music books that had been sitting on those shelves for 30, sometimes 50 or 60 years. On a couple of occasions I was the first on books. I loved wondering who had come before me, what they were like, what they were doing now, and if anyone would wonder the same things about the date stamps I was leaving.
The first time I found a date that overlapped with my stay was during my senior year. I got super excited and wondered if it was someone in my class or if I already knew them. Then I realized I had checked the book out freshman year.
She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah!
She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart!
She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah!
It takes control and slowly tears you apart!
Genesis is the best.
Is everyone else just not posting because they’re as busy as I am?
It is exam season right now… Of course that doesn’t mean anything for me personally but I never post anyway.
Well, post!
ten-page urban studies paper, yep!
Turned in the first semester draft of my thesis today! I’m studying how Cassin’s auklets (seabirds) on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco budget their foraging time differently over the course of the breeding season.
And now John Glenn is gone (1921-2016).
Still 23 days left in the year.
SPIKE PIE YOU TO HECK 2016!
I saw Mr. Glenn speak at the National Air and Space Museum during the two summers I interned in DC. The second time, at the ISDC gala, I stood a few tables over from where he and Scott Carpenter were sitting with some other VIPs and debated going up before I realized I would be interrupting their meal.
The impulse now, with both of them gone, is to say that I should have gone up after all, because this wasn’t like Sir Edmund Hillary or Sally Ride or Tim Samaras or other people I don’t think I was ever even knowingly in the same city as before their passing, this was a few tables away and something that will never reoccur in my mortal life. But I still know that it would have been a rude thing to do, that other people do not exist for my enjoyment, and that disrespecting someone is a poor way of showing you respect them and.
I never sat across from Neil Armstrong on the subway like the poem I wrote, but I did stand a few tables away from John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.
A college classmate told a story from her flight attendant days about the time that John Glenn was one of her passengers. She was helping with the beverage cart when she heard her co-worker say, “coffee, tea, or Tang, Senator Glenn?” Airlines were much more straight-laced in those days, so my friend held her breath and wondered if they were going to be fired (“fired again,” she said, without explanation). Senator Glenn took it in stride, and Gloria Steinem, who happened to be sitting behind him, laughed whole-heartedly. No jobs lost.
Ha!
In complete fairness… he was 95. I don’t really know if that can count as 2016 unfairly taking someone from us. Yes, it is of course sad that he is no longer with us, but at 95 I am sure he lived a long and full life and was ready for what was to come next.
What I’m saying is that I am expecting a much more shocking death before the end of the year.
I finally went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them last night!
Selenium: I haven’t seen it yet. Should I? (Your exclamation point suggests “yes.”)
I liked it!
I enjoyed it! It’s a very different movie, but that was almost a good thing, and it was fun to enjoy the story without knowing what will happen in the future movies.
It’s not, like, incredible, but it’s fun and well-worth seeing. (Especially if you’ve got a soft spot for Redmayne, which I inexplicably do.)
My roommate and I made decorations for our door out of cardboard we’d saved. We have two snowflakes, a snowman, mistletoe, a Christmas tree, a Christmas palm tree and a lighthouse decorated with strings of lights and ornaments.
What if there was an alternate timeline where the lemur line of primates instead of the ape line had developed bipedalism, large brains, etc. and instead of humans there was a civilization of “lemur people”? I guess losing tails, etc. would still make sense, but they would probably look so different from humans or even reconstructions of apelike human ancestors. If they evolved from nocturnal lemurs would they never need to invent electric light?
You know, they would be perfectly justified in calling their civilization “Lemuria”.
That’s no coincidence: The supposed lost continent of Lemuria was originally hypothesized to explain the distribution of lemurs.
Hence the joke.
¡Feliz dÃa de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe a todos! Ella es la patrona de las Américas y también de mi seminario. El obispo va a decir la misa para nosotros esta mañana. Y esta tarde: ¡fiesta!
