Compulsively Aimless

  Michigan is a modification of the words for "big lake" in Ojibwa and Algonquian languages.     --Indian Names in Michigan, Virgil J. Vogel   Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams.               --The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordan Lightfoot Michigan is my happy place. I have deep family roots there going back to the early settlers of western Michigan in the 1830s and over 50 summer in Leelenau county.  Even so, I'm still learning more about "the mitten." Most people from the coasts may not think beyond Detroit and not know the state is more sand dunes, forests of pine an birch trees, and fresh water lakes. This summer I ventured to its farthest northern territory, Isle Royale and drove the Keewenau peninsula in the upper peninsula (a peninsula in a peninsula) learning about its rich copper mining history and stories of the Finnish community that settled there. I want to go back. More to explore....

Third in a series of unexpected installments to repurpose archaic terms for the names of Indy Pop Bands or Micro Brew Beers . This time naval terms from the Naval Terms and Definitions by Commander C.C. Soul, U.S.N. (Second Edition, 1926), previously reviewed in an earlier blog.  Jibber the Kibber* Runner and Tackle Spanish Burton Double Bottoms Eyebolt Monkey Gaff Man Ropes Preventer (mistyped and misheard as Perverter and Prefer Her) Rose Lashing Tanner Blish Machine Against the Sun Parbuckle Squilgee Eye-Splice Shaft and Alley Snorter Ice Blink Recognition Signal Keep her so Heave 'round   *the only term not to come out of Naval Terms and Definitions

     What’s your favorite color? This may be the most innocuous ice-breaker to open a conversation with a child or ask on a first date.       A survey of ten countries across four continents shows that one color – blue – is the most popular answer, whether it is in Great Britain, China, or Indonesia. The best selling crayons of all time, Crayola Crayons gives us a choice of 64 colors. Cognitive experts have shown that we can see about 100 levels of red-green and 100 levels of yellow-blue, with thousands more variations for levels of light and dark. They calculate that the total number of colors the human eye can perceive is as much as 10 million.      Color is how we express our moods. I’ve got the blues. Shakespeare coined, green with envy. Color is associated with national identity. Dutch Olympic athletes always wear orange. A patriotic American is said to bleed red, white, and blue. Color influences what we eat. Comedian George Carlin...

An unexpected second installment to repurpose archaic terms for as Indy Pop bands names or Micro brew beers.  This time architecture terms. Acanthus Scroll   Ashyler   Baluster Bargeboard Battlements Blind Arch Broken Pediment Corinthian Order Egg and Dart Fenestration Festoon Hewn and Peg Nulling Splat Stopped Flutes Wattle and Daub  

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                  I've become fixated with names. Names of people, products, places, and companies. Anything that gets a name. This post is a collection of riffs mostly about names of people I like from the books I've read so far this year.  From the second book in Sir Osbert Sitwell's memoir, Great Morning Miss Primrose Miss Figglestone Sir Titus Tittlebyte Lady Viola Tree and her daughters, Iris and Felicity and husband Sir Herbert . They could be depended upon to supply an entertainment of the most delicious personal fantasy based on the flimsiest and most delicate foundation of sense. Lady Tree when offered two kinds of fish at dinner, 'Ye cannot serve both Cod and Salmon.' Another icthyophoagous bon-mot when offered Haddock responded, 'Cry Haddock and let slip my dogs of war!' On her death bed, she referred to her lawyer coming to her bedside to teach her death duties.   More names from another book, Kearny's March Aquilla Gl...

Is there opportunity in this world to repurpose Old Golf club names as Indy Pop bands (plural) or Micro brew beers (singular). The Spade Mashies Pitching Niblicks Wooden Cleeks The Baffie Spoons The Brassies  The Jiggers