Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 30, 2008

The word of the day for April 30, 2008 is "cleanser" — noun — 1 : one that cleanses. 2 : a preparation (as a scouring powder or a skin cream) used for cleaning .

Jimmy came yesterday to clean and keep Lloyd company for the afternoon. A cheerful, competent young man—I hope we suit him as well as he suits us. He did the bathrooms and vacuumed and dusted the rest of the main floor—we don't use the basement except for storage & laundry. It was so nice to come home to a clean smelling house without having to do it myself.

That's a statement I never thought to make. Mother used to say that the first sentence I ever uttered was, "I do it myself." Anyway, there's still plenty for me to do. Further, as it becomes evident that I am letting other things slide in favor of caring for Lloyd, the Home Instead agency will adjust Jimmy's hours or bring in more help for Lloyd, whichever will be most helpful. The peace of mind is worth the minor disruption of someone else in the house.

Our quote for the day is from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773), British statesman, man of letters. letter, Dec. 11, 1747, Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl, Esq, 5th ed., vol. I, p. 298, London (1774):

     I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he
     would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature
     obliged him to pass in the necessary-house, but gradually went through
     all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common
     edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read
     them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was
     so much time fairly gained.

               [“Necessary-house” or “necessary-vault” was a term used for
          “privy.” Cloacina, or Venus the Cleanser, is referred to here
          somewhat frivolously as the goddess of sewers.
               I don't know whether to applaud this practice as a time saver
           or to deplore the subsequent "sacrifice" of the books. - J]

;^) Jan

P.S. Don't forget to strew primroses on your doorstep tonight, as they used to do on the Isle of Man, to keep out the evil fairies. )

Tags: cleanser

Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 29, 2008

The word of the day for April 29, 2008 is "toast" — transitive verb : To drink to the health or honor of. — intransitive verb : To propose or drink a toast. — noun 1a. The act of raising a glass and drinking in honor of or to the health of a person or thing. b. A proposal to drink to someone or something or a speech given before the taking of such a drink. c. The one honored by a toast. 2. A person receiving much attention or acclaim: [the toast of Broadway].

Here's an excercize we all can do. Check out the L'Chaim site put up by Frank Darcy. Set an alarm for 8:00pm local time on May 1, 2008. Lift a glass to survival and to remembrance.

So many of us have lost loved ones to cancer and other causes this year. Yet many of us are surviving cancer or other possibly fatal diseases and the treatments to make us well or at least comfortable. We need to stop periodically and pay tribute to ourselves for just being here. We need to reflect on the happy times with our loved ones who have graduated out of their mortality. On May 1, at 8:00pm I intend to lift my glass.

Our quote for the day is from Frank Darcy:

     It would be a time that we can all share, and say L'Chaim - To Life!
     A time to say that despite it all, we're still here, 
     A time to say that we still doing the dance of life,
     A time to remember those we lost, 
     A time to give the finger to death.
     So come join the celebration and toast L'Chaim - To Life!

;^) Jan

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Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 28, 2008

The word of the day for April 28, 2008 is "librarian" — noun — : a specialist in the care or management of a library.

At crew meeting last week, my supervisor showed us a YouTube video called Shift Happens. It is about the paradigm shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. It mentions how many Google searches occur per day and asks who answered those questions before Google. The answer is librarians.

My sister and sister-in-law are both librarians. Mother would have loved for me to be a librarian, too, but I like to read too much. (Plus, I hated shelving books as a library page. It hurt to put them up without reading them.) Don't get me wrong, librarians read—voraciously, omnivorously, religiously. However, I am not willing to read stuff that I don't want to, solely for the knowlege to tell someone else where to find answers they don't have the wherewithal to look up themselves. Yet, I find that I must do too much of that as a design tech, which is drafting and configuration control—not literary research.

Our quote for the day is from Stephen Sommers, Lloyd Fonvielle and Kevin Jarre; The Mummy; 1999:

     Evelyn:    I am proud of what I am.
     Rick:       And what is that?
     Evelyn:    I, sir, am a librarian.

;^) Jan

Tags: libraran

Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 26, 2008

The word of the day for April 26, 2008 is "beatify" — transitive verb — 1 : to make supremely happy. 2 : to declare to have attained the blessedness of heaven and authorize the title “Blessed” and limited public religious honor.

My son began calling my mother "GrandmaAgarForceofNature" while he was in High School—not to her face, mind. The soubriquet fits her so well that my sister and I plan to publish the Force of Nature Cook Book filled with recipes gleaned from Mother's recipe box. Some of the recipes we found were the old standbys: spaghetti sauce that was basically a white sauce with tomato juice, for instance. I don't ever remember having some of the recipes; I suppose people gave them to her or she copied them out of magazines. One, which we intend to put into the book purely for the weird factor, involves olives in lemon jello. [Don't hold your breath for the publication date, we have to recreate some of the text.]

