What's up with "UP"?

(What's Bugs Bunny UP to now?)

The English word UP has more meanings than any other two-letter word and is listed in the dictionary as:

adjective
adverb
noun
preposition
verb

We all know UP means toward the sky, but why do we say we wake UP in the morning?

Why does a topic come UP at a meeting?

Why do we speak UP?

Why are officers UP for election, and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

People stir UP trouble, line UP for movie tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

George Carlin

And some people are stand UP comedians.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP has a completely different meaning.

After an argument, we kiss and make UP. 

We seem to be mixed UP about UP!

A clogged-UP drain must be opened UP.

We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.

And what could she be UP to?

I could go on and on, but my time is UP, so I'll wrap UP this post.

If you want to continue this list, it's UP to you!

===================================================================

This was also written UP more than a decade ago and posted on this blog.  Hmm, counting the title and illustrations, how many times have I used UP in this post?  I love words, especially this one!

Oh, wait!  I just thought of another example!  Have you ever told a horse, even a pretend horse when you were a child, to "Giddy UP"?

Word of the Day

giddy up <gid·​dy·​ap ˌgid-ē-əp> = a command to a horse to go ahead or go faster.

A road less traveled and a universe less traveled

A Universe Less Traveled (Book 1 of Intersecting Worlds) ~ by Eric von Schrader, 2020, science fiction (Missouri), 384 pages

Kirkus Reviews: Von Schrader's debut novel should especially captivate readers familiar with St. Louis, but even those unacquainted with the city will find this parallel-worlds yarn worth a visit. ... Von Schrader's prose is butter smooth, and the chronological jumps the narrative makes back and forth throughout history (in both universes) are never tangled or confusing.  An enjoyable, gentle fantasy that gives new meaning to the phrase "Spirit of St. Louis."

 

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:  For St. Louis sci-fi buffs, "A Universe Less Traveled" amounts to Must Reading — and then some.

This book's title is obviously derived from "The Road Not Taken," a Robert Frost poem that I've written about before on this blog (click on the title below to go to one of those times):

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 
Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon.

Walking and other ways of exercising

I've been walking up and down my hall every day, since it's been either too cold or too rainy to walk around the neighborhood.  Since I usually do it late in the evening, I'm the only one in my hallway.  So I've been adding a few things, like shrugging my shoulders up and down as I walk (which would look pretty strange if I were passing others along the way).  I have added moves like that one on the right, with my forearms up and pressing inward and back to the side as I walk along.  In other words, I'm trying to move various parts of my body while also getting in something like 5,000 steps a day, or more if possible.  I could go to the weekly 30-45 minute group that exercises together while sitting in chairs.  Or I could try to get in more of those moves in the drawings above.  Today, I found this drawing of exercising in a chair that I had used in a blog post back in 2020 and decided to put it here so I'd remember it.

A traffic sign for Caturday

This is #48 in a long post found HERE.  I think it's cute, so enjoy.

Two senior sleuths for TWOsday

Armed and Outrageous (Book 1, Agnes Barton Senior Sleuth Mystery) ~ by Madison Johns, 2011, 2014, cozy mystery, 269 pages

This cozy mystery was a USA Today Bestseller in 2013.  Senior sleuth Agnes Barton is not your typical senior citizen living in Tadium, MI, on the shores of Lake Huron.  She drives a red hot Mustang, shops at Victoria's Secret, rankles local police officials, and has a knack for sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

What does a murder that happened forty-three years ago have to do with missing tourist Jennifer Martin?  Agnes makes it her personal mission to find out, and she's not letting the fact she's seventy-two get in the way.  Butting heads with Sheriff Clem Peterson is something she's accustomed to, but lately Clem seems to be acting even more strange, making Agnes wonder what he may be hiding about the Martin disappearance.

Agnes' partner in crime, Eleanor Mason tags along, the Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. Together, they unearth clues.  If only Eleanor would behave; although lovable, she has a knack for getting into trouble by tangling with her rival, Dorothy Alton, or flirting with anyone — male or female — and gossiping!  She's incorrigible, but she does carry a Pink Lady revolver in her purse, one that has proved useful at times.

