I don’t remember when I learned to read. I don’t remember going through the process. My mother sometimes read stories to us at bedtime and I think that had a great influence on me. I know that I could read fairly well by the time I started first grade. I was allowed to read the more advanced books on the teacher’s shelf in the classroom while most of my classmates struggled with Sally, Jane, Dick, and Spot. My parents gave me books as gifts when I was a child (and as an adult too). Books are to me the perfect gift if the giver knows how to choose a good one. My love of books began early and has delighted me all my life.
Perhaps because of my love of books, early on I also came to love words for their own sake. A lover of books is called a bibliophile. A lover of words is called a logophile. I love it that there are specific terms for those loves. At school I’m often asked by students if the rumor is true that I read dictionaries. I admit that I have never read a dictionary from cover to cover in one go, but I do love to read parts of them in short bursts. We have several dictionaries in the house. The Random House College Dictionary (Revised Edition, 1975) is the one we use when we play Scrabble because it isn’t bulky and it has the words we feel are most suited for the game (not the strange words found in the specialized Scrabble dictionaries – words no one really uses). We have various foreign language bilingual dictionaries – German, French, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish. You never know when you’ll need to translate something into or out of Yiddish, right?
Perhaps because of my love of books, early on I also came to love words for their own sake. A lover of books is called a bibliophile. A lover of words is called a logophile. I love it that there are specific terms for those loves. At school I’m often asked by students if the rumor is true that I read dictionaries. I admit that I have never read a dictionary from cover to cover in one go, but I do love to read parts of them in short bursts. We have several dictionaries in the house. The Random House College Dictionary (Revised Edition, 1975) is the one we use when we play Scrabble because it isn’t bulky and it has the words we feel are most suited for the game (not the strange words found in the specialized Scrabble dictionaries – words no one really uses). We have various foreign language bilingual dictionaries – German, French, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish. You never know when you’ll need to translate something into or out of Yiddish, right?
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| The dictionary shelf. |
My favorite dictionary, and the one that I read when I actually sit down to read a dictionary (sometimes in a fit of boredom, but not always) belonged to my Grandfather Howe. It is the Webster’s Universities Dictionary of the English Language, Being the Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster, LL.D, 1940. It is a big book, almost six inches thick and weighing eleven pounds. It has maps of the United States and its Territories in the front, which is a bonus, although Alaska and Hawaii are shown as territories, not states. In the back there are appendices with maps of the rest of the world – pre-World War II Europe, Biblical maps, and maps of the ancient world. I think I love the book because it is an atlas of history as well as a dictionary. There is an appendix listing the populations of states, cities, and towns in the United States (Pennsylvania had 9,631,350 inhabitants in 1940, 17,489 of them lived in Potter County). And an appendix that I especially love – A Dictionary of Foreign Words, Phrases, Noteworthy Sayings, and Colloquial Expressions From the Latin, Greek, and Modern Languages Used in Current Literature that informs me of such useful phrases as verbum sat sapienti which is Latin for “a word is enough for a wise man.” It also has great illustrations.
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| My favorite dictionary. |
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| The illustration for "alligator." |
Best of all, this dictionary has etymologies – the history of the words back to their origins, which I find fascinating. For example, the word alligator:
al’li-gā-tŏr, n. [Spanish el lagarto, lizard; Latin lacerta, lacertus, lizard.].
Or the word zany:
zā’ny, n. [French zani, from Italian zanni, a clown; originally simply an abbreviated pronunciation of Giovanni, John; from Greek Iōannĕs; from Hebrew Yōkhanan, literally, The Lord graciously gave.]
I find it absolutely fascinating that a word we use to describe a kook is ultimately derived from a Hebrew name that means “The Lord graciously gave.” A good dictionary is excellent entertainment on a bleak winter’s afternoon. There are a million words to explore and all of them amazing. I admit that I do use online dictionaries sometimes, but purely for convenience sake. To me they lack the authority and gravity of a six inch thick, eleven pound, eighty year old tome.
