Hermenautic Circle blog

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Pocket Book Edition
January, 1961
signature "J. Polaeno"?

I had a piece in the Boston Globe’s Ideas section yesterday about Christmas Superstitions.

If you love reading about old superstitions (and I really do), hie yourself to Google Book Search and look for British Popular Customs, Present and Past. Be warned, though, that reading aloud from this to others is something that can be done only in very small doses. There’s a limit to how many “Did you know”s? most people want to hear ….

My friend Peter is most definitely not a wine importer--he has chided me many times for describing or introducing as such. Rather he works for a wine importer. He prefers beer to wine, doesn't drink coffee, and unlike everyone else in Manhattan, he does not boast nor brag about himself. He is humble to a fault. At first I found his slackadasical attitude towards the grape (and everything else really) confusing; he knows the restaurant and wine worlds quite well, has an excellent palette, and yet he seems quite bored with it all. He actually says things like, "Oh, it's so hard going on all these wine tours in Italy. I get so tired of eating and drinking." He would rather talk about indie rock harpist Joanna Newsom than argue terroir. But his whatever attitude is actually quite refreshing and it means that when he actually likes a wine, it's very, very special.

Enter a layered, fruity, complex white wine from Valle Isarco in Northern Italy. I recently order a mixed case from Peter,letting him do the selecting. The first bottle I opened was this little dream--Cantina Produttori Valle Isarco EKK Kerner Della Valle Isarco Sudtirol-Alto Adige Eisacktaler DOC - 2006. It is made in a more German or Austrian style than you'd expect from an Italian wine, with a nice amount of crispness. Apples, peaches, a bit of cream, it's utterly delicious, with just enough acid to work amazingly well both on its own or with food.

I served it with Thai food--a super-fast "shrimp in coconut sauce" I made last night. I heated coconut milk with a teaspoon of curry pasted, added some meyer lemon, broiled the shrimp, steamed some broccoli in the microwave and threw all of it on leftover brown rice. Topped with chopped cilantro and green onions, it was a perfectly OK weeknight meal. The wine made it very Friday night.

We finished the bottle watching the Grinch Who Stole Christmas with our two boys, feeling less Grinch-like than usual.

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Cranky night. Frustrated by rl/sl communications, frequent crashes, and slow-motion collaborations on projects. I suspect some of my cohorts are getting distracted, as Achariya says, "by the shiny". /me snaps her fingers and mutters "let's go let's go".

AP — TUALATIN, Ore. — Police say Ryan Osbrink was getting ready for a job at the sheriff’s department and practicing his draw when his .45-caliber pistol discharged, killing his wife.

Tualatin police say 23-year-old Kimberly Osbrink was entering the room Sunday night when the bullet struck her in the abdomen.

The Clark County, Washington, sheriff’s department has delayed hiring the 24-year-old Osbrink until the investigation is complete. He was to report for duty on Wednesday.

The police say the shooting was unintentional, and the weapon was Osbrink’s.

jay: delayed? delayed! maybe he’s not for hiring, re: wife killing/poor gun habits?

[picture from Flickr -- thanks, bradlauster!]

David Smay sent me a link to a lovely long article in the Guardian about using unusual words: From albedo to zugunruhe, in which the author, James Meek, talks about words he hasn’t known and his own uneasiness about using rarer (but more exact) words.

It also has this great quote in it:

The point at which a man starts finding discrepancies in dictionaries is probably the point at which he should go for a long holiday to a place that is sleazy and restoring.

My take (and yes, I know it’s self-serving, in that I make dictionaries) is that, in belletristic writing, when presented with an otherwise-equal choice between a fun, unusual word, and a boring, commonplace word, you should always choose the unusual one. Why deny your readers the “aha!” moment of finding a perfectly apt, elegantly descriptive word?

(Of course, I also think “when in doubt, wear orange,” so you perhaps should take this with a grain of salt.)

Literary writing is a way to introduce readers not just to facts and ideas and emotions but to beautiful words: imagine writing a guidebook to a place that left out the best restaurants because they weren’t on the subway line … if something is worthwhile, people will find a way to get there. If a word is perfect, people will figure it out.

