Author Archives: The Night Writer

Challenging Word of the Week: abjure

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Abjure
(ab JOOHR) verb

To abjure something is to renounce it, retract, repudiate, forswear it. Abjure comes from the Latin verb abjurare (to deny under oath); abjuration from Late Latin abjuratio (recantation); both are based on ab- (away) plus jurare (to swear). Reformed sinners abjure the errors of their ways. A number of American communists abjured their allegiance to the Communist Party and informed on their former colleagues. The noun abjuration (abjoo RAY shuhn) implies renunciation upon oath, or at least some measure of solemnity and formality, something more than a mere change of mind. Born-again Christians abjure their former unbelief. The English poet John Donne (1572-1631) wrote:

The heavens rejoice in moiion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety

In Paradise Lost, the English poet John Milton (1608-1674) says:

I waked To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure.

My example: The Minnesota Twins abjured the lousy baseball they played in April and June and came back to win the American League Central Division title on the last day of the season.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

“My Girl Likes to Party All the Time…”

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Alright, I’ve heard that some people have been clamoring for a post from their elusive Diva, so here I am. Bruise-free, might I add.

But this is a special post, as it is about a special person. I would not be here if she hadn’t been here first. It’s my mom. (Insert your “awwwww”s here)

It was her birthday on Friday. Earlier in the year I asked her what she wanted to do for it, and she said “Nothing, and no flamingo’s!”.

So I threw her a surprise party. Actually it was me and our home church group that meets on Friday nights.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents went on a little golfing vacation weekend thingy (yes, I did use both “golfing” and “vacation” in the same sentence, and no, I’m not crazy). So that Friday night we decided to plan the party and got all the invitations out on Sunday, which I thought was pretty slick.

The usual Home church schedule is everyone one comes around 7p.m. and just walk in, then we do a couple songs. We had our guests walk in around 7:15. The house was packed and my mother thoroughly surprised.

Direct quote from my Aunt Carol (HI CAROL!),”I’ve never been to a birthday party that broke down into a dance party.” Which it did. Even ask Benny.

Thank you to everyone who came and would happen to be reading this! I swear that her party was better than mine.

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, you old Norse Saxon dog?

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I didn’t get around to composing a “Challenging Word of the Week” post earlier this week, but I’ll share this from today’s Writer’s Almanac (emphasis mine):

It was on this day in 1066 that William the Conqueror of Normandy arrived on British soil. He defeated the British in the Battle of Hastings, and on Christmas Day, he was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

One of the most important consequences of the Norman conquest of England was its effect on the English language. At the time, the British were speaking a combination of Saxon and Old Norse. The Normans spoke French. Over time, the languages blended, and the result was that English became a language incredibly rich in synonyms. Because the French speakers were aristocrats, the French words often became the fancy words for things. The Saxons had “house”; the Normans gave us “mansion.” The Saxons had “cow”; the Normans gave us “beef.” The Normans gave us “excrement,” for which the Saxons had lots of four letter words.

The English language has gone on accepting additions to its vocabulary ever since the Norman invasion, and it now contains more than a million words, making it one of the most diverse languages on Earth.

Thank goodness for the Normans, or we’d all be still be talking like the left-side of the blogosphere…and it wouldn’t be so funny when Learned Foot types “poop”.

All things are possible

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Pardon me if I stay on the subject of sports and metaphysics for one more post, but there are tips of the ball cap to be divvied out here on the day after the Minnesota Twins clinched a play-off spot, despite being 25-33 on June 7 (a date that will live in infamy, and which you’ve already heard about over and over). As much as I believed in faith and hope back when spring training began (and berated Patrick Reusse for writing the team off before camp even opened), these guys stunk in April and May and barely showed a glimmer of hope worthy of saying “wait ’til next year”, let alone any inkling of what was to come. For them to come back from the dead, even winning 19 of 20 games at one point, is a minor (but major league) miracle.

While it has been fun to watch them come together and play with spirit and joy, the experience has been all the more pleasureable because this summer I’ve been able to turn to Batgirl for her take on each game. Spirit and joy are just the starting point for her and her assorted contributors, and they are always taking the extra base when it comes to humor and drama. I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve wet my pants. She’s introduced me to the BOD (Boyfriend of the Day), the Doctor (Justin Morneau), Chairman Mauer, El Presidente (Johan Santana), Sweetcheeks (Torii Hunter), Naked Batting Practice (Mike Redmond) and Little Nicky Punto. As much as I want to celebrate the Twins’ accomplishment, today it is only fitting to hand you over to the one who never doubted. Enjoy and savor this moment with her!

Intelligent Design in Hollywood?

