Hail to the Lexicon

Last weekend Spouse, Spawn and I headed down to DC to attend our friends Michael & Ron’s wedding and spend time with old pals. A marvelous time was had by all! As we headed out of town listening to The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU (DC’s NPR station) we heard a segment on the many words and popular phrases that were introduced into the English language by US Presidents.

I knew that Shakespeare introduced somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 words into the language. In fact, based on intensive studies of his works by those whose job it is figure out such things it is estimated that Shakespeare’s vocabulary numbered about 17,000 words, or four times the number of words in the vocabulary of a well-educated speaker of English. What I did not know is that US presidents have attempted to give him a run for his money over the years.

The Americans and the Brits have always had a different way of looking at and adding to the language we call English. According to Kojo’s guest, Paul Dickson, the author of over fifty books, whose current project is a tome on this very subject: the British…were very prescriptive about language. And going all the way back to Noah Webster, Americans believed that you listened and wrote down the words people were actually speaking…the British system was learned men sitting around, stroking their beards telling you what words were useful and could be used and what words weren't. At the time of the founding of the United States the British had no library or copyright systems. Webster and Benjamin Franklin believed that to create these things along with an “American language” we were committing acts of rebellion and resistance. According to Dickson, “when Franklin forms the first free library in Philadelphia, where everybody can go and borrow books, he's doing this as an act of sedition, an act of sort of thumbing his nose at the British”.

So, what have our presidents added to the lexicon over the years? From George Washington we get indoors, non-discrimination, off-duty, paroled and one of my all time favorite words, bakery.

Don’t you wonder what we used to call new words before Thomas Jefferson devised the term neologism? Jefferson is known to have added at least one hundred new words to our vocabulary including Public Relations, belittle and Anglophile (which at the time was assuredly NOT a compliment). The next time you go to a spa and get a pedicure be sure and say thank you to Mr. J. Although, one does wonder what was going on at Monticello that he needed to invent such a word.

Before George W. Bush bemused us with words like misunderestimate and strategery there was Warren G. Harding. Harding’s use and abuse of the language was so notorious it was called Gamalielese (Gamaliel being his middle name). Warren G. did manage to leave a few terms hanging around like Founding Fathers, and normalcy.

From John Adams we get quixotic, and from Eisenhower Military Industrial Complex. Ike also gave us Academic Intellectual Complex but that one never really caught on.

The award for most colorful legacy goes to Teddy Roosevelt who,besides strenuous, brought us bully pulpit, mollycoddle, weasel words and pussyfoot.

The jury is still out on Obama’s attempt at linguistic glory, wee-weed up. No one seems quite sure what exactly at means but saying it does bring a smile. Maybe you can find a way to use it in an intelligible sentence in the comment section.


Here’s the broadcast in its entirety.


PS The photo is from the Ruterford B. Hayes presidential library circa 1952. Wonder what words he came up with.

Whistle While You Loaf

Drawing by Charles Dana Gibson courtesy of A Polar Bear's Tale

I think the winter weather has turned my brain to ice. I’ve been sitting in my chair twirling round and round, browsing e-bay, checking my email for the thirty-forth time, and generally trying to shake loose the blog post that has been swimming around in my head to no avail. I was trying to write about patience, but, as it turns out, I simply do not have the patience to do so. There are some days where the muse doesn’t just hide she leaves the building to hang with Elvis and Jimmie Hendrix on their tropical isle. Can’t say as I blame her a tropical isle would be pretty darn nice right now.

Of course, what I should be doing right now is getting up a blog post with all haste, doing a final edit on the copy for the album cover, preparing for a meeting tomorrow, scouting venues, working on a new song, and just generally being a responsible and productive citizen. What I want to be doing is sitting in my comfy chair with a diet cherry coke watching DVRed episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race and reading diversionary trash on my Kindle. What I am doing is practicing what my sister- in- law Heather calls Task Avoidance. Task Avoidance is the fine art of doing everything in the world except the task in front of me.


