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I have the honor today of helping out my friend and Maryland neighbor with her annual February Write-Along Challenge.  (Laura's kind of busy right now, with her NEW BOOK* set to come out in April.) This project goes by many names, and I'll let Laura herself explain it thoroughly at her new blog, but the short version is:


Laura is very careful to let everyone know that perfect attendance is not a requirement for participation, although some do challenge themselves to that discipline.  I'm in the other camp, joining in when I can, but since today's prompt is the Found Object photo that I provided, I'll be working on my draft along with rounding up the responses of others today.

And let's be frank, shall we?  Although each of us blasting out a poem a day may enjoy a blazing moment of transcendent poetic glory here and there, it will be a very rare poem shared that doesn't need some time to percolate and another few rounds of review and revision.  Most of our responses are very definitely drafts.  But as I noted earlier, there is something liberating about just Going For It--conceiving a poem, typing it, cutting and pasting it and clicking to put it out there, all in under an hour.  This practice exercises all kinds of muscles other than actual composition, doesn't it!?

Now, let's go find some transcendent poetic glory.



Chocolate Chip Cookies

Vanilla splashes
Flowery fingerprints
Cookie dough everywhere
Spoonful of chocolate chips
Magic baking on trays
The best part of all
Slurping leftover
Batter off fingers
From the mixing bowl
We're Grandma's
Little bakers

~ Jessica Bigi



*****************************************
*Laura's new book is The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary and it's due out from Wendy Lamb Books on April 12.  The book is enjoying a thrilling amount of pre-publicity, so pre-order now to make sure it's in your hands as soon as possible!

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not that I would ever carve a tree...

Welcome one and all!  I suspect we may be a small group this week--last summer flings and all--but I also know that many of us Poetry Friday faithfuls are educators who are beginning to gear up for a new year.  This should be true for me too, but I'm holding on tooth-and-nail to "empty" summer days during which I decide what and when!  Here's a NoNotYet poem to fit that feeling....



< poem ready? NoNotYet >


Where are you in the wheel of the year?  Clicking slowly and deliciously up-up-up to the first day of school, ready to ride that roller coaster, or noticing already the drawing in of the evening light, the scatter of yellow leaves on the still-green lawn?  Or perhaps you are good at being smack in the middle of the moment...your posts should give us a clue!

Thanks for joining in this week, the last week of the Summer Poem Swap!  I look forward to sharing the riches I received next Friday.  Now then, click below to leave your link for all to follow!

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By Anatoly Liberman

The questions people ask about word origins usually concern slang, family names, and idioms. I cannot remember being ever asked about the etymology of house, fox, or sun. These are such common words that we take them for granted, and yet their history is often complicated and instructive. In this blog, I usually stay away from them, but I sometimes let my Indo-European sympathies run away with me. Today’s subject is of this type.

Guest is an ancient word, with cognates in all the Germanic languages. If in English its development had not been interrupted, today it would have been pronounced approximately like yeast, but in the aftermath of the Viking raids the native form was replaced with its Scandinavian congener, as also happened to give, get, and many other words. The modern spelling guest, with u, points to the presence of “hard” g (compare guess). The German and Old Norse for guest are Gast and gestr respectively; the vowel in German (it should have been e) poses a problem, but it cannot delay us here.

The related forms are Latin hostis and, to give one Slavic example, Russian gost’. Although the word had wide currency (Italic-Germanic-Slavic), its senses diverged. Latin hostis meant “public enemy,” in distinction from inimicus “one’s private foe.” (I probably don’t have to add that inimicus is the ultimate etymon of enemy.) In today’s English, hostile and inimical are rather close synonyms, but inimical is more bookish and therefore more restricted in usage (some of my undergraduate students don’t understand it, but everybody knows hostile). However, “enemy” was this noun’s later meaning, which supplanted “stranger (who in early Rome had the rights of a Roman).” And “stranger” is what Gothic gasts meant. In the text of the Gothic Bible (a fourth-century translation from Greek), it corresponds to ksénos “stranger,” from which we have xeno-, as in xenophobia. Incidentally, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the best Indo-European scholars had agreed that Greek ksénos is both a gloss and a cognate of hostis ~ gasts (with a bit of legitimate phonetic maneuvering all of them can be traced to the same protoform). This opinion has now been given up; ksénos seems to lack siblings. (What a drama! To mean “stranger” and end up in linguistic isolation.) The progress of linguistics brings with it not only an increase in knowledge but also the loss of many formerly accepted truths. However, caution should be recommended. Some people whose opinion is worth hearing still believe in the affinity between ksénos and hostis. Discarded conjectures are apt to return. Today the acknowledged authorities separate the Greek word from the cognates of guest; tomorrow, the pendulum may swing in the opposite direction.

