Month: March 2015

The Lydster, Part 132

She gets a thrill when she gets a question right on JEOPARDY!

Lydia.NYCThis is probably true: the Daughter will be taller than her mother, and quite likely, her father. She’s about 5 feet, 4 inches tall, which is about 1.6 meters.

She is generous of spirit, contributing her money to causes, especially those involving dogs and cats.

She relishes being helpful. She teaches me about current music, even as I share with her the Beatles and Motown.

She is quite good in math, instinctively, though the showing of the work, especially with those bar charts, is tedious for both of us.

She LOVES reading, but some of her “compare and contrast” writing assignments suck the joy out of it.

She gets a thrill when she gets a question right on JEOPARDY!, and at least once she got an answer that none of the three contestants could come up with.

She probably watches the news too much, though I was the same at her age. (But the news didn’t seem so grim then: Cold War and racial tension, whereas now it’s terrorism and ethnic tension.)

She went to two funerals this year, one for a person she cared deeply for.

She still likes it when her mother and/or I watch the scary parts of the movies with her, e.g., in Brave, when the mama bear was in peril.

She still loves her papa, and he’ll always love her.

MOVIE REVIEW: Still Alice

“The film Still Alice doesn’t so much progress as fade away, leaving only the memory of its central performance intact.”

stillaliceThe Wife and I saw the movie Still Alice the Saturday after Julianne Moore won the Best Actress Oscar.

I didn’t see the other nominees in the category, save for Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything, but she was fine. Great, actually, as linguistics professor Alice Howland, who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Alec Baldwin plays her husband John, somewhat self-absorbed with his own academic career; Baldwin’s played this type of character before.

Kate Bosworth is the annoying married daughter Anna. The guys playing her brother and her husband were mostly ciphers because they didn’t have that much to do.

The key family relationship is between Alice and her youngest daughter, an aspiring actress named Lydia (good name, that), played by Kirsten Stewart. I had NEVER seen her in any movie. The Twilight series actress was surprisingly not bad, though, as a friend of mine who happened to attend the same showing, she has a tendency to mumble.

Weeks later, I’m still trying to figure out why this movie, based on a book I have not read, felt a bit distant to me. I’m not sure, but here are some observations:

*There’s a scene that is out of focus, save for Alice. I KNOW it was showing her feeling disorientated, but it LOOKED as though perhaps she was going blind, and that was a distraction.

*Perhaps the emotional center was a speech, which came more or less in the middle of the movie, a time I actually teared up.

*The bathroom scene at the summer house was the most painful.

*The scene involving the video of Alice’s younger self almost played as a very dark comedy.

*The family, save for Lydia, seemed so shiny and put together.

This Spectator review says it better than I:

“The film doesn’t so much progress as fade away, leaving only the memory of its central performance intact. Still Alice thus joins a growing band of movies… which seem plucked into existence solely to fatten up a single performance for awards season, while everyone else — the rest of the cast, director, crew — goes on a starvation diet. The people around Alice are sketches.”

My mother had some sort of dementia in the months before she died, and of course, the disease manifests itself in many different ways. She was far older than Alice, not as well educated, not as self-aware. All of that probably colors the movie for me as well.

K is for Kellogg’s Cereal Bowls

I have NO recollection of ordering these bowls.

kelloggs cereal bowls
This is an odd little story.

Back in early 1980s, my (now) parents-in-law had befriended this older woman named Alice. She became part of their family. I met her a few times; she was a nice lady.

Around 2003, she died, and my parents-in-law were tasked to take her stuff from the trailer in which she lived, plus a storage unit. The items were removed en masse, without looking much at what items were present. They did sorting as time allowed.

Jump to 2014. In the midst of their own move, the in-laws discover this box with Alice’s handwritten note, “A Gift From” my wife. But the box initially had been mailed to ME at my address before we got married, from E.P.I Fulfillment in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Contained therein were four Kellogg’s cereal bowls, the same ones pictured above, with a 1996 copyright date.

I have NO recollection of ordering these bowls. Nor does my spouse remember having given them to Alice. Still, they’ve made their way back to us.