Life for Agnes and Eleanor is shaken up when Agnes' former boss and secret crush comes to Tadium. Before long, the lady sleuths have more on their hands to contend with as goons roll into town and bullets begin to fly.

Senior Snoops (Book 3, Agnes Barton Senior Sleuth Mystery) ~ by Madison Johns, 2013, cozy mystery (Michigan and Florida), 219 pages

Hilarious sleuths Agnes Barton and Eleanor Mason head to Florida for the winter.  True to his words, Sheriff Clem Peterson sends Agnes Barton and Eleanor Mason packing to Florida via a Cessna, but things go haywire when during a fuel stop, two men shoot the pilot.  Agnes springs into action slamming the door just as shots are fired while Frank Alton jumps into the cockpit flying them out of there.

When they land in Florida, they’re asked tough questions by Putner and Palmer from Homeland Security. They keep asking if they found a packet on board the plane, a packet that Agnes has tucked in her purse, but they never mention what’s in the packet. She decides to hold onto it; after all, it contains twenty-five thousand in cash.

Sheriff Calvin Peterson, Sheriff Clem Peterson’s brother, picks them up from the airport in Florida, but tells them the bad news.  His brother Clem made arrangements for them to stay at Sunny Brooke Retirement Village and work as the hired help to pay for their room and board.  They go unwillingly, but discover in town that two maids have disappeared at Sunny Brooke.

It’s a race against the clock; will Agnes and Eleanor solve the case of the missing maids and finally figure out what happened to their pilot before they also show up on a milk carton?

Beginning ~ on a cruise

Beginning ~ Prologue

I couldn't help but reflect back on the day I married my Andrew, and Eleanor also married her Mr. Wilson, in a double wedding at the lighthouse on the point in Tawas.

High Seas Honeymoon ~ by Madison Johns, 2015, cozy mystery (Michigan and Florida), 204 pages

Agnes and Eleanor embark on a honeymoon cruise with their new husbands, Andrew and Mr. Wilson.  There are plenty of other Tawas residents along for the ride, although the newlyweds don’t realize this until they set out to sea.  But the presence of the locals sets the stage for much drama to unfold.  For instance, there’s a crime.  Agnes and Eleanor find the body of a woman, but wait.  The body disappears before the ship’s security and Captain Hamilton show up.  To further complicate matters, there’s a question of whether the woman was even really dead.  But none of these details detour Agnes and Eleanor as they hone in on some very goon-like men, Ricky and Leo, to help them get to the bottom of what really happened.  Will the women ever be able to figure out what really transpired, or will this be the one case they won't be able to solve?

=========================================================

I found this on the Kindle that my friend's sister let me have after she died.  I was looking for something mindless to read because I just want to zone out right now, and this looked like one that would do that.  I've never been on a cruise -- why not go via cozy mystery?

Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings

With unread books on my shelves, should I get another?

Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most ~ by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, 2023, self-help, 352 pages

What makes a good life?  The question is inherent to the human condition, asked by people across generations, professions, and social classes, and addressed by all schools of philosophy and religions.  This search for meaning, as these Yale faculty members argue, is at the crux of a crisis that is facing Western culture, a crisis that, they propose, can be ameliorated by searching, in one’s own life, for the underlying truth. 

In A Life Worth Living, named after the highly sought-after undergraduate course taught by the authors, they provide readers with jumping-off points, road maps, and habits of reflection for figuring out where their lives hold meaning and where things need to change.  This is a guide to life’s most pressing question, the one asked of all of us:  How are we to live?

Thoughts about history and paper money

The Irony of American History ~ by Reinhold Niebuhr, 1952, history, xiv + 174 pages

Niebuhr examines America's role in the world community in the light of our political history and moral responsibilities.  Drawing from the ironic contrast between the "innocent" nation our forefathers hoped to build and the superpower America became, Niebuhr clarifies the relation of power to justice and virtue, as he discusses the moral responsibility of the United States as a leader of the free world.

$100 bills in 1977, 2003, and 2017

Here are the fronts and backs of $100 bills issued decades apart.  Someone left a comment saying that when these $100 bills were new, they could pay:

1. pay the 1977 monthly mortgage, 
2. pay the 2003 weekly groceries, and 
3. pay the 2017 weekly Starbucks budget.

