Sunday Sundries, 269

1. HBsOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Two this week. (1) Friend Chris Cozens who has, every day, brought me coffee from Open Door (I'm being cautious--staying at home); I try not to to cry every time he shows up; (2) Former Hiram High classmate Ralph Green, who, I discovered quite by accident, had added some information on Find-a-Grave about my parents. Oh, was I touched when I saw that!

2. I finished two books this week--one was on my "night pile" (my 10-pp-per-night pile), the other I read during the week.

    - The former was Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth about Language, 2019. I'd read a stellar review of it somewhere (?) and ordered it right away.

Author David Shariatmadari works at The Guardian  and studied linguistics at Cambridge. Basically, it's a "catch-up" book: What has gone on in recent decades in linguistics? (A lot!) But the most interesting part for me came near the end when he went into recent thinking about how we acquire language in the first place--a stunning achievement, of course. Toddlers listen, make noises, then, eventually, compound-complex sentences.

He talks about how recent work has greatly modified the theories of Noam Chomsky, who for decades has been on the Mount Rushmore of Linguists. (Chomsky has argued for an innate, Universal Grammar. Doesn't seem to hold the same amount of water it used to.)

I still remember our toddler son, making silly sounds. Then, one day, here came this: "When you are sad, Mom, then I get sad, too."

WHAT!?

And all of us in our lives, at some point, said something remarkable that dazzled our parents. (Well, maybe I didn't. There are better, more accurate words than dazzled!)

The book's a little dense in places, but I did it!

     - The second was the first novel of Arthur Phillips, Prague (2002). Some years ago I read his wonderful The Tragedy of Arthur, 2011, a novel that impressed me about as much as a novel can. Then, recently, I read his latest one, The King at the Edge of the World, 2020, which also--to coin a phrase--blew me away.

So ... I decided to read his earlier books (there are only four--he's young yet), beginning with his first, which, as I said, is Prague.

The novel takes place in ... three guesses! In the early 1990s. And we follow a collection of characters, principally a young man named John, who shows up one day to stay with his brother, Scott, who, to put it bluntly, is something of a dick.

Phillips shifts us around, character by character, until we get to know them all very well. John catches on as a local journalist--does well--until ... ain't tellin' you.

Yes, there's love; yes, there's sex; yes, there are surprises galore.

Eventually, John leaves, and as he's aboard the train, he thinks: "Life will start there, at the end of this ride" (366). True for all of us, in various ways.

Lots of detail about the city--lots of insights into some of the darkest--and brightest--recesses of the human heart.

3. We had good luck--very good luck--shopping online this week at Acme here in Hudson. All their products are listed online (they've provided curbside pickup for quite some time), so we sent in our order, told them the day and time we'd like to have pick-up; they gave us a two-hour window; we drove over there in the time frame, called, and out came a young man with our order and put it in the trunk which I'd already opened. And off we drove ...

They had almost everything we'd ordered (some things--sanitary wipes--not yet available). Quality very good. We're going to keep doing this till this crisis is over.

4.  We're streaming only about an hour a night--just before beddie-bye. Don't want to gobble up everything we want to watch and be stuck with things we don't want to watch. The rest of the time we're reading and writing and talking and cooking and (in my case) napping!

5. Lots of walkers around Hudson these days--many people with their dogs and children. Everyone's being prudent, I hope.

6. Baking bread today, as is my Sunday custom, and hoping to Face Time later today with our son and his family.

7. Be safe!

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

     - from dictionary.com

hypermnesia [hahy-perm-nee-zhuh ]

noun: the condition of having an unusually vivid or precise memory.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF HYPERMNESIA? Hypermnesia, a medical or psychological term meaning “the condition of having an unusually vivid or precise memory,” is composed of the familiar prefix hyper-, which usually implies excess or exaggeration, the Greek noun mnêsis “memory,” and the Greek abstract noun suffix –ia. Hypermnesia entered English in the late 19th century.

Psychologists have investigated some persons with exceptional memories – said to exhibit “hypermnesia”. The most famous of these was a Russian, code-named “S”, who could recall long random series of numbers or words without error, many years later. ALUN REES, "IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER HER NAME," NEW SCIENTIST, DECEMBER 24, 1994 

This sharpened memory is called hypermnesia. A frequent experience in dreaming is a hypermnesia with regard to childhood scenes. FREDERICK PETERSON, "THE NEW DIVINATION OF DREAMS," HARPER'S MAGAZINE, VOL. 115, JUNE 1907