They go for about $20-$45 for the set on eBay, depending on condition, and they appear to be in near-mint condition, so I doubt she ever used them. I’m not inclined to sell them anytime soon.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

The word “apothic”

apothic crush

My friend Dan, always with a question, writes:

Apothic: A mysterious word. Searching Google, apothic is used for a lot of commercial enterprises, particularly a cheap red California wine that appears to be popular. It also pops up as a scent, as an alternative medicine peddler, a carpentry shop, etc. But mostly the wine.

Urban Dictionary gives “beautiful or stunning,” but there’s only one entry which makes that definition highly suspect. The word “apoth” appears to have nothing to do with it, that is an archaic derogatory term for someone who is an apothecary, plus apoth is also a Northern English local word meaning “silly.” Not to be confused with aphotic, which means “unfathomable depth.” My spell checker keeps trying to make the word apothem, which is a line drawn in a polygon from the center to one of the sides.

So in desperation I checked the wine maker’s site, and found Apothic Red Wine is put out by Gallo. (Urp.) On their site I found, “Inspired by “Apotheca,” a mysterious place where wine was blended and stored in 13th century Europe…” So I find Wiktionary which defines apotheca as a warehouse or repository. But then I see “apotheca” appropriated as a coffee house and as another herb peddler, flower seller, a hair shop, etc.

So finally I zeroed in. It seems that an apotheca, back in ancient Greek times, was a storeroom usually in the upper part of a house used particularly for storing wine. So I’m guessing that “apothic” is a modern made-up word that has not been copyrighted (although it appears that someone tried to claim copyright) that is supposed to sound like something technical to do with wine. But, judging by the variety of commercial names, the use of the word is scattered all over the place.

Perhaps a Librarian can help me out here. Am I missing something? Or is this too tedious to bother with? Is this what I do when I get up early?

“So I’m guessing that ‘apothic’ is a modern made-up word” – well, all words are ultimately made up. And my best guess is someone made an adjective out of apotheca, which is the antecedent to boutique and bodega.

To your last sentence: I think you already have the bulk of your answer, a variation of apothecary: Mid-14c., “shopkeeper, especially one who stores, compounds, and sells medicaments,” from Old French apotecaire (13c., Modern French apothicaire), from Late Latin apothecarius “storekeeper,” from Latin apotheca “storehouse,” from Greek apotheke “barn, storehouse,” literally “a place where things are put away,” from apo- “away” (see apo-) + tithenai “to put, to place” (see theme). Same root produced French boutique and Spanish bodega. Cognate compounds produced Sanskrit apadha- “concealment,” Old Persian apadana- “palace.”

Surely THE answer you seek may be derived by the right librarian or linguist. But I’m hitting the same references as you are. I DO agree that the “beautiful” definition is suspect.

The only reference I found you did not mention is the Thesaurasize definition, “Of, or relating to the eye or to vision,” which I find even more puzzling. Maybe this was confused with aphotic, “being the deep zone of an ocean or lake receiving too little light to permit photosynthesis.”

I looked at the USPTO.gov website. Yes, E. & J. GALLO WINERY CORPORATION has a lot of trademarks that are LIVE (active), Apothic, Apothic Brew, Apothic Dark, Apothic Fire, and Apothic Smoke. Two of them they have even trademarked not just the name but the logo design:

APOTHIC CRUSH (pictured)
The color(s) red is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of a red label with a letter “A” surrounded by various swirl designs centered at the top. Centered below is cursive lettering spelling out CRUSH in what appears to be fabric, and directly below that are printed capital letters spelling APOTHIC CRUSH. Forming a rectangle around the border of the label are swirl designs.

APOTHIC RED
The color(s) red is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of a three dimensional configuration of a glass bottle for the goods, namely, a bottle with a round circumference and vertical sides that gradually curve in at the neck; the bottom of the bottle is concave. Around the middle of the circumference of the bottle it is shaded darker than the rest of the bottle, and at the top of the shaded section on one side of the bottle is a label, which consists of the red letter “A” surrounded by various red swirl designs. Directly underneath the label are the words APOTHIC RED in capital letters, with APOTHIC in white lettering and RED in red lettering. The top of the bottle is covered by red sealing material that goes halfway down the neck of the bottle and covers the cork at the top of the bottle.