Since we were raised Methodists, Mother expended no effort to emulate Marjory of Kemp. Marjory, who wanted to be a saint and spent most of her life and a great deal of her husband's money in the attempt to achieve it never was recognised by any pope, but probably would be a better patron of travelers than St. Christopher mainly because she always managed to get on the boat that made it. Mother's forte was that she just "knew where people were going wrong and what they should do to straighten out their lives." (Some of you may rememeber the "Button Box.") Not that she was overbearing (for the most part): she just let you know what she expected of you. Mother and Dad raised the three of us in the United Methodist Church. They taught sixth grade Sunday School for a number of years—not while we girls were in that age group. I don't know whether that was because Jo and I were so angelic or whether they thought they needed to save their strength for Wes's cohort.

Our quote for the day is from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Eloquence,” Society and Solitude (1870):

     There is also something excellent in every audience,—the capacity of virtue.
     They are ready to be beatified.

Tags: beatify

Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 22, 2008

The word of the day for April 22, 2008 is "excrescence" — noun — 1 : a projection or outgrowth especially when abnormal [warty excrescences in the colon]. 2 : a disfiguring, extraneous, or unwanted mark or part : blot. 3 : by-product 2 .

The Renaissance Fest was not the only thing I did last weekend. I also bought clippers to trim Lloyd's hair. Betty Lewis, who cut his hair for about 25 years, retired a few years ago. He hasn't been able to find a barber to suit him since then. For the past month he has been telling me that he needed a hair cut, but when I would offer to go with or take him to a barber, he would say "Not right now." Or he would carp about my choice of barber or shop. So I have given in, and he is nearly cue ball at the moment.

Also for the past few weeks I've had to shave him, because his hands have developed arthritis. It must be especially hard for him to give up personal grooming because of inability. His finger and toe nails are another thing I have to do for him. I now have a rotary file machine because his nails are so tough. If he decides that he doesn't like the way I trim him, he'll just have to try for the Guiness Records for hair and nails. lol

Our quote for today is from Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist. Paper, Autumn 1986, New York. “The Anorexic Ruins,” repr. In Looking Back on the End of the World, ed. Dietmar Kamper and Christoph Wulf (1989):

     We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are
     living in a society of excrescence.... The boil is growing out of control, recklessly
     at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate.

;^) Jan

Tags: excrescence

Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 20, 2008

The word of the day for April 20, 2008 is "inevitable" —  adjective  — : incapable of being avoided or evaded [an inevitable outcome].

One of the reasons that Lloyd doesn't like reenactments is that so many of them started as US Civil War history buffs. As Lloyd says, it doesn't matter how many times they replay the battles, the North still won the war. They ought to get over themselves.

I, on the other hand, am in favor of people seeing how we used to do things. If the apocalypse leaves enough of us for a breeding population, somebody will have to remember or reinvent enough of the old technology to gather/hunt for food. Someone will have to show us how to weave and spin and create cooking pots from raw materials. Someone will have to remember the rituals that apply.

And this is what Lloyd missed—inevitably:

 

Our quote for today is from Philip Guedalla (1889–1944), British author. “Some Historians,” Supers and Supermen (1920):

     History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.

;^) Jan

Tags: inevitable

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Gryphon's Word of the Day, April 19, 2008

The word of the day for April 19, 2008 is "reenactor" — noun — : a person who participates in reenactments of historical events.

As you can see, I went to the Great Plains Renaissance Festival today. Lloyd didn't want to go—he has never been interested in that sort of thing. So I left Bubbles home, too. Just as well because the dog is not well trained, might as well say not trained. Nothing worse for shopping than having to deal with a dog or a toddler.

As I left I took a photo of a Viking ship sailing across the pond toward the festival site. I'm not certain where Vikings come into it. I'll admit that there were Norsemen, Native Americans and Australian aborigines living at the time of the European renaissance. However, the Americans, Australians and Vikings didn't participate in the intellectual and cultural flowering. OK, pirates were for the most part, a bunch of scummy cutthroats; Scots who wore kilts before the 1850s did so only because they hadn't the wherewithal to go breeched and shod; and Ghengis Khan died 250 years before Columbus set off for India and ended up in the Bahamas. Nonetheless they show up at our Renaissance Faires and Fests, and they buy Norman chainmail, digeridoos, rubber duckies made in China, and Navaho beaded work. And we all have a good time in spite of it.

Our quote for the day is from Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), French theater producer, actor, theorist. repr. in Selected Writings, pt. 10, ed. Susan Sontag (1976). General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925):

     Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy
     escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY
     to reenact their escape.

;^) Jan

Tags: reenactor