November 30, 2011 · 6:52 am

Charmed, I’m sure

This year, as in years past, charm bracelets are a hot holiday gift item.

Most of the ones I see advertised come ready-made, with the decorative trinkets already dangling from them: bulbous hearts, seashells, and other, dare I say, gaudy baubles that may or may not bear any special significance to their wearer.

There do seem to be individual charms available for those who might like to personalize their bracelets to reflect their love of cats or ladybugs.

In my day (that’s what ladies of my age say when we reminisce), we accumulated charms based on our interests, hobbies or places we’d visited.

I started adorning my charm bracelet early on, with tiny pendants I collected in my younger years. My mother insisted we have the charms soldered on to the bracelet so they didn’t fall off. I’m pretty sure that somewhere I have a pouch of charms that we never got around to having soldered.

Last night, after seeing several holiday commercials for charm bracelets, I decided to dig mine out. I wondered what people would learn about me—or at least who I was as a child—simply by what hangs from my bracelet.

There are 20 charms, not counting the ones that were never affixed. Almost every one has a story of one kind or another:

  1. A train engine, representing a cross-country trip my father and I took in 1969
  2. An Alpine tram car, from our family trip to Switzerland in 1970
  3. A Christmas tree
  4. A crutch, representing my brittle ankles
  5. An ice skate, right next to the crutch
  6. A telephone, on which I spent many hours when I was young
  7. A space capsule, representing man landing on the moon
  8. A house; in particular, 4615 Duncan Drive, Annandale, Virginia
  9. A swimmer (technically it’s a diver wearing a light blue swim cap), from when I took swimming lessons–and failed
  10. A piano. You’ve already heard that story.
  11. A pendant bearing my astrological sign, Sagittarius
  12. A four-leaf clover, engraved with Lucky 13 for my 13th birthday on the 13th
  13. A framed photograph of my best friend, Mary Engdahl, who I hope will one day Google herself and find me here, because I sure as heck can’t find her
  14. A church, with a tiny window through which you can read the Lord’s Prayer
  15. A cowboy hat from the Ponderosa Ranch, a souvenir from Mary Engdahl
  16. An Amish buggy, from my trip to Lancaster, Pa., with Lisa Vernon and her family
  17. A dachshund, representing Gretchen, an early pet that used to belong to my Nana Marie
  18. A yellow and green flowered sleeping bag with the words Slumber Party engraved, representing a time when family friends stayed with us for an extended period. The charm was a gift from Becky Sterago who, when she gave it to me upon leaving, said sharing my room had been like one long slumber party
  19. Ballet slippers, representing another attempt at something I never mastered
  20. A black cat, representing Gus, my first feline friend

Somewhere I have an Eiffel Tower, a Sweet 16 and a few others, but I have no idea where they are.

I’ve already shared accounts of the family trip to Europe, a little about my love of the phone, my dislike of piano lessons and my zodiac sign. Many of the others could easily be woven into blog tales.

Which ones would you like to hear? Or do you prefer I keep my memories to the quiet jingle of the bracelet?

Better yet, what’s on your charm bracelet?

16 Comments

Filed under Beauty and Fashion, Family and Friends, Holidays

Tagged as , , ,

November 29, 2011 · 8:10 am

Penalty for possession

Long before the Word Nymph aired her first grievance, a friend had whispered a complaint into my sympathetic ear. She wondered what prompted those close to her, God-love-’em, to make the names of all restaurants and retailers possessive.

She observed that her mother, along with so many of our mothers’ generation, always adds an apostrophe + s to the name of just about every business in town.

Perhaps it’s because so many businesses used to be owned by individuals: Mario’s Pizza. Harry’s Bar. Bertha’s Mussels. (All right, not Bertha’s; that’s another story.)

Years ago, department store names, such as Woodward & Lothrop, The Hecht Company and R.H. Macy & Co. were shortened to such neighborly nicknames as Woodies, Hecht’s and Macy’s. The nicknames took hold, to no one’s objection. Eventually, these stores branded their possessives.

Now, however, businesses whose names were neither possessive to begin with nor shortened to nicknames are being made so by those who link every business to a person.

In this shopping season, let us be reminded to call our retailers by their correct names. It is Nordstrom, not Nordstrom’s. Lord & Taylor, not Lord & Taylor’s.

Far more egregious examples exist with regard to restaurants. It’s gone rampant. Let us not assume that every restaurant is named after a person. Restaurants take great care to give their establishments fitting and clever names, many of which don’t bear the moniker of the owner, founder or chef. Yet we can’t seem to help adding an apostrophe + s. Examples of these violations are too numerous to mention, many coming from within my own circle.

Maybe these complaints are nit-picky. Can we at least agree that, when the name of a business has a possessive built in, we should fight any urge to add an apostrophe + s?