Hoping to learn a lot from this book

Hope and Other Superpowers: A Life-Affirming, Love-Defending, Butt-Kicking, World-Saving Manifesto ~  by John Pavlovitz, 2018, inspirational guide, 257 pages

Overwhelmed by the news cycle and the state of affairs in our world?  This inspirational guide draws lessons of our favorite superheroes for how we can band together, live more heroically (and meaningfully), and save the world.  It’s exhausting to give a damn these days, isn’t it?  Perhaps you’re feeling anguished about what you see on the news or in your social media timeline, or by your personal circumstances, and are paralyzed waiting for political or religious leaders, or celebrities, to rescue us from it all.  But what if you didn’t have to wait for someone else?  What if you could be the hero?

This book shows you how.  Pavlovitz offers a path away from the vitriol and toward com­passion, with a plan to transform our burdens into dreams and our outrage into activism.  Drawing from lessons of fictional superheroes, hd shows us how to identify our origin story, build protective suits of armor, guard against our personal kryptonite, and vanquish our villains.  He also identifies ten specific "superpowers" that we can enlist to make our lives and our world better.

Along the way, he shares inspiring anecdotes and profiles about ordinary people who saw a gap in the world in empathy or kindness or gratitude and decided to fill it.  This is an invitation to anyone hoping to be the kind of person the world so desperately needs — the kind who can save it.  In other words, it invites you.

Kiki was my cat before Clawdia

Kiki was a reader (aren't photos proof of that?) and reviewed books on some Caturdays.  (The book above was Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron.)  Her hobby was bird watching out our bedroom window.  She also had her own way of ending her Caturday posts:  "Kiki Cat, signing off."  Kiki died in 2012.

Let's talk turkey about phrases and idioms

Common Phrases and Where They Come From ~ by John Mordock and Myron Korach, 2001, etymology, xvii + 200 pages

The purpose of this book is to acquaint you with some of your own history, a history we all share no matter what our station in life.  We want to make you aware of the historical circumstances that produced today's brief, colorful phrases that convey powerful meanings; to illustrate the way our language is shaped by our past history and how this history influences our current communications.  While some idioms arose following significant historical events, most came out of the everyday lives of common folks.  (See  p. 168 about talking turkey.)

Book I finished recently

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner ~ edited by Ellen E. Garrigues, 1895 and 1910, ballad, 43 pages, 8/10

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads.  Some modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Wikipedia

Those dates from Wikipedia differ from the actual book I have in hand, which shows 1895 and 1910.  My copy belonged to my Aunt Bonnie Reynolds, who was born in 1904 and was a sophomore at Central High School when she studied this book.  I found it interesting to see what she wrote in the book with pencil.  For example, she put wavy lines along the sides of these stanzas on page 22:

"Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

"Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

I didn't include a closing quotation mark because it isn't the end of the quote in the book.  I paused there because I had to memorize  those lines of the poem in high school in the late 1950s and wondered if she marked them because she too had to memorize them.  Do students today still have to memorize poetry?

If you have read this poem, you know that the other sailors blamed the ancient mariner for their plight because he had shot and killed the albatross with his crossbow (page 20, in the last line of Part I).  Why?  Because it had been considered a bird of good luck:

'Ah, wretch!' said they, 'the bird to slay,

That made the wind to blow!' (p. 21).

I also had to memorize two other parts of the poem (the first below from p. 26 and the other from p. 40):

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony,

"He prayeth best who loveth best

All things, both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

Steps per day

Doctors recommend:

• 7,000-10,000 steps per day for adults aged 18-59 years
• 6,000-8,000 steps per day for adults aged 60+ years
• 7,500 steps per day for women aged 62-101 years.

The current federal exercise guidelines suggest 30 minutes of brisk walking most days, which translates into 3,000 steps taken at the 100-steps-per-minute pace.  I take a rollator, so I can sit down if I stop to talk to someone else out walking or if I just get tired.  Wait, I just noticed that 7,500 steps is more than the minimum for 18-year-old kids!  That doesn't sound right.  How can that be right?

My Wednesday Words are "upside down"

Show compassion

Mathematics on a book blog? It's in a book, isn't it?