In its (and my) defense it can be very educational. In the last ten minutes alone I’ve learned that ultracrepidarian means to overstep one’s bounds, and that I have more than once committed oniochalasia which is buying as a means of mental relaxation. Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifetz Byrne has been providing much diversion of late.


The Web, of course, is a Task Avoider’s dream. Did you know that there are blogs devoted solely to Apostrophe Catastrophes, Quotation Mark Abuse and the lost art of the letter? Click on these at your own risk, Task Avoiders go in, but they can’t get out. I could excuse the web troll for the recipe for Chicken Scaloppine over Broccoli Rabe as an effort to uphold my New Year’s goal of eating more vegetables (not to mention that the Broccoli Rabe looks at me mournfully each time I open the refrigerator door) but we know what I’m really doing. I will not even attempt to justify the Dulce De Leche Brownie recipe from David Lebowitz’s site.

I really should get back to work now, and yet the siren song of my phone’s Latin Phrases app is calling. I have to figure out how to work acta est fabula plaudite  into my act!

Remembering John Barry

Film Composer John Barry died yesterday at the age of Seventy-seven. He composed the score to over ninety movies and won the highest awards his industry could bestow. He was best known for scoring twelve of the films in the James Bond series, but his work went far beyond that franchise. His scores for Born Free, Lion in Winter, Out of Africa & Dances With Wolves won academy awards for Best Original Score, and the title song to Born Free won him an additional Oscar for Best Original Song. Also among his work are the scores for Midnight Cowboy, Chaplin, Somewhere in Time, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married and Enigma. Along the way he managed to write five musicals and numerous television themes. Of his prolific career he said, When I look back on it, I think, how the Hell did I do all this?

He was a master at telling a story with music. When I was an overly romantic teenager I saw Somewhere in Time over and over and over again. I went so far as to buy the soundtrack, which I then proceeded to play over and over and over again. I thought I loved the score because I loved the movie, but looking back at it now I think it was the other way around. What comes to mind is not the plot (which really was a bit silly), or the performances, but the music. It was lush and beautiful, and I love it still.

His son-in-law, Simon Jack, said he truly loved writing music as much as people enjoyed listening to it”. He saw himself as much a dramatist as a composer and his music was inextricably linked to the stories told on the screen. We will miss all the stories he had yet to tell.

Storm Warnings

I woke this morning to a grey sky and yet another storm warning. As I was going about my morning looking at what may need to be re-arranged and checking the diet coke supply in the event of yet another deluge my inner DJ was playing John Rutter's setting of William Shakespeare's Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind. I have loved this arrangement since I sang it many eons ago with my high school choir.

The lyrics come for Act II Scene VII of Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Blow, Blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude:
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! Unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most Jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! Unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Saying nature's a bitch, but people are worse is perhaps not Will's sunniest most life affirming moment, but the elgance and passion with which he says it strikes a chord. I don't think it's all bad news really. Nature is cruel but not because she choses to be, and that's an important lesson in perspective. If it is snowing again it's not because I did something to anger mother nature, it's not personal . The idea that man is worse because he choses to be cruel is a little more distressing, yet underneath that is the idea that the we can chose at all. Yes, we can chose to be unkind, but our choices are not predetermined and we can just as easily choose to be loving. We can also chose to write beautiful poetry and music as a way of dealing with the cruelty.

I couldn't decided between the Northwest Missouri State University Tower Choir's version and the Cambridge Singers version so I'm giving you both. The Barenaked Ladies version is a little bonus. I've been wishing someone would do a modern non-choir setting of this and here is one. I think there's some room though for a few more modern intrepretations so if any of you composers out there want to set it to music send it my way.

Julie, Julie, Julie

With yesterday’s forecast promising yet another overnight snow storm I decided to get while the getting was good and escape my house, desk and piano while the sun was still shining. I turned off my phone (gasp), and let myself wander aimlessly a bit. Of course, I wandered right into my favorite used bookstore. Santa brought me a Kindle for Christmas, so perhaps I was feeling some subconscious guilt for abandoning paper and ink. Wandering soon turned to browsing which turned to buying. I came away with a slightly lighter wallet and a great book called American Singers: 27 Portraits in Song by Whitney Balliett. Making a stop at the cupcake bakery I went home fortified and ready to hunker down.

