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AWADmail Issue 773

Sponsor’s Message: Sometimes the way things were is better than the way things are. We call it “Old’s Cool”, and we’d like to invite this week’s Email of the Week winner, SarahRose Werner (see below), as well as anyone who loves wit, excellence, adventure, and a few typographical errors every once in a while to come save 10% off everything on our brand new website, today only. Just use coupon code: “newscool”. SHOP NOW.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

How Qi And Za Changed Scrabble
FiveThirtyEight
Permalink

“What Do Old Books Smell Like?” Preserving Smells as Important Cultural Heritage
ScienceDaily
Permalink

From: Philemon Vanderbeck (professor creepymagician.com)
Subject: Seasonal food

Your observation that we are now able to buy seasonal food all year round reminded me of an article from 2011 by Waldo Jaquith about how it is impractical to create a cheeseburger from scratch. It is the epitome of the modern age wherein we can have the various food components needed flown in from anywhere in the world:

From: Susan Kritzik (sgkritzik gmail.com)
Subject: cramoisy

There is an antique red rose called Cramoisi Superieur! I used to have it in my garden. Never knew what the name meant, but now I do!

From: Chantal Quincy (chantalquincy gmail.com)
Subject: Cramoisy

In French we use cramoisi also for somebody who is blushing and embarrassed by it! As “elle est devenue cramoisie!”

From: William Clarkson (bclarkso sewanee.edu)
Subject: Cramoisy

Ezra Pound included the word in his famous Usura Canto (45):

From: Andrew Pressburger (andpress sympatico.ca)
Subject: Lilac

Lilac Time is one of two English titles of the 1922 Viennese operetta Das Dreimaderlhaus by Heinrich Berte, based on a selection of melodies by the acclaimed, yet tragically short-lived, Austrian composer Franz Schubert of the early 19th century. It is also known as Blossom Time and enjoyed a long run on Broadway under this title and with a new arrangement by Sigmund Romberg.

The original version had featured the redoubtable Richard Tauber (friend of Franz Lehar of Merry Widow fame), who played Schubert himself in Paris, London, and Vienna.

From: Claus Cartellieri (cartellieri t-online.de)
Subject: Kaput

It is noteworthy perhaps that today’s word assumed a very fitting extension of its meaning, when Soviet soldiers, in 1945, painted the words GITLER KAPUT on numerous walls in Germany.

From: Julia Cashion Baker (jccbaker yahoo.com)
Subject: kaput

Shortly after moving to Germany for the first time, while camping at a German campground, I had a headache that would not go away. I went to the camp store for aspirins, but didn’t know how to ask for aspirins. After much pantomiming, which resulted in being shown combs and shampoos, I finally said “Mein kopf ist kaput.” The storekeeper laughed and gave me a small packet and said “Aspirin”.

From: Dwyn Tomlinson (dragonjools gmail.com)
Subject: Kaput

Imagine my reaction when Swarovski rolled out a new line of pendants (for us, as a bead store) to sell -- called “Kaputt” -- because “the only way to make something completely new was to introduce an element of imperfection.” A striking technological innovation that is at the same time perfect and imperfect. Playing on the theme of “perfect imperfection”, it was aptly named “Kaputt”.

I never did recover. <snort>

A few decades ago, I and a couple of Australian guys I was travelling with, went into a tobacco shop in Vienna to buy some transit tickets. The guys didn’t speak any German, and I knew only a few words. One of the guys asked the elderly lady behind the counter for tickets. When that didn’t work, he tried “billets”, which is French. The lady kept gesturing towards the door and making a motion to one side.

I knew that the German word for tickets was Fahrkarten, but I also noticed that the lady kept using the word Apparat. I suggested to the guys that there might be a ticket machine around the side of the building. We went and looked. Sure enough, there was a machine -- but it had a sign attached, “Ausser Betrieb”. I knew that “ausser” meant “out of”, so this wasn’t looking good. We tried putting Austrian schilling coins into the machine, but the machine kept spitting them back out.

The guys were getting hot under the collar, but I said that perhaps the lady hadn’t known the machine was out of order. They agreed to try the shop again, but said that this time I should do the talking. This was fine with me, as I thought I should have been doing it all along.

We went back inside the shop. I started off with “Gruss Gott!” because I had noticed that people say that when entering small shops in Vienna. (Politeness pays when you’re trying to get someone to work with you on building a communication bridge.) The lady looked at me and replied, “Gruss Gott”, but rather cautiously.

I embarked on my tale. “Apparat ist ausser Betrieb.”
“Ausser Betrieb?”
“Ja. Schillings ein, Schillings aus. Schillings ein, Schillings aus.” I accompanied this with appropriate hand motions. Then with the most woeful look I could muster, “Keine Fahrkarten!”

The lady’s face lit with understanding. “Apparat ist kaput!”

Everyone involved, including the Australian guys, understood that! My companions and I chorused, “Ja, ist kaput!”

The story ended well. The lady began talking, opening a drawer in the counter as she did so. I caught something about “einzeln” (single) and “funf” (five), so I stood up on my toes and leaned over the counter to see inside the drawer. Yup -- she didn’t have single tickets for sale, only booklets of five. That was why she’d sent the three of us to the Apparat.