I read books all year long. I’m never not reading a book. But in winter I read a lot of books. They are one of my primary means of distraction. Distraction, by the way, has an interesting etymology.
dis-trac’tion n. [Middle English distractioun; Latin distractio, from distrahere, to pull apart.] So it can mean literally to pull the mind in a different direction. It can also mean madness, insanity, or extreme perturbation of mind. So it’s kind of funny that I use books as a distraction to stay sane during the interminable days of winter.
Speaking of my grandfather, Lawrence Evered Howe, January 28th is his birthday. On Tuesday it will have been 126 years since he was born a few miles north of here in Genesee. I’m looking forward to meeting him someday.
al’li-gā-tŏr, n. [Spanish el lagarto, lizard; Latin lacerta, lacertus, lizard.].
Or the word zany:
zā’ny, n. [French zani, from Italian zanni, a clown; originally simply an abbreviated pronunciation of Giovanni, John; from Greek Iōannĕs; from Hebrew Yōkhanan, literally, The Lord graciously gave.]
I find it absolutely fascinating that a word we use to describe a kook is ultimately derived from a Hebrew name that means “The Lord graciously gave.” A good dictionary is excellent entertainment on a bleak winter’s afternoon. There are a million words to explore and all of them amazing. I admit that I do use online dictionaries sometimes, but purely for convenience sake. To me they lack the authority and gravity of a six inch thick, eleven pound, eighty year old tome.
I read books all year long. I’m never not reading a book. But in winter I read a lot of books. They are one of my primary means of distraction. Distraction, by the way, has an interesting etymology.
dis-trac’tion n. [Middle English distractioun; Latin distractio, from distrahere, to pull apart.] So it can mean literally to pull the mind in a different direction. It can also mean madness, insanity, or extreme perturbation of mind. So it’s kind of funny that I use books as a distraction to stay sane during the interminable days of winter.
Speaking of my grandfather, Lawrence Evered Howe, January 28th is his birthday. On Tuesday it will have been 126 years since he was born a few miles north of here in Genesee. I’m looking forward to meeting him someday.
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| My grandfather. |
We had some very pretty sunrises last week. It seems like we have more of them in winter. I think the cold air acts on the approaching light of the sun in a different way than warm summer air. It may just seem that way because in winter sunrise comes late enough in the morning that I am up and about and more aware of them. Some mornings when it’s very cold, we see interesting things like sun pillars and sun dogs. One day last week, just as I was driving into the parking lot at the school, there was a brilliant sun pillar. I was sorry I didn’t have a chance to photograph it. I did get some photographs of a few of the sunrises on other days.
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| Sunrise one morning. |
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| From the same spot on another morning. |
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| Same spot yet another morning. |
My other great distraction in winter is my plants. I crave interaction with growing things in every season of the year and my potted plants satisfy that craving during the cold months. I follow a strict routine in caring for my plants. I keep the faded blossoms and dead leaves trimmed on my pelargoniums. Every morning I mist my orchids. I water most of the plants on Tuesdays and Saturdays, except for the clivias, sansevieria, succulents, and the euphorbia that get watered only twice a month. On Saturdays I fill up a big bowl with diluted fertilizer solution and soak my orchid pots for five minutes each. My Aunt Joyce’s amaryllis reached its peak of bloom last week. It had ten flowers open at once, something it has never done for me before. It made me happy.
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| My amaryllis at its peak. |
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| Ten blossoms all at once. |
I had an early meeting this morning at church and had to leave the house at 6:30. It was dark and cold and snowing. The road between Gold and Genesee had some bad stretches. There wasn’t a lot of snow on the road, but it looked icy and the plows hadn’t been out yet to spread cinders. I was nervous, but I got to church okay. Coming home was no problem at all. But the thought that kept rising in the back of my mind as I drove was, you get to go to Florida in a few weeks! There was a time when the thought of that would not have appealed to me at all. But winter seems to grow longer and longer every year. And going somewhere else for a while seems like the ultimate distraction. I must be getting soft.
