Mosaic

MOSAIC, n. A kind of inlaid work. from Moses, who, when little was inlaid in a basket among the bulrushes.

2009 Update: adj. Composed of disparate members like a seamless argument or an an invention made from whole cloth.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Vier-und-Dreizig

To hear Danny Boy read, click on the haystacks. Long-time Waking Ambrose family will remember Dan as an old friend of mine from Deep Springs.

To read this week's episode, click on Frau Braun's Apfelkuchen.

The story so far is here. Happy birthday to Dddragon!

Asperse

ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.

2009 Update: To baptize by sputum into the grand fellowship of the slandered.

Adonis

ADONIS, n. A comely youth, remembered chiefly for his unkindness to Venus. He has been unjustly censured by those who forget that in his time goddesses were only ten cents a bunch.

2009 Update: The hero Andromeda awaited from the foam.

A Fable for Children

The Gull and The Goats

Once upon a time, a gull landed on a manger in front of a herd of goats. "Brothers and sisters," the gull squawked, "you live as slaves! The farmer tells you are there are wolves beyond your fence and you clump up cowardly on the land within that fence. The farmer tells you this straw, this grass, is food and you eat it. Surely I tell you, the farmer tells you these things because if you left the pasture he knows what you have forgotten, that you will take wing to the water, catch fish and prosper! Because if you flew over the ocean, as is your birthright, you would see his daughters rise from the depths on a clam shell!"

"The bird makes sense," muttered a nanny and returned to eating her tuna can.

Moral: Men will lie to hide even fictional truths.

JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY, n. A theory of government by which yeoman farmers undertake the vices of aristocrats.

Arrayed

ARRAYED, p.p. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.

2009 Update: Distributed for tyranted transcendence.

"Consider the lillies and how they're arrayed

Idle, unspun and quickly bouqueted." -St. Florence of Fasterbrook

Abjectly

ABJECTLY, adv. In the manner of a poor but honest person.

2009 Update: In the manner of a discovered dignitary.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Drei-und-Dreizig

To hear my old man bear witness to the events of 1524, click on Huldrych Zwingli at right.

To read this week's episode, click on Thomas Münzer, as played by Robert Blake.

The story so far is here.

November

NOVEMBER, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.

2009 Update: The month in which young men's thoughts turn to spring, and to which old men's thoughts turn in April.

Noumenon

NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only be a process of reasoning — which is a phenomenon. Nevertheless, the discovery and exposition of noumena offer a rich field for what Lewes calls "the endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought." Hurrah (therefore) for the noumenon.

2009 Update: The actual object denoted by a representational noun- in this case, a noun.

Self-Published

Getting in mind all the chores for today-

Some are for pleasure, some are for pay-

I notice there's no list of things I should say.

Words are made by volunteers.

We do what we must do, most of the time,

Work, wander and worship, Caritas and crime,

And reserve to our liberty, those minutes most prime,

Selective invective toward each neighbor who hears.

For what is a man, but the sum of his grousing,

Over healthcare, despair, law, whiskey or housing?

A man in his grief, like a cat in her mousing,

Pursues his own nature and forgets his own fears.

And so, today, providence finally has granted

To we who rose upright, made fire and ranted

The means to pronounce our fretting unslanted,

By blog, bloodless bluster and unsalted tears.

WEBLOG, n. A personal chronicle of universal stasis.

Nominate

NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbling and deadcatting of the opposition.

2009 Update: To accommodate a martyr with nail and slur.

Notoriety

NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

2009 Update: A public embarrassment fertilized with forgiveness and pregnant with opportunity. An orphan in triumph.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Zwo-und-Dreizig

To hear this week's episode, click on the photo at right of readers TLP and Actonbell with me and sister Dddragon, from front to back.

To read this week's episode, click on the Elizabethkirche dorm building, which I just realized I have a photo of and which is neither flat nor perpendicular as I remembered it.

The story so far is here.

