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It is raining leaves! – Micron Pigma Brush Pen Black & Graphite pencil

Autumn leaves are falling to the ground here in Western Massachusetts. The fall colors are becoming more and more vibrant. As I walked on campus yesterday, I noticed the leaves coming down, just like rain. Beautiful!

I purchased a black Micron brand Pigma Brush pen. I really loved the feel of it. It is my first time using a brush pen for inking. I love the loose line it allows yet still with the control of a pen. I will be using it again!

We are so excited to announce the release of our latest children’s book, Ten Thankful Turkeys.  This colorful autumn tale follows ten turkeys as they get ready for an important celebration. This story teaches about gratitude. There are also fun turkey facts in the back of the book.  You can get the kindle version of this book for a special launch price of $.99 for a limited time or FREE if you have Kindle Unlimited.  We also have paperback versions on sale now at Amazon for $8.99.

Be sure to gobble up this deal before it disappears. :-)

This is the cover art for a book in an outdoor science series I did way back when...

The Wonderful Woods Acrylic on watercolor paper Steven James Petrucccio

Autumn! My favorite time of the year!

I’m not exactly what you would call a football fan, although I’m trying this year. And by trying I mean learning what a down is… yeah, I’m that behind.

I am, however, very excited by the prospect of cooler temps and therefore many forays into the kitchen to attack new recipes.

Oh, and Halloween! Did I mention Halloween?

Autumn! My favorite time of the year!

I’m not exactly what you would call a football fan, although I’m trying this year. And by trying I mean learning what a down is… yeah, I’m that behind.

I am, however, very excited about by the prospect of cooler temps and therefore many forays into the kitchen to attack new recipes.

Oh, and Halloween! Did I mention Halloween?

Inspired by Kenn Nesbitt’s, “My Brother’s not a Werewolf”. Hope you enjoy.   Tale of the WeirdoWolfBy Donna Earnhardt He transformed in the daytimeavoiding moonlit nightsHe cringed at his own shadow,fear brought him no delight He was a vegetarian.He loved to draw and paint.And when he howled,No one was cowed*,Except for him… He’d faint.  …

Hand painted Pumpkin wine glasses/ candle holders
Now taking orders!!
Buy one for $35 or a set of three like this for $75

R is for Robots : A Noisy Alphabet

By Adam F. Watkins

Hey picture book lovers! I’m still at the farm and we’re nearing the close of another season “living close to the land” and feeling its rhythms. As the leaves begin to turn a rusty color on the enormous chestnut tree at the front of our farm stand, I’m sure I’ll also soon see the familiar sight of yellow school buses coursing up and down Main Street in our little town of Southold, New York. It’s Back to School time just in case you haven’t noticed, patient parents. But then, I’m sure as the Labor Day weekend wound down, you were making frenetic trips to Staples, stocking up on the endless list of school supplies, and all while fitting in ONE MORE trip to the beach! Beginnings and endings are full of memories and moments we never realize ARE a memory until they’e OVER!

And speaking of beginning and endings, it led me to a perfect start off to Back to School books, namely those featuring the ALPHABET! There are some great ones out there for your young soon to be reader! Tackling those letters and becoming familiar with their shapes and the sounds they make is the FIRST STEP to the magic Open Sesame door to READING. So why not make it an adventure with books that help make the intro easy and fun?

“R is for Robots: A Noisy Alphabet” is a colorful cacophonous romp through the alphabet . According to an article written on “The History of Robots” by Paula Timpson that I read recently, robots “come in every shape, size and color.” Did you know back in 850 B.C., the poet Homer wrote about a creature called a “bot”, short for robot? Today, they can play chess, talk, paint, dance and have even gone to Mars! Why even Leonardo da Vinci sketched a mechanical knight when he was 12! Yikes! He showed that movement by humans could be copied.

Remember Robbie the Robot in the great movie, “Forbidden Planet”? And who can forget the iconic R2D2 and C-3PO of Star Wars Fame. Well, Adam Watkins has fashioned a collection of lovable robot rompers that march forward on wheels and more. As they try to harness these pesky alphabet ABC’s, Watkins’ robotic roustabouts find it is no easy task! A lot of grunting and groaning of effort ensues. They’re on a assemblage mission replete with emanating sounds that begins with the letter they’re harnessing. Cool! As a giant B is carted into place, the phrase BEEP BOOP also moves into view and C falls to the ground causing a robot to cover its ears as a deafening CLANGO CLINK CRASH echoes on the construction scene.

These cute and clamorous robots vacuum, drill, haul, cycle, tractor and cycle. And as the letter T totters into place, a large robot with a tick tock clock for a body, points to the hands as if to say, “Let’s get it going, guys!”

Don’t let your young one miss the letter S hard working senior robot that uses a walker as he gingerly helps out. The tennis balls on the bottom of his walker glide smoothly over the grass as if to say, “I may be old, but I am STILL useful. KIDS, take note!”

