Sunday Sundries, 159

1. AOTW: Okay, I had a plethora of candidates this week--most of them drivers, but let's switch up a little and confer the award on those anonymous folks at grocery stores who leave their carts in parking places out in the lot. We were at Marc's in Aurora earlier this week, and several  folks had done this--even though, in our vicinity (where the AOTWs had not taken home three carts), the slots that hold the empty carts were only about ten feet away.

2. I finished two books this week.

     - One was a monograph--Boscombe Manor--about the mansion in Bournemouth (England), where Percy Florence (named for the Italian city of his birth) Shelley, the son of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, lived out (most of) his days with his wife, Jane (they were childless--though they adopted two); they luxuriated in an often fatuous opulence that would have stunned young Shelley's maternal grandparents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Anyway, because I'm going to include some  details from this monograph in my Frankenstein Sundae publication (not soon--definitely not soon), I will do a post about it separately later this week.

     - I also finished another of the Faulkner novels I'd never read--The Wild Palms (1939)--a novel he'd written with a different title--If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem--a title which his publisher apparently didn't go for, and, despite Faulkner's objection (says the Library of America notes on the novel), the publisher changed it.


Anyway, the novel comprises two stories ("The Wild Palms" and "Old Man"), stories which Faulkner alternates.  The latter deals with that devastating Mississippi River flood of 1937. Some convicts (from Parchman) are pressed into rescue service, and we follow one of them--a guy who realizes he belongs in prison and not really anywhere else--who rescues a pregnant woman, who delivers her child while the convict is dealing with her. Then--not knowing what else to do (although, of course, he could have fled) he returns to Parchman, where they want to release him (for his good deeds), realize that's not what he wants, and so phony up a charge so he can stay. Where he belongs. (Oh, and there's some stuff with water moccasins--that's fun!)

The other story ("The Wild Palms") is a love story; a married woman runs away with another man; he's a doctor who has not quite completed all the requirements for his license. (There's an abortion subplot later on.) Jobs are tough; he can't find anything that pays very well. Then ... some "found" money helps them out for a while, but, of course, it can't last forever. He comments at one point, "'... a good portion of my courage is a sincere disbelief in my good luck'" (586--Library of America ed.).

Things don't work out well.


3. On Friday night, Joyce and I went down to the Hanna Theater in Cleveland to see the first of the four shows in our season ticket package (we've belonged there for a long, long time)--The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the musical). It was opening night--and they have a very strong cast (especially the principal men--especially the hunchback himself, a quite attractive young man, actually, who appears at the outset, sans shirt--yes, he's ripped--and then we see him transform into the hunchback, right before our eyes). They had some issues with sound (oh, how loud it all got at times--the singers, everything), and some stage business didn't work out too well--via., the "hot lead" Quasimodo pours down on the attackers, some of the sword play needed a little more sword and a little less play, and there was just some confusion at times about what had happened.

But the crowd loved it (despite Critical Old Dan), and when we got home I was sufficiently motivated to order the novel on Kindle--that's right: I've never read it! (Well, in Classics Illustrated form ... does that count?)

We were afraid traffic would be horrendous because of a Tribe game (which, indeed, let out about the same time as the play), but ... not bad at all ..


4, Following the recommendation of Joyce's former student (and now our long-time good friend Tammy Eldredge), we are streaming--and enjoying--episodes of The Good Place, an NBC series. Had fun with the first episode! More to come ...

5. Final Word--A word I liked this week from my various online word--of-the-day providers: No, instead ... a word I used in a letter I wrote to my mom today ... had to check it out because I wasn't sure of its origin--and neither, apparently, is the OED!

smidgen, n.    A tiny amount, a trace; a very small person or thing.

Forms:  Also smidgeon, smidgin, smitchin, etc.

Etymology: Origin unknown, perhaps < smitch n.2 + -en , -in , repr. dialect pronunciation of -ing suffix1: compare smidge n.

orig. and chiefly U.S.

1845   C. M. Kirkland Western Clearings 71   They wouldn't have left a smitchin o' honey.

1878   J. H. Beadle Western Wilds 611   Not a smidgeon left—just bodaciously chawed up and spit out.

1886   Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 17 43   Smidgen, ‘a small bit, a grain’, as ‘a smidgen of meal’, is common in East Tennessee.

1913   G. Stratton-Porter Laddie xvii. 568   Robert..wasn't a smidgin behind, for every clip he had the answer ready.

1930   Va. Quarterly Rev. 6 Apr. 249   He can testify perhaps..that he has had a bait, a snack, or a mere smidgen of them.

1952   J. Steinbeck East of Eden xxiii. 289   You little, silly, half-pint, smidgin of a wife.

1954   R. Millar Waiting for Gillian in Plays of Year X. 346   There's a smidgin of Gordon's in the whisky decanter.

1960   P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves in Offing iv. 45   ‘No will of her own?’ ‘Not a smidgeon.’

1968   Globe & Mail (Toronto) 17 Feb. 37 (advt.)    Whether you're nine months or ninety years old, plump or twiggy, tall as a tree or small as a smidgeon.

1971   N.Z. Listener 18 Oct. 11/5   It's an unknown quantity often combined with just a smidgen of skill.

1973   People's Jrnl. (Inverness & Northern Counties ed.) 15 Dec. 4/5   My family would eat mince pies to a band playing so long as there's at least a smidgeon of rum butter to wipe over the top crust.

1982   R. Conquest in Times Lit. Suppl. 17 Dec. 1385/4   Any writer allowing the merest smidgin of Soviet reality into his work was headed straight for Magadan.