VARIA.

Lots of reading coming in over the transom and not enough time, so I’m just going to throw some stuff into the pot and call it burgoo:
1) An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, by Alexander MacBain, via the indefatigable aldiboronti; it’s outdated (a reprint of the 1911 edition) but still useful if taken with a grain of salt.
2) I’m a big fan of Charles Reznikoff and quoted a brief description of his Testimony here; there’s a longer discussion by Edmund Hardy in the October issue of Jacket. (Via wood s lot, which also links to a nice review by Jenny Diski of Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost and Where Did It Go? by Michael Bywater, with plangent reflections on what it means to get older; I must, however, take issue with the title, “Who wears hats now?” The answer is, I do.)
3) A new blog, The Daily Growler, takes a break from its usual fare of over-the-top political commentary for a striking post called “From dust to dust” that begins with a hot Texas day suddenly turning cold (“The wind is now just flat-dab cold. And now the wind throws grains of what’s coming in my face and I breathe in and taste the first of what’s coming in my face and what’s coming in my face tastes like earth…”) and goes on to “one morning not so many years ago in New York City.” Yes, that’s what it was like.

Comments

  1. Maire Smith says

    The question, I’d say, is not ‘who wears hats these days’, but ‘where can we buy them?’
    Hat shops seem to be steadily vanishing, and the hat ranges available in the big department stores are becoming less and less interesting.
    *sigh*

  2. Is there a name for this?

  3. One buys hats in Texas, Montana, Wyoming…
    Just the other day I was watching Food Network star Rachael Ray spend half her $40 a Day show buying a hat — which did not count against her $40 because it wasn’t food. Guess she never heard the expression “I’ll eat my hat!”

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