Parting shots

I was going through some long overdue e-mail and realised I'd missed the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the National library in Sarajevo. I've updated my post for August 23rd, if you're interested. I keep up with such things in Bosnia through the Friends of Bosnia. I'm sorry to say that one of the finest projects I've kept tabs on recently, the Bosnia Library Project, is seriously in danger due to a lack of funding. I hope it can continue.

I thought I'd put a note here as well, especially as it is Banned Book week. Read a Banned Book--it shouldn't be hard--practically any good text has been challenged by someone. I'm reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (a current favourite target of small-minded Muggles everywhere). What are you reading?

PS I got an e-mail from the Lexington Public Library E-librarian (Electronic Reference). My creek has no official name. Apparently it is an "intermittent stream". Seems like Eidolon is especially appropriate, then. I think I'll go for Eidolon Run. It's in keeping with many of the names around here, and a "run" is a small stream in local parlance.

Oh, and I had an amazing find in my closet last week. A teacher named Mona Combs did a paper on "Archaic English Words Used in Northeastern Kentucky", and there was a copy of the typescript in the library. I have no idea why. Our chief of staff emeritus is really into etymology--maybe that's why. As someone just one class shy of a linguistic major :(--a day class, unfortunately--I've always tended to respect regional dialects, despite the assertion that it's just not "proper English". (Let's face it, the received pronunciation favoured by the BBC is largely artificial, and it's not like those Yorkshire and Cockney folks are speaking German.) Anyway, Ms. Combs sent her students out into the Rowan county area to collect various "archaic" words, then compared them to Chaucer. I'm familiar with a lot of them, actually. But I think I'll include a random one every now and then just for the sake of fun.

So...drumroll, please...today's Kentucky-word/phrase-of-the-day is:

to honey fuggle verb, to flatter persuasively

oh, and I just have to add:

a gentleman cow noun, a bull--to be used in the presence of ladies, as "bull" was deemed too vulgar