I am NOT suggesting that technical or workaday writing should be full of fifty-cent words; “This way to the egress” is a scam, not an invitation to learning. (Or, at least, not an invitation to learning that is received gratefully!) But literature, long-form journalism, and essay writing allow for more lexical scope, and you should take advantage of it, to the best of your ability. Why not?

A subscriber from long ago rediscovered us again today, and asked particularly after one article: Noun Overuse Phenomenon Article, from Vol. 2, No. 4. So there it is — click on the link to read it. It’s a favorite!

Please remember that if you are ordering VERBATIM as a gift subscription and our link is recalcitrant, you can always let the order go through and email us with the gift recipient’s address. We are not so overwhelmed by the press of orders that we won’t be able to match up your payment and your gift …

Bill was a good friend. One day, as all curious preteen good friends of the opposite sex do, we decided to take our friendship to the next level: we were going to make out. I don’t remember the reason why we decided to complete such a mature part of our lives that particular day; it was broad daylight on a summer afternoon and Bill’s mom, a school employee who was off during summer, was lurking somewhere in the vicinity. Thus we decided we had to keep this tonsil hockey session discreet. We snuck around the back of Bill’s dad’s tool shed: it was perfect.

We got ready. I licked my lips, took a deep breath; not only was I about to taste whatever Bill had for lunch, but I would also get a taste of what it was like to be a woman, or at least a teenager, which every 11 year old girl desperately longs for. This was it.

Bill leaned in, and I took a slight step backward and just as the magic started happening I lost my balance and stepped backward right into a ditch. The moment was over. Our hearts stopped fluttering, birds stopped singing, sweet music stopped playing and the ambient noise of cars and the hum of lawn mowers came back, along with our we’ve-never-done-this-before nervousness. Bill helped me out of the ditch and we decided to go play videogames instead – maybe we’d give adulthood a try later.

As we were walking across the yard, my foot felt a little sticky. I took a glance down and realized my entire foot and the grass surrounding it was covered in blood, and there was a fresh supply spurting from a gaping wound in my left ankle. Bill raced off to find his mom and I hobbled up the sun-faded wooden stairs, sat down, and waited patiently on the deck. His mom came dashing out of the house, wide-eyed and frantic with a cordless phone in one and a dishtowel in the other.

Her face was paler the tan line where my socks should've been (a combination of socks and shoes could've probably prevented this mess in the first place). She dropped the phone twice as she fumbled to dial my mom and shoved the towel on the gash; as it soaked with blood she would peep under it to see the carnage, mumble some kind of frantic "oh dear" concerned mother type of mumble, and ask me how I was feeling. Perhaps I was still reeling from my recent brush with adulthood, but I wasn’t feeling much of anything. All I kept saying was, "wow, it's so cool, look you can see bone!" Every time I said it, her face turned from white to green and back again.

My mom's car flew into the driveway and she charged up the stairs. A nurse for a million years, she automatically went into nurse mode. It was determined that I needed stitches, stat! We called our family doctor and were instructed to go to a hospital that we had never been to before, in area we knew nothing about. My leg continued to saturate towel after towel as we turned around, backed up, and made U-turns around the unfamiliar town. Once we found the hospital, a disenchanted receptionist casually glanced at the cascade of blood erupting from my ankle, told us to take a seat and handed us a box of tissues to dam the bleeding. After we finished the first box, we were given a second one and told to wait patiently; apparently nobody saw this as an emergency.

I got seven stitches, which completely impressed my fifth grade friends. When they asked what happened, I just said I fell in a ditch –- no need for details. I may not have become a woman that sultry summer day, but I became "the girl with stitches, cooool!" and that was good enough for me.

I keep meaning to post versions of the various talks I’ve given (the ones that are not videos) but I haven’t yet, for myriad reasons … including trying to get actual work done. But the Ignite talk I gave was pretty short (five minutes!), so I thought I’d try to put it up here.

Slide 1: I always include a definition of ‘lexicographer’ when I talk; keeps people from elbowing their neighbor and asking ‘what did she say she did again’?

Slide 2: Because this was a tech talk, I also pointed out that I was a geek. (I wore this skirt, by the way, for visual reinforcement of the concept.)