It snowed yesterday and stuck a little bit but the rain washed it all away.
So, Midnight Fiddler and I ran into each other (on purpose) at a contradance last night. Here’s a blurry picture to prove it:
She appears to be thriving (and dances wonderfully). In shouted bursts between dances, she told me about the ships she has lined up to work on and her current temporary job as a seasonal UPS worker.
Fern also mentioned that many old-time MBers are still communicating elsewhere in cyberspace. That’s excellent news, because everybody else who might have been capable of saving the world seems to have botched the job. You’re our only hope, I’m afraid. Sorry about the inconvenience.
It is a heavy burden, but it’s not the way of a Muser to surrender!
Who wants to join my cult worshipping giant ground sloths? Yes it is 4 AM and I have just finished preparing my presentation on them for tomorrow.
Am always up for 4 a.m. ideas. Especially if they involve emulating those sloths *yawn*
I should mention that tree sloths are slow as an adaptation to their arboreal lifestyle. Ground sloths are believed to have been as fast as other large mammals.
I’d rather join a tree-sloth cult and sleep till 4 p.m..
So, quick question: Do you pronounce the “t” in “often”? NPR seems to have settled on a standard pronunciation that surprised me.
Off-ten. Yes, but my accent is kind of weird in general.
I pronounce it often, but not always.
“When you said ‘orphan,’ did you mean ‘orphan’ — a person who has lost his parents — or ‘often,’ frequently?”
“Ah! I beg pardon — I see what you mean — frequently.”
“Ah! you said ‘often,’ frequently.”
“No, only once.”
when speaking no, when reading text out loud yes; but I also pronounce both ts in words like butter and apparently that’s not standard.
Follow-up questions:
– How about soften, listen, fasten: any “t” sounds there?
– How do your parents pronounce “often”?
– Do you also say “oftentimes”?
(Why I ask: When I was growing up, “often” had a silent “t” — period. Nobody I knew would have dreamed of pronouncing it any other way, and teachers would have corrected anyone who did. Now, on radio at least, the audible-t version seems to have become standard for announcers under 40. I’m curious about where it came from and when it became popular. I have a few hypotheses but need data to test them.)
I leave out the “t” in all of them, but I can see circumstances when I would pronounce them, especially if someone else has recently said them with a “t”, and I think if I was trying to speak more formally I’d add them in.
On another note: how does everyone pronounce “half”, with or without the “l”?
“Lis-ten” sounds more formal to you? To me it just sounds bizarre.
Fascinating. I need to find out more about this.
Pronouncing the T in “listen” and “fasten” sounds bizarre to me too. “Sof-ten” seems less bizarre, but I’m not sure whether I ever use it myself.
I say “lissen”, but I would say “listening” as “list’ning”.
Okay, on further experimentation, when I tried to say these words with the “t”s pronounced out loud, they sounded way off to me, too. And yet if I try to sound them out in my head, the idea of pronouncing the “t” feels more correct.
So I guess I like the idea of the “t”s not being silent, but not the actuality? I don’t know.
(This isn’t the case for “of-ten”, which actually does sound more careful and formal with the “t” than without.)
It’s an interesting reversal, because at least as recently as 30 years ago, “often” pronounced phonetically just sounded illiterate.
I wonder whether this is part of a more general trend of making English more user-friendly for non-native speakers. That has happened before (one reason it lost its declensions). Or maybe it’s hypercorrection, or a minority usage that gains popularity, or a result of changes in the content or status of school curricula. Or some combination of the above, of course.
I never pronounce the T in the other words. My parents only use “offen”. I do say “offentimes”. I think I pronounce the T in often when I’m trying to sound less Nebraskan and more educated. There’s other words I’ll pronounce differently for that reason, too–I’ll try to think of some examples.
