Category Archives: Reading

Books, magazines, newspapers

June 2, 2011 · 5:12 am

Who’s hungry?

Wow, I have this craving for some good bird’s tongue. How about you?

This post is another in the series in which I pull a book out of the stacks and write about it. I hope you’re game.

Fourteen years ago, long before the word nymph in me emerged, or so I thought, a friend and former colleague gave me a book entitled Ladyfingers & Nun’s Tummies: A Lighthearted Look at How Foods Got Their Names, by Martha Barnette, who was once a reporter with The Washington Post. I remember my friend saying he thought the book suited me because of my love of food and words.

Barnette grabs readers of my type with the first sentence of the introduction: “Sometimes the very name of a food tickles our taste buds before a bite of it ever reaches our mouths. Saltimbocca, tiramisu, teriyaki, shabu-shabu, passion fruit, angel hair, soubise, bubble and squeak, chimichanga, couscous – rolling any of these words around on our tongues is a sensory experience all its own.”

Bubble and squeak? Come again? Bubble and squeak comes from the chapter on foods named for what they do while cooking. It’s a potato and cabbage dish that apparently makes noise when it’s frying.

Bird's tongue (orzo)

There are chapters on foods named for what they look like (e.g., bare buttocks in the grass); food names associated with religion or the supernatural (no surprise that there are lots of angels and devils, but also Judas’ ear); foods named by mistake, often as a result of goofs in translation (including German chocolate cake and Jordan almonds); foods named for people and places (the chapter  is called “Edible Eponyms and Tasty Toponyms,” surely a topic for another day); foods named for what’s done to them or what they do to us; and words deriving from other words about food and drink.

Did you know that, In Lebanon, the long rolled pastry known as zunuud as-sitt translates from “woman’s upper arms?” It’s in there.

The book contains hundreds more little-known facts about food names and where they come from. I could stretch this out over several days, and maybe I’ll regret it if I don’t. In the meantime, maybe I’ll give you a little homework assignment.

See if you know—or can find—the recognized food names for the following:

  1. Apple in its bathrobe
  2. Angel’s breasts
  3. Boudoir biscuits
  4. Dad’s beard
  5. Dead fingers
  6. Friar’s balls
  7. Naughty children’s toes
  8. Tipsy parson
  9. Spicy bishop
  10. Whore’s pasta

Want to have some more fun? Look up the origin of pumpernickel.

One final note: my father recently suggested I address the origin of the word “bedlam,” and he traced its origin for me. What I learned from Ladyfingers & Nun’s Tummies, though, is that the word goes back even farther, with its origin in food. Maybe tomorrow?

6 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Food, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 27, 2011 · 8:26 am

Two cousins

When I was little, I used to like the book Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott.

Today I couldn’t tell you a thing about it. I think I liked it because I had eight cousins, five from an aunt and uncle on my mother’s side and three from an aunt and uncle on my father’s side. Eight terrific cousins.

Today’s blog entry is dedicated to Lesley, the eldest cousin on my father’s side. Today is her birthday.

Lesley is a year and a half younger than I. We spent a lot of time together when we were little, especially around the holidays. Her family moved away when we were six and seven, so we saw less of each other after that. We did end up at the same university, where our attendance overlapped for a while.

Monica and Lesley

As I remembered that her birthday was approaching, I recalled so many little things about our childhood. I was the shy one, fearful of doing anything daring or talking to anyone I didn’t know or getting dirty. Lesley was the opposite. Everyone was Lesley’s new best friend. She loved to express herself in song and expressive dance.

Once, while the kids put on a show for the adults at a holiday party, Lesley took the stage (the hearth in our family room) and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to put on a magic show!” She began her first trick and then said to the audience, “Everyone, close your eyes.”

There are several stories of how Lesley’s curiosity and creativity led her to adventure. Up a ladder onto the roof when she was two. Putting Baker’s chocolate in the toaster in the middle of the night. (Haven’t we all wanted to try that?) This photo shows how Lesley’s front teeth suffered during one of her acts of daring. Oh, to have been like Lesley. Arms stretched out, Here I am, world!

