Sunday Sundries, 202

 I've not had the energy to do a Sundries in the past month or so ... but I'm going to give one a whirl today though it will probably be a bit ... abbreviated. (I'm already feeling the insistent urgency of Mr. Nap.) So ... here goes ...

1. AOTW: Okay, this happened a couple of weeks ago in a coffee shop. A guy was on Face Time (or Skype or whatever). He had a booming baritone (he should audition for the Met), and his conversation was audible throughout the entire shop. It went on and on and on and on and ... I won't say what he was talking about (don't want to reveal any clues to his identity), but he seemed blithely unaware (or maybe just flat didn't care) that there were many other people in the shop trying to read, talk, think, whatever--all occupations that his AOTWery prohibited.

2. I've read a handful of books since I last posted here, but I don't have the energy to do my usual paragraph on each, so I'll just talk about a couple I've read recently, a few that have had an ... effect ... on me.

     - George S. Schuyler's Black No More (1931--but recently reissued by Penguin Classics) is a work that remains shockingly (and depressingly) relevant. It's kind of a what-if story about a man who invents a process to turn black people white (Schuyler, 1895-1977, was an African American). And it's not just the color: all "traditional" features are also altered--hair, etc. When the process is complete, no one can tell ...

Soon, virtually all have undergone the process, and the befuddled whites don't know what to do ... Whom should we hate?

The novel takes some surprising twists and dives and accelerations and ascents ... fun to read. And also profoundly depressing at times. 1931, for pity's sake!

     - Also entertaining and depressing is Julie Schumacher's 2018 academic satire, The Shakespeare Requirement, about a university that's abandoning the liberal arts in favor of econ, entrepreneurship, etc. The Econ Dept has recently gotten a huge grant to renovate the building they occupy--and share with the English Department. But they renovate only the Econ floors; the Eng Dept is on the lower floors and has to deal with no A/C, insufficient electrical power, grotesque restrooms, etc.

So ... the conflicts are set. The university is pressuring the Eng Department to alter the curriculum--including eliminating the Shakespeare requirement (see title!)

Sure, there were times when I laughed aloud as I read, but there were numerous other times when I groaned and grieved. What I was reading, you see, was not always fiction.

     - Finally, I finished the last book by Rachel Kushner I'd not read--a very small and slender volume of stories called The Strange Case of Rachel K.(2015).

The stories are short, odd, and provocative. Well, the final story (the title story) is long--about 35 pages--and deals with an exotic dancer in Cuba. Rachel "makes a life out of twilight," we read (55). And near the end comes this from Rachel: "And so here I am, in a burlesque club below the Tropic of Cancer, in this damp city where dreams are marbled with nothingness" (80).

Kushner can write, eh?

     - Oh, I should say that I'm now reading the most recent of the Longmire novels by Craig Johnson, just out in the last couple of weeks--Depth of Winter.

It picks up where the previous novel left off (The Western Star): a Bad Guy has kidnapped his daughter, Cady, and taken her to Mexico, into the wilderness, into land controlled by Very, Very, Very Bad Guys. And Longmire is going after her ...  I'm about 1/3 of the way through ...


3. We've found some new episodes of The Doctor Blake Mysteries to stream and are devouring them greedily. Link to some video.

5. Final word: a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers--

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--and I had never seen this word before!

phynnodderee, n. [fin-AW-dree]

Frequency (in current use): 

Origin: A borrowing from Manx. Etymon: Manx phynnodderee.

Etymology: < Manx phynnodderee, fynnodderee (1812 or earlier), of uncertain origin,

 In the folklore of the Isle of Man: a supernatural being characterized as having a thick coat of hair and said to assist farmers whose lands he lives near, typically by performing tasks requiring superhuman strength or abilities.

The phynnodderee is sometimes considered to be a composite of elements from the folklore of cultures with which the Manx have historically come into contact, combining, for instance, some aspects of the Scandinavian troll with those of the Scottish brownie.

1847   Mona's Herald 8 Sept.   Like the big Buggane, and all other finite creatures, the Phynnodderee had a spice of mischief in him.

1874   W. I. Jenkinson Pract. Guide Isle of Man 91   At Baldwin we had often been informed that the Phynnodderee used to thrash the corn and gather the sheep for the owners of the Lanjaghan farm.

1891   Folk-lore 2 287   It is to Glen Rushen, then, that the Fenodyree is supposed to be gone.

1967   Jrnl. Manx Mus. 7 59/1   Charles Roeder has called the fynnoderee ‘the puzzle and despair of Folklorists’.

2015   @manxhills 5 June in twitter.com (O.E.D. Archive)    Of all the fairy folk in the Isle of Man, I think my heart goes out most to the Phynnodderee.