Log24

Saturday, July 10, 2004

Saturday July 10, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:17 pm
Oxford Word

From today's obituary in The New York Times of R. W. Burchfield, editor of A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary:

"Robert William Burchfield was born Jan. 27, 1923, in Wanganui, New Zealand. In 1949, after earning an undergraduate degree at Victoria University College in Wellington, he accepted a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford.

There, he read Medieval English literature with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien."

For more on literature and Wanganui, see my entry of Jan. 19. 2003, from which the following is taken.

 

 

Literature
and
Geography

"Literature begins
with geography."

Attributed to
Robert Frost

The Maori Court at
the Wanganui Museum

 

"Cullinane College is a Catholic co-educational college, set to open in Wanganui (New Zealand) on the 29th of January, 2003."

The 29th of January will be the 40th anniversary of the death of Saint Robert Frost.

New Zealand, perhaps the most beautiful country on the planet, is noted for being the setting of the film version of Lord of the Rings, which was written by a devout Catholic, J. R. R. Tolkien.

For other New Zealand themes, see Alfred Bester's novels The Stars My Destination and The Deceivers.

The original title of The Stars My Destination was Tyger! Tyger! after Blake's poem. 

For more on fearful symmetry, see the work of Marston Conder, professor of mathematics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

 

Saturday July 10, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:36 pm

Wrestling with Words

"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday…."

— Bernard Holland, The New York Times of  Monday, May 20, 1996 

From today's New York Times obituaries:

R. W. Burchfield died Monday. He was "an internationally renowned lexicographer who wrestled the Oxford English Dictionary into the era of 'sexploitation.' "

In other news….

"Although Mr. Kerry had told the crowd at the New York fund-raiser that 'every single performer' on the bill had 'conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country,' his campaign on Friday sought to distance Mr. Kerry and his running mate, Senator John Edwards, from the anti-Bush jokes, lyrics and statements of some of the entertainers.

But it declined to release a videotape of the performance at which Ms. Goldberg, a bottle of wine in hand, made an extended sexual pun out of the president's surname.

[Also on Friday…]

At an afternoon airport rally in Beaver, W. Va., a town of 1,378 people, Mr. Kerry attached the word 'value' to virtually every line of his standard stump speech…."

Somehow, a different word comes to mind.

 

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