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X-Men 3: The Last Stand is about to come out on DVD, which prompted this non-football-related thinking from ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook:

Of course, one must suspend disbelief when it comes to superheroes. But what TMQ always wonders about X-Men, Superman, the Flash and the rest is: Where are the body organs that support their powers? I’m willing to believe a superhero can fly, but where is the organ that provides propulsion? Supposedly Earth’s yellow star activated in Kal-El powers that he would not have had under the red sun of Krypton. But still, some internal organ must produce the energy for his heat vision and the thrust for his flying and so on. In “Superman Returns,” Supe can even fly faster than light, a power he lacked in the comics; apparently some organ too small to even bulge under his skin propels him to warp speed. Really, there must be some physical point of origin for a superhero’s power. Storm must have a body organ that projects force fields that control weather. Iceman must have a body organ that can reduce temperature very rapidly, plus shed heat so Bobby doesn’t boil. Where in their physiques are these organs?

Beyond that, the X-Men premise defies scientific thinking about natural selection, which holds that new organs develop very slowly across hundreds of generations. Assume some body organ can allow Shadowcat to walk through walls or Colossus to change his skin to steel: it’s unimaginable such an organ could arise de novo in a single mutation. Many generations of relatively minor mutations would be required before a novel body organ could come into full functionality. Biologists from Richard Goldschmidt of the early 20th century to Stephen Jay Gould of the late 20th have speculated there is an as-yet-undiscovered natural mechanism that enables accelerated evolution. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine how creatures lived through long chains of generations with still-evolving incomplete organs, since incomplete organs should be a fitness disadvantage and thus render their possessors less likely to reproduce. Unless the X-Men are an argument for intelligent design! The intelligent-design crowd believes natural selection can produce minor alterations in existing forms but cannot produce new organs or new species; a higher intellect controls that. The sudden, drastic evolutionary jumps depicted in the X-Men movies and comics sure feel like intelligent design. In fact one of the most interesting X-Men, Nightcrawler, asserts that the very rapid evolution he and his friends experience could not occur naturally and must be the result of God intervening for reasons not yet known.

That’s an interesting point, especially for a football columnist. Personally, I favor something more like the Intelligent Design model, though evolution is clearly the model in the NFL. Think about it:

330-lb linemen with cat-quick reflexes: evolution.
260-lb tight ends with 4.5 speed in the forty: evolution.
The Cover Two defense to the Tampa Two defense: evolution.
The West Coast Offense to the Vikings offense: well, it sure as heck isn’t Intelligent Design!

Are you ready for some …foolishness?

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Monday Night Football returns to the New Orleans for the Superdome’s first appearance in primetime since Hurricane Katrina. You can expect a lot of talk about this being a symbolic victory for the city, and a lot of references to the things that occurred in the Dome in the days after the hurricane passed and the levees gave way. I think it will be interesting to see how many references will reflect the common perception of horrors that occurred versus the reality.

Will we hear about the supposed murders, rapes, atrocities and bodies stacked up in the facility’s freezer, presented as common knowledge, or will we hear about how outrageously the media hyped what they couldn’t see and couldn’t bother to verify yet presented as breathless fact? In case you’re scoring at home, here are some excerpts and interesting links (emphasis mine).

The LA Times: Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.

… Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on “Oprah” a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of “the little babies getting raped” at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city’s two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports. Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

Of the 841 recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said. One victim was found in the Superdome but was believed to have been brought there, and one was found at the Convention Center, he added …

From Real Clear Politics, “What the Media Missed” (for one thing, no babies raped, but seven delivered!):

… Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week?

Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media. The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there.

From the Dome, the Louisiana Guard’s main command ran at least 2,500 troops who rode out the storm inside the city, a dozen emergency shelters, 200-plus boats, dozens of high-water vehicles, 150 helicopters, and a triage and medical center that handled up to 5,000 patients (and delivered 7 babies). The Guard command headquarters also coordinated efforts of the police, firefighters and scores of volunteers after the storm knocked out local radio, as well as other regular military and other state Guard units.

Jack Harrison, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia, cited “10,244 sorties flown, 88,181 passengers moved, 18,834 cargo tons hauled, 17,411 saves” by air. Unlike the politicians, they had a working chain of command that commandeered more relief aid from other Guard units outside the state. From day one.

There were problems, true: FEMA melted down. Political leaders, from the Mayor to Governor to the White House, showed “A Failure of Initiative”, as a recent House report put it. That report, along with sharply critical studies by the White House and the Senate, delve into the myriad of breakdowns, shortages and miscommunications that hampered relief efforts.

