Abi – I love this! The last time I was in Amsterdam (all too many years ago), I wandered into an exhibit on the ground floor of the Rijksmuseum – a permanent exhibit, I think – about the Dutch language, with maps and labels and captions and explanations. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Dutch was not up to the task (and this was the one section of the museum that was monolingual), but it *looked* fascinating!
I sometimes feel left out that my "kitchen tongue" is standard American English. I speak more informally with some people than with others, but basically I grew up entirely monolingual. I've rectified that by extending my knowledge into several other languages, but I have no home experience of a separate dialect for home use and one for formal use. My loss, I think.
It doesn't look Roman; it just looks quadrilateral. As a couple of people have pointed out, there are no streets – an essential part of any Roman camp. And no four gates.
Nice starting point for some imaginative speculation, but the starting-point idea is bogus.
As to China – well, doesn't every country like to claim that its natural boundaries are whatever happened to be the greatest extent that they conquered, at any point in their history? Consider what size that would make Lithuania...
That is a completely appropriate message. Ave, Luci Fiiriini!
“Zombies ‘round the farmhouse make me sighâ€
Ahem. Apostrophe alert: you've got a single open quotation mark instead of a flying comma at the beginning of “round.†If Making Light can't keep this straight, what hope for civilization?
– Type Right
All these responses, and no one has pointed out that the New York
Times headquarters is no longer on 43rd St.; it's in their newly built
building at Eighth Ave. & 40th St.:
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3044
This is appalling news. I can hear his grumbly voice right now, and find it hard to imagine that the next time I'm in a New York sf gathering I won't run into him.
Are you interested in real poetry, or in doggerel? For real poetry, the best resource is simply to read the best. And read lots of poetry in translation, not just American or even English-language poems. (Read 'em in the original languages, if you can.)
Good resources for good poetry:
www.poets.org
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do
www.coppercanyonpress.org/
One of the scans of endpapers hit me right in the nostalgia plexus: this one from a 1954 Tom Swift, Jr. book. I remember that image!
http://drawger.com/show.php?show_id=27&image_id=926
Nixon actually resigned on my birthday, which I thought was a great birthday present, though it didn't come into effect until the day after. I was in San Francisco at the time, watching on local TV, and I remember seeing actual footage of people in Berkeley dancing in the streets.
Earliest political stuff I remember was the 1960 presidential election, which took place after I'd turned ten. I must have been pretty oblivious to anything before then; no recollection of the Suez crisis or the '56 presidential election, and I don't even remember Nelson Rockefeller being elected governor of New York (he'd just *always* been governor, in my childhood memory – governor was Rockefeller, mayor of NYC was Wagner, president was Eisenhower, by definition). I remember the effect of Sputnik on our schools, but I don't really remember the actual launch of Sputnik, or not in any detail.
Personal memories, of course, are a different thing altogether.
If you're fascinated by Iranian typography and calligraphy, you might find this recent book worth checking out:
New Visual Culture of Modern Iran
by Reza Abedini & Hans Wolbers
(Mark Batty Publisher, 2006)
www.markbattypublisher.com/servlet/book_view?number=30
John
There are any number of reasons why I wouldn't want to see McCain as president of the United States, but it's intriguing to realize that most of the qualities and ideas cited by the LA Times editorial would have been considered virtues during the Roman republic.
Of course, we know where that ended up.
-- Karthago delenda est
The linked AP report sez: "Virginia has had two statewide vote recounts in modern history,..." Am I the only one who gnashes his teeth at this shortsighted use of "modern"? How many statewide recounts were there in medieval Virginia? Ancient Virginia? Or even Renaissance Virginia? (Might have been one there, but Croatoan won.)
I think you've gotten way too carried away here, but it's all pretty good advice.
One personal wish: when buying beer, don't make all the interesting beer be "Amber," or other kinds of beer for people who basically like sweet stuff. Get some seriously dry beers -- IPAs or the like.
I know it's obvious to you, but I don't think you mentioned: if you're making any kind of signs for the party (whether to announce it elsewhere, or to identify places and objects and purposes in the party suite itself), make them Big and Clear and Darkly Written, and post them where people's eyes will naturally tend to look. Otherwise they're pointless.
Your account actually makes a huge party sound like fun. Sometimes they are. Hope you have fun at some next weekend, whether you're hosting them or not.
John
T --
You knew this one would get me, didn't you?
I was especially fond of the correcting Selectric, though its ability to correct wasn't much use if you were typing mimeo stencils. I made my living for a while in the 1970s at the keyboard of a Selectric, as a temporary typist. This led me, not to the IBM Composer, but directly to that epitome of cheap composition, the bright-blue Compugraphic phototypesetters. Just a couple of weeks ago, at TypeCon in Boston, on an end-of-con excursion to the Museum of Printing in North Andover, I found myself sitting at a Comp IV again, for the first time in at least 20 years, reminiscing about wearing out the little finger of my right hand hitting the Discretionary Hyphen key over and over again as I approached the end of a typeset line. (The correcting Selectric had given that finger a bit of practice, and perhaps strengthening, but nothing like the workout that the Comp IV gave it.)
I find it fascinating that the two books for which the poet and printer Clifford Burke is best known are Printing It: A Guide to Graphic Techniques for the Impecunious (1972), which was a manual of cheap production for those with access to a Composer and a xerox or a local offset printer, and Printing Poetry (1980) an exquisite letterpress book about hand-setting poetry and printing it on a hand press. The two books deal with the opposite ends of the self-printing technology, yet both are about putting the means of production into the hands of loving amateurs.
For a current look at Clifford Burke:
http://desertrosepress.com/Detailed/29.html
You might also be interested in an essay I wrote (originally as a column on Creativepro.com) about the techniques of creating typefaces for the Letraset rub-down lettering system:
http://www.indesignmag.com/story/feature/6604.html
For the about-to-go-to-press book Dot-font: Talking About Fonts (Mark Batty Publisher), I'm reprinting that as the lead-off essay, complete with brand-new photos of the process of cutting Rubylith stencils, which Dave Farey did for the book a few weeks ago since he had no decent old photos from the 1960s...
Much old tech, much new tech; much ado about tech...
And one quibble: no one who was actually familiar with typesetting would confuse a publication set on an IBM Composer with one set in real type, even phototype. The difference was instantly recognizable. But not to your average reader -- which was the point.
John
It gets at things that are obviously true, but it isn't actually very insightful.
JDB
"For the saucy Shenandoah files / The harp without the crown"
"Files"? While I love the images this conjures up — whether of someone assiduously sharpening the corners of a harp so it has crown-like points, or of an office worker carefully storing the harp in a filing cabinet under "H" — I suspect you meant "flies."
"Surrey International Writers’ Conference"? Really? I mean, congratulations and all, and I know that anything close enough to a border is international (cf. Bellingham International Airport), but isn't that a little like the Newark International Writers' Conference?
I suppose if it weren't for the pretentiousness of the name, I wouldn't think twice. Hope you had a lovely time.
John
"Discover that tree trunks aren’t brown; they’re grey." I learned that one long ago, from looking at real trees. Where did we get the notion that tree trunks are brown? Maybe there really are brown tree trunks, but I don't think I've ever seen any.
Of course, color is a complex thing. The American Impressionist Maurice Prendergast, when shipping his dog and asked to describe its color, described it as "purple, with yellow spots."
(In case you're wondering, I got that anecdote from the wonderful book "The Improper Bohemians," by Allen Churchill.)
T --
I suppose it was because the song playing when I read the lone-testicle line was "Where the Old Red River Flows," but I immediately started hearing it as a country & western song. A lament, no doubt. Very sad.
John
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