1. no t
2. without the t – and I know that I say it with the t sometimes because I’ve had this discussion with my mom after she calls me out on it
3. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word
A thought–is the standard BBC pronunciation “sof-ten”? I could see British media having an impact on American media, especially journalism.
Every modern British dialect I’m familiar with features silent “t” in all of those words.
I’ve replaced the sad poem that originally started this thread with something more uplifting. You can still see the original poem and image at https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=16348 .
Thank you, this is a very nice poem. I hadn’t read it before.
The thing about putting your sheets in the wash is that you can’t put off getting it from the machine or unpacking your laundry because you won’t have sheets to sleep on until you do.
Very true: Washing your sheets is a commitment.
Drat drat drat! I forgot to bring my wader shoes with me and the boots I have are apparently useless at keeping damp out when walking on snow in addition to having very cheap rubber soles that are breaking up under my heels after only three months of use. (I live in New York. I walk. I walk a lot. If walking five miles a day is too much for these boots, then they aren’t good for someone living in Manhattan.)
Got some replacements at REI. Expensive but I hope they last a while. They are supposed to be for hiking.
I’m done with my first semester of college! I ended up with grades I was satisfied with, and did fun quirky college things including:
-made at least two friends
-joined rock climbing club
-drank lots of coffee and staying up late
-social-network stalked people as a maladjusted way of trying to make friends
-survived and passed my first ever jury
-I went to a few parties and managed to enjoy myself at most of them
-went to small shops downtown and looked at vinyl even though I’ve promised myself I won’t buy a record player til I marry a dentist
-recorded bad noise covers of sad songs and put them on bandcamp
-volunteered at a blood drive since I was too scared to actually donate
-listened to a lot of Car Seat Headrest
-got recognized IRL as “that saxophonist who makes ambient music”
-went to a street festival and bought zines
-wrote poetry and was told by my professor I should get my MFA
-submitted poetry to the student literary magazine and was politely rejected
-had my electronic music played for a large audience of strangers
-watched Twin Peaks in the basement of my dorm with my friend over FaceTime
I’m a little scared for next semester, since I’ll be taking 8am classes and will have a generally harder time of it. But I’ll get through it somehow, probably, right? I’m entering a rock climbing competition next semester. Also at some point I want to start DJing at the college radio station but who knows if I’ll ever have time.
You’re winning college, I’d say.
My brother joined the rock climbing team this semester (also his first), too! I know because he took me rock climbing yesterday, at the climbing gym close to home. My forearms and shoulders and grip hurt a lot today, mostly in a good way.
With every reread, I become more assured Neil Gaimen’s The Graveyard Book is my favorite book.
I had dinner with the editor of The Graveyard Book the other night. Her office is three doors down from mine. It’s pretty cool.
I’m slowly reading my way through the graphic novel version when I go into Strand. I don’t know how much is left out from the original, as I haven’t read it yet, but the premise is very unique (and awesome) and all of the stories are a really compelling mix of mysterious, ominous, and charming.
I read the graphic novel adaptation last year. I think the only thing that’s really changed is minor bits of dialogue.
It’s snowing!
Here’s another linguistic question. What form of the verb “to know” would you use in the following two sentences:
– I wish I ___________[know] that earlier.
– If I ___________[know] you were coming, I would have baked a cake.
– Knew
– Had known
‘had known’ for both, but almost certainly contracted into ‘I wish I’d known’.
Not looking at other posts, I would use “had known”.
“knew” would also sound correct for me.
Now looking at Errata’s, I agree that I would contract to “I’d known”.
Had known, both.
Would any Midwesterners care to weigh in?
Both sound right to me in both situations but my first instinct was:
1. had known
2. knew
I think maybe I instinctually went to “had known” for the first because it sounds more somber and directed inward. The second takes place during a casual conversation and is directed toward the other person, hence “knew.”
1. Had known
2. Knew
Interesting question!