My companions were going straight on to Italy but I was staying in Vienna for a few days longer, so I smiled and said, “Ist gut. Funf, bitte.” The lady sold me a booklet of five. I sold two to my companions and kept the other three for myself.

From: Joel Mabus (joel.mabus pobox.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--alembic

My only acquaintance with today’s word, alembic, had been from the world of musical instruments. Alembic is a fabled high-end maker of custom amps, electric guitars, and basses. Born in the 1960s in California, the shop was first little more than artisan problem-solvers to the “heady” stars of that time and place, namely the Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Stanley Clarke. Alembic gear became as storied as The Dead themselves in the 1970s. Alembic is still around, and a family-run business doing mostly custom work as I understand. But they did flirt with the larger music industry around 1979 when they designed a mass-produced affordable guitar and bass line called The Distillate. Now I know where that name comes from!

From: Michael Scheller (michael.scheller gmail.com)
Subject: Alembic

“Formerly” used in distillation is very inaccurate. Not only is the alembic-headed pot still the still of choice of most modern moonshiners, they are still used by many modern commercial distillers. Here is a modern manufacturer of alembics who provides stills to commercial distillers.

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: cramoisy and talisman

Illustrations: Alex McCrae

I caught an interview of Syrian autocrat/war-criminal al-Bashar Assad, with one of his state TV broadcast stooges this morning (Apr 13) on CNN. On the extreme camera closeups, I was riveted to his piercing blue eyes with their large, pitch-black pupils, as he vehemently denied having recently used poisonous gas on his own people. These cold, unblinking orbs of Assad reminded me of the popular black, blue, and white evil eye glass talismans that for millennia have been worn or carried by Greek folk in the belief that they will be protected from evil spirits, spells, or bad omens.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Anagrams of this week’s words

The text in the right box is an anagram of the text in the left.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

An innocent hanky of cramoisy
was catalyst of a calamity.
‘Twas suddenly pulled
in front of a bull.
We’ve only the man’s monogram to see.
-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

She arrived on a bus from Boise,
In a dress of silk cramoisy.
By day she seemed pure
With manners demure,
By night, flamboyant and noisy.
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodthmw gmail.com)

The President loves the new toys he
Employs in diplomacy noisy.
“I’ll bomb just for fun,”
Donald warns Kim Jong-Un,
“Till your rivers are running cramoisy.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

To turn on the light’s not astute
When I’m wearing this old birthday suit.
In the dark I imagined
I’d just won a pageant.
The truth is my figure’s kaput.
-Janice Power, Cleveland, Ohio (jpower wowway.com)

When I tripped o’er my very own foot
and made landfall on my cranium/caput,
I at once knew the answer
to the query, “A dancer
am I?” -- that career was kaput.
-Glenn R. Diamond, Highland Park, New Jersey (slartibartfastx yahoo.com)

Once the beautiful, yet now kaput,
America stoops to a tyrant’s foot.
O spacious skies so vain,
Our amber waves of pain,
From seas a-shining to such SAD! soot.
-Charles Harp, Victoria, Canada (texzenpro yahoo.com)

We ordinary folks are hard put
To believe the world won’t be kaput.
It just takes two crazies,
We’ll be pushing up daisies,
With Kim’s and Trump’s madness afoot.
-Kathy Deutsch, Melbourne, Australia (kathy deutsch.net.au)

He sighs as he flips through his tie rack,
“I really do wish I could buy back
the one that I sold
’cause I thought it too bold.
Now everyone wears pink and lilac!”
-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

There’s a color that’s making a comback
in the fashion world. This is a new tack:
Once an “old ladies’ hue”
it’s for young ladies too --
the pale purple that people call lilac.
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

I once had a friend, a guy, Zack.
Said, “It’s no matter what I pack.
With the shades that I find,
’Cause I am color-blind,
And can’t tell maroon from lilac.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

Though left-pinko she used to be
shouting slogans such as “Love is free!”
father time, the alembic,
played his that-was-then trick,
her thoughts are now right-cramoisy.
-Brenda J. Gannam, Brooklyn, New York (gannamconsulting earthlink.net)

The moonshiner made great moonshine.
I had heard it through the grapevine,
The success for this trick,
His pappy’s alembic,
Which distilled a moonshine divine.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

Our nation could use an alembic
For our rancorous discourse endemic.
Let’s keep our tongues civil,
Dispense with the drivel,
And drive from the White House this schmendrick.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

He is a crude and callous man,
A great, big golden-palace-fan.
With Donald we’re stuck;
He won’t bring us luck.
Who fell for this fake talisman?
-Marion Wolf, Bergenfield, New Jersey (marionewolf yahoo.com)

In Scotland member of a clan
Often carried a talisman.
In his sporran he’d put
A dead animal’s foot
To guarantee a long life span.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

There isn’t a totem or talisman
That can ease all your fears like a phallus can.
They work just like magic,
Except if you’re Catholic.
“Don’t touch,” say the men at the Vatican.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Well-raveled puns (if you untangle them)

After the student pulled an all-nighter to cramoisee red-eyed?

You kaput your phone in the recycle bin. It’s cheaper to buy a new one.

“Not only do you write purple prose; you lilac a dog!”

When the brewery offers free beer I become an alembic sprinter.

Holding up two tea towels the woman asked, “Which talisman nicest one?”