Culture – Page 19 – Scripturient

Coriolanus on Film

Coriolanus is a tough play, full of politics and angry people and shouting mobs. It has no comic relief, no jesters, no romance and no real heroes. No great soliloquies, unsympathetic characters, uncomfortable double dealing, treachery and plotting. No powerful subplot as a counterpoint. Pride, arrogance, and power dominate. Coriolanus himself is empty, driven, bereft of the great passions that animate Shakespeare’s other main protagonists. Except the passion for revenge, which comes upon him halfway through the play. Before that, he seems an automaton, as fixed in his role as an aristocrat and soldier as Tsar Nicholas was, with little ……… click below for more ↓

The Fretful Porpentine

2013-11-06 2013-11-06 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Language & Grammar / My WritingLeave a comment

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. That phrase just makes the modern reader stop and wonder. What, you ask yourself, is a porpentine? And why is it fretful? We never learn, although later interpreters would knowingly tell us a porpentine is a porcupine in today’s argot. Porcupine itself dervices from the Old or Middle French term, “porc espin” or spined pig. Which it isn’t – it’s a rodent. * It’s an old word, encountered earlier as “purpentine” in 1589, but hardly a common word in any spelling after that, at least not in drama.** Shakespeare wrote it as porpentine in 1602. ……… click below for more ↓

What Bread Would Chaucer Have Eaten?

2013-11-04 2023-03-17 Bread & Baking / Chaucer / Culture / Food & Drink / History & Biography3 Comments

I was mulling over the growth of the whole ‘artisan bread’ movement as I made another batch of dough last week to cold ferment in the fridge. As I lay in bed reading one night, I started to wonder what sort of bread Chaucer would have eaten. Or Shakespeare. That led to: how was bread made 500 years ago? 1,000? What ingredients did they use? How did the technology and techniques develop? How was yeast’s work discovered and when? How authentic is today’s bread? Aside, that is, from the refined flour, sugar, salt and highly domesticated yeast… So I started to ……… click below for more ↓

In Appreciation of Vintage Music

2013-11-03 2013-11-03 Arts / Culture / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

I was listening the other day to a song sung by Cliff Edwards, Cheating on Me, recorded from an old 78 RPM single. Scratchy, warbly, and a bit thin, but it comes across beautifully across the gap of time. When you listen for a while, the scratches just disappear into the background and you hear Ukulele Ike’s lovely voice cut through the noise. I was thinking it was a song I really should learn to play myself. Listen to Edwards’s classic strumming in his version, as well as the key change towards the end: I have it on my MP3, ……… click below for more ↓

The Circuitous Path from Bulge to Budget

2013-10-28 2013-10-28 Arts / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQO7e_a-gvU] If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sow-skin budget, Then my account I well may, give, And in the stocks avouch it. Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, Act IV, Sc. III, Shakespeare These lines got me thinking about the town’s finances. Sow-skin budget? What does that mean? And how does that relate to the financial plan for the coming year staff is preparing for council’s review? I did some reading (of course…). In Shakespeare’s time, the online etymological dictionary tells us the word budget meant something quite different:* “leather pouch,” from Middle French bougette, diminutive of Old French ……… click below for more ↓

Words, words, words

2013-10-24 2013-10-24 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about the internet: “…the BBS medium reveals not only a widespread inability to use English as a means of communication but also a widespread ignorance of that inability, and, in consequence, a lack of interest in doing anything about it.” Words that were prescient. As if he could foresee Facebook. Blackburn also wrote that most people thought they spoke and wrote well… “The majority of English-speaking people I’ve come across…think they ……… click below for more ↓

1927: Ads, Layout and Typography

2013-10-15 2014-04-18 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

As promised, here are the first 20 scans of the ads from the 1927 North American Almanac I recently mentioned. If there is interest, I’ll do another set later this week. There are probably another 40 or 50 pages of ads in the book. I think these ads give us a wonderful window into the daily, household life of the time, into cultural views and medical thinking. As well, they show the state of advertising, layout and typography. It’s fascinating to look at the mix of typefaces and their placement. Click on the image to load a larger version and ……… click below for more ↓