Five Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics ~ by Michael Guillen, 1995, physics, 288 pages

1. Isaac Newton and the Universal Law of Gravity
2. Daniel Bernoulli and the Law of Hydrodynamic Pressure
3. Michael Faraday and Law of Electromagnetic Induction
4. Rudolf Clausius and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
5. Albert Einstein and the Theory of Special Relativity

When this book was published, Dr. Michael Guillen was an instructor at Harvard University and was known to millions as the science editor of ABC's Good Morning America.  In this book, he unravels the equations that have led to the inventions and events that characterize the modern world, one of which — Albert Einstein's famous energy equation, E=mc2 — enabled the creation of the nuclear bomb.  Also revealed in the book are the mathematical foundations for the moon landing, airplane travel, the electric generator, and even life itself (according to the blurb on Amazon). 

Publishers Weekly praised the book as "a wholly accessible, beautifully written exploration of the potent mathematical imagination," and named it a Best Nonfiction Book of 1995.  Okay, I'm ready to start reading it.

* Footnote:  Since my move, I'm finding old stuff that's been "buried" among my thousands of books for ages.  Some of you may be surprised that I am excited to find this book on my shelves.  I guess I haven't mentioned lately that I studied all the math and science I could work in during my school years.  I even have a favorite number (which I have mentioned previously on this blog).  And when I sat on my mother's lap while she read me nursery rhymes, I wanted her to read me the page numbers, too.

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.

Every act of kindness makes a difference

 

I have these words hanging on a small plaque from the box beside my door.  I have been thinking of an act of kindness that's been nudging me for days now:  Clawdia is in kidney failure and losing weight.  She is much thinner now than in the photo below, with her ribs sticking out on each side, so I indulge her when she 

asks to get out of our apartment.  One day she wanted to go for a walk in the hall, so I made four loops to the end of our hallway and back, twice adding the elevator area to our trek.  I'd made a note of how many steps I'd already taken so far that day before we went out the door.  When I checked the number of steps after our walk, I was startled to see I had taken exactly 1,000.  Exactly!  The act of kindness I'm considering?  Euthanasia.

* FYI:  Clawdia died this afternoon, shortly after 3:30 pm.

Parking spots and books

Memories

My friend and I were going toward my vehicle in the Crown Center parking lot in 2015 when I snapped this view of the neighborhood with trees changing colors.  People who live here can no longer imagine empty parking spaces.  With construction of our newest building and demolition of the oldest one, we have few spaces left for vehicles.  Staff and visitors must park on the street, since there are BARELY enough for residents' cars.

Rambam's Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give ~ by Julie Salamon, 2003, meditation, 183 pages

This is a book that will inspire usto get a toehold on the ladder and start climbing.  In eight chapters, one for each rung, the book helps us navigate the world of giving.  How much to give?  How do we know if our gifts are being used wisely?  Is it better to give anonymously?  It will help us make our lives, and the lives of those around us, better.

Vocabulary Energizers: Stories of Word Origins ~ by David Popkin, 1988, words, 143 pages

This book builds vocabulary by presenting the fascinating histories behind those words we need for more effective communication and comprehension.

* Vocabulary Energizers II: Stories of Word Origins is the newer edition of this item, but this is the one that I found on my bookshelf.

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.

"Pass It On" ~ by Henry Burton

Have you had a kindness shown?

Pass it on;

'Twas not given for thee alone,

Pass it on;

Let it travel down the years,

Let it wipe another's tears,

'Till in Heaven the deed appears . . .