1. Had known (I’d known)
2. Knew
I think it’s the German influence. Had known fits perfectly into the conjuctive plusquamperfect in German (hätte gewusst), while swapping a vowel is how you usually get to an imperfect tense (wisse – wüsste). My gut feeling puts the time at which I wanted to know x further in the past with the first sentence than the second.
For the cake-baking, I’d just need an hour or two, and I could’ve used imperfect to tell you that I just baked it. If that thing I wish I’d known earlier requires me to steal the declaration of independence/come to terms with the deepest and darkest secrets of your soul/summon satan/bake two cakes, I’d need considerably more prep time.
((Google tells me the tenses are equivalent, so the argument is moot anyhow.))
So, nobody here would say “would have”? I’m hearing that more and more (“I wish I would have known”) and get the feeling that it’s becoming standard, however strange it sounds to me.
(For the record, I’m with Selenium here: “had known” is correct in both instances.)
I’ve heard “would have known” before and wouldn’t think it too strange, even though I don’t say it that way.
I’d say “had known” for both, too.
“Had known” for both. (Or “I’d known”, more probably).
“Had known,” in both.
I’m gonna be the odd one out here: I think I alternate “had” and “would have” [known] both pretty regularly, both sound ok to me. but I always would go to use a contraction (would’ve or I’d’ve) first.
Second, I think I would lean towards “would’ve.”
If I were writing more formally, I think I would skip the would, but for conversational/informal I would use it. I’m defs midwestern speech patterns in a lot of ways.
I don’t care about the contractions; it’s the basic construction that interests me.
“Would have” in this sense is a Midwestern regionalism that I assume was influenced by German. Within living memory (mine), English teachers would have considered it an error taught you to avoid it. Now it seems to be gaining acceptance, though old-school editors like me still won’t let it appear in print.
Yeah, if I were writing for anything other than conversation/personal reasons, I don’t think I’d phrase it that way. But it’s also been probably years since I had to do serious (non-personal) writing that uses first person–I think everything my later years of college was scientific or where it otherwise would have been inappropriate. I do think the other stuff I’ve written has swung way more unofficial since, probably as an escape from the stuffyness of most scientific papers.
I’d probably say “I wish I’d’a (or I’d’ve) known” for both of those situations, if speaking (for I wish I would have known), but writing probably would favor “wish I had” or “wish I would have”. Probably te former, because it’s less words to write.
I wish I could remember the truly alarming statement I made the other day when talking to the neighbor & had slipped into the regional southern/Pennsylvania Dutch influenced accent/grammar that characterizes the region I grew up in. It was some butchering of the English language that to anyone with a degree (including myself) would recoil in horror at, but that makes perfect sense to locals, again including myself.
Some of the things that I’ve heard around here, & sometimes use myself, are “might could” to describe something not only possible, but maybe even likely, & dropping “to be” out of sentences (“the car needs fixed” “that letter needs mailed”).
Like the discovery that the Appalachian mountains profoundly influenced my childhood, & that I really did grow up south of the Mason Dixon line (even though it was only 3 miles), I didn’t realize how familiar with southern speech I actually was until I moved away from Maryland to North Carolina for college. There I noticed that, despite the very obvious lack of Pennsylvania Dutch influence in NC, there were a ton of unavoidable differences between my home & this place that was undeniably “the south” & “the mountains”. While I was in college I really explored my relationship to a southern experience & identity that I had spent most of my life to that point either ignoring, denying, or feeling isolated from. Now I’m definitely more likely to use regional speech when I’m in areas that it makes sense, to gain credibility & to try to be likable, especially when I’m interacting with older folks. When I was a kid I tried to sound more northern & educated to distance myself from the “rednecks” that lived around us.
I also grew up with “might could” – “I might could go to the grocery store later.” Also dropping -al from words – “rent car” instead of “rental car”
My mother was from Mississippi and used to say “might could.” It’s a clever construction — saves syllables.
Constructions like “the car needs fixed” are British, too. I’ve heard them many times in Scotland.
