Sunday Sundries, 247

1. HBOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Late Saturday morning I drove over to the Aurora Starbucks, where I met a group of young people (well, "young" compared with me!) whom I'd taught back in the mid-1980s at Harmon Middle School in Aurora, Ohio; they were in town for their 30th high school reunion. The picture below shows us, and I have to say that I was extraordinarily moved to see them all again. They'd been involved in my middle school shows (and, some, in two high school shows I did later--Grease and The Merry Wives of Windsor). It was wonderful--"catching up," laughing, telling stories, remembering those no longer with us I confess to a few (okay, a lot) of tears on my drive home.

L-R: Will, Kim, Jason, Rob, DD, Jennifer, Carmen

2. I finished just one book this week--Beautiful Girl,  a 1979 collection of stories by Alice Adams (1926-99). a writer Joyce has read, a writer I've known about for a long, long time, a writer I've just never gotten around to ... till now. And am I glad I did!

She writes in a deceptively simple style, for the stories are complex and, eventually, revelatory. They deal with relationships, with discovery, disappointment, shock, and surprise--in other words, they deal with our lives. She won numerous awards for her fiction (she wrote novels, as well).

I have bought a thick collection of her stories--and then I will start on her novels. I've got a new obsession!

Link to her obituary in the New York Times.

3. No movie-going this week, though we continue to stream bits of "our" shows on various sites: Elementary, Waking the Dead, Doc Martin.

4. Thanks to Joyce, I've found yet another addiction: the "mini" crossword puzzle on the New York Times website. Joyce has been doing them for quite a while; I've been doing so for a few weeks. I will not reveal that there is some, uh, competition between us concerning the speed with which we complete them (the site provides minutes and seconds when you finish). That would be self-destructive, you know, competing with your beloved spouse like that ... then blogging about how you ... never mind.

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

     - from wordsmith.org

delphinestrian (del-fi-NES-tree-uhn)

noun: A dolphin rider.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin delphinus (dolphin), on the pattern of equestrian. Earliest documented use: 1820.

NOTES: If you ever get the urge to ride a dolphin, please leave them alone. Find yourself an inflatable one instead. In general, if you find yourself wanting to do things to any sentient being without their permission, find yourself an inflatable one. Also see, wooden horse.

USAGE: “A boy venturing to swim farther out than his companions, was met by a dolphin, who after playing about him a little, slipped under him, and taking him on his back, carried him out still farther, to the great terror of the young delphinestrian.” Leigh Hunt; The Indicator; Joseph Appleyard (London, UK); 1822.

FYI: Leigh Hunt (look in the lines just above) was a friend of the Shelleys, and it was after a visit to the Hunts that Bysshe Shelley drowned off the coast of Viareggio, Italy, in July 1822 in a boating accident.