Let us stay with Latin hostis for some more time. Like guest, Engl. host is neither an alien nor a dangerous adversary. The reason is that host goes back not to hostis but to Old French (h)oste, from Latin hospit-, the root of hospes, which meant both “host” and “guest,” presumably, an ancient compound that sounded as ghosti-potis “master (or lord) of strangers” (potis as in potent, potential, possibly despot, and so forth). We remember Latin hospit- from Engl. hospice, hospital, and hospitable, all, as usual, via Old French. Hostler, ostler, hostel, and hotel belong here too, each with its own history, and it is amusing that so many senses have merged and that, for instance, a hostel is not a hostile place.

Unlike host “he who entertains guests,” Engl. host “multitude” does trace to Latin hostis “enemy.” In Medieval Latin, this word acquired the sense “hostile, invading army,” and in English it still means “a large armed force marshaled for war,” except when used in a watered down sense, as in a host of troubles, a host of questions, or a host of friends (!). Finally, the etymon of host “consecrated wafer” is Latin hostia “sacrificial victim,” again via Old French. Hostia is a derivative of hostis, but the sense development to “sacrifice” (through “compensation”?) is obscure.

The puzzling part of this story is that long ago the same words could evidently mean “guest” and “the person who entertains guests”, “stranger” and “enemy.” This amalgam has been accounted for in a satisfactory way. Someone coming from afar could be a friend or an enemy. “Stranger” covers both situations. With time different languages generalized one or the other sense, so that “guest” vacillated between “a person who is friendly and welcome” and “a dangerous invader.” Newcomers had to be tested for their intentions and either greeted cordially or kept at bay. Words of this type are particularly sensitive to the structure of societal institutions. Thus, friend is, from a historical point of view, a present participle meaning “loving,” but Icelandic frændi “kinsman” makes it clear that one was supposed “to love” one’s relatives. “Friendship” referred to the obligation one had toward the other members of the family (clan, tribe), rather than a sentimental feeling we associate with this word.

It is with hospitality as it is with friendship. We should beware of endowing familiar words with the meanings natural to us. A friendly visit presupposes reciprocity: today you are the host, tomorrow you will be your host’s guest. In old societies, the “exchange” was institutionalized even more strictly than now. The constant trading of roles allowed the same word to do double duty. In this situation, meanings could develop in unpredictable ways. In Modern Russian, as well as in the other Slavic languages, gost’ and its cognates mean “guest,” but a common older sense of gost’ was “merchant” (it is still understood in the modern language and survives in several derivatives). Most likely, someone who came to Russia to sell his wares was first and foremost looked upon as a stranger; merchant would then be the product of semantic specialization.

One can also ask what the most ancient etymon of hostis ~ gasts was. Those scholars who looked on ksénos and hostis as related also cited Sanskrit ghásati “consume.” If this sense can be connected with the idea of offering food to guests, we will again find ourselves in the sphere of hospitality. The Sanskrit verb begins with gh-. The founders of Indo-European philology believed that words like Gothic gasts and Latin host go back to a protoform resembling the Sanskrit one. Later, according to this reconstruction, initial gh- remained unchanged in some languages of India but was simplified to g in Germanic and h in Latin. The existence of early Indo-European gh- has been questioned, but reviewing this debate would take us too far afield and in that barren field we will find nothing. We only have to understand that gasts ~ guest and hostis ~ host can indeed be related.

There is a linguistic term enantiosemy. It means a combination of two opposite senses in one word, as in Latin altus “high” and “deep.” Some people have spun an intricate yarn around this phenomenon, pointing out that everything in the world has too sides (hence the merger of the opposites) or admiring the simplicity (or complexity?) of primitive thought, allegedly unable to discriminate between cold and hot, black and white, and the like. But in almost all cases, the riddle has a much simpler solution. Etymology shows that the distance from host to guest, from friend to enemy, and from love to hatred is short, but we do not need historical linguists to tell us that.

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 here, each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of [email protected]; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”

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Image credit: Conversation de dames en l’absence de leurs maris: le diner. Abraham Bosse. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post ‘Guests’ and ‘hosts’ appeared first on OUPblog.

