May 27

'Don’t. stop. thinkin’ (about tomorrow).'

I'm sorry not to have gotten this advice to you last week, but USA Today warned us Are you preparing a Memorial Day cookout? Don't risk food poisoning.
I'm posting this because it strikes me as 'good anytime' advice. Go forth, you cookers-outers, and heed this advice!

We seem to have interlocking themes going here. We apologize.

About that petard.

It seems I've been running into the phrase 'hoist on his own petard' a lot.

While it's a fun phrase to say, I have to admit I keep forgetting what a petard is (if I ever knew). So off to the dictionary I hie myself.

A petard, I discover, is a small bomb. OK, not getting the picture of being hoist by it, no wait, the petarder is blown up by his own device, as in caught in the blast.

A petard can also be a large noise. Seems appropriate somehow, although I can't picture being lifted up by one.

What about lollipops and rainbows? Don't they deserve protection too?

The bill in Congress that will make Daylight Savings Time be in effect year 'round is named the 'Sunshine Protection Act.'

I don't know exactly what this means, but I wouldn't be surprised to see enforcers in aircraft lassoing clouds and pulling them out of the projected path if the sun. Tickets might be issued, too. And how does not jiggling with our clocks protect sunshine?

Not news, WSJ!

This headline is not going to surprise anyone who knows anything about business: Rival airlines are carving up Spirit’s routes and airport slots

These headlines have greater surprise value: 'Sun to rise in East tomorrow,' 'Illegal fireworks on Fourth of July,' 'Church services held on Sunday morning!' 'Babies born yesterday.'

The AISlop cometh.

It is predicted by everybody and nobody in particular, as is the way of the social media these days, that AI is going to automate everything. I suspect that's not really true, and some people say that people who are 'creative' won't be replaced.

But in some areas of entertainment, the transformation may already be complete. I'm thinking of network situation comedies, where in the 50s you had the Stones, the Cleavers, the Nelsons, the Andersons, or the Mitchells, all working the same formula and jokes. Maybe you prefer the mid to late 90s-early 2Ks sitcoms: 'a number of attractive young people hang out in an apartment' series, like Three's Company, Seinfeld, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Will & Grace, The Drew Carey Show, and Living Single.

Maybe the question shouldn't be 'will it happen?' but 'when did it happen first?'

Names to forget.

A recent WSJ Magazine cover featured a photo of a young man with the caption, Colman Domingo, Man of the Hour.

On the plus side, '15 minutes of fame' seems to have quadrupled. On the down side, you've only got a sixty-minute period in which to make a career-extending impact.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

So when are people supposed to have their crisis?

Also in the WSJ, the editor points out that the term 'midlife' is falling into disfavor. Apparently this is another form of denial, the 'seven ages of man' is shrinking toward two—vibrant living and not living.

The editor goes on to say I see...only a feeble insecurity in the rejection of middle age. I mention that not because I agree (frankly, I'm not quite sure what it means), but because I misread it, substituting 'female' for 'feeble.' Of course, I thought, men have midlife crises and women have... menopause.

The big difference? Men have to manufacture a midlife crisis, or at best we're responding to some vague sense or feeling, while women have a clear sign that 'things are different now.' For some, it's liberating to assume their identity. For others, it's a sign that life is over. For still others, they are fortunate enough to blaze forward on the path they forged, following their life vision.

But wait, there's more.

We're seeing another handover of the generational lead (if only in the targets of up-and-comer wrath and mockery switching from OK Boomers to Gen Xers). Yeah, some of us old farts have been mucking up the works by hanging on way too long, but other signs are there. Like the WSJ Magazine I've been referencing celebrates that people in their late thirties and mid-fifties are doing things in areas they're not supposed to do them in and should be ceded to youth. Like making movies and competing in athletics.

In the past, transitions have been mostly clear. Kennedy signaled the new frontier. Clinton also symbolized a changing of the guard. It's time again.