Pass it on.

~~~ by Henry Burton

*Note ~ I ran across this first verse in a book, so I'm passing it on for you to ponder, too.

Thursday Thoughts about Library Loot

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Commu-nications of the Dying ~ by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 1992, psychology, 224 pages

In this moving and compassionate classic, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts — of wisdom, faith, and love — that the dying leave for the living to share.  Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project ~ edited by Dave Isay, 2007, stories, 293 pages

Dave Isay selects the most memorable stories from StoryCorps' collection, creating a moving portrait of American life.  The voices here connect us to real people and their lives — to their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage, and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds.  To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or stereotype.  We are our history, individually and collectively, and this book reminds us of this powerful truth.

These are two books I currently have checked out of the library.  I chose them for today's post, even though I previously mentioned them HERE and HERE.  The top book's cover was different online.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.  Both of these are from the Crown Center's library.

*Speaking of dying, someone shared this story yesterday in the Café (you need to know her mother died decades ago):

 

"I think I died just after midnight.  Mother came for me, but said, 'Not yet,' and I woke up and was back in my bed, alive.  When she came and seemed to be looking for me, I said, 'I'm here on this chair and . . .'  Then I searched for the other word that I needed — ottoman — which was where my feet were resting.  Mother looked at me, said those two words 'Not yet,' and faded away."

Was that a near death experience?  She said she was in bed, but her vision said chair and ottoman.  What's up with that?  Will she die in her chair, maybe soon?

(Note:  Speaking of "a near death experience," on page 173 near the end of the book In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier, I was surprised to read these words from a character in the book who had died briefly and was brought back to life:  "There's nothing out there Baby.  Now you know why I never wanted to tell you what happened.  No matter what the priests or the ministers say, or those people talking about near-death experiences."  I finished reading those last pages of Cormier's book a mere nine days after writing this post.)

**Speaking of StoryCorps, I ran across a 2019 blog post (that never got posted) while putting this one together.  I was among those invited to hear a presentation about our community's Oral History Project and had been pondering some of the questions since then (click the link to see the questions), including this one:

"School:  Are you still friends with anyone from that time in your life?"

We heard details at a meeting, and an old school friend had just sent me a letter with this old B/W photo of the two of us.  (B/W is an abbreviation referring to a photograph in shades of black and white as opposed to a color photograph.)  That's Shirley on the left and me on the right in the 1950s.

As a wordsmith who loves words, I think I'd love to read this book

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary ~ by Sarah Ogilvie, 2023, words, 384 pages

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of the greatest achievements humans have made.  Yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered.  Who were the people behind this unprecedented book?  As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.

Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak.  It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.  It's a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.

Update on 9/21/23:  Thanks, Helen (see comment below).  I was not aware of the book by Simon Winchester on this subject.  He's an excellent writer.  Here's more information about his book.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary~ by Simon Winchester, 1998, words, 256 pages

The Professor and the Madman (a New York Times Notable Book) is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary — and literary history.

The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken.  As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, was stunned to discover that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand.  But their surprise would pale in comparison to what they were about to discover when the committee insisted on honoring him:  Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

William Safire wrote that the book was masterfully researched and eloquently written, "the linguistic detective story of the decade" (New York Times Magazine).  This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews and recommended reading.

Musing about money

"Paper checks are dead.  Cash is dying."  I read that in an article online and thought it was quite accurate.  I write a rent check each month and another check for the monthly meal plan.  That's it.  I was talking to someone recently about how we have quit using "heavy" coins.  A nickel isn't worth carrying around, and neither is a penny.  Hmm, or a dime, for that matter.  I only use coins when I buy a snack from a vending machine, and that's rare these days.  Before I moved into my new apartment, I needed quarters for machines to wash and dry sheets and clothes.  Now I don't leave home to do my laundry.

Coming down and moving on

Demolition has begun on the 10-story building on the right.  Two of my old apartment windows were those first ones from the right on the sixth floor.

My friend Alyssa took this picture, calling it "deconstruction, brick by brick."  That's her old apartment just to the left of the demolition, the one window on the top floor to the left of the worker and the window at an angle beside it with an air conditioner.  This view is from the parking lot to the right of the upper photo.

Move On: Adventures in the Real World ~ by Linda Ellerbee, 1991, memoir, 269 pages

The renowned journalist discusses professional perils and changes in her family, society, her generation, and herself, along with such issues as parenting, communes, Maxwell House, alcohol, and feminism.

The Existential Imagination ~ by Frederick R. Karl and Leo Hamalian, 1963, philosophy (existentialism), 288 pages

Existentialism is the most challenging philosophic movement of the 20th Century.  The hurricane of argument it engendered shook the very framework of humanity's moral and spiritual traditions.  This anthology charts the development of existential thought through the classic literature of past and present and provides new insights into that intellectual revolution.

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.