Still, by focusing on the part of the glass that was half-empty, the national media imposed a near total blackout on the nerve center of what may have been the largest, most successful aerial search and rescue operation in history…

Pencils ready? Hit it, Hank!

Forever Autumn

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The summer sun is fading as the year grows old
And darker days are drawing near…*

Autumn has always been my favorite season. I don’t know when I first decided that I had a favorite season, but I do remember that the first poem I ever wrote was about Halloween, when I was in second grade, and that my grandfather helped me write it, explaining rhyme and meter to me, and helping me discover the puzzle-solving joy of finding the right descriptive word with the correct number of syllables and euphony to fit the need, kind of like linguistic Sudoku.

I’m pretty sure Autumn was Pawpaw’s favorite time of year. Though he had left the farm nearly 50 years prior, the rhythms hadn’t left his life and he enjoyed harvest time, whether it came from the fields or from his own garden that was always so meticulously nurtured. Sure, there was contentment to be found in winter when he could spend time with his beloved books and browse seed catalogs, and sit snug inside knowing he was completely prepared. Springtime brought anticipation and the satisfaction of turning the earth and staking out the future, and summer brought the good, hard work and the challenge of simultaneously working with and against nature to raise and defend his crop as the tomatoes, turnips and radishes overflowed their bins. But it was fall where he reaped the abundance of the season in all its colors, its smells and its sensations. It is the fall that I always seem to remember with him.

Through autumn’s golden gown we used to kick our way
You always loved this time of year.

Aside from my grandfather’s garden there was always a bumper crop of leaves in his yard as oak, maple, walnut, buckeye and birch shook off another year and prepared to sleep. We would work the rakes, or I’d try to push the big canvas lawn-sweeper across the yard with my stubby legs. He’d talk about the smell of the moist earth, and I’d listen to him and to the whisk of the rake, the shoosh of the brush and the shuffle and crush of the leaves as they jumped and tumbled before us into the huge, promising piles so perfect for my jumping and burrowing. And then, the best part, the burning. It was a wistful pleasure, as so many pleasures are; so much had been accomplished which had to, in turn, go away. The piles of leaves were curled and dry though still streaked through with glory, touched with the orange flame and the first wisps of gray smoke and then that wonderful, distinctive aroma. I loved the smell of it on my clothes, in my corduroy cap, the taste that lingered in my mouth, the taste that was so strangely complementary when we’d go inside for rye bread, braunschweiger and cheese, all smeared with sharp mustard.

Later in my life I’d add the memories of the smells of a leather football and of textbooks old and new; the sounds of pads crashing and school buses idling, and the bright yellow, autumnal, flash of new pencils. These were all spells woven around me that still have the power to take me back to those long-ago days, but there is no more powerful talisman for taking me back to my memories of my grandfather than for me to see a black walnut or the pungent, green husk it came out of, or the smooth, chocolatey surface of a buckeye. These happen every year, and every year I go back in time and into my grandfather’s presence. And every year I go somewhere and hear Justin Hayward sing “Forever Autumn” and it somehow pulls all those memories into a bittersweet ball in my center …

I watch the birds fly south across the autumn sky
And one by one they disappear.
I wish that I was flying with them …

as the signature line from the song rakes my heart:

Now you’re not here…

* Justin Hayward, “Forever Autumn”, from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.

Everybody SHOUT!

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by Minfidel

The Minfidel is now back from hiatus, if that’s what you call being locked in a trunk for over a year. Anyway, I’ve been trying to get caught up on current events, and it’s nice to see that nothing’s really changed. The big news this week is that a bunch of murdering jihadists have been murdering – or threatening to murder – people because someone called them, well, a bunch of murdering jihadists. This all sounded strangely familiar; I know I’ve seen this somewhere before. I’ve got it! It was a scene from one of my all-time favorite movies, “Animal Mosque.”

Pope Wormer: Greg, what is the worst religious sect in this world?

Cardinal Greg Marmalard: Well that would be hard to say, sir. They’re each outstanding in their own way.

Pope Wormer: Cut the horse***, son. I’ve got their disciplinary files right here. Who dropped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.

Cardinal Marmalard: You’re talking about radical islamofascists, sir.

Pope Wormer: Of course I’m talking about radical islamofascists, you TWERP!

Later…inside Animal Mosque:

Al D-Day: War’s over, man. Wormer’s dropped the big one.

bin-Bluto: Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Saddam Otter: Germans?

bin-Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.

bin-Bluto: And it ain’t over now. ‘Cause when the goin’ gets tough… [thinks hard] … the tough get goin’! Who’s with me? Let’s go! [runs out, alone; then returns]

bin-Bluto: What happened to the jihadis I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? “Ooh, we’re afraid to go with you bin-Bluto, we might get in trouble.” Well just kiss my *** from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this. Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer…

Saddam Otter: Dead! bin-Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.

bin-Bluto: We’re just the guys to do it.