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By Jennifer Burns

How does being a guest on The Colbert Report compare to being a guest on The Daily Show? Here’s a breakdown!

More Face Time with Everyone: Backstage at The Daily Show was a blur; I had no sooner arrived than I was in make-up, met Jon, and was heading out into the lights. By contrast, I had lots of time at The Colbert Report to see the stage, meet the producers, and chat with sundry tech people. And I got way more face time with Stephen Colbert! “I’m not my character!” was pretty much the first thing he said to me. He explained that he would feign willful ignorance and my job was to educate him and the audience. And of course we talked about Ayn Rand. Colbert told me he read Anthem in a Christian ethics class in college, and then while backpacking in Europe traded somebody for Atlas Shrugged. But he only made it to the scene where Dagny discovers world renowned philosopher Dr. Hugh Akston flipping burgers at a roadside diner and recognizes his genius by the way he handled a spatula — this stretched credulity for Colbert and he gave up on reading the rest!

The Audience: The audience was a much more intimate part of The Colbert Report than The Daily Show, where guests make a grand entrance and can’t even see the audience because of the blinding lights. This time, I was seated on the set for about a minute beforehand in full view of the audience, and their laughter and response seemed a bigger part of the interview. While I was waiting to go on, I could hear everyone laughing uproariously, clearly having a great time, and that made me feel excited and ready.

The Host: The biggest difference, of course, is Jon vs. Stephen, but I had an unexpected reaction. Where most people seem to think Stephen Colbert would be a more difficult interview, I actually found him to be personally warmer and easier to talk to than Jon Stewart. Some of this was because I felt more confident the second time around. But the interview itself was also less serious and more of a performance, whereas on The Daily Show I felt I was being grilled by a formidable intellect. Before The Daily Show interview, the producer told me it would be extemporaneous, and that Jon didn’t have notes. But as I was waiting for my interview with Colbert to start, I was told he was finalizing his jokes. When I was seated on the set, I could see a detailed note card on Stephen’s side of the table. I’m pretty sure we veered off the script, but that level of planning was reassuring. The Colbert producer also did a great job of helping me understand what would create a good interview. Her top piece of advice (which I also heard at The Daily Show): “Don’t be funny!”

Author Jennifer Burns on The Colbert Report

Author Jennifer Burns on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. A nationally recognized authority on Rand and conservative thought, she has discussed her work on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Book TV, and has been interviewed on numerous radio programs. Read her previous blog post: “Top Three Questions About My Interview On The Daily Show”

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Welcome one and all to what I hope will be a lucrative day in the poetry market! 
Come early, stay late and shop til you drop without ever leaving home or---this is key--spending a penny.  At the poetry mall, all the flavors & favors, subjects & objects, treasures & pleasures here are yours for the mere click of a mouse (and what a hard-working creature she is).  I'll be rounding up the posts periodically all day with the help of Mr. Linky below.

I spent time yesterday trying to explain "Black Friday" to my 9-year-old and why we will be avoiding Target like the plague (also known, in its day, as The Black Death).  I'd like to reclaim the beauty of black this Friday with a video and a piquant excerpt from Mary O'Neill's deservedly famous Hailstones and Halibut Bones.

What Is Black?

...Think of what starlight
And lamplight would lack
Diamonds and fireflies
If they couldn’t lean against Black.




Interesting musical treatment, don't you think?  For more black beauty, go here for said 9-year-old's take, and here and here for some adult poems on black.  Then be sure to leave your link below, with a word about your post in parentheses after your name. Thanks for stopping in!

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Welcome all visitors, new and seasoned! I'm looking forward to rounding up your poetry posts throughout the day, and I'm delighted also to share poems by 2nd graders from Mr. Gamard's class at Wyngate Elementary School here in Bethesda.

On Wednesday I spent 75 minutes sharing "Honeysuckle Hunting" and talking about how poetry tools like alliteration, personification and onomatopoeia are powerful--but how they work best in a poem about something that really matters to the poet. The children then drafted, with very little hesitation. There was "Can I?" and "Are we supposed to?" -- to which I always answer, "You are the boss of your poem."

On Thursday my aim was to highlight the freedom poets can exercise in arranging their poems on the page to help readers read it "right." I brought in "Botanical Jazz" printed across four left-justified lines (contrary to its appearance in the book), and after reading it aloud twice, I asked the children to cut and paste the words of the poem on lines, creating line breaks and stanzas. This turned out to be both challenging and highly instructive, and the kids enjoyed investigating the different readings commanded by their varying versions and comparing their own with each others' and with mine. More on this exercise next week....