Here’s an example. A Mexican restaurant near me is called Mi Rancho, Spanish for “My Ranch.” Is it not redundant to call it Mi Rancho’s? The same goes for any establishment beginning in Mon, Mes, Notre, Nuestro or any other possessive pronoun, as well as any beginning with Chez.

This also stands when the name of the restaurant is a noun; Panera, for example, meaning “Bakery.” In English, we would not say we are going to the bakery’s. Why, then, do we say we’re having lunch at Panera’s? Let’s not.

Sorry for the grumpies. I’ve suddenly become very hungry.

(But while we’re at it, it’s Williams-Sonoma, not Williams and Sonoma. Jones New York, not Jones of New York.)

When in doubt, take your cue from the sign:

5 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Beauty and Fashion, Food, Marketing/Advertising/PR, Rants and Raves

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

November 28, 2011 · 6:32 am

Part-timers disease

Now then.

More than two months ago, I announced here that I’d be letting out a little slack in the blog, to free up mental energy for a busy work season. I was buckling down to pressing obligations and, until those were tended to satisfactorily, there’d be no time for frivolous writing. Big mistake.

If you’re wondering how my September 23 resolutions turned out, I indeed completed the work, meeting all deadlines. To top that off, I pulled off the largest closet cleaning in 20 years.

Then, I erected more barriers. Believing I couldn’t clear my head enough to get my blogging groove back if obligations remained, I addressed, signed and stuffed 230 Christmas cards and finished 95 percent of my shopping. I even have most of my out-of-town packages ready to go in the mail.

But every time I sat down to tap out what used to be a free-flowing daily ditty, my skin itched. My teeth clenched.

Oh, sure, I’ve sneezed out a handful of posts this month, but they’re not my best work. And they’ve troubled me all the more for their awkward sparseness.

In an attempt to reverse my blog atrophy, I spent yesterday afternoon re-reading my blog posts of last November and December. I didn’t even recognize the writing.

This setback has proven the validity something my father once said. Over the last few years, people asked if he had considered shifting his writing and performance schedule into a lower gear. His answer was always that part time doesn’t work. The frenetic schedule kept him sharp and productive and able to maintain the rhythm. I see now that he was absolutely right.

(To give equal time, my mother suggested that, if I cleaned out my closets, things might flow more freely in other areas of my life. She too was right.)

Today is the first Monday of the season of Advent. Yesterday our priest encouraged us to take up renewed discipline—of the spiritual kind. I do intend to do that and, now that I’m ahead on many of my Christmas preparations, I might even have energy left to artificially resuscitate my inner Erma Bombeck, William Safire, Roseanne Roseannadanna, or whoever else I feel like being this season. Maybe even myself.

Did I really begin with “Now then?” That makes no sense.

4 Comments

Filed under Family and Friends, Holidays, Marketing/Advertising/PR, Technology and Social Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

November 15, 2011 · 7:51 am

Stream of unconsciousness

It’s interesting where roads lead. Sometimes a little free association can take us down an amusing path to sparkling treasure.

For me, the starting point was ballroom dancing. As a freelancer, my flavor of the week can be just about anything; this time, it’s dancing. Often when I start a new writing project, I go to sleep with ideas swirling about, in hopes a few will collide and stir creative copy. Other times, it’s just dust.

While listening to the radio on Sunday, I sang along with Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” as I had a thousand times before. It’s a beautiful song. This time, though, I wondered what in the world it meant that “We skipped the light fandango.” I thought about it. Could the phrase be a variation on “trip the light fantastic?”

I always considered trip the light fantastic to be ritzy and glitzy, from another era. I’ve never found occasion to use it in conversation, and certainly never understood where it came from or what it even meant exactly. (For you younger readers, it means to dance nimbly or lightly in a pattern.)

On Monday I woke up mulling my latest writing challenge. Might there be a place for tripping the light fantastic? I looked it up to ensure I understood the meaning and origin of the expression. Good thing too because I learned that, not only did it come from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but “tripping the light fantastic” was sixties drug lingo.

I continued searching. And I found a most delightful poem by John Milton, L’Allegro, published in 1645. It’s 150 lines long; I’ll share just the first excerpt that popped up:

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free …

Don’t you just love it?

Later in the poem, I found bonus words I’ll tuck away, should I ever be hired to write about beer:

To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer’d shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a Sunshine Holyday
Till the live-long daylight fail,
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.

So here’s to A Whiter Shade of Pale.

1 Comment

Filed under All Things Wordish, Marketing/Advertising/PR, Music, Quotes, Reading, Theater

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

November 12, 2011 · 11:43 am

Write me a letter

All right, wordies, who’s up for a Word Nymph challenge?