By the time Y and Z are put into place with a YOINK and ZAP from a Super Soaker-iike gizmo, kids will be saying, “READ IT AGAIN! and please don’t forget the sound effects, reader! It’s half the fun of making Mr. Watkins’ book make the letters A to Z clatter clearly and with cacophony, into the consciousness of the young!

Here's a wine glass I did for Autumn…my favorite time of year!!

By Anatoly Liberman

Since I’ll be out of town at the end of July, I was not sure I would be able to write these “gleanings.” But the questions have been many, and I could answer some of them ahead of time.

Autumn: its etymology

Our correspondent wonders whether the Latin word from which English, via French, has autumn, could be identified with the name of the Egyptian god Autun. The Romans derived the word autumnus, which was both an adjective (“autumnal”) and a noun (“autumn”), from augere “to increase.” This verb’s perfect participle is auctus “rich (“autumn as a rich season”). The Roman derivation, though not implausible, looks like a tribute to folk etymology. A more serious conjecture allies autumn to the Germanic root aud-, as in Gothic aud-ags “blessed” (in the related languages, also “rich”). But, more probably, Latin autumnus goes back to Etruscan. The main argument for the Etruscan origin is the resemblance of autumnus to Vertumnus, the name of a seasonal deity (or so it seems), about whom little is known besides the tale of his seduction, in the shape of an old woman, of Pomona, as told by Ovid. Vertumnus, or Vortumnus, may be a Latinized form of an Etruscan name. A definite conclusion about autumnus is hardly possible, even though some sources, while tracing this word to Etruscan, add “without doubt.” The Egyptian Autun was a creation god and the god of the setting sun, so that his connection with autumn is remote at best. Nor do we have any evidence that Autun had a cult in Ancient Rome. Everything is so uncertain here that the origin of autumnus must needs remain unknown. In my opinion, the Egyptian hypothesis holds out little promise.

Vertumnus seducing Pomona in the shape of an old woman. (Pomona by Frans de Vriendt “Floris” (Konstnär, 1518-1570) Antwerpen, Belgien, Hallwyl Museum, Photo by Jens Mohr, via Wikimedia Commons)

The origin of so long

I received an interesting letter from Mr. Paul Nance. He writes about so long:

“It seems the kind of expression that should have derived from some fuller social nicety, such as I regret that it will be so long before we meet again or the like, but no one has proposed a clear antecedent. An oddity is its sudden appearance in the early nineteenth century; there are only a handful of sightings before Walt Whitman’s use of it in a poem (including the title) in the 1860-1861 edition of Leaves of Grass. I can, by the way, offer an antedating to the OED citations: so, good bye, so long in the story ‘Cruise of a Guinean Man’. Knickerbocker: New York (Monthly Magazine 5, February 1835, p. 105; available on Google Books). Given the lack of a fuller antecedent, suggestions as to its origin all propose a borrowing from another language. Does this seem reasonable to you?”

Mr. Nance was kind enough to append two articles (by Alan S. Kaye and Joachim Grzega) on so long, both of which I had in my folders but have not reread since 2004 and 2005, when I found and copied them. Grzega’s contribution is especially detailed. My database contains only one more tiny comment on so long by Frank Penny: “About twenty years ago I was informed that it [the expression so long] is allied to Samuel Pepys’s expression so home, and should be written so along or so ’long, meaning that the person using the expression must go his way” (Notes and Queries, Series 12, vol. IX, 1921, p. 419). The group so home does turn up in the Diary more than once, but no citation I could find looks like a formula. Perhaps Stephen Goranson will ferret it out. In any case, so long looks like an Americanism, and it is unlikely that such a popular phrase should have remained dormant in texts for almost two centuries.

Be that as it may, I agree with Mr. Nance that a formula of this type probably arose in civil conversation. The numerous attempts to find a foreign source for it carry little conviction. Norwegian does have an almost identical phrase, but, since its antecedents are unknown, it may have been borrowed from English. I suspect (a favorite turn of speech by old etymologists) that so long is indeed a curtailed version of a once more comprehensible parting formula, unless it belongs with the likes of for auld lang sine. It may have been brought to the New World from England or Scotland and later abbreviated and reinterpreted.

“Heavy rain” in languages other than English

Once I wrote a post titled “When it rains, it does not necessarily pour.” There I mentioned many German and Swedish idioms like it is raining cats and dogs, and, rather than recycling that text, will refer our old correspondent Mr. John Larsson to it.

Ukraine and Baltic place names

The comment on this matter was welcome. In my response, I preferred not to talk about the things alien to me, but I wondered whether the Latvian place name could be of Slavic origin. That is why I said cautiously: “If this is a native Latvian word…” The question, as I understand, remains unanswered, but the suggestion is tempting. And yes, of course, Serb/Croat Krajna is an exact counterpart of Ukraina, only without a prefix. In Russian, stress falls on i; in Ukrainian, I think, the first a is stressed. The same holds for the derived adjectives: ukrainskii ~ ukrainskii. Pushkin said ukrainskaia (feminine).