Slide 3: We all think of dictionaries as very concrete, solid objects. (You wouldn’t want to drop one on your foot, would you?) But actually …

Slide 4: Dictionaries might be solid, but their innards are really collections of ABSTRACTIONS. Definitions are made by taking a lot of specific datapoints (uses of a word in context) …

Slide 5: … and averaging them out to a more general meaning.

Slide 6: This may seem really obvious to YOU … [note: this is my favorite Flickr image EVER]

Slide 7: But many people think that lexicographers just “decide” what a word means. Nope! That would be really hard work … it’s easier (and more accurate) to look at examples of use.

Slide 8: What can you tell about this word [pirgate] from these examples? Well, I bet you know it’s a verb, that you can do it TO something, and that it’s something you might not want to do. This is all information you know implicitly because you know how English works.

Slide 9: How about now? Now you know this use is a noun, and it’s a kind of person — the kind of person you don’t want to be, probably.

Slide 10: The truth is that “meaning” is created by lots of little points of data, in the same way that persistence-of-vision effects are created by lots of little points of light. A diffuse set of data can look pretty solid if it moves fast enough …

Slide 11: But you really do have to have ENOUGH data for this persistence-of-vision effect to work. If I say a guy is wearing a tux and holding a martini, is he a waiter, or is he James Bond? You don’t have enough data to tell.

Slide 12: So lexicographers in their labs try to distill all those usage data points into high-octane liquid definitions.

Slide 13: Now, if you want to brew your own, and want a lot of examples of use, there are more places than ever to try to find them …

Slide 14: Although it doesn’t work for every word … (especially not ‘pirgate’, since I made it up).

Slide 16: And, of course, the examples you DO find might not be helpful.

Slide 16: The big question, though, isn’t really WHERE to find enough examples — that’s pretty straightforward. The big question is: if we agree that dictionary definitions are abstractions of meaning, is there a better way to represent those abstractions than this:

Slide 17: … the boring old print dictionary?

Slide 18: Could we show relationships between examples in a less-linear way?

Slide 19: Could we convey those abstractions in a more powerful way?

Slide 20: That’s the problem I’m working on every day … [go visit my blog, yadda yadda, big plug for Creative Commons and the awesome nice sharing people on Flickr.]

(All my presentations are Creative Commons-sharealike, by the way, so if you ever want to remix me into a rap song or create a dictionary-talk novel or whatever, go right on ahead. If you see me speak somewhere and want a copy of my slide deck, just email and ask.]

And that’s what I talked about at Ignite last Thursday. More or less. I didn’t make any notes, so this is from what I remember of what I said off the top of my head!

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"Where the slightly rusty, out of tune magic happens." ®

It was early May and her name was Lena Callaghan. My sister Tasha made me do it. She had known for a long time that I had developed an embarrassingly obvious crush on her long time friend. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear on a stack of bibles that my sister’s only goal was to completely embarrass me in front of her friends and, worst of all, the girl of my many wet dreams and pleasant fantasies. Lena and I started as friends, but before friendship, we were nothing. We weren’t even cordial to one another. We just had nothing to say to each other for whatever reason at the time.


Lena confided in my sister on my birthday in 1995 that she had in fact developed a little crush on me as well. My sister was never good at keeping a secret. She instantly ran to me and told me what Lena had said. Since I shared Lena’s feeling for me, I decided to ask her out and I picked the perfect time to do so—her birthday. She thought I was sweet, comparing my asking her out on her birthday to being proposed to on Valentines Day. I hadn’t made the connection but I didn’t care. I got her!


We were both fourteen years old and in our second year of high school. We hadn’t ever had a relationship before each other so we had no one to live up to and no one to be better than. It was beautiful. Weeks had gone by after we started to date and Lena and I had done nothing more than hold hands. That was it. My sister noticed that we were shy and afraid to give each other as much as a kiss on the cheek. She in her own way tested my manhood and I wasn’t happy.


It was offensive, it was embarrassing and I felt insulted. After several minutes of back and forth bantering, I sat down on the bed next to Lena, grabbed her shoulder and turned her to me; then I planted one on her. I threw her down on the bed, gingerly and kissed her on the lips for nearly forty-five seconds.


Lena gave me my first kiss. I’ll always remember that and I’ll always love her for that. Because of that kiss, I had confirmed what I had known for a very long time but refused to admit to myself - I was gay.

