Salon Des Geeks

Kiri alerted me to the extremely geeky-fun and addictive site Save the Words. As Kiri said, “someone went to a lot of trouble to set this up.” Check out and enjoy!

I was reading this blog entry from Dick Cavett about Palin’s abuse of language:

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla/?em

It mostly made me feel ill, but I really liked the postscript, which introduced me to the word `Lagniappe’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagniappe

Fun!

I thought you grammar mavens might like an exercise:

http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/red-pencils-ready/

Probably too easy for y’all, but I like the notion of using specific examples from the Times’ own pages.

Hi all,
Sorry for those whom I’ve already emailed about this, but I wanted to spread the word. As you know, my father died of pancreatic cancer in August, just over two months after diagnosis. On Saturday my family and I are doing a walk to benefit the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. I’ve put the link for our team page below– any donation you can make is appreciated, but even if you can’t, check it out for the great pictures of my dad with the grandbabies. Thanks so much,
Kim

http://tinyurl.com/6euhz8

Long ago, back in the mists of time, we had a salon at which the discussion turned at one point to one of my favorite comic poems, An Overworked Elocutionist by Carolyn Wells. As you know, the poem is about a little boy named Robert Reese who has memorized so many poems that one day he just can’t keep them straight, and recites bits and pieces of over twenty of them — in rhyming iambic heptameter, natch. Wouldn’t it be cool, we said, to make an online version with in-line links to each of the poems it quotes?

Well, here it is at last, friends. Putting this together was a delight as only the geeky pursuits we love best can be. I sleuthed out some truly hard-to-find poetry, followed some false leads, and got to revisit some dear old classics. So much of the energy and emotion and melodrama that first drew me to poetry as a kid is in here. There are husky whispers, dying words, tender goodbyes, lingering by shingly bars and babbling on the pebbles, escape via death from fates worse than, and deep life-lessons such as “blind obedience to authority is a good way to get dead,” not to mention “be nice to trees and horses.”

Thank you for inspiring and encouraging me to do this project. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Despite the mundane salutation, I am happy to be posting. This is a test. I tried last week with little success so here goes. Donna

Here is a link to the poem I read at the Salon:

A Nauseous Nocturne by Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

Enjoy!

As requested, this is the “grace” that I read before dinner at the last salon. I miss you all!

A Ritual to Read to Each Other
by William Stafford

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider -
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe -
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

I was asked recently if I had a motto. That prompted me to make the following list:

1. Qui aime juste s’attire un destin
2. I never look at you but there is some new virtue born in me, some new courage
3. A comma not an exclamation mark
4. Dulcius ex asperis
5. Nemo me impune lacessit

It made me think of the Salon. If you were to pick a motto what would it be? Is it more importnat that it capture the essence of your being, or should it be something that you strive to attain?

Discussing this with Natarajan, we came up with a game. For a given motto, what sort of person would have that motto? (’I would buy your book’) Could that be the center of a collaborative short story?

One of the many NPR programs that I enjoy is “This I Believe.” The program, which is based on the original series started by Edward R. Murrow in the 1950’s, invites people to share their deeply-held beliefs in the form of essays of 350-500 words. Selected essays are read aloud on the air by the authors.

Recently I found myself in the emergency situation of running out of reading material in the airport on a business trip to Kentucky. Since this violates one of my core beliefs (”Never be in Kentucky without a book”), I was lucky to run across the book version of “This I Believe” in the airport book store. The book includes essays by such famous lights as Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Leonard Bernstein, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as many by ordinary folk. A concentrated shot of the thought-provoking material I normally hear in three-minute increments once a week on NPR, the book inspired me to work on my own belief essay.

I wondered if anyone on the salon might be interested in reading this book with me and discussing it. If there is a lot of interest, perhaps we might take it up as a topic at our next meeting. If only a few are interested, I would love to chat about it over e-mail.