Settling in with my cupcake, diet coke (I know, it makes NO sense) and book I dove into the profile of Julie Wilson. I have known Julie for many years, and it always makes me very happy when I find someone has written about her. She is a consummate performer but more than that she is a genuine and thoughtful human being. She is unfailingly supportive of singers, trekking out to see them whenever she can. I had a gig at the Metropolitan Room last winter during the worst snow storm of the year. I figured no one would possibly come out in such ridiculous weather to see me, but a small but mighty house gathered, including Miss. Julie sitting in a booth with some other friends. She has come to every show I’ve ever done in the city, and every time I see her or hear her urging me on from the audience I am touched.

When we were still living in Washington, DC Julie came to town to do a show and I had a small party for her at our condo. I had been a whirling dervish of cleaning trying to get the house ready and make sure everything was presentable and ready. Everything that was in the way or couldn't be dealt with neatly was hidden away in my bedroom with my two cats. At some point during the evening I mentioned the cats and Julie’s ears perked right up. She just had to see the cats. I stood there for a minute thinking of the state of my bedroom and wondering how fast I could make it as perfect as the rest of the apartment, but Julie would not wait. Within minutes one of the most elegant women I have ever met was on her hands and knees under my unmade bed trying to coax my kitties to come out and see her. Of course, they did, who could refuse her? We bonded over our mutual love of animals and family. Whenever I see Julie she always asks about my cats, my husband and son.

In Balliett’s profile Julie tells the story of being fired from a night club in Miami Beach because the producer wanted his girlfriend to have Julie’s place in the show. She said I was only twenty-three, but I had already learned that it’s not so much what is done to you as the way it is done-that people should have the guts to be square with you. This is the Julie Wilson I know. She speaks honestly but tempers it with kindness and grace. She has a great gift for making you feel like you’re the most important person in the room. A pretty neat trick if you’ve ever seen her perform for a packed house of people, all of whom feel she’s singing directly to them.

She told Mr. Balliett that the only singer who ever influenced her was Billie Holiday. She wears a Gardenia in her hair whenever she performs to honor Holiday’s memory. She says I used to listen to her on Fifty-second Street when I was with Johnny Long’s band, and I finally met her and had dinner with her just a year before she died. No singer has ever moved me so much. No one has ever had such pain and emotion in her singing. There have been many better singers, but none as moving. She taught me that when you sing a song like Irving Berlin’s Supper Time, which has to do with a woman whose husband has just been lynched, you picture him hanging, you think of what must be going through her mind, you think of her children and what she can possibly say to them. You keep all that in your mind while you’re singing and it will come out in the words, in your voice, in your face – and people will listen. This is a lesson she mastered, few performers can match Julie’s grasp of the subtext of a song, you can see every moment of the story in her face.

She told me that she really didn’t start out to be a singer she wanted to be a serious actress and it shows. She approaches every song as an actor approaches a script, but loses none of the musicality. You always believe what Julie Wilson is singing to you.

She continues to be an example of grace and perseverance to me. To watch her on-stage is a master class in inhabiting a lyric. She will always be one of my heroes.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby

Today is Spouse's birthday. Being married to me the man puts up with a lot, we Redheads are a temperamental lot to say the least, but he seems to enjoy it. Even though we've been married about a hundred and five years he's still happy to come home to me at the end of the day. I am a very lucky girl!

According to This Day in Music The Monkee's I'm a Believer was the number one song in the USA on the day he was born. Somehow this seems appropriate. Happy birthday, my love!

Miss Laurel & JaLaLa

Miss Laurel and her trio JaLaLa will be at the Cornelia Street Cafe this coming Tuesday. Click on this link for all the details!
http://myemail.constantcontact.com/JaLaLa-Sings-in-Manhattan-.html?soid=1102090353260&aid=-9H1E3vIZOk