Slough, sloo, and the rest

Many thanks to those who informed me about their pronunciation of slough “mire.” It was new to me that the surname Slough is pronounced differently in England and the United States. I also received a question about the history of slew. The past tense of slay (Old Engl. slahan) was sloh (with a long vowel), and this form developed like scoh “shoe,” though the verb vacillated between the 6th and the 7th class. The fact that slew and shoe have such dissimilar written forms is due to the vagaries of English spelling. One can think of too, who, you, group, fruit, cruise, rheum, truth, and true, which have the same vowel as slew. In addition, consider Bruin and ruin, which look deceptively like fruit, and add manoeuver for good measure. A mild spelling reform looks like a good idea, doesn’t it?

The pronunciation of February

In one of the letters I received, the writer expresses her indignation that some people insist on sounding the first r in February. Everybody, she asserts, says Febyooary. In such matters, everybody is a dangerous word (as we will also see from the next item). All of us tend to think that what we say is the only correct norm. Words with the succession r…r tend to lose one of them. Yet library is more often pronounced with both, and Drury, brewery, and prurient have withstood the tendency. February has changed its form many times. Thus, long ago feverer (from Old French) became feverel (possibly under the influence of averel “April”). In the older language of New England, January and February turned into Janry and Febry. However powerful the phonetic forces may have been in affecting the pronunciation of February, of great importance was also the fact that the names of the months often occur in enumeration. Without the first r, January and February rhyme. A similar situation is well-known from the etymology of some numerals. Although the pronunciation Febyooary is equally common on both sides of the Atlantic and is recognized as standard throughout the English-speaking world, not “everybody” has accepted it. The consonant b in February is due to the Latinization of the French etymon (late Latin februarius).

Who versus whom

Discussion of these pronouns lost all interest long ago, because the confusion of who and whom and the defeat of whom in American English go back to old days. Yet I am not sure that what I said about the educated norm is “nonsense.” Who will marry our son? Whom will our son marry? Is it “nonsense” to distinguish them, and should (or only can) it be who in both cases? Despite the rebuke, I believe that even in Modern American English the woman who we visited won’t suffer if who is replaced with whom. But, unlike my opponent, I admit that tastes differ.

Wrap

Another question I received was about the origin of the verb wrap. This is a rather long story, and I decided to devote a special post to it in the foreseeable future.

PS. I notice that of the two questions asked by our correspondent last month only copacetic attracted some attention (read Stephen Goranson’s response). But what about hubba hubba?

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of [email protected]; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology articles via email or RSS.

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The post Monthly etymology gleanings for July 2014 appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2014, part 2
• Which witch?
• Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2014, part one

 

Here are a couple of illustrations featuring bears...

RECITAL Lightning strikes a chord and Autumn tap dances on a floor of encrusted gold and ruby… while Thunder claps in appreciation —                       and Winter waits in the wings. Filed under: writing for children Tagged: autumn, ballet, dancing, fall, free verse, free verse autumn poetry, free2rhymeornot, freeverse, freeverse poetry, micropoetry, poems, poetry, poets, recital, […]

August sun rises demands the loon’s attention like a hungry child   Leaves fall in tandem a shady victory dance summer is morose Filed under: writing for children Tagged: autumn, dance, haiku, haiku challenge, hungry, loon, maine, morose, poetry, summer, victory

Night falls like snowflakes, I slide under warm blankets and wait for dawn’s thaw   Autumn sings her song echoing through the evening golden melodies     Filed under: writing for children Tagged: autumn, blankets, evening, haiku, haiku Tuesday, melodies, melody, night, snow, snowflakes, songs, summer, thaw

It’s pouring outside here in Boulder (really pouring…like a monsoon. Seriously, there are flash flood warnings in effect.) This turn of events has ended a streak of blistering hot days and put me in the mood for autumn. Bring out the galoshes and wool sweaters! Serve up the hot tea and warm soup! I’m ready.

So, without further ado, here is an illustration I made at work today to celebrate the changing of the seasons:

You’re probably wondering why I haven’t updated my website since February. Yes, February. As in, A LONG TIME AGO. My only excuse is that I became slightly busy with little things like changing jobs and getting married. (I know, some people manage to still update their websites while doing other things, but some of us are a little more bloggingly-challenged.) Anyway, that’s what I have been up to. I can now happily say that I am now a full-time professional illustrator for a company here in Boulder, and I can also happily say that I have been married for a whole 10 days. Hooray!

My new employer is called Mocavo and is a genealogy web searching service where you can find out all sorts of delightful secrets about your great aunt Mildred and so forth. Unlike other web start-up companies I have encountered, this one had the good taste to hire a full-time illustrator to be on staff. Brilliant! You can find the Mocavo website here.

So, folks, I’m glad to be back here posting again. I have a ton of illustrations to share since I draw and paint almost every day now, so stay tuned for more to come!

The post An Autumn Stroll appeared first on Jessica Lanan Illustration.