Then they went back to work with their drafts, to reconsider arrangements on the page, word choice and pacing--or just to elaborate their illustrations. They were rather excited to think of their work being published on the World-Wide Web, and so without further ado (Okay, a little further ado: as always, I'm not able to preserve all the indents, so apologies to young writers who intended a little more variety in the shape of their poems)....THE POEMS!


Mouse
by Peter D.

Creeping crawling sneaking. Stealing
cheese.

Living in dark holes.

Always staying out of sight.
Always sneaking food at night.
Jumping out of sight when the
cat comes.

Brown, black, gray, white mice!


What am I eating?
by Danielle P.

The reds are
like SHINY red apples.

The oranges are
like JUICY tangerines.

The yellows are
like SOUR lemons.

The greens are
like
SWEET
lime.

The
purples
are
like BITTER grapes.

now I’m
eating SKITTLES!!!!!!


Drawing
by Cooper M.

Action!
I take pencil and draw a circle.
Then a straight line down the bottom of the
circle. Then one line going to the right.
Then I draw one line
going diagonal and…
wow! You’ve got a troop. But make more!


The Night Is Like A Cat
by Kit F.

The night is like a big black cat

the moon is like his eye

with a gleaming glow of mischief sailing

across the sky.

The night is like a prowling cat

watching all the stars

which are like the mice

that make their home in ours.

Now you know that

the night is like a cat.


football
by Ryan G.

Hike
whoosh
the football flies through the air
click clank
the players crash together
he catches the ball
TOUCH DOWN!!!
BOOM!
he kicked the field goal everyone is out of
their seats
It’s good!
the Redskins win!<

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Trendy retailer Express (may have figured out how to monetize its Facebook presence — by adding a “shop” tab. The full Express line is available on the site, and the purchase process is fully contained within the Facebook frame. Oh,... Read the rest of this post

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Monday Artday... A major motion picture? No, not really. But it is something to be admired. Not just as an amazing place to find some great art and illustration from a huge variety of artists from all over the world, but as an interesting social experiment. The artists here have an astonishing knack for managing themselves when the host is absent.

Well, the host is back. Just a quick run-down of what's up. I spent all of 2010 treating a horrible intestinal cancer. Long runs of chemotherapy and 2 major surgeries. It's been very hard on me and my family but it all has a happy ending! I'm cancer-free and back to normal health! Now I can ease back into all of my passions (outside of just staying alive). So I'm diving back into Monday Artday and I want to thank you all for keeping it going while I was away.

For all of you that requested membership while I was out, I have approved your membership so look for an email from Blogger with instructions on how to log in. Looking forward to seeing all of you posting your fabulous work here!

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Hey, artists! I'm going to be away for a little while so I want you all to play nice! I'm going in for tests tomorrow (EKG, blood, etc.) and then abdominal surgery on Monday (March 22). I've got cancer and my duodenum needs to be removed (along with part of my pancreas and anything else they find needs pruning in there). It's all good and I expect to be right as rain in a couple of weeks so don't worry about me. I'll be back as soon as I can.

I set up the next challenges to appear as posts in the next few weeks, Mondays at 10:00 AM PST. Keep that artwork coming! I'll judge the Castaway and Monkey challenges and the next few challenges when I return.

Also, for anyone who wants to join in that time period, I'll have to add you when I'm back, so expect a few weeks delay.

Now, sharpen those pencils and start drawing! And good health to all. Ciao for now.

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Hello, artists! A quick note about formatting posts... Please read this whole post!

First off, try to keep your images at a small to medium size. When you add an image to your post you can resize it with a click and drag or a click and select the size. If someone wants to see the image in a larger scale they can click on it.

Next, we need shorter posts. I love the stories, the tips, the tutorials, the self-promotion and more that everyone posts and I've never given thought to length. But I've had a few emails about the difficulty of viewing the blog when there are long posts - some people have slower connections, view on other devices (like iPods), or use a lower resolution. So, please continue to post your long posts, but insert a JUMP BREAK in it so it's shorter on our main page and those that wish to read further can click the jump link and do so.

Here's how. Write your long post and then select the point at which you want to insert the jump break. You do so by clicking the broken page icon in the post editor (you need the updated editor - see below).

