WordsWordsWords

Moving back to New Mexico has brought me back to a part of my childhood. I grew up in a large farmhouse about seven miles outside of town. After turning off the highway, we were about two miles down a country road with no street lights.

As it was then, our night drive home now features a dark few last miles, on a road that is also a bit narrow. If one were to break down or have a flat, it might be difficult to pull all the way off.

Enter the LED flare! Because I occasionally come home after dark, the Professor has been a bit concerned about my safety in this hypothetical situation. She loves me, and doesn’t want me – or our car, which she loves but fortunately not as much as she loves me – to get creamed in the dark by an unsuspecting motorist.

Yesterday, a set of LED flares something like this came in the mail:

They are rechargeable, and I’ve put them on my monthly to-do list to be charged every two months, though I’m guessing they hold a charge much longer than this. They have nine flashing patterns (which in my mind seems excessive) and a built-in flashlight. They will work for hours, rather than the 15-30 minutes I see listed on traditional flares.

There are many brands that are similar, and I’m not endorsing any particular brand. But I think this safety product is a big enough deal, and a big enough improvement over the old flares that burn, that I wanted to mention them here.

Safe driving to you! May neither you nor I ever be stuck on the roadside in need of such a product.

And I mean that sincerely. Sometimes, if an etymology seems too good to be true, it is.

I’ve written on this blog before about false etymologies, and about how I read Palabra del Día (PdD), the Word of the Day email from elcastellano.org. Often, when I see something interesting there about a word that has a cognate in English, I also go to etymonline.com to see what they can tell me about it.

Enter “sincere.”

PdD says that “sincero” comes from the world of apiculture (beekeeping). “Sin cera” in Spanish literally means “without wax,” and PdD says that “sincero” comes from the Latin equivalent, “sincerum.” The idea being that the product is pure honey, with no mixing or nothing false about it. Thus, a sincere person is true in their statements and motivations.

Trouble is. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), according to Etymonline, dismisses this etymology “out of hand” and suggests a couple of other possibilities, one coming ultimately from an Indoeuropean root meaning “whole.”

It’s always such a disappointment when an etymology that seems so lovely is false. What’s a language lover to do? We can do nothing but live with the uncertainty, a skill which we all must have in so many ways.

Well, new-ish.

Three years ago, when we moved back to New Mexico and I retired, I did wonder what exactly I was going to do with myself once we got settled in. I spent the first many months unpacking, configuring, buying things we needed, and working with contractors on various projects – plumbing and electric upgrades, solar power installation, and the like.

Somewhere in there, as a language nerd will do, and after hearing some episode of the History of English podcast, I got curious about what Middle English sounded like, so I searched online for a recorded version of the Canterbury Tales, read from the original. What I found opened up my world. And answered the question, “What am I going to do with myself?”

I found Librivox. Simply put, Librivox is a project to turn books in the public domain into audiobooks in the public domain. The way this is accomplished is the amazing part.

Librivox has no budget, and no staff. Volunteers from all over the world coordinate their work through an online forum. There are four roles. The Book Coordinator (BC) mounts a project by starting a topic in the forum. Readers upload their recordings to the site. A prooflistener (PL) reviews every recording for errors and editing gaffes. And the meta coordinator (MC) works behind the scenes to set the project up in the system and to catalog it when it’s finished.

Then, after thousands of hours of work are performed every month by volunteers, we give it all away for free!

It’s hard to describe the passion that was ignited in me for LV. I started out by recording, turning a corner of our walk-in closet into a recording studio (see my catalog page here), but soon turned to PL duties, and then to setting up my own projects as a BC. Now, at any given time, I am involved in some capacity with around 15 projects. I work on something for LV every day, and sometimes spend many hours in a day.

This is all the more surprising given that historically, I tend to get really interested in things, jump in headfirst with excitement, and then burn out before too long. That has never come close to happening with LV.

The joy of being exposed to so many ideas that I might not otherwise come into contact with is constant. Waking up in the morning to see what my PL in India (for example) has posted on my project while I was sleeping is always compelling. And being part of an international community with whom I work and communicate every day has a social aspect that richly adds to my retired life. It’s like having a remote job, but you only have to do what you want, in the amount you want, and when you want!

While I wrote this, I got three notifications from two different projects that there was something I needed to take action on. Better go get busy!

LV was started in 2005 and has so far added almost 20,000 recorded books to its catalog. Around 100 new titles are added every month. Works are available on the LV website, YouTube, and the Internet Archive. Check it out today to see if there is something you might enjoy listening to!

In the Distance
By Hernan Diaz
pub. 2017

“A Book I Liked” is a deliberate understatement.

In the Distance, roughly speaking, is about a man, Håkan, who immigrates to America from Sweden, intending to go to New York. Instead, he ends up in the American West, and the book recounts his adventures and misadventures throughout his life.

That summary is like saying Moby Dick is about a guy and a whale.

Diaz’ imagination in spinning the stories of the extraordinary events in Håkan’s life, the intensity of his depictions of them, and the harsh beauty of his prose easily explain the reason why this, his first novel, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He had to wait until his second novel, Trust, in 2022, to actually win the Pulitzer. That’s a pretty good track record for your first two books.

In the Distance was so compelling that when I say I couldn’t put it down, that’s literal. I had to make myself go to bed the first night, and finished it within 24 hours. This is not a “beach read,” and some of the events are not to be read by the faint of heart, but if you’re looking for a gorgeous gut punch of a book, run, don’t walk, to the nearest library, bookstore, Libby app, or kindle near you.

Many years ago, I began listening to podcasts with headphones to help me go to sleep. It’s always talk, not music I want. Listening to that talk keeps my brain from focusing on whatever’s worrying or obsessing me at the moment.

I started with Stuff You Should Know, when it was just two guys talking and the occasional soothing title jingle. But over the years I have listened to a lot of different ones. Once ads became more common, it was harder to find one that didn’t occasionally have something butt in to the conversation that ruins my almost-sleep or that jars me awake.

About a year and a half ago, I went looking for something targeted at sleep specifically, and found Boring Books For Bedtime, by Sharon Handy. It is now my nightly companion.

Sharon reads from works in the public domain, mostly published on Project Gutenberg. U.S. copyright extends for 95 years, so the fact that they are in the public domain means currently that the books were published in 1928 or earlier. Many she chooses are much older than that. Most episodes are close to an hour long.

Some of the books she selects fall into several different genres—science, nature, cooking, history, philosophy. Plus there are plenty of quirky ones, which tend to be my favorites. I’m especially fond of Fry’s Practical Candy Maker (1884), the 1897 Sears catalog, The Book of Household Management (1861), Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres (1826), The Railway Travellers Handy Book (1862), and The Manual of Egyptian Archaeology (1895).

While anything can be interesting to the right person, Sharon’s lovely contralto voice—which has gotten deeper over the years, if you listen to older episodes—sets the boring scene each time, washing over you and preparing you to be lulled to sleep: “Good evening, and thank you for joining me for another Boring Books for Bedtime. I hope tonight’s selection provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep. So find a comfortable spot. Adjust your volume. Take a nice, deep breath in….let it out slowly….and off we go….”

Boring Books is 100% listener supported and ad free for everyone. But if you want to show your appreciation for all the hours you don’t lie in the dark wishing you didn’t have insomnia, you can support Sharon on Patreon. Supporters get an additional episode a month, have access to .mp3s of all past episodes, and can find their favorite type in collections by topic. There are also links to versions with no music—the episodes in your podcast feed have a subtle background music, though I didn’t even notice it before I was a member and started listening music-free.  Find Boring Books for Bedtime on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Zzzzzz….