A Few Wee Thngs ...

Okay, so wee goes back to Middle English--and even farther. Meant (and means) very small. (Had to look that one up!) (And, of course, there's that other meaning of wee (or wee-wee)--the one related to micturition!) (Merriam-Webster sniffs: "Not often in polite use.")

Anyway, there are just a few things today I want to mention--all too brief (wee!) for a full post, even considering my fondness for diverging into yellow woods--and woods of every other color, if the mood suits.

• Today,  I was thinking about the word batten. It happened when I was running through (silently, silently) Tennyson's poem "The Kraken" this morning at the coffee shop. In that poem (see the whole thing pasted below), Tennyson mentions that the creature is "Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep."
• And then there's that expression batten down the hatches.
• So ... here's what I found in (and copied from) Merriam-Webster ...
• "The origin ... is believed to be the Old Norse verb batna, meaning "to improve." Batna is akin to Old Norse betr and Old English betera, from which we get the modern English word better. Batten entered the English language in the 1500s, with the meaning "to improve," and was especially used in the sense of improving or thriving by feeding. It is not related to the verb batten … found in expressions such as "batten down the hatches." This latter batten comes from the noun batten, which denotes, among other things, an iron bar used to secure the covering of a hatchway on a ship. This batten has Latinate rather than Germanic origins and can be traced back through Anglo-French batre to the Latin verb battuere ("to beat").
• Batten, then, has two different histories: one meaning to eat or fatten; the other, to secure a ship's hatchway. There you go!
• I had a wonderful 73rd birthday on Saturday. A flood of greetings from FB friends--a lovely (pizza) dinner with our son and his family at Hudson's 3 Palms (and an "after-party" at our house, with fireplace blazing). I am one lucky, lucky man.
• I was thrilled yesterday (Sunday) that I actually paid attention while I was making our weekly bread and did not make the goof of last week (using oat instead of wheat flour as the principal flour). The pictures below certify the benefits of paying attention: Failure is rarely so evident as in baking!

Nov 6, 2017

Nov. 13, 2017

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumbered and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.