(Roughly) Daily

From reader KM, and PlayingForChange.com:

And, apropos today’s earlier posting, this wonderful portrait of honoree Wm. Burroughs by close-to-your-correspondent’s-heart Robert Crumb:

source: Water Row Books

Readers may recall earlier missives on the roles that dictionary editors play in deciding which words get added to or deleted from dictionaries– e.g. “It’s alive! (the language edition)“– and on nascent efforts to allow the owners of the language (those of us who use it) to have a say in those decisions– e.g., “Vote!.”

Now the good folks at Oxford University Press (more specifically, at Oxford Dictionaries) have made a bolder and even more democratic move:  they’ve introduced Save the Words— an elegant interface that allows one to adopt a word– promise to use it– in an effort to save it.

Your correspondent urges readers to give themselves the lubency of providing these needy words a home– of sparing these worthy parts-of-speech the vacivity of retreat into a final latibule.

As we reach for our OEDs, we might wish an altitudinous Happy Birthday to William S. Burroughs, the author (Naked Lunch; Junkie), poster-child of the Beat movement… and perhaps the only person ever to make money legally from heroin (apart from shareholders of the Bayer company, which invented heroin and marketed it as a non-addictive cure for morphine addiction and coughs); he was born in St. Louis on this date in 1914, and once observed:

Language is a virus from outer space.

William S. Burroughs, commemorated

To celebrate his 40th birthday, Ted Ciamillo plans to pedal across the Atlantic in a one-man submarine.

Ted and his sub

A machinist and inventor, Ciamillo has some aquatic experience; he invented the “Hydrospeeder,” a 007-style underwater propulsion device, and more recently, the Lunocet.  But this adventure, which he is calling “The Subhuman Project,” is his deepest dive yet.

Read the New Scientist story here, and visit the Subhuman Project website here.

As we practice holding our breath, we might recall that it was on this date in 1824 that J.W. Goodrich introduced rubber galosches to the U.S.  (The transition from a traditional wooden sole to one of vulcanized rubber is attributed to Charles Goodyear and Leverett Candee. Vulcanization of rubber tempered its properties so that it was easily molded, durable, and tough. A rubberized elastic webbing made Goodyear’s galoshes [circa 1890] easy to pull on and off.)

…So many books, so little time!

Now, a little…  well, a lot of curatorial help from The Guardian: “1000 Novels Everyone Must Read.”  Lest readers be discouraged, at a book a week, that’s under 20 years of reading pleasure…

And pleasure it promises to be.  The full list is divided into seven sections– War & Travel, Science fiction & Fantasy, State of the Nation, Family & Self, Comedy, Crime, and Love– each filled with extraordinary treats.  (The “State of the Nation” section has a detectable– and understandable– British bias, but kicks nonetheless.)

And the list is surrounded by nifty extras, like “Top 10 trivia: Lost manuscripts” (a list on which T.E. Lawrence meets Robert Ludlam)…

Read it and reap!

As we settle into our comfy chairs, we might spare a memorial thought for Charles “Buddy” Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, who died on this date in 1959 when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza crashed a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City, Iowa on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota.  After some mechanical problems stalled their tour bus (The three were part of “The Winter Dance Party” tour), Holly, who had just scored a No. 1 hit with “That’ll Be the Day,” chartered the plane.  Richardson (touring in support of “Chantilly Lace”) talked Holly’s band mate Waylon Jennings out of his seat on the flight; Valens (who was only 17, but had already sent “Come ON, Let’s GO,” “Donna,” and “La Bamba” to the top ten) won a coin toss for the final place.  It was, as Don McLean sang, “the day the music died”…

The Crash Site

The Tour Poster