My younger cousin used to look up to me. When I was allowed to wear perfume at age 14 (Love’s Fresh Lemon Body Splash, to be exact), she talked her mother into getting her a bottle of Jean Naté.

Truly, it is I who looks up to her. As grown women, Lesley’s the refined one and I’m the one talks to strangers and visits the ER after a hapless home accident.

Lesley is a gifted writer and a poet, and always has a beaming smile and an infectious laugh. She and her husband are rearing and educating five beautiful children, all of whom have their own expressions of wonder and talent.

Here’s to you, Lesley. Happy Birthday! Now go fix yourself some Baker’s chocolate.

P.S. Great outfit!

6 Comments

Filed under Family and Friends, Holidays, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 19, 2011 · 8:13 am

100 proof pure poison

It doesn’t matter how often or how extensively we clean our house. We still uncover the oddest things and collections of things under the layers of dust that have been accumulating for 20 years.

Oh, the things we find in bags, bowls, bins, buckets and baskets.

Yesterday, I dared to peek into an old brass bin on a shelf above the basement stairs. Most of the contents were minute—paper clips, safety pins, tiny pieces of broken toys, a few rusty screws and a small paperback book entitled Jesse Helms “quoted”: 100 Proof Pure Old Jess.

I’m glad I have the opportunity to clean out my things before strangers come in to organize a sale of my so-called estate. This find would be hard to explain.

The source of this relic is a little fuzzy to me; It must have been a gag gift from someone who knew that neither my husband nor I was ever a big supporter of the late North Carolina senator. Quite possibly, it was a re-gift. No matter.

I looked the book up online to see if I could get a little background. I found only a used book site, where several owners were selling their copies. The site did tell me that, if I liked this book, I might also like 2000 Foreign Policy Overview and the President’s Fiscal Year 2001 Foreign Affairs Budget Request: Congress hearing. I think I’ll pass. Maybe I’ll wait for the movie.

For some reason, I expected to find humor in the 67 pages of the book that contain direct quotes from Sen. Helms, who lived from 1921 to 2008. If anyone who lived only during the last two decades of Helms’ life gazed upon these quotes, they’d be shocked—barely more than I was, though—to realize that such flagrant bigotry was expressed so freely and publicly in the late 20th century and into the 21st.

The last section of the book is devoted to political cartoons about the man, but these provided little relief for my sour stomach.

There was only one quote I found worthy to excerpt in this blog; it’s the first one printed in the book:

“Well there are a lot of number one problems in America. But let me boil it down to two…”

Don’t make me share the rest.

6 Comments

Filed under Hearth and Home, Politics, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

April 26, 2011 · 9:49 am

Pretty it up

Call me one lucky word nymph. I say how much I love words and how they’re used and people send give me their treasured dictionaries. I say how I much I love SweeTarts and people think of me when they see the candies in stores. I publicly fear coming up dry and people send me suggestions for topics.

I received many blessings this Easter, including SweeTarts and other goodies. One gift is something you and I will be able to enjoy together in weeks and months to come.

Get ready to enjoy picks from Hugh Rawson’s A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk: Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves and Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language, a treasure that came my way thanks to a very special Easter Bunny.

I’ve wanted to write about euphemisms for some time; in fact, I noticed that I had jotted it down on a pad where I park blog ideas, just before I received the book. I had been separating euphemisms from political correctness in my mind in hopes of sharing some subtleties. I’ll do this later, after I’ve had time to delve into 312 pages of euphemisms A to Z. Already I’ve come upon some gems. Doubletalk merits its own discussion altogether. It’s an art often disparagingly attributed to politicians but made famous by comedic greats Carl Reiner and Sid Caesar. Or maybe that’s doublespeak. I’ll look into that.

This dictionary might be my favorite yet; I see great utility. There’s another one out there that looks interesting: A Dictionary of Euphemisms: How Not To Say What You Mean by R.W. Holder, which could be of value to those practicing in the field of crisis communications.

