Sunday Sundries, 179

I'm late this week--just as I (often) was with my homework in junior high--okay, and later, too.

1. AOTW: Those people I see exercising fairly vigorously at the health club, then later, outside, see moving toward their car, parked in a handicapped spot.

2. I finished three books this week ...

     - The first was another in the Longmire series by Craig Johnson (they inspired the eponymous TV series you can stream on Netflix). This one--Dry Bones (2015)--is based on the discovery of a spectacular T-rex skeleton on/near the Indian reservation. Hmmm ... who gets the bones? And who will profit thereby?

I enjoy these novels (which are quite different, by the way, from the TV scripts), but reading them in order (as I am), I'm getting a little weary of some of the recurring plot devices--one of which appears here: Sheriff Longmire is caught out in some fierce weather in a remote place, ill-prepared. You would think that, having read the earlier novels about himself, he might be more ... circumspect? Johnson, though, is a fine writer--and these books deserve the celebration they've received.

     - I also finished a sometimes dense book by a reading scientist/researcher, Mark Seidenberg: Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and What Can Be Done about It (2017). He goes through all the solid research about how we learn to read--then wonders why it is that we don't use those principles in the teaching of reading. He believes one fundamental reason is this: We prefer appealing theories to hard facts--to established research findings. And so, he says, we drift from theory to theory, from fad to fashion, and fail, as a result, so many of our youngsters.

I wish he had spent a bit more time suggesting strategies teachers could use instead of condemning those they do use. It's not always evident how to apply in a busy classroom the findings he discusses. Maybe a sequel is in the offing?

By the way, he does not really attack teachers. He's sets his sights mostly on colleges  and departments of education: He believes they are the principal villains in this story.

(One annoying thing to a former English teacher: He uses the expressions "feel badly" and "felt badly" (61, 70).)

     - Finally, I finished Bernard Cornwell's Fools and Mortals (2018), a sort of a thriller narrated by Richard Shakespeare (1574-1613), younger brother of the Bard (by ten years), who, like his brother, is trying to make it in the theater world in London in the late 16th century.

Cornwell imagines that Richard is an actor with the Bard's company--the Lord Chamberlain's Men--and has been playing women's parts but is itching to Go Guy.

There's some sibling tension here, but the overall plot involves the mounting of the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream--and the early days of working on Romeo & Juliet. A rival company tries to steal the Bard's scripts (there were no copyright laws: If you had the text, it was yours), and so there's some swordplay and whatnot as a result.

Cornwell inserts a lot about Elizabethan life, explaining all sorts of things to those of you who weren't paying attention in my 8th-grade classes Back in the Day. So ... you can read this without feeling ... deprived. He also inserts some sly allusions here and there to other Bard plays. For example, in a scene that deals a bit about an early Dream rehearsal, the narrator tells us that Puck "fled off through the right-hand door as if pursued by a bear" (253)--this, of course, a reference to what is probably the most famous stage direction in history, from the Bard's A Winter's Tale: "Exit, pursued by a bear." There are quite a few others.

I really enjoyed this novel--light and fun and literate.

3. We were set to go see Black Panther this weekend ... didn't make it ... maybe next?

4. Our neighborhood woodpecker is back for spring training. I have heard his cephalic jackhammering on nearby trees--and neighbors' houses. Soon, we know, he will move to ours, and we, again, will have to Take Action! (We have a fake owl we put on the roof; it ... dissuades him.)

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

     - from dictionary.com

ergophobia [ur-guh-FOH-bee-uh]

noun

1. an abnormal fear of work; an aversion to work.

QUOTES

He was examined by Dr. Wilson, who diagnosed the disease which had attacked him as ergophobia, (fear of work.)

-- , "Bad Case of Ergophobia," New York Times, October 13, 1907

ORIGIN

Ergophobia, “abnormal fear of or aversion to work,” is formed from two Greek nouns commonly used to form words in English: érgon “work” and the combining form -phobía “fear.” Greek dialects preserve the original form wérgon, which comes directly from Proto-Indo-European wérgom, the source of Germanic werkam (English work). The combining form -phobía is a derivative of phóbos “flight, fear, panic fear,” from Proto-Indo-European bhógwos, a derivative of the root bhegw- “to run,” which appears in Slavic (Polish) biegać “to run.” Ergophobia entered English in the early 20th century.