Are constructions along the lines of “the car wants fixing” a British thing also? I’ve noticed that I use that phrasing but don’t hear it around me, so I’m wondering if it’s one of those things I’ve accidentally picked up from too much British media.
“Wants x-ing” expressions are (or were) British-only, I believe. I’m not sure about nowadays, but Victorians certainly used them. Remember in Alice in Wonderland when the Mad Hatter tells Alice, “Your hair wants cutting”?
Yes—I looked at Wiktionary and the two examples they gave of that usage were Carroll and Woolf, nothing more recent and nothing American. A lot of my idiolect is inappropriately British, and inappropriately old-fashioned is also typical.
Mine as well!
I think it runs in the family. The Muser family, I mean.
Oh the family, there’s nothing like the family, the Muser family that is!
This is the second year in a row that I find myself spending finals week stuck inside writing an essay about the origins of the US Public Lands system and reading about all of the National Parks in the west and how special they are and wishing I was there and not here.
It’s cold in my room! I’ve asked the management of my building multiple times (over several weeks…) to fix the radiator or increase the heating and yesterday they sent some people to have a look at my radiator, and later emailed me asking if there was any difference but nothing has changed! It’s like getting blood out of a stone. I’m wearing multiple jumpers and still typing with freezing hands.
Good news, I have obtained a portable radiator to keep me going until they come back tomorrow to fix it (once and for all, I hope).
Happy solstice, everybody!
Okay, how about this one:
– I spent the morning ___________[lying/laying] around doing nothing in particular.
Which?
No idea if it’s correct, but my brain automatically went to “lying.”
I’d say laying but write lying.
Lying.
“Lying” sounds more correct to me, but I think I’ve said both in the past.
Lying, for sure.
I submitted my essays. *collapses*
Congratulations, KaiYves!
Happy Holidays, everyone!
And to you, KaiYves! When is Orthodox Christmas this year?
Officially the 7th, but as Greek Americans we just celebrate on the 25th like everyone else. We’ll be going to a service tonight.
Merry Christmas, MuseBlog!
And to you as well!
Merry Christmas! I got my parents gifts they actually wanted/needed this year so that felt good.
My mom always gets me some kind of nostalgic gift. This year in my stocking she got me a set of Harry Potter trivia pursuit cards, and I described a Sorcerer’s Stone trivia game that I had fun playing with my friends back in the day. Turns out she got me that exact game as the nostalgia gift! Too bad we still have the other copy in the game closet!
Aww, what thoughtful gifts.
Sweet gifts! I got Mike Massimino’s memoir, a scarf, and some gift cards. There should be a patch and a luggage tag coming in the mail, too.
I gave my Dad an olivewood kitchen spoon and a Moleskein notebook, and my Mom a bracelet (that sadly turned out to be too small for her wrist), some coasters that look like artists’ palettes, and novelty soap called “15 Minutes of Foam” with Andy Worhol’s picture on it.
Those coasters sound awesome.
Ha! I gave my brother-in-law soap called “Nihilism” with the tag line “There is nothing. Like it.” It’s good to see that the novelty-soap business offers opportunities for people with a penchant for wordplay.
My dad got my mom a roomba and so far this evening we’ve been watching it vacuum the living room. Exciting times!
You have a robot servant now. Welcome to the future!
Nice! Since we don’t have a dog anymore our family should probably buy a Roomba.
You know you’re an adult when you get excited about receiving household appliances for Christmas. This crock pot will solve so many of my cooking problems…
Yes, crock pots are lifesavers. Chili and stews — yum!
And now Carrie Fisher. This year seems endless.
And now, Carrie Fisher’s mother. This is worse than “Game of Thrones.”