Severalty

SEVERALTY, n. Separateness, as, lands in severalty, i.e., lands held individually, not in joint ownership. Certain tribes of Indians are believed now to be sufficiently civilized to have in severalty the lands that they have hitherto held as tribal organizations, and could not sell to the Whites for waxen beads and potato whiskey.

Lo! the poor Indian whose unsuited mind
Saw death before, hell and the grave behind;
Whom thrifty settler ne'er besought to stay —
His small belongings their appointed prey;
Whom Dispossession, with alluring wile,
Persuaded elsewhere every little while!
His fire unquenched and his undying worm
By "land in severalty" (charming term!)
Are cooled and killed, respectively, at last,
And he to his new holding anchored fast!

2009 Update: In the language of law, uncontested in possession, which is to say, impossible.

Shamrock

SHAMROCK, n. A trefoil which is more potent in politics than "the sword of Bunker Hill."

2009 Update: A clover bearing a single extra leaf representing prosperity to the Irish and ovine.

The Weasel's War Dance

In a poor chicken coop,

Just over the rise,

A weasel stood up to speak.

Her tail and back drooped,

There were tears in her eyes

And some egg yolk stuck to her cheek.

"The farmers down yonder,

How they harry and try us,

They use and abuse and upend us.

I ask you to ponder

Just one moment, why us?

Are there no wolves out there to defend us?

"Foresaken, my sisters,

Forgotten indeed,

Patronized, hammered and roasted!

Boiled to a blister,

Robbed of our seed

But peace I can bring you," she boasted.

"Hide your eggs in my warren,

There's a tunnel just by,

And the farmer's pail holds death.

The coop's now as foreign

As the white-clouded sky

And you all deserve bugs on your breath."

Her sermon stuttered,

The old screen-door slammed

And the farmer, in coveralls, came.

"Weasel?" he muttered

Under each nest he peeked,

Took some eggs and scattered some grain.

When he'd gone,

The weasel that he hadn't seen

Returned to homilize and inspire

The laying hens cackled along,

And crowned her hen-house queen,

So she bowed, took an egg and retired.

WEASEL, n. The new lion. Homo pirroueticus.

Soul

SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.

"Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen — in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' — why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pates de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination."

2009 Update: The collected essence of an intellect against which the senses, instinct, habit and history all conspire. An inborn obstacle to the hordes of hell and the party in power.

Spooker

SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks. One of the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells, who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet. To the terror that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another township.

2009 Update: An ordinary fiction writer who, through misguided meddling at a ouija board becomes possessed by the spirit of Dean R. Koontz.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Ein-und-Dreizig

To hear this week's episode, click on the Schaf-Kußer, at right.

To read this week's episode, sit quietly in Saint Elizabeth of Hungary's church.

The story so far is here.

Y feliz compleaños a mi madre.

Geneology

GENEOLOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

2009 Update: Testimony for the complainant by those in the family unable to dissent or recuse themselves. A renegade's resumé.

Grime

GRIME, n. A peculiar substance widely distributed throughout nature, but found most abundantly on the hands of eminent American statesmen. It is insoluble in public money.

2009 Update: Precipitate of purpose.

Limericks on Wednesday mean I'm particularly slow-witted and hurried

We tremble what each day might bring.

Take comfort it won't change a thing

Though sunshine or raining

Expect more complaining

Our forecast is good through the Spring.

CHANGE, n. A constant source of consistent complaint.

There's a lady I know in P.A.

Who can read, write or run the long day.

Her major repentence-

The long run-on sentence-

Of all things should have seemed o.k.

Happy birthday, Actonbell.

Gender

GENDER, n. The sex of words.

A masculine wooed a feminine noun,

But his courting didn't suit her,

So he begged a verb his wishes to crown,

But the verb replied, with a rigid frown:

"What object have I? I'm neuter."

2009 Update: The first in a series of certainties that confuse us as we grow, or seem to.

Gas-Meter

GAS-METER, n. The family liar in the basement.

2009 Update: Nielsen rating.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Dreizig

To hear the Amoeba and Quilly read this week's episode, click on the bunny.

To read it yourself, check the temperature at the cottage.

The story so far is here.