While I’m at work on this, what are some of your favorite euphemisms?

(So far, mine might be “embroider the truth.”)

Leave a comment

Filed under All Things Wordish, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

April 21, 2011 · 8:12 am

Let the Triduum begin

Six weeks ago, I wrote about eating pancakes before the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.

Some 40 days have passed and we are now at the Holy Triduum—the three days preceding Easter, beginning today with Maundy Thursday, which commemorates, among other significant happenings, the Last Supper.

Our Jewish friends and family are in their season of Passover. It is indeed a holy week for those of Judeo-Christian faiths.

I thought about refraining from writing during this period so that I could fully observe the holy days, and I might still.

As I mentioned on Shrove Tuesday, I am following a daily devotional (On the Cross Road by Joan Trusty Moore) and  I have fallen about a week behind, so I hope to do some catching up. Also, I plan to be in church every day for the next four days–Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Great Vigil of Easter and Easter Sunday. If something strikes me, I’ll write. If not, I’ll be back soon.

In the meantime, whether your tradition involves observing holy days, taking your kids to Disney or on college tours for spring break or, if you live in the nation’s capital, enjoying having the roads to yourself, I invite you to share your comments on what this time means to you.

Happy days.

Leave a comment

Filed under Family and Friends, Holidays, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

April 15, 2011 · 9:07 am

By the book

About 10 years ago I realized that, as a society, we parents read way too many books about pregnancy and infancy and not enough about parenting. It was much longer ago that I marveled at the amount of energy and money we pour into infants, equipping ourselves and them with nursery furniture and fixtures, clothes and equipment, when everything is outgrown in the blink of an eye—and, in our case, occupies space in the attic for another 20 years.

As I glance at my bookcase, I count more than a dozen books about the first years of life. Were those really needed, when what we focused on at that stage was putting food in one end and cleaning up at the other? The loving came naturally.

By the time our children are adolescents, we are too busy pulling our hair out to read books. I did have one or two that helped in a pinch, but wouldn’t it have made better sense to read those in advance of onset?

Then came the dreaded Empty Nest Syndrome, for which I was completely unprepared—most likely because I was consumed with the here and now of the high school years. Then came the college years, during which parenting happens long distance. And then, the post college era.

Just weeks after our son graduated from college last spring, I struggled with identifying my role as a parent. You’d think your work is done, but isn’t your role just being redefined yet again? As the parent of an only child, I am the very model of the modern helicopter parent, always hovering. When is it time to fly out of the picture? How is my adult child going to navigate the adult world? Where are the books for this stage?

Well, it turns out there are plenty of books on parenting your adult child. I just never thought to look. I spent some time on Amazon.com this morning, when my son and his girlfriend went back to North Carolina after spending a week here, exploring possible relocation. Yes, we are inviting him back to the nest, so that he might have a better pad from which to launch the second year of his adult career. And I see there are nearly a dozen books on the subject.

Again, we contemplate our role as parents. We taught him what the cow says and where his nose is. Surely, 20 years later we can be of help in punching up a resume, crafting an elevator pitch, sharing advice on networking techniques, working up sample budgets and helping in the clarification of goals. But whose goals, his or ours?

I know the answer is this: we have an adult son who has matured into an outstanding man, caring and talented, in spite of us.

Now what?

6 Comments

Filed under Family and Friends, Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

March 31, 2011 · 9:31 am

Year of the Nymph

On March 31, 2010, I wrote my first blog post, questioning the value of blogs. My premise was that no one wants to read anyone else’s innermost thoughts—and blogging seemed to be the place where innermost feelings become outermost feelings. But I went ahead and started Word Nymph anyway.

My one-year anniversary post isn’t going to be anything spectacular, so if you’re reading this blog for the first time today, please dig deeper into the archives before you form a first impression.

If you’re among the small but potent community of regular readers and commenters, thank you. Thank you for your faithfulness, even on days when your basket is brimming with reading matter. Thank you also to the four or five people who advised me in the beginning of this undertaking. And thank you to my husband, who kisses me good night as I sit in the late hours staring at a blank screen and panicking about what I will write about the next day. Three hundred nine times, so far.