Redefining terms.

Today we're changing older to 'projecting as my age plus.' It has nothing to do with chronology. Dick VanDyke, for example, may have a quarter century on me, but he is not older. People who have only lived 60 years or so can be older than me. 'Older' has nothing to do with age, infirmity, or activity, or health or wisdom. It has to do with attitude.

I think of my grandmother at 80, being wheeled through the activity room of her nursing home, referring to the card players (who were ten or 15 years her junior) as 'the old ladies.' I didn't understand then.

I understand better now.

And here I thought...

I used 'ditto' in a poem the other day, and wondered, in that superior, patronizing way that I have sometime when I'm alone, 'Do the yeuts of today know where the word ditto comes from, now that the Ditto machine (AKA 'purple poop,' beloved of schoolchildren everywhere) has gone the way of tail fins on DeSotos?

Wanting to know when/if the Ditto went away, I checked.

Good thing I did. Turns out 'ditto' has nothing to do with printing machines, but instead was imported from Italy in the Seventeenth Century to avoid repeating dates. It acquired its 'like before' meaning soon after.

Another thing I did not know.

The eye is the only part of the body that remains the same size all through life as it is at birth.

Fighting fire with fire.

This is one of those pieces that I'm not sure where to begin. Choice one is the original annoyance: overly long web articles where the raison d'etre is buried at the end of the article (if it appears at all). Choice two is the little boxed AI summaries that have been appearing at the top of those overly long web articles, obviating the need to read them, much less sort for substance.

Choice three is to start with the prompt for this article, which was Jeff Goins commenting that Half of these sentences [in those A.I. generated articles] don’t even need to exist.

Happy birthday?

You may have noticed an uptick in references to the works of Mark Twain. That's OK–they're mostly relevant, even though Twain died over 115 years ago.

But—is he really dead? Every time I invoke some of his work, or think about him, or read something of his, doesn't that bring him back to life? And when I mention him, doesn't that bring him to life in your head?

I ask this because a headline said something about 'Miles Davis' 100th birthday.' 'I didn't know he was still alive,' I thought.

He's not–died in 1991. But now. that I'm thinking about him, and the article writer is thinking about him, and somebody is probably playing his music somewhere, is he really dead?

Yes. And no.

Wrong verb modifier, USA Today!

In this headline, replace 'could' with 'will:'

US Postal Service says it could raise first-class stamp prices.

More language.

On a more serious note, Bradley Birzer, in a review of The Idea Machine, notes Miller loves creating, embracing, and profound tidbits of wisdom.

Thus is created confusion. I'm not sure if that's an incomplete parallel construction he's got there, or if there should be more after 'wisdom,' or some other linguistic feat of legerdemain with which I am not familiar. Any way, it's a head-scratching, 'say what?' moment.

Just a thought or two.

for writers, mostly:

The word you are writing at this very instant has the power to change the choice or the meaning of the next word you write. You're making it up as you go along.

In the same way, the word you are writing now has the power to transform the word you just wrote.

The words your audience is reading are not necessarily the same words you wrote, and are probably attached to a narrative in their head you never conceived or even know exists, much less where you were leading.

word of the week

heterodoxy

poetry bonus! recent augie sez

Quoted.

It's going to be a great day to go out and take advantage of the opportunities the world has to offer.

--Zig Ziglar

 

Bonus!

Quiet world changers.

You probably don't recognize the names Fredrich Gottlieb Keller, Charles Fenerty, nor of the German industrialist Heinrich Voelter or Johann Voith.

But if you were born in the 20th Century, they shaped your world. It's a world that seems to be going away. My world.

You see, Keller and Fenerty invented wood pulp paper around 1844, working independently (which regulars will recognize as one of my pet fascinations). Voelter was responsible for taking Keller's process and industrializing it, and he and Voith developed processes to make pulp paper in large quantities.

This is all very nice, and was useful in publishing in the later 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1880s that Ottmar Mergenthaler (another name you've probably never heard of), invented the linotype machine.

