The Painful Nowning Process

Not for me, at least (she boasted vainly), I think because I seem to have a pretty good visual memory, but even so I usually find that I have to come back and fix one or two careless spelling errors in these postings, just because I’m not always paying attention. However, everyone agrees that English spelling is gruesome, because the language is a glorious jumble of different base languages that was “frozen” in print before reasonable (i.e., phonetic) spelling rules could be imposed. British/Canadian and American spellings differ as well. Nevertheless, English spelling can be conquered without resorting to replacing to/two/too with “2″ with some care and attention to rules, exceptions and mnemonics.

These guidelines note that if you really want to improve your spelling, you’re going to have to practice, practice, practice. And note rule #9, which is more about punctuation:

Watch out for the “grocer’s apostrophe.” This gets its name from a spelling error traditionally made by greengrocers on signs in produce sections. Unfortunately, this error is popping up in all sorts of places these days. Remember that an apostrophe with an “s” shows possession. Correct: “The banana’s skin turned brown.” You do not use an apostrophe to form the regular plural of a noun. Not correct: “Special on banana’s: 49 cents.”

. . . nowadays, at any rate, the Merriam-Webster powers-that-be keep an eye on the frequency and usage of new words that crop up over the years. Then:

“As soon as we see the word used without explanation or translation or gloss, we consider it a naturalized citizen of the English language,” said Peter Sokolowski, an editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster. “If somebody is using it to convey a specific idea and that idea is successfully conveyed in that word, it’s ready to go in the dictionary.”

The history of English dictionary-making goes back at least to Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755, which he labored away at single-handedly, leading him to write in the Preface:

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius . . . . Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few. . . .

When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order, and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principle of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged authority.

Over a hundred years later, James A.H. Murray agreed with Oxford University Press to edit a “new dictionary” which eventually became the Oxford English Dictionary. He had numerous assistants researching word usages and etymologies in a “scriptorium” in his back yard, but it was a much larger job than Johnson’s, and he could not finish it in his lifetime, though he came close. His life story is quite fascinating, and has been told in Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, by K.M. Elisabeth Murray. Recently, Simon Winchester’s somewhat sensationalized account of one of the more unusual contributors to the Dictionary brought renewed attention to Murray’s achievement with The Professor and the Madman.

My favorite among this year’s newly approved words: mondegreen: usually described as a misheard lyric. Its origin (because we dictionary people love etymologies), according to the largest collection of the things, is Sylvia Wright:

As a child she had heard the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray” and had believed that one stanza went like this:

Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae sla[in] the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright. A tragic heroine dying with her liege; how poetic. When it turned out, some years later, that what they had actually done was slay the Earl of Murray and lay him on the green, Wright was so distraught by the sudden disappearance of her heroine that she memorialized her with a neologism.

You probably know or have committed some of the “mondegreens” listed yourself . . . but maybe you didn’t know there was a term for such things! Now you know.

Three posts in one day may seem like spam, but when I realized that the replica Viking ship the Sea Stallion from Glendalough actually set sail yesterday on its return voyage from Dublin to Denmark, I had to post the link to the Smithsonian video . Last year, the ship sailed from Denmark to Dublin, reproducing typical Viking voyages of the 8th-11th centuries.

According to the accompanying Smithsonian.com article

[R]ecent research has suggested that the Vikings pouring out of Denmark, Sweden and Norway 1,200 years ago had more on their minds than raiding, though they were not above using their martial reputation to their advantage in areas where they were vastly outnumbered. These adventurers also wove a network of trade and exploration that stretched from Russia to Turkey to Canada, buying and selling goods from places as distant as China and Afghanistan. “They were people without boundaries,” says Wladyslaw Duczko, an archaeologist at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

This information will make fans of Michael Crichton’s The 13th Warrior happy, undoubtedly. A Viking voyage was swift, considering, but no romantic cruise, however:

Nighttime temperatures plunged into the 30s. . . . “It kept on raining and raining and raining,” says crew member Henrik Kastoft, a spokesman for a Danish political party in his day job. “There were so many nights I just sat there shivering for hours.” Each member of the crew had only about eight square feet of space to himself. “I really suffered from being so close to people for so long. I got edgy, cranky,” says Erik Nielsen. “Maybe the modern analogue would be a submarine.”

Archaeologists, anthropologists, and literary/history scholars learn a lot from projects such as these.

Thanks to my in-laws for the subscription to Smithsonian Magazine, without which I might have missed this story!

Oh my. I’m definitely saving this for World Lit this fall (hope the link is still active by then): a flash animated tour of Dante’s Inferno.

I salute the artist, a friend of a friend of scholar and author Kim Paffenroth, who calls it “without a doubt, the most adorable rendering of the Inferno evah!” I must agree.

You decide:

Jay Parini plays some variations on the classic themes: poetry helps us understand life, it appeals to the spirit and the imagination, it opens the emotions:

[Robert] Frost argued that an understanding of how poetry works is essential to the developing intellect. He went so far as to suggest that unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values, “you don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you.” Those are very large claims.

Poets do make large claims, and they are usually a bit exaggerated. In his “Defense of Poetry,” Shelley famously wrote: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I prefer the twist on that offered by a later poet, George Oppen, who wrote: “Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world.”