Over the course of the year, I’ve heard from people that they want more personal stories of my childhood or of the careless foibles of my adulthood. Others believe I should stick to my knitting; one reader said he was going to unsubscribe because I wasn’t doing enough on language and grammar. At times I’ve wondered how I might satisfy everyone in this regard. But, as Ricky Nelson once sang, “You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself.”

Some readers tell me they can’t keep up with my six-days-a-week schedule,  that they get behind and struggle to catch up. I don’t want people feeling like they’re drinking from a fire hose, so maybe I should slow down, pace myself so I don’t run out of ideas, or worse, generate forced content for the sake of adhering to a self-imposed schedule. On the other hand, some readers call me when I’ve posted late or missed a day, wondering where their Word Nymph is.

As I struggled with these questions, a friend and supporter sent me a link to another blogger’s ideas. These very usefully address my very conundrums. If you’re contemplating starting a blog yourself, or if you’d like to join me in contemplating Word Nymph’s future, you’ll find these thought-provoking—and a good read all around.

I know one thing for certain. Your comments–good or bad, serious or funny–are what make it worth the effort.

That’s it for today. Still thinking about the future. I welcome your ideas.

Thanks again for reading. Must find cake.

20 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Family and Friends, Foibles and Faux Pas, Reading, Technology and Social Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 22, 2011 · 9:04 am

Famed phobia

Do other Vanity Fair readers out there read the last page first? As soon as VF comes in the mail, I flip to the back, to the Proust Questionnaire, a regular feature in which celebrities are asked to reveal their true selves–even if their true selves drive them to provide flip answers.

The questionnaire is fashioned after a list of queries developed by French writer Marcel Proust, who believed that, in order to know others, we must first know ourselves. It asks things like “What is your idea pf perfect happiness?” and “What is your greatest achievement?” as well as “What do you consider the most overrated virtue?” and “How would you like to die?” Every month I read the responses of the featured celebrity and imagine what my own might be.

When asked which talent they’d most like to have, it’s surprising to me how many would like to play the piano. I would too, though being smarter and being able to sing would be higher on my list.

One of my favorites—an example of a flip response—was, when asked “What do you value most in your friends,” Dustin Hoffman replied, “private planes.”

We all relate to those who deplore cruelty in others and admire hard work. I’ve never related more to any answer than I did to one this month by New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter. To the question, “What is your greatest fear,” he said “Being unprepared.” Bingo.

We’ve all had that dream about going into a final exam after forgetting to go to class for a whole semester. Or being out in public without a stitch of clothing. I also have one in which I’ve neglected a pet too long. Gruesome, I know, but it reflects the depth of this fear I share with Jeter.

Perhaps it comes from showing up at Catholic school without my homework or permission slip, or not taking some of my college courses seriously enough. Somewhere along the way, these experiences of my youth led to some pretty compulsive behavior in my later years: packing three pairs of pantyhose for a one-night trip or leaving the house in perfect order, just in case something happens to me while I’m at 7-Eleven. Never running out of milk or floor wax or Q-tips. Reading the whole paper in the morning, not necessarily because I want to but because someone might ask me about a column or an obituary or the Dow. Getting my car inspected before it’s due and filing my taxes three weeks early. I can’t sleep at night if I don’t have at least an inkling of what I’ll blog about the next morning.

I know nothing whatsoever about Derek Jeter, or the New York Yankees or baseball for that matter. I do know, though, that Jeter’s favorite hero is The Incredible Hulk, that he would come back as an elephant, that he thinks he overuses the word “obviously” and that he hates bullies and his own skinny legs. I’d like to know how he overcomes that fear we both share and if he’s anywhere near as neurotic as I am in compensating for it.

What’s your greatest fear and, just to make me feel normal, what quirky compulsions do you throw at it?