GALLO has abandoned the trademarks for Apothic Frost, Apothic Ice, Apothic Lust, and Apothic Spice.

The only other company that has trademarked the word apothic is LUX BEAUTY GROUP, West Hollywood CALIFORNIA 90069.

This title is DEAD (abandoned) – ROYAL APOTHIC INVISIBLE SKIN: Cosmetics, toiletries, non-medicated skin care preparations, non-medicated bath and body gels and lotions, body washes, and soaps for personal use

But this is LIVE (in use) – ROYAL APOTHIC: Non-medicated bath and body gels and lotions, non-medicated skin care preparations; soaps for personal use; perfumes; and scented room sprays.

Variations on the name Richard

“Around the 16th century Dick started to be synonymous with ‘man’, ‘lad’, or ‘fellow’, sort of a general name for any ‘Tom, Dick, or Francis”.

richard nixonRegarding my post of March 8, the Windy City Kiwi, Arthur@AmeriNZ, wrote:

HUGE props to you for doing a post relevant to International Women’s Day without making it about it. I tend to think the most powerful feminism from men is when it’s not about being feminist. Maybe that’s just me.

But I want to challenge you a bit. You wrote that you object to “the C-word” in part because of the “the reduction of a woman to a body part”. But, do you similarly object to a man being called a “dumb prick” or, more simply, a “dick”? That’s reducing a man to a body part, after all, but no one—ever—says “the D-word” or similar. Is it really any less objectionable and, if not, why not?

An “Ask Roger” question without being prompted!

Obviously I agree with the gist of your post, and I challenge myself far more than I challenge others. But I do wonder sometimes if we have cultural blinders on, and so, don’t see oppressive language in all its manifestations.

I suppose I didn’t think about this side of the equation very much, maybe because this is still a male-centric culture. It’s usually men that I hear using these terms, surely far more often than I hear women sharing them.

Perhaps others use the term because of the cliche – which may be true – that men sometimes (often?) seem to think to think with their “little heads”, that men are, as a whole, a less evolved species.

I will say that these aren’t words that I would use, personally. Indeed, there are a whole slew of terms for male body parts that I tend not to choose to describe the whole man. But is that a function of sensitivity or just me being a prude? The only time I use the word prick is when I get blood drawn and they prick my finger, which, BTW, hurts more than one would think.

The only people named Richard that I regularly referred to as Dick were Nixon and Cheney.

My father-in-law is named Richard. My mother-in-law calls him Dick, as do most of his friends in his age range, but I call him Richard. This is, undoubtedly a reaction, when I was a kid, to some poor boy named Richard being verbally tortured for his nickname.

And there are so many other choices for Richard: Rich, Richie, Rick. I wondered how How Dick Came to be Short for Richard:

Due to people having to write everything by hand, shortened versions of Richard were common, such as ‘Ric’ or ‘Rich’. This in turn gave rise to nicknames like ‘Richie’, ‘Rick’, and ‘Ricket’, among others. People also used to like to use rhyming names; thus, someone who was nicknamed Rich might further be nicknamed Hitch. Thus, Richard -> Ric -> Rick gave rise to nicknames like Dick and Hick around the early 13th century.

This s also how William became Bill, Robert became Bob, et al.

While few today call Richards ‘Hick’, the nickname ‘Dick’ has stuck around, and of course has come to mean many other things as well. Its persistence as associated with Richard is probably in part because around the 16th century Dick started to be synonymous with ‘man’, ‘lad’, or ‘fellow’, sort of a general name for any ‘Tom, Dick, or Francis” (which by the way appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, written in the late 16th century, with Dick at this point firmly established as an “every man” name). It may well be that this association with ‘man’ is in turn how ‘dick’ eventually came to mean ‘penis’.

But the more vulgar reference is much later, from the last quarter of the 19th century.

The etymological roots of the word Dick, as a replacement for an everyday guy, which somehow segued into something more vulgar, makes me no less eager to use the term, but it was something I learned that I did not know.

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