Either way, something major could happen, if you can figure out exactly what Shelley and/or Oppen means. Parini also notes that modern poetry has earned a reputation for being “difficult” because of all its classical allusions.

Meanwhile, in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins contemplates the poetic inspiration of Looney Tunes—something most readers should have no trouble connecting with immediately. How is Bugs Bunny poetic?

. . . characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. . . . This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry.

So, according to Collins, if you know how to watch cartoons, you know how to read poetry. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.

Yes, it’s summer, but a teacher’s work never ends. People just think we have long summer vacations. Forget it! We’re either teaching summer school (OK, I’m not actually doing that this year . . . so far), or planning next fall’s classes, or doing some other kind of research, or doing some administrative task for the college. Because we are dedicated to our vocations.

And with that in mind, I must post this little 60-second free-writing exercise site, which seems both educational and entertaining—perfect for summer! Seriously—only takes a minute! Try it, and see your results immediately!

—get it? Oh, never mind. But I just had to note that even a relatively small conference like the third Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses doesn’t happen without a LOT of advance planning, hard work, and organization, chronicled here by philosophy professor Kevin Durand of Henderson State U. and his band of dedicated and reliable volunteers (apparently in some cases “volunteer” was a term to be applied loosely). Anyone thinking about hosting an academic conference can learn from him:

It’s unclear where Slayage 4 is going to be. At least two universities have made mention that they are interested. Here’s my advice to them (I’ve given it directly, but I offer it here as well). Make d*** sure that you have a large, capable, and dedicated team of people. You can do the conference with a team of 10-15 people that you can absolutely depend on. You can also do it with 100 folks who will flake on you. But, it’s better to have that dedicated cadre of people. We had that and because of that, Slayage 3 worked.

Durand then goes on to put our type of pop-culture scholarship in its philosophical context, ably defending against the usual suspects who decry the decline in academic standards:

[T]he PR folks at Henderson . . .had gotten a call from the newspaper in Chattanooga, Tennessee asking how many tax payer dollars had been used on the conference. As the answer to that question is a big, fat ZERO, it was kinda fun to nip that in the bud. But, geez, people. Get a life. Let me point out that Plato was fond of the theater [but he] wasn’t fond of those who interpreted plays and the like without systematic and analytic thoroughness.

Thanks again to Prof. Durand and all who helped make this conference happen, both behind the scenes and behind the lecterns, and behind the pies.

Check out Nikki Stafford’s conference blog-posts, starting here. Don’t miss her recaps of Rhonda Wilcox’s paper on B7.7 “Conversations with Dead People” in the post on “day two” and Jeanine Basinger’s keynote address—Nikki’s professional note-taking skill far outstrips mine!

OK, I’ll stop blathering on about Buffy after this—probably—and get back to supposedly more serious things like . . . well, I’ll let you know when I think of something.

It’s a little known fact that many “pop culture” scholars actually began their academic careers specializing in something “respectable” such as literature, history, philosophy, education, physics, or religious studies; many even maintain parallel careers. As one of the keynote speakers at this past weekend’s SC3 Conference, Matthew Pateman, noted, no one in the “real world” seems to care much when one of us publishes or presents our work in those fields. “Oh, another academic conference? Ho hum!” But a conference on something as wacky as Buffy gets us on CNN.

And on blogosphere. Somebody wonders whether analyzing TV stops you from enjoying it? In the case of BtVS (and I’d say, any really good work of art)–No. Another writer notes Buffy’s philosophical credentials. And synchronicitously, bloggers engage in some of the same debates BtVS scholar/fans do: favorite episodes (your list may vary), and Joss Whedon’s brilliant but agonizing willingness to follow Faulkner’s advice to writers: “kill your darlings.”

OK, this one was posted last month, but I’m noting it now, so we can plan the refreshments for next time: BtVS themed party, with decorations, favors, and recipes.

We’ve just concluded the second day of the third Slayage Conference on the works of Joss Whedon, which include TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, the film Serenity, scripts for other movies, and comics. This year, it’s in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and the group was too large for the room designated for the first keynote session, so this morning’s presentation was moved to a larger auditorium.

Why are academic types from all over the USA, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere still talking about Buffy, a show that’s been in reruns since 2003?

“It has staying power,” [conference organizer] Durand said. “It’s like I tell my students in philosophy a lot of times: We’re not so much about necessarily finding all the answers as wanting to ask better questions. `Buffy,’ I think, does that. `Buffy’ never really leaves you with nice, pat answers. You have even more questions than when you started.”

So far, almost all of the papers I’ve heard have been thought-provoking and often entertaining as well. It’s also been great to meet friends from past conferences again. Several of us had the pleasure this evening of dining with guest of honor Jeanine Basinger, who is perfectly charming, and reminds me of my favorite author, the late Dorothy Dunnett. (I got into “Buffy studies” when I presented a paper on Dunnett’s historical fiction at PCA, where I discovered other academics taking BtVS seriously.)

The last event tonight was a workshop analyzing one of the key episodes, season 4’s dream finale, “Restless,” led by Rhonda Wilcox. I’ve seen it three or four times, at least, and I still found new insights.

More tomorrow. Conference website.