From latin; nubes means cloud, vagari is to roam and the -ant is the suffix to form an adjective.
Definition (from the Oxford English Dictionary; its earliest known recording is from 1656):
moving through (or among) clouds
Examples:
René Magritte's Infinite Gratitude
The American idiom: "head in the clouds" (e.g.: After she finished reading the last page of her book, she got up and loftily walked around the park with her head in the clouds, not really seeing all of the rustling trees or bustling people or birds taking flight.)
The Irish Elk is misrepresented by its name, they were neighter exclusively Irish nor were they elk. They were one of the largest deer that ever lived whose skeletons have been found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. They are called Irish because a great number of well preserved skeletons were found in the peat bogs of Ireland. They weighed between 1300-1500 lbs., stood about 6.9 feet tall, and had the largest antlers of any known deer. Their antlers, at their most, stretched 12 feet long- from tip to tip. Comparatively, the average antler on deer still alive range from 3"-60" (approximately).
These enormous animals fell victim to the Ice Age and dropped into extinction around 10,500 years ago. If these deer had managed to live through the Ice Age and subsequent years, what would it have been like to have them be among us? Would we place their antlers over our mantle places, keep them captive in zoos? I think that most people tend to think of an animal's value only in relation to themselves. This is evident in our obsession with pets, zoos, and whole websites devoted to baby animals. I think we love animals because we love how they make us feel.
In the early 1930s, there was a record label in America called Hit of the Week. They catered mostly to the poorer majority of people during the Depression. Their records were made of a mixture of paper and resin, called durium, unlike most other label's shellac phonographs- which were more durable and resistant to time's persistent weathering abuse. Their phonographs were usually sold at newsstands, as opposed to record stores, in a rice paper sleeve for 15 cents a piece.
These flimsy little records weren't made to survive an extended amount of time, they were made for the people who loved music and couldn't afford to not have them. I really like the idea that people who largely couldn't afford a meal would spend the money to purchase a record instead. There's something to be said about the sentiment behind that (it certainly wasn't materialism or consumerism that drove these people to the newsstands).
Luckily, for us, this company has found and reproduced the songs from that short lived era of desperate hunger for music. Lucky for you, the reader: I have decided to post a song from this ephemeral little record company weekly. I hope that, in light of all the convenience of downloading albums and movies for free, this can serve as a small reminder that some things and feelings are well worth the money.
This week's Hit of the Week comes from The Harlem Hot Chocolates, the pseudonym of Duke Ellington and his band with Irving Mills singing. Due to copyright issues, many of the larger performers were forced to use pseudonyms to release these records.
The following players are as follows:
Barney Bigard: Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone
Wellman Braud: Bass
Harry Carney: Clarinet, Alto, and Baritone Saxophone
One of the most notable things about American movies made pre-1960s is the way the actors and actresses speak. They have this rather elegant way of dropping their R's and emphasizing their T's. This Transatlantic Accent was not a conventional accent, by any means; rather, it was taught in theater classes and most boarding schools prior to the sixties.
As an example: the narrator in the video above blends a more neutral accent with an upper-class British accent seamlessly. Actors and actresses, especially those who began in theatre, were taught to speak this way as it sounded vaguely universal in origin. It also added a heightened sense of glamour to these idolized movie stars.
A cursory overview of linguistics explains that accents, not to be necessarily confused with dialects, develop over time according to one's geographic location, ethnicity, social class, etc. Accents naturally develop in people's speech patterns over a course of time. The accent a person has isn't something permanent, but is constantly evolving and is reflective of what has influenced them. In high school, I spoke in a way that I imagined Holden Caulfield speaking: prep-schoolish and new yorkese, with plenty of words and phrases like "phony", "g. damn", and "for chrissake" thrown in. Now, I'd be a little embarrassed (only a little, mind you) speaking that way. I think I've developed a full California accent, complete with lazy vowels and dropping off of syllables.
This American speaker emerged only approximately 50 years after the narrator in the first video. What caused this sudden shift from a highly stylized, elegant way of speaking to a more casual, almost lazy, way of communicating?
This word comes from C. Grant B. Allen in volume 5 of the quarterly review journal Mind. Ap from ancient Greek which means "off" or "away, anthropin (ism) meaning human-centered consideration, and isation which is a noun suffix that denotes the action of the suffixed verb.
Definition (as given by the Oxford English Dictionary's second edition, published in 1989):
The broadening of the ambit of one's preoccupations and concerns away from a narrow focus on those things most palpably human and most closely pertinent to humanity.
Notable examples of those who exhibit apanthropinisation include:
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
Perhaps this word has dropped out of use because of the way technology evolved to ease the way humans interact with each other. It's hard to step in any direction (in "developed" countries) without being within the realm of contact with others, via whatever iDevice, cellular telephone, et cetera. Human interaction has become all but unavoidable in our modern life.
If I can trust my memory: this photograph was sent to me by a friend around three years ago. He sent it to me when he was living in Boston and I was still living with my parents in California. He found it in an antique store and sent it to me as a part of a birthday present. The written note on the back reads: "View of LA from observation deck of city hall".
It's hard to date this photograph or know what direction the photographer was facing when the shutter release button was pressed. I think that the decades between us and the photographer resulted in such a change in the Los Angeles landscape that it feels unrecognizable. The only distinguishing factor of this picture are, what I believe to be, rows of trains near the skyline on the left side of the photograph. These trains may be a part of Union Station, one of the last great railway stations built in America, and are easily seen from the southeast corner of Los Angeles' City Hall's observation deck. A haze of smog and sunlight blankets the background of the picture, a sight all too familiar in Los Angeles.
Pictures act as a sort of immortalization of a time and place. So, when you contrast more recent photos, often taken digitally, against an older Los Angeles, usually with the archaic format of film, one is able to see the passage of time in a tangible way. Buildings have been destroyed and new ones emerged, modernized and sleek. Of related interest: Los Angeles Past, Vintage Los Angeles
The dodo's personal date of extinction remains speculative, but it is widely accepted that it happened between 1688 and 1715 and was mostly caused by human intervention. The etymology of their name is also rather unclear. Some suggest that it is an onomatopoeic approximation of it's call "doo-doo". Still, others believe that it comes from the Portuguese word for fool: doudo.
Dodos rose to prominence with the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. One made a brief appearance in chapter 3, where he conducts a Caucus race where an assortment of animals runs around in circles, starting and stopping whenever they pleased, and bestowing Alice with her own thimble after she has given all the participants the comfits in her pocket.
These oddly shaped, flightless birds have become a symbol for things that have dropped into antiquity or extinction.
Looking through dusty bins for frayed, yellowing photographs and postcards with pictures of places that no longer exist with faded handwriting on the back. Remembering animals who are no longer living and words gone out of circulation.