Poor Billie
at least she has Gary…
Ten years ago today, I visited MuseBlog for the first time. Since that day, I have visited it almost daily, except during a few internetless periods of my life. Almost daily for ten years I have read about all of your dreams, fears, accomplishments, and aspirations, and I have told you about my own. When I look at my life–what I do, what I like, what interests me, and how I spend my days–I am amazed at how much of it I can trace back to MuseBlog. To say that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all of you wouldn’t even come close to the truth; I really cannot even fathom what I would be without you all. I want to thank all of you for being such an important part of my life these past ten years, and especially Robert for being the beating heart of this community, keeping it alive through thick and thin. I love all of you and am truly eternally grateful for all that you’ve done for me. Here’s to another decade of wonder, love, and banana cream!
Heyo frembs! I am still living in Moab Utah, but left for denver and then chicago mid-december. I also decided to take all of january off work, so, 6 weeks of vacation total!! (admittedly, 3 will be unpaid). I’ve had some doubts recently about my current life as a field tech (aka, when at the start of december i ended up stuck in the office doing 8 hours of data entry a day for two weeks), but I have to admit it’s very, very nice to be able to take a month and a half off in the winter just because you feel like it. I don’t have big plans but I’m gonna visit some friends, hopefully including a short kokon with ebeth and a week or so with Sweet Melpomene.
Anyway, I’ve spent most of today alternating between a somber haze and being openly upset regarding the death of Carrie Fisher. Suffice to say Princess Leia was an important character to me growing up and, once I discovered the woman beneath the costume was just as inspiring, a general human i deeply admired. The world is a little dimmer with her passing.
A little less unexpected but still sad, the author of Watership Down, Richard Adams, also passed away today (age 96). I still can’t think of that book without reminiscing about the good ‘ol Great Pie War
The “special celebrity guests” hanging out with the reporters in Times Square on New Year’s Eve are going to be mayors of minor cities and the reporters’ own High School principals, because all of the real celebrities will be dead or hiding in bunkers to avoid being next.
J.’s girlfriend is coming to stay with us for New Years tomorrow. He says we can all go hiking!
We went to a short trail near our High School today and saw several deer, who left tracks in the mud! We also saw a cardinal bird!
Today we went to the wildlife refuge we visited in August and walked the same trail. This time the cold got to us instead of the heat! A lot of people seemed to have gotten the same idea we did– the parking lot was almost full and we ran into a lot of other people on the trail. Between the hibernation season and the foot traffic, we didn’t see as many animals as last time, but we did see a lot of squirrels, a cardinal, several pheasants from a distance, some little birds that ate sunflower seeds out of J. and his girlfriend’s hands, and an osprey! With all of the trees missing their leaves, we could see much farther. From the top of the hill in the meadow, we could see down to the creek and bay.
The beach was very windy and exposed– we certainly weren’t going wading today! But the sun shining through the clouds and haze was very beautiful and we were able to walk on the dune trail that was closed off in the summer because the piping plovers were nesting there. We went down by the osprey poles and we turned around into the wind and saw the sun shining over the sea through the haze… It was a beautiful sight with which to end the year.
Greetings from 2017! Eleven minutes in and no-one’s died yet. 2016 was… a ride, so here’s to making this one better than the last!
Happy New Year, MuseBlog! I think it’s safe to predict that 2017 will be more exciting than some of us might have wished. But whatever betide, the Kokonspiracy will prevail. Courage!
Happy New Year, all! My brother and I are in NYC, but we’re avoiding Time’s Square and are planning to go see the fireworks in Central Park. We went to The Cloisters – a museum of medieval art – yesterday, and I took pictures of the misericords, thinking of you all.
It’s still 2016 for two hours here, but I’m wishing all of you the very best for 2017!
A little bit until midnight here in Nebraska. I want to thank all of you for making my 2016 better than it would’ve been without you, and to wish you only the best in 2017, even if it’s only in terms of perspective. I hope all of you have some victories in the fight for achieving your dreams this year. Cheers!
Thanks, Piggy! Happy New Year to you as well!