Why Spelling Matters

2013-09-29 2013-09-29 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Language & Grammar / My Writing / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

Sometimes I despair when I surf through the social media. Technology has empowered everyone to be able to comment, to post their stories, to share their opinion. Yet it has not enabled their ability to compose a sentence, or to spell the words correctly. It has not made us better grammarians, better spellers. And in my despair, I’m not alone. Others take exception to the general dumbing down and its accelerating spread online. It’s not just the easily-confused homophones like they’re, their and there, board and bored, your and you’re. What’s heartbreaking about those mistakes is that the differences are ……… click below for more ↓

A Cup of Pu-Erh

2013-09-28 2013-09-28 Culture / Food & DrinkLeave a comment

It’s dark in the cup, but in the glass pot for brewing, it’s a deep copper. It smells of earth and age, a hint of horses and leather. A rich, slightly sweet and crisp taste. Black, no milk. With milk, it changes to a hot-chocolate light brown, and the flavour mellows. I prefer the slightly sharper black taste. * “For hundreds of years,” reads the Whittard’s package, “mule loads of precious Pu-Erh tea travelled the Ancient Tea Horse Road from China, risking the dangers of Tiger Leaping Gorge to reach the towering mountains of Tibet.” It has that aroma and ……… click below for more ↓

Swimming with Vivaldi

2013-09-20 2013-09-20 Arts / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Uncategorized2 Comments

Today, for an hour, I swam with Vivaldi. Not the actual composer, of course. He died in 1741 at the age of 63. Would have made a mess of the pool to dig him up and toss him in. The “red priest,” as he was called (for his red hair), probably couldn’t even swim. Not a lot of people back then could. but he could write music, and play the violin beautifully. Almost 300 years later his music is still as powerful and moving as when he was alive.* Rather, as you guessed, I swam with his music, the Four ……… click below for more ↓

Should Latin Return to Ontario Schools?

2013-09-18 2013-09-18 Culture / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

When I was a young lad, all I ever wanted to be was a paleontologist. Dinosaurs were the most important thing in my life until around age 14 or 15. That’s when I barely scraped through my high-school Latin course. After that, my interests shifted to other, more attainable career goals. Basic Latin was, at least back then, required for a career in paleontology. Greek, too*. My ability to learn languages was, as a young teenager, not up to the mark. I barely passed Latin, probably given a pass by a teacher who felt sorry for my linguistic disability (and ……… click below for more ↓

Of Type and Typography

2013-09-16 2013-09-16 Arts / My Writing / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Humans have remarkable ability that is shared by – as far as we know – no other animal. We can turn abstract images and symbols into meaning. Words are, of course, the prime example, as old as our history. We can turn a word like dog, tree, table or vacation into a broad and deep understanding of what that word means to us. Of course when I write “dog” and you read it, they’re not the same thing. I need to add qualifiers – adjectives, descriptions, anecdotes – for you to come close to appreciating my meaning. Even then, it’s ……… click below for more ↓

Empire of Illusion and the End of Literacy

2013-09-13 2013-09-13 Arts / Critical Thinking / Culture / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

I don’t know whether to feel vindicated, delighted, frightened or depressed as I read through Chris Hedges’s book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Much of what he says reflects many of my own observations and opinions. I started reading this book in part as research for my upcoming conference speech on social media, but it has kept me mesmerized, like seeing a train wreck before your eyes, something you can’t quite turn away from. I suppose we like to read books that reinforce our world view (those of us who read, that is ……… click below for more ↓

Three Archy poems by Don Marquis

2013-09-07 2013-09-07 Arts / Books & Reviews / Humour & Satire / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

pete the parrot and shakespeare i got acquainted with a parrot named pete recently who is an interesting bird pete says he used to belong to the fellow that ran the mermaid tavern in london then i said you must have known shakespeare know him said pete poor mutt i knew him well he called me pete and i called him bill but why do you say poor mutt well said pete bill was a disappointed man and was always boring his friends about what he might have been and done if he only had a fair break two or ……… click below for more ↓