This inserts a grey line into the post that will appear as a "read more" link on the main page. The rest of the post will be seen after the jump - on the post page.
To get your editor to look like the one shown here, go to the Settings link in your dashboard - the settings tab, basic - and scroll down to Global Settings, Select post editor... select the "Updated editor" option.

I would appreciate if everyone followed this rule for the sake of readability for everyone. So, post those long posts!

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Hi! I'm so sorry I've been absent. I've been recovering from chemotherapy. I'm doing great right now so I'll be updating this coming Monday. Great work here, glad to see you all are self-sufficient. :)

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In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. Zeus ordered her creation as a punishment for mankind, in retaliation for Prometheus’ having stolen fire and then giving it to humans for their use. She is most famous for having brought with her a box containing all the world’s evils. She releases these evils, but closes the lid before Hope can escape. Man, those ancient Greeks were nuts! :)

The Greek Myth challenge ends February 23. - Mike (your host)

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Minnie “Boom-Boom” Mahoony was the world’s greatest juggling, sword - swallowing, tight - rope - walking, daredevil of the 1890s. She was also known to wrestle gators and climb skyscrapers. Rumor had it that she studied under Houdini, learned martial arts in Peking, and worked as a spy for the U.S. government. While flying biplanes in WWI, she disappeared somewhere over the Bermuda Triangle.

The Cliff Hanger challenge ends February 16th. - Mike (your host)

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Well, we're off again.

This is our third tour and it starts December 15th. Below is the schedule of Hosts and their Guests. We hope you drop by to see what's going on.

Host: Dr. John F. Murray / Guest: Elysabeth Eldering
http://drjohnfmurray.blogspot.com
Host: Dianne Sagan / Guest: Joyce Anthony
http://www.diannesagan.wordpress.com
Host: Harry Gilleland / Guest: Rosanna Ienco
http://harrygillelandwrites.blogspot.com
Host: Lanaia Lee / Guest: Dr. John F. Murray
http://lanaialee.blogspot.com
Host: Joy Delgado / Guest: Dianne Sagan http://zooprisepartyfiestazoorpresa.blogspot.com
Host: Lillian Cauldwell / Guest: Harry Gilleland
http://lilliancaldwell.blogspot.com
Host: Karen Cioffi / Guest: Lanaia Lee
http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com
Host: Kathy Stemke / Guest: Joy Delgado
http://educationtipster.blogspot.com
Host: Linda Ballou / Guest: Lillian Cauldwell
http://lindaballou.blogspot.com
Host: Lea Schizas / Guest: Karen Cioffi
http://thewritingjungle.blogspot.com
Host: Patricia Crandall / Guest: Kathy Stemke
http://patriciacrandall.blogspot.com
Host: Nancy Famolari / Guest: Linda Ballou
http://nancygfamolari.blogspot.com
Host: Rosemary Chaulk / Guest: Lea Schizas
http://rosemarychaulk.blogspot.com
Host: Sharon Poppen / Guest: Patricia Crandall
http://sharonpoppenauthor.blogspot.com
Host: Suzanne Lieurance / Guest: Nancy Famolari
http://www.suzannelieurance.com
Host: Vivian Zabel / Guest: Rosemary Chaulk
http://VivianZabel.blogspot.com
Host: Boyd Hipp / Guest: Sharon Poppen
http://boydhipp.blogspot.com
Host: Dehanna Bailee / Guest: Suzanne Lieurance http://www.thebackroomat.dehanna.com
Host: Margaret Fieland / Guest: Vivian Zabel
http://www.margaretfieland.com
Host: Ransom Noble / Guest: Boyd Hipp
http://www.ransomnoble.wordpress.com
Host: Luigi Falconi / Guest: Dehanna Bailee
http://luigifalconi.blogspot.com
Host: Dwight Rounds / Guest: Margaret Fieland
http://dwightcrounds.blogspot.com
Host: Anna Maria Prezio / Guest: Ransom Noble
http://prezio.blogspot.com
Host: Crystalee Calderwood / Guest: Luigi Falconi http://crystaleecalderwood.blogspot.com
Host: Rosanna Ienco / Guest: Dwight Rounds
http://rosannaienco.blogspot.com
Host: Elysabeth Eldering / Guest: Anna Maria Prezio
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
Host: Joyce Anthony / Guest: Crystalee Calderwood
http://joyceanthony.tripod.com/blog/

Please come back on the 15th to visit with my guest, author Lanaia Lee.

Karen

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