Marvell's Home
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near
General Quotation of the Day
June 23, 2008
If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
—George Carlin
Literary Quotation
July 14, 2008
A Tale
This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.
He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;
Seeking, I think, a light that waits
Still as a lamp upon a shelf, –
A land with hills like rocky gates
Where no sea leaps upon itself.
But he will find that nothing dares
To be enduring, save where, south
Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
On beauty with a rusted mouth, –
Where something dreadful and another
Look quietly upon each other.
Pictorial Selection
July 12, 2008
Rowing team practices just above John Ross Bridge, while vintage cabin cruiser sedately moored lends contrast.
Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day
The Word of the Day for July 23, 2008 is:
natatorial • \nay-tuh-TOR-ee-ul\ • adjective
*1 : of or relating to swimming
2 : adapted to or characterized by swimming
Felix’s Example Sentence:
Their natatorial skills were of little use to those passengers from the Titanic who went into the water rather than into a lifeboat.
Did you know?
On a warm spring weekday afternoon, the local swimming hole beckons . . . and boys will be boys. “Mr. Foster [the town truant officer] knew very well where to find us . . . at our vernal and natatorial frolics,” confessed John Gould in The Christian Science Monitor (January 10, 1992), some 70 years after that warm spring day of his youth. The Latin verb “natare,” meaning “to swim,” gave English the word “natatorial” and its variant “natatory.” It also gave us “natant” (”swimming or floating in water”); “supernatant” (”floating on the surface”); “natation” (”the action or art of swimming”); and last but not least, “natatorium” (”an indoor swimming pool”).
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
Music Pick
July 12, 2008
Last month, we listened to this young woman and her band at the local Tremont Tavern. Singer and band were strong, clear and rewarding, in spite of bar noise and obnoxious individuals in the Friday happy hour crowd. The music was a mix of bluegrass and traditional American music. Good stuff.
Funny Stuff
June 13, 2008
The Ecologists and Ingratitude
From The New Yorker magazine, the Friday 13th cartoon. Available from CartoonBank.