What happened then was the birth and growth of universal literacy. Education in the United States and other western nations was not only being democratized, but mandated for people of all classes and occupations. Everyone had to go to school to learn readin', writin', and 'rithmatic. All these people needed something to read, and the combination of vast quantities of cheap paper and a speedy printing process made mass-market newspapers, books, textbooks and magazines possible.

At the same time, people were having houses wired for electricity, which expanded the hours when one could read far beyond the limitations imposed by natural light.

This ushers in not only a tighter connecting of the world (everything that happened in the world yesterday shows up on your doorstep this morning), an explosion of writing generally and the Golden Age of the Short Story in the 30s in particular. Every newspaper worth its salt (or presses) ran at least one best-seller list.

Other new printed creations filled our stores and lives. Where books had once been rare, and almost revered, the new literacy meant that everyday households had other books join the family Bible. Andrew Carnegie funded the building of free libraries open to the public across the United States. Kids toted textbooks back and forth to school (although to be fair, this was already happening even in the 1850s).

There were other signs of the growth of the popularity of reading. At the upper end, universities teamed up with publishers to develop series of leatherbound collections of great literature which were hawked door-to-door like encyclopedias, brooms, vacuum cleaners and fruit. Having one was a sign of culture and education. At the bottom end, dime novels, penny dreadfuls, and pulp fiction provided cheap, disposable reading material for all ages (as exemplified by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Harlequin romances, to name just two.

Life, and technology 'moves forward.' Other entertainment mediums begin to nibble away at print, particularly TV, which provide news reports more quickly than newspapers, and stories/entertainment more easily and cheaply than books (and often worth every penny of the free price [they still had pennies then]). Life and technology moved forward, with the development of the micro (personal) computer and later of the internet, both of which made information and entertainment more accessible, and had the unintended effect of lessening the power of gatekeepers.

And so here we are, at a point where we are seeing if not the death of books and reading, at least a steepish decline. Only 70% of 'books' are printed anymore, the rest being consumed as audiobooks and e-books. A percentage like this does not account for declines in overall numbers. A best, these are signs or indicators, maybe even portents. Publishers are ceasing publication of mass-market paperbacks. Newspapers (remember newspapers?) are eliminating book review sections. It used to be I was surprised when I went in a house with no visible reading material. Now, it's routine. I don't know if it's a sign that home decorating shows hide the covers and spines of books, or if they're just going for that 'textured paperwhite' look.

So, are we really changing, entering a new age of bread and circuses, or am I just doing my best Chicken Little imitation? It will be painful in the transition, where we will have to learn which information sources to distrust, but we will weather it.

So—insignificant blip, sea change, or a return to a status quo of most of human history, as Joel J Miller points out: mass literacy hasn’t really been a thing for most of history. I think it’ll be an outlier, a phenomenon of the twentieth century.

I don't think I'll have to worry about the book disappearing in my lifetime, or reading. I do worry a little about the invasion of multitasking. It is very, very easy to immerse yourself in a good book, to look up from the pages and realize it's waaay past your bedtime. But different mediums, including e-books, are much more susceptible to distraction.

It's unfortunately very easy to get distracted (i.e., multitask) by a text or email when reading an e-book, or have an audiobook or podcast playing as an accessory to another task (say, driving). But even this is within your power. as Jeff Goins points out in Are Audiobooks the Future of Publishing?, saying I would argue, learn to love your chores. Do them for the sake of doing them, not as something you need to be distracted from. When you read, read. When you vacuum, vacuum. When you work, work.
Do everything with as much intention as possible.

Ultimately, we will live life as we live life, subject to the same pressures as we have now to conform and live a good life, an excellent life. Will books be a part of that? I don't know, but I know they will continue to be a part of my life. And for that, I give another shout out to Herren Keller, Voelter, Voith, and Mergenthaler for the work they did creating my world.