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Welcomed into a game of blog tag by Achariya (http://www.achariya.net/2007/12/taggz0rzed.html)
here are 8 random facts about self:

I was born on an army base
I’ve studied ancient slingshot techniques in Mallorca, Spain
As a kid I spent a lot of time hanging around funeral homes
I prefer boots but welcome an excuse to dress up
I’m a printmaker and illustrator who hasn’t done either in four years
My first computer game was Adventure (Colossal Cave)
I’m more shy in SL than I am in RL
If it weren’t for Caledon, I would have quit SL in a matter of days…

Extending the charge to the following, if they’re willing to accept:
Project Q
Iason Hassanov
Soleil Snook
Abigail Raymaker
Emily Orr
Tinsel Silvera
Eggberta Echegaray

By MARTIGA LOHN, Associated Press Writer

AP - ST. PAUL, Minn. - On the slaughterhouse floor at Quality Pork Processors Inc. is an area known as the “head table,” but not because it is the place of honor. It is where workers cut up pigs’ heads and then shoot compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out.

But now the grisly practice has come under suspicion from health authorities.

Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the plant in Austin, Minn. — all of them employed at the head table — developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

The use of compressed air to remove pig brains was suspended at Quality Pork earlier this week while authorities try to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Quality Pork has not said what it does with the pork brains. Sold fresh and in cans, pork brains are fried and eaten in sandwiches or gravy in some parts of the country. But it is a small market, and the American Meat Institute, which represents most of the nation’s pork processors, does not even track sales.

In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs’ heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull.

jay: am i being a sensitive hippie vegan here or is this pretty gnarly to the rest of you, too? sometimes i lose perspective.

R. Walker posted a photo:

R. Walker posted a photo:

The Project Food Store, in pretty bad shape on my last long visit to NO, not long after Katrina, is open again. The revamped projects across the street look fairly good, though I wasn't around long enough to judge. Here is the same building in October 2005, and in 2003.

R. Walker posted a photo:

R. Walker posted a photo:

I completely forgot to post that I’m talking tonight at the Chicago Ignite!

I’ll be talking about dictionaries. (Whoa! Surprised you there, did I?) I’ll also be bringing the estrogen to the geek potluck (in other words, I’m the only woman speaking).

It’s at the Debonair Social Club, 1575 N. Milwaukee Ave. Event starts at 6 p.m., I’m talking at the end of the first block (so close to 9 p.m.)

If you’re Chicago-local, hope to see you there! (If you’re not Chicago-local, it’s not too late to move here, y’know. I mean, it is for TONIGHT, but not in the larger context of your life plan. I’m just sayin’.) Don’t let the four inches snowfall predicted for this evening put you off, or anything.

Photo by KatieW

We've all read the articles about the benefits of red wine and moderate drinking. Now I found a blogger who claims that it works to ward of illness. Brilliant for me, then that I drink a half bottle of vino each night. Maybe I'll be illness-free this winter.

Don’t get me wrong — I loved the *idea* of Twitter, I just didn’t think a constant stream of messages such as

12:02 “Reading New Scientist“
12:11 “Still reading New Scientist“
12:45 “In front of computer, reading the Internet”

would be interesting. To me, or to anyone else.

But (and there’s always a ‘but’), Twitter is perfect for a task that I’ve been having trouble managing: immediate new-word filing. If I’m at my desk, sure, I can append any new-to-me words I find in my reading to a file. And if I’m out and about, I can make a note on my Treo, or in my Moleskine. But they aren’t all in the Same Place, and so consolidation has to happen. (Note: I am not so good — actually, frakkin’ terrible — at consolidation, of any sort.)

Twitter lets me post a WOTD (word-of-the-day) from anywhere, and then it is nicely stored ALL IN ONE PLACE. The limit of 140 characters per ‘tweet’ keeps me from rambling on and on. And it’s semi-public (you can follow my messages if you like, I’m emckean on Twitter) which allows for the possibility of feedback.

If you really want a reliable, highly structured WOTD — my Twitter feed is not for you. (What you want is Double-Tongued Dictionary.) But if you just want to ride shotgun while I read, go ahead and add me to your “follow” list.

