Daniel E Wolf
It’s not often I take note of something in an alumni magazine. But this one (from PSU) caught my eye, combining as it does two topics near and dear to my heart: Maps and hoops. The takeaway? NBA 3-pointers are here to stay. That corner 3, it’s like a layup! Oh, and also? Just gotta love geography majors.
Excerpt from “SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA.”
By Kirk Goldsberry, 1999 Penn State geography alumnus and author.
It’s been a while since I’ve been much above sea level. But my daughter’s in Peru right now. So in her honor, there’s this story from the DP, which has heartening news for those who love to hike and climb. Also, there’s a new king among Colorado 14ers, and it’s a Quandary. Confused? Cmon, read the article!
Well, it’s almost Halloween. That must mean it’s time for pumpkins, bats, and today’s WOTD: “Belfry.” Oh yeah, gotta love “bats in the belfry.” But first… some linguistics! (Courtesy of Merriam Webster, of course.)
Surprisingly, belfry does not come from bell, and early belfries did not contain bells at all. Belfry comes from the Middle English berfrey, a term for a wooden tower used in medieval sieges. The structure could be rolled up to a fortification wall so that warriors hidden inside could storm the battlements. Over time, the term was applied to other types of shelters and towers, many of which had bells in them. This association of berfrey with bell towers, seems to have influenced the dissimilation of the first r in berfrey to an l , and people began representing this pronunciation in writing with variants such as bellfray, belfrey, and belfry (the last of which has become the standard spelling). On a metaphorical note, someone who has ” bats in the belfry” is insane or eccentric. This phrase is responsible for the use of bats for “insane” (as in “Are you completely bats?”) and the occasional use of belfry for “head” (“He’s not quite right in the belfry”).
Recently I came across this story in the LA Times about a lawsuit brought by Larry Bird against a muralist in Indy who painted a younger version of him with hilarious tattoos. Bird’s brand is strictly sans tattoos, so the muralist is having them removed. Chalk one up for trash-talking seniors, I guess.
Then today I got to the end of an online interview with the self-same 62-year-old hoopster and found to my surprise that the interviewer was none other than Marc J. Spears, formerly of the Denver Post. Back in the day Marc was a basketball buddy at the downtown Denver Y. Even then he wore a big old knee brace. Now he’s senior writer for The Undefeated. According to his current bio, he “used to be able to dunk on you, but hasn’t been able to in years, and his knees still hurt.”
https://theundefeated.com/features/larry-bird-being-a-white-player-in-the-nba-trash-talking/
Oh, btw, Bird is still talking trash – though you’d have to be pretty fanatical about hoops to plow all the way through Marc’s piece. Good luck with that.
I stole the following from my daughter’s FB page. I like it because it ties together active lifestyles, awareness of one’s environment, and aging, in ways that are uncommon, yet necessary – for most of us anyway – now more than ever.
I’ll forever be one year younger than Larry Bird, but I too am finally retired from the game. At this late date I’m unlikely to start doing parkour. But I still walk to work. And now I’ve got an outdoor lap pool under mostly sunny skies year round. I stay active enough to gather relatively little moss. So I say, whether it’s leaping from tall buildings, walking, swimming, hiking – or even golf: Get out there and keep moving. You’ll be glad you did.
Hey, it beats talking trash.
Just ask Larry.
Or Marc.
Or me.
I am grateful for:
Yeah, yer welcome too.
If any of this seems <100% sincere, please see yesterday’s WOTD.
It’s my superpower.
Two days in a row, two Words of the Day. What gives? Just lucky I guess. Today’s WOTD is “caustic,” which means…
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1 :
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capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action : corrosive
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2 :
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marked by incisive sarcasm
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the envelope of rays emanating from a point and reflected or refracted by a curved surface
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Caustic was borrowed into English in the 14th century from the Latin causticus, which itself derives from the Greek kaustikos. Kaustikos, in turn, comes from the Greek verb kaiein, meaning “to burn.” Other kaiein descendants in English include cautery and cauterize, causalgia (a burning pain caused by nerve damage), and encaustic (a kind of paint that is heated after it’s applied).
Bonus pictorial content from one of my colleagues at UMG:
HA! Burn you!
It’s been a while since there was a worthy Word of the Day. But today, that’s not a problem. Because it’s Yom Kippur and today’s word (from Merriam Webster) is “scapegoat.” In Hebrew, “yom” means “day.” “Kippur” (loosely translated) is “atonement.” So, today’s a bad day if you’re a goat or if you just happen to have horns and a beard. But it’s a good day for you and me – assuming you have no goatee.
On Yom Kippur, the ancient Hebrews would sacrifice one goat for the Lord and lead another one into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. The ceremony is recorded in Leviticus. That’s where it says one lot shall be cast for the Lord and one for “Azazel.” Modern scholars usually interpret Azazel as being the name of a demon living in the desert. But ancient biblical translators thought Azazel referred to the goat itself. Apparently they confused it with the Hebrew phrase ez ozel, which means “goat that departs.” The mis-translation carried through Greek and Latin into 16th-century English. That’s where the word became rendered as scapegoote, or “goat that escapes.” The extended sense of the word we use today evolved from this biblical use.
Lately I’ve been reading T.C. Boyle, another gorgeous prose stylist. His latest effort is “Outside Looking In” which chronicles the early days of Tim Leary’s LSD experimentation at Harvard. It continues the series of Americana Boyle has lately been pursuing, from his treatment of Adventists hawking health food and miracle cures, to Kinsey & Co. researching modern American sex habits. Or his previous outing, The Terranauts, a quasi-historical farce set under a hermetically sealed Plexiglas bubble in the desert southwest. You can argue with his choice of material, and you can bemoan his latent misogyny and childish plotting – all traits he shares with Updike, btw. Or, you can sit back and enjoy the descriptive ride. That’s what I’m doing. If political correctness is what you seek, there’s plenty of that available – for all it’s worth. Me personally? I’ll take a stylish prose preoccupation with latter day Americana any day – warts and all.