Al D-Day: Let’s do it.

bin-Bluto: LET’S DO IT!

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce — hold your fire!

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Angry drive-thru customer opens fire, wounding manager
A Brooklyn Park man was arrested today after he argued with a Wendy’s drive-through clerk about prices after midnight and returned minutes later to fire shots into the pickup window, slightly wounding a manager, police said.

I saw the above headline while browsing the StarTribune’s site today, and with a hook like that I just had to read the story to find out more about “Drive-through Rage.” All in all it wasn’t a shocking tale; kind of run-of-the mill. Maybe it was one of those deals where the guy in the car and the manager behind the drive-through window argued, things got out of hand, the manager suggested the customer was a psycho nut-job, the driver was offended and just to show the manager how wrong she was, he went and got a gun and acted like a psycho nut-job. There’s a lot of that going around these days, you know.

Anyway, I was going to move on when I saw two interesting headlines juxtapositioned beside the drive-through article, one above the other. The first headline read, “New York had lowest crime rate of nation’s 10 largest cities in 2005, FBI says”. The one below it said, “Violent crime up in Minneapolis.” Well, that was intriguing, so I clicked on the New York story first.

NEW YORK — New York remained the safest of the nation’s 10 largest cities in 2005, with about one crime reported for every 37 people, according to FBI statistics…

…The national figures showed that violent crime rose 2.3 percent last year, the first increase since 2001. But in New York City, violent crimes — which include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — fell 1.9 percent.

Well, crime is decreasing in New York, but up slightly around the country. That must explain the increase in crime in Minneapolis alluded to in the other headline, right? I clicked on the Minneapolis story.

Minneapolis’ violent crime rate continues to outpace that of 2005, but authorities said Monday that a recent crackdown on juvenile crime is slowing the increase.

The violent crime rate from January to Sept. 11, 2006, was 25.8 percent higher than the same period last year, according to Minneapolis police. That includes murder, robbery, aggravated assaults and rape. The increase from 2005 was as high as 60 percent in January and stayed above 30 percent for most of the year.

Wow, a 25.8 percent increase — and that was comparing 2006 thus far to 2005 statistics — and the police say it could be 60 percent if they weren’t doing such a good job! Does this suggest Minneapolis is more dangerous than New York? Quiet, midwestern, progressive Minneapolis, compared to gritty, hustling New York, the city that never sleeps because you’ll get your shoes stolen if you do? Certainly there’s got to be some difference in scale, right? Even if the Minneapolis crime rate jumps up it’s still got to be smaller, per capita, than New York, right?

I went back to the New York story to see where those statistics came from. Turns out the source was the FBI, which releases an annual crime survey listing crime rates state-by-state and community-by-community. There wasn’t a link in the story, so I found my own way over to the fbi.gov site. It wasn’t hard to find the report and the statistics from New York and I even did the math myself to be sure I was looking at the same report that generated the one crime for every 37 people statistic. Yep, the New York numbers came out right. There were 8,115,690 people living there in 2005, and a total of 53,623 violent crimes reported and 162,509 property crimes. Add the crimes together, divide them into the population, and that’s what you get.

So what do the Minneapolis numbers say? Hmmmm, 5,472 violent crimes, 22,417 property crimes. That doesn’t seem too bad compared to the Big Rotten Apple. Let’s see, population 376,277 divided by 27,899 equals….one crime reported for every 13.5 people! That’s nearly the same as Dallas (one crime for every 12 people), the 10th largest city in the nation! (For what it’s worth, the numbers for St. Paul come out as 278,692 population, 2,442 violent crimes and 13,693 property crimes reported, or one crime for every 17.2 people).

Again, the FBI numbers are from 2005, and the numbers from the Strib article about violent crime in Minneapolis describe an increase in 2006 over 2005.

Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a connection between crimes in drive-throughs and Hennepin County’s “drive-through” justice system?

Challenging Word of the Week: verjuice

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Verjuice
(VUR joos) noun

Verjuice, literally, is the sour juice of unripe fruits, especially crabapples and grapes. Figuratively, verjuice is sourness of temperament, disposition, or expression. It is the hallmark of a curmudgeon, itself an interesting word, generally described in dictionaries as of unknown origin though Samuel Johnson (the English lexicographer, 1709-1784) says in his Dictionary: “It is a vitious [the old spelling, based on Latin vitiosus] manner of pronouncing coeur méchant [ French for wicked heart ]. . .”

My example: Grapes of wrath make for vintage verjuice, don’t they, Mr. Reid?

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.