Sunday Sundries, 221

1. AOTW: This choice required no thought whatsoever--and the person winning the "award" displayed no thought whatsoever while in the process. Joyce and I were driving back to Hudson from Cleveland on Friday night (after seeing a good production of Witness for the Prosecution at the Hanna Theater). We were on I-480, in the right lane (a car was to my left, so I could not switch lanes); near an on-ramp the AOTW gunned his way out onto the freeway, saw I was inconveniencing him (I was going about 65), and roared by me--on the right berm--doing about 80--then cut back in front of me, leaving, oh, three or four inches of space between us. I said some bad words. Thought about what qualifies as justifiable homicide ...

2. I finished two books this week --

     - The first (an "in-bed book" (one I read when I've gone beddie-bye)) was Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live, 2018, by Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State Univ.

It's an amazingly good book about the many critters--visible and -in--that share our homes with us--around 200,000 species he says (not counting viruses!).

One point he makes continually: Virtually all of these critters are beneficial to us, so when we kill a spider (or whatever)--or spray pesticides around--we are actually harming ourselves. The hardy evolve, survive--but, unfortunately, many of them are not beneficial to us.

He advises us to make our dwellings a little "wilder"--in- and outside. Plants, pets, etc. Most of them share with us their bacteria, etc.--beneficial bacteria. He also advises that we just wash our hands with soap (which removes the recent pathogens and leaves behind our invisible friends).

He has a great section near the end about sourdough--about the microbes in and on the starter--and on the hands of the baker. Beneficial to everyone.

Based on years of research and study--and a treat to read.

     - The second was a 2019 novel by Christopher Castellani, a writer I'd not heard of, but when I read a recent review of his Leading Men, well, I plopped down the plastic, bought it, read it, really liked it. (Link to review in NYT)

The novel is about the relationship between Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo (1922-63). This is a novel about love, about ambition, about death. (In pic below, TW is standing.)

Castellani moves artfully through Time, bending it, splitting it, revisiting it as his plot demands. Much of the story is "true"--i.e., Tenn (the name Frank called him) and Frank are in the places they actually were at the times they actually were, and other actual people pop in and out of the story: Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Franco Zeffirelli, and others.

A key incident is the discovery of a short play Williams wrote and the decision to produce it. (It deals with Tenn and Frank and others we've met.) Castellani actually reproduces the (fictional) script here and does a credible job of producing a text that is not unlike the weaker plays Williams wrote after his soaring successes (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, et al.).

Frank's death (to cancer) is key, as well--and the ending of the book is quite moving and powerful.

3. We've started streaming (Netflix) the new mini-series from Ricky Gervais, After Life, about a man whose wife has recently died (he's a small-town journalist) and about how that has changed him. He's become brutally frank with people (even cruel)--but we find ourselves laughing at the extremeness of it. (We've seen only the first episode, which features some funny bits about food--for humans, for dogs.) (Link to some video.)

4: Later this week (I hope!) I'll be uploading to Kindle Direct the latest collection of doggerel I've written--the series based on eponyms. I'm calling it What's in a Name?--stealing a line from Juliet's mouth in the balcony scene--before she knows Romeo is below, listening to her. I'll let you know when it's up on the site--$2.99 (the cheapest allowed), and the Kindle app on your smartphone or tablet or computer will give you access to it.

5: Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     -  from wordsmith.org (in case you thought there is not a word for everything):

mondegreen (MON-di-green)

noun: A word or phrase resulting from mishearing a word or phrase, especially in song lyrics.

Example: “The girl with colitis goes by” for “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” (in the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”).

ETYMOLOGY: Coined by author Sylvia Wright when she misinterpreted the line “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” in the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray”. Earliest documented use: 1954.

USAGE: “Sometimes in musical announcements, words lose their meaning, or are misheard, resulting in a delightful mondegreen. ... The audience thought Walter Love had said: ‘We are beginning tonight with Howard Ferguson’s overture ‘Fornication’.’” (instead of “Overture for an Occasion”). Paul Clements; “An Irishman’s Diary”; Irish Times (Dublin); Oct 5, 2016.

“[Tim Minchin’s] elocution is so exquisite there’s not a mondegreen in earshot.” Suzanne Simonot; “Tim and Tom Show a HOTA Opening Act”; Gold Coast Bulletin (Southport, Australia); Mar 19, 2018.