2 Comments

Filed under Foibles and Faux Pas, Reading, Sports and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 15, 2011 · 8:00 am

Double trouble

Exactly when, or how, did Doppelgänger spring into popular consciousness?

For a word that originated as early as the 17th century, hovering below the radar for hundreds of years, it seems to have crashed back in to popular language quite suddenly.

When I first noticed people on Facebook putting up pictures of their celebrity doubles a year or so ago, I should have picked up on the Doppelgänger phenomenon, but didn’t. I sat that one out anyway, not because I was unfamiliar with the Doppelgänger (which I was), but because I don’t think I have a celebrity double necessarily. I’ve been told I look like Mary Crosby (She shot J.R.), Marsha Mason, Helen Hunt, Laura Linney and Stockard Channing, none of whom look at all like each other.

Since the time Celebrity Doppelgänger Week was last celebrated on Facebook, I’ve been hearing this quirky word all over the place. It was kind of like kerfuffle, which seemed to lie low for years before becoming a fad.

Doppelgänger has come to be synonymous with evil twin, alter ego and clone. But where did it come from? It’s not easy to say exactly, because there are many meanings and, as best I can tell, many origins. In fact, it seems even the Doppelgänger has a Doppelgänger.

It can mean an omen of danger or death; a hallucination of one’s own image out of the corner of one’s eye, sometimes as a result of electromagnetic stimulation of the brain; looking in the mirror and seeing two faces; a mythological apparition of evil or just someone who looks very much like someone else.

There are references to Doppelgänger in poetry and literature, as well as historical references going back hundreds of years in the United States and Europe.

If you’re interested, I encourage you to go out and learn about each culture’s interpretation. Or perhaps you already know all this and I am the one who is late to the party.

Make mine a party of six—my five Doppelgängers and me.

 

5 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Movies, Television and Radio, Reading, Technology and Social Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 5, 2011 · 8:21 am

A wicked good read

In December, I received the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West for my birthday. I had just seen the play and had heard the book upon which it was based was excellent.

It’s now March and I’m on page 28. At this rate, I’ll do well to finish the book before my next birthday.

This isn’t because I’m not enjoying Wicked. On the contrary, it’s because I am.

I like to read, but I don’t finish more than about two or three books a year. The better the book, the longer it takes me. Sure, I can polish off a Nora Roberts trilogy in one beach vacation. That’s like slurping up a triple scoop hot fudge sundae—no chewing involved, except for the crunchy sprinkles of guilty indulgence.

Newspapers, magazines and online news and opinion consume a healthy share of my reading.

Books are different. For me, a really good read isn’t always a page-turner. It’s not always a sundae. It’s a protracted dinner composed of superbly seasoned courses, savored slowly to appreciate each nuance. Like a good dish, a well-written sentence might hit the cranial taste buds with a burst of garlic, and leave a hint of smoked poblano on the back side.

The reason it’s taking me so long to read Wicked is that I am re-reading—and re-re-reading—each sentence. I enjoy each one so much that it pains me to move on.

To say author Gregory Maguire has a way with words is akin to saying Julia Child made a decent bowl of onion soup.

Let me feed you a few bites, just to whet your appetite:

“In the kitchen yard Malena floated gently, not with the normal gravity of pregnancy but as if inflated, a huge balloon trailing its strings through the dirt. She carried a skillet in one hand and a few eggs and the whiskery tips of autumn chives in the other.”

“In the minister’s lodge, Malena struggled with consciousness as a pair of midwives went in and out of focus before her. One was a fishwife, the other a palsied crone.”

“’Look, a rainbow,’ said the senior, bobbing her head. A sickly scarf of colored light hung on the sky.”

“After the double blow of the birth and his public embarrassment, he was not yet up to professional engagements and sat whittling praying beads out of oak, scoring and inscribing them with emblems of the Namelessness of God.”

“Malena, groggy from pinlobble leaves as usual, arched an eyebrow in confusion.”

Hungry?

Watch for a full review, likely around year’s end.

4 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Food, Reading

Tagged as , , , , ,