Compulsively Aimless

Looking back on my reading for 2023, if I find any themes for the year they would be time, memory, and nostalgia. A few of the quotes and observations I've written down from this year.     Like watches ticking on the wrists of dead soldiers. --Jean Cocteau   If you live long enough, the process of memory ruthless condenses your experiences consigning much to oblivion. --Robert Kaplan, Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age   The alleys at night intimate chambers of of just remembered dreams and childhood -- Robert Kaplan, Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age   Journey taken in youth inform the rest of our lives -- they are markers of of change in us as well as the rest of the world --WSJ, April ?, 2023   The lifetime that I've been lent in idleness I've spent      --fragment of a poem that I can't recall attribution.  I had become my ancestors --The Growing Seasons, Samuel Hynes ...

  I have several pages of fictional band names and songs. (A project that continues without direction or purpose.) Here's another installment. Awl Da Tyme Cherub Moolah Cake Bakers Band Name or Microbrew? Night Deposit Dying Cloud Saturday on Mars German Haircut Country Killing   Legal Bands   I saw these as actual band names earlier this year posted on a bulletin boards at the George Washington Law School. International Shoe Attractive Nuisance I've not seen them perform but if they're still around I have a couple of song titles for them: Frolic and Detour Writ of Replevin

                        1. Do you ever make a to-go cup of coffee for your drive to get coffee?   2. Have you written more odes than haikus to coffee?   3. Do you ever think about planning a vacation to Java?   4. Do you drink coffee while sitting on the toilet?   5. Have you named any of your children Mocha or Frappuccino?

  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