Here’s the background:  This week I wrote my first letter to the editor of The Washington Post. That’s significant considering I’ve been reading the Post since I could read. In fact, I still have the Sunday edition my father bought the day I was born. It’s also surprising that I only now penned my first gripe, considering the nitpickiness of my nature.

Like many newspapers, the Post has suffered sizeable cutbacks in recent years, many of which have hit the editing team. Up to now, when I’ve noticed an occasional typo or less occasional grammatical, spelling or punctuation error in my hometown paper, my reaction has been more sympathetic than critical.

However, last Sunday, an erroneous subhead provoked my inner schoolmarm. I fired off a pithy primer on subject-verb agreement that I thought might have a chance of being printed, if not in the daily Letters, then surely in Saturday’s “Free For All” space, typically set aside for granular grievances.

I awoke today—Saturday—with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, and ran out to get the paper. I flipped directly to the editorial pages. Nada. I wondered: Was my letter too nitpicky? Too esoteric? Not well written enough?

Here’s the challenge:  1. Read the following headline, along with its subhead (sorry, I can’t find a link to the original editorial). 2. See if you notice the grammatical error. 3. Submit, in the Comments section below, your pretend letter to the editor, using fewer than 200 words (mine was 106). The best submissions will win a prize and the opportunity to help me the next time I’m stirred to speak up. Extra credit goes to anyone who can furnish the link to the editorial.

Picking on Catholic University
A complaint of bias against Muslims seem frivolous.

Go.

11 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, News

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 3, 2011 · 8:20 am

Silly songs

While we’re on the subject of song lyrics, may I share something else?

I’ve told you before that all twenty-something of my iPod playlists are themed. Surprised? Each one is fashioned around an era, a genre, a mood or a bit of subject matter, sometimes a bit subtle but always cohesive.

Recently I went a little wild and created a playlist willy-nilly. No theme; I just named it Background Music. I made it for a little get-together, to which most invitees didn’t show, so it’ll be safe to bring out again.

Meanwhile, I put it on two CDs, in my own version of Shuffle (songs organized in alphabetical order, pretty crazy, eh?). While listening to these, I discovered that a theme has nonetheless emerged—laugh-out-loud lyrics.

For example:

“They say that absence makes the heart grow fungus.”

“I don’t remember you looking any better, but then again I don’t remember you.”

“My dog’s not in your dumpster.”

“Mama’s been cryin’ in the kitchen since morning; she cried right through As The World Turns.”

“Trying my best to set the highway on fire, but my bicycle won’t go no faster.”

“You think you’re so smart but I’ve seen you naked.”

“I dug up this old photograph; look at all that hair we had.”

“When it rains, I pour.”

Have you any of your own that might have zipped by us without notice? Do share.

1 Comment

Filed under Music

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

November 2, 2011 · 8:20 am

Gavotte words?

Do you ever think about—really think about—where we get our vocabulary words?

They come from an endless variety of places. There are the ones we were forced to learn in school, the ones we read in books and looked up, the ones we heard smart people use and adopted as our own. There are the ones our parents wrote on cards and made us study in the small room of the house.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still collecting vocabulary words. From time to time I spotlight my favorite ones in this space. Right next to the song lyrics.

Only recently have I thought about the words I learned in my adolescent years as a radio junkie. One day last week, while in the car, I remembered the first time I ever heard the word invincible. I wonder if you learned it from the same source.

If you’re about my age, and you grew up listening to Top 40 hits of the 60s and 70s, you too might have learned invincible from Helen Reddy. “I am strong, I am invincible, I am wom-a-a-a-n.”

I’m making an effort now to listen more closely and nostalgically to the oldies so I can build the list.

I had never heard of a funeral pyre until 1967, when The Doors sang, “and our love become a funeral pyre,” which I confess I thought was funeral parlor; it makes about as much sense, not to mention the lack of subject-verb agreement. Leon Russell came along in 1972 with “I’m up on a tight wire, flanked by life and the funeral pyre.”  I still didn’t know what a pyre was but I liked the song and, looking back, it’s pretty darn poetic.

Let’s skip over pompatus, because it’s been overdone and everyone knows pompatus isn’t really a word. Next?

Again in 1972, I learned a word that I couldn’t imagine ever using, but it caught my attention when Carly Simon sang, “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” I think I did try to look up gavotte as a curious 12-year-old, and have been looking for the right opportunity to use it ever since. It was also in  “You’re So Vain” that I first heard of Saratoga.

In 1973, I first heard the word espionage. Anyone remember where? It’s obscure, I know. “He’s a mastermind in the ways of espionage.” All these years later, I still know all the words  to “Uneasy Rider” by Charlie Daniels (from which I also first heard of John Birch and Mario Andretti).

I know there are more. Can we keep this going?