If *you* want to do the same thing with the words you notice, go ahead and use the tag “wotd:” — Twitter has a ‘track’ function, so if you prefix your messages with this tag, I’ll be able to follow your new words easily. Fun, no? (BTW, Twitter is free.)

I’ll try to keep my Twitter feed just for the WOTDs — although a few rollerskating or “seeing-cool-music” tweets might make it through. Just a warning.

The boy at the corner gave me that look first. I was walking by on one of those painful winter days pinching your cheeks pink and your back hunches bracing the cold like a punch in a stomach. When his eyes first glanced in my direction, I thought he might be awaiting someone. He was tall and thin like a musician. His hair was dark and curly, his face pale. All he wore to keep warm was a blue scarf. His hands were shoved in his pockets. It was really too cold to wait even a seconds pause but his eyes caught mine in an awkward intimacy.

He locked his gaze on mine. Even if I wanted to tear myself away, my eyes were caught. I knew this happenstance quite well: A girl did not need to be prettier than a crow for a boy to stare. I knew that but my heart started pounding heavy bass and my cheeks flushed. If possible for them to redden even further, at that point rouge was a blush and my cheeks were deeper than Marilyn's blazing red.

The look barely lasted in time but it engraved my soul. I was more let down about the time than the deeper consequences. I walked quickly past the corner nearly tripping over the ice patches on the sidewalk. A strong wind soaked my bones and drenched my blood with its severity. I was nearly home and the "kiss" I had just received from a total stranger fleeted like the way it had come.

After some minutes of this death march, I was at my door at last fumbling in my purse for key. It was in the same pocket as last time I looked. My hands were stiff and iced cold. Getting that key in the lock felt warming - I was almost in.

Pushing open the door, my otherwise drafty place felt toasty like in a bakery. Shedding all the trappings and layers of winter, I found myself staring in the bathroom mirror. The fleeting thought had returned. I stood there just wondering about the boy. Why did he look at me? Am I even pretty? What did he see in me? However, most of all Why is my heart still beating with a rhythm of love.

Well, love is that, oh too over used word no one is sure if it is a verb, adjective or noun. It has lost its truth over time and has so many variations. The word has been overplayed in every chord and every darn creation tries to manipulate it theirs.

Love that word colored pink. I was still standing in thought when the doorbell rang. I tousled my hair around, made it look messy but good enough. I dapped on it a bit of my roommates' Vaseline that was lying around. Looking in that silver lined piece of glass I ran to answer the door. It was only my roommate.

She comes in bitter like old man winter from the cold. "Why are you all made up?" I tell her, "Oh no, I jut came in."

"No, you look like you are in love."

"Love- no. I just came running in from that Arctic chill. That's all."

She was not satisfied but she left me alone. She is a girl who read one too many romance novels and had a date at least twice a week. She wanted someone to commiserate with over the reality of love. I was a poor choice. In my first years of teaching I always looked like I was about to yell. My nerves were on edge and all I could think about was a weekend of sleep when no frustrated students would be at my throat. I went to bed early so I would be at my best for the kids but it did not help. Nightly, I would lie in bed and just think about all the things I wished to be or could not be. I had pity parties in bed. Lonely with my friends all dating and gibbering I kept myself awake with the thoughts of where else I could be. I became an insomniac and drunk over thoughts of the Himalayans, a low light bar with some jazz. I was beautiful, I was brazen, I was under those bright lights.

I woke up cranky and back in my bed with my blanket off my bed. No wonder I was cold.

My roommate's name was Draiza. She came from Australia and on every blistering damned cold day, she blamed me for my country's weather. She made herself an herbal tea and attributed it antibiotic powers. Good for her. I am glad she never gets sick. I want to get sick; I need a day off from those kids. While she kicked back with her holy drink I made myself a cup of chocolate milk, the one where you squeeze the chocolate syrup in the cup like 2/3 the way up and then add the milk.

Draiza listens to lots of spa style music - the kind where the men come chanting and where I do not know the instruments. She feels it is relaxing. I feel it grating but I keep quiet.

Draiza picks up where we left off when she first came in.

"Who is the guy?"

I think for a minute to tell her about the boy on the corner but on second thought, it was really nothing. For some girls it is as common as breathing but for me it felt like 'Spring Awakening' of something hidden, pretty and unknown.

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