8 Comments

Filed under All Things Wordish, Music

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

October 25, 2011 · 8:28 am

Wrap song

Here in the Eastern United States, October’s final week welcomes the brilliant colors of hardwood trees, the seasonal bloom of bushy chrysanthemums and the annual return of my favorite cold-weather symbol.

From the soft underbelly of the Himalayan yak to the vulnerable neck of the female human, comes one of the world’s most beautiful and utile inventions—the Pashmina.

The Pashminas were out in their vibrant glory this past weekend, as they should be.

I have several fringed rectangular scarves, though only three qualify as authentic Pashmina. But whether woven of this particular Asian cashmere or its synthetic sister, I’ll wear and enjoy each one throughout the season and, if I’m lucky, maybe even acquire a missing color.

Indulge me, if you would, in an ode:

You, oversized scarf, keep me toasty when you’re folded, twisted, swirled.
You protect me from the breezes, as a blanket, when unfurled.
O, Pashmina, dear woolen protector, without you how could I live?
Let us share our ritual of sorting you by color, à la Roy G. Biv.

Ladies and gentlemen, feel free to add your own verse or salute your favorite article of autumnal attire.

9 Comments

Filed under Beauty and Fashion

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

October 21, 2011 · 7:50 am

Well connected

This was my first full week at home in a while. In the last month or so, I’ve spent 15 days in airports, some 20 airports in all, counting connections. You might say I’ve been going at terminal velocity.

Or you might say I’ve been on an extended hub crawl. (Okay, I stole that pun from a recent issue of the US Airways in-flight magazine; being that they graciously plugged my blog last year, I owe them attribution.)

This last wave didn’t yield epic tales, as previous trips almost always have. Thankfully, this time I’m left with just a few bits of footage, which remain stored in my mental DVR:

  • There was a medical emergency mid-flight. The crew called for a doctor to tend to an ailing passenger. The woman beside me—who had noticed the clinical trial data I was reviewing in preparation for moderating a medical program—tried  to volunteer me. “Aren’t you a doctor? Can’t you do something?” I wanted to tell her that if a doctor emerged, I’d be happy to introduce him, but that’s all I was qualified to do. Instead, I said nothing.
  • Before an early flight, I watched as a woman poured Starbucks coffee into a child’s sippy cup. I was horrified, but didn’t say anything.
  • One morning I stopped for breakfast at an airport restaurant called Real Food. I ordered a pancake and bacon. When I went to cut into the pancake with a knife and fork, it was so hard that it snapped my fork in two. I couldn’t even get my teeth through the bacon. I was tempted to accuse the manager of serving Pretend Food but instead I threw my breakfast Frisbee in the trash without saying a word.
  • At what I assume was a pet-friendly hotel, I watched a dog drop his business in a carpeted corridor and walk away nonchalantly with its owner. Not a peep out of me.

No, I’m just a frequent flyer who sits quietly in the gate area listening to the Bluetoothed blowhard (there’s one at every gate) loudly putting together the big corporate deal. And I shake my head at the Smartphone Sallies who fight over the last available outlet, scrounging for electricity as if it were crack cocaine.

My personal addiction? Airport jewelry kiosks. This credit card bill’s going to be a doozy. I already know these impulse buys are irresponsible, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything.

4 Comments

Filed under Travel

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

October 20, 2011 · 8:43 am

Women’s lib

This goes out to the ladies out there.

Fire up your Kindle, visit the library, dash over to Barnes & Noble, however you hook your ladyself up to a good read, and get The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted And Other Small Acts of Liberation, a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Berg.

You might know Elizabeth Berg. She’s written more than 20 books. Some years ago, my mother gave me a copy of What We Keep. I started reading it to a hospice patient and loved it. Well, I loved the first few chapters anyway. My patient passed before we finished and I’ve had trouble picking it back up.

While I was browsing in a bookstore with my sister-in-law this summer, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted called to me from the shelf.

It’s not a diet book or a self-help book or even a poor-me chick book. It’s a rich collection of hilarious short stories, each funnier and more touching than the last. Not every chapter has to do with food, but Berg’s characters do a lot of living—for better or worse—at life’s table.

One chapter is simply a letter from a woman to her granddaughter, instructing the girl on “How to Make an Apple Pie.” The chapter is 12 pages long–and one of the most entertaining recipes I’ve ever read.

So what’s with the book title? Each chapter includes, implicitly or explicitly, one small act of liberation. You don’t always see it coming but, before you turn to the next chapter, a well whaddaya know, along with a sweet bite of inspiration, will pop. There’s even a section in the back for book club discussions.

Do pick up a copy. I promise you’ll find it delicious. And, if not, you’ll have yourself one peach of an apple pie recipe.

Gentlemen, join in the fun. You might even get a chuckle or two. Or rack up a few sensitivity points with your sweetie.

5 Comments

Filed under Reading

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,