Backlog Stromateis

  • This morning, I finally went to the dentist to repair the tooth that I broke several weeks ago. If my life were a Symbolic Novel, this would count as a turning point toward restoration and renewed energies. Which I wouldn’t object to — I’m just not counting on anything at the moment.
  • We do love Princeton in the spring.
    Princeton In The Spring
  • The Rt. Rev. Dr. Krister Stendahl, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Divinity Emeritus of Harvard Divinity School (and parishioner of St. Paul’s Church, Nantucket), died Tuesday. I don’t have much to add to the HDS and NYT obituaries except that his essay “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” was a vitally important precursor of the revolution in Pauline studies that bore fruit in the 80’s and 90’s in the “New Perspective” articulated by Sanders, Wright, and many others.
  • In response to Apple’s releasing a font-face CSS-compliant web browser, FDI fonts.info has made available Graublau Sans Web regular and bold for CSS embedding. I’m impressed with the faces, with the offer, with the terms of the arrangement, and would like to experiment with Graublau on this site (maybe someday). I’d be interested to learn whether Yanone Kaffeesatz is also licensed for web embedding — that one’s a beauty, too.
  • In another type-related story, a post on the Typophile boards pointed to the Ascender Eco-Friendly Font Pack, which includes several quite usable types with some templates and images in a bargain package. I don’t know what makes this particularly eco-friendly, but it seems like a good deal if you’re looking for inexpensive typefaces. I’m saving my pennies for the OpenType versions of Nick Shinn’s Paradigm, a typeface that has utterly captivated my imagination. Nick has devised an ingenious pricing scheme: only $9 per typeface for the “basic” version, which still includes ’most everything an amateur will need, but $59 for the Pro OpenType version. Although I doubt I would use the Pro features more than once or twice in the normal course of events, it would be hard for me to pass up the fuller set of designs. Either way, it’s very lovely to look at, and to imagine as the stylish-but-not-outlandish house type for a congregation or school.
  • This is very reassuring. I’m not the only one.

3 thoughts on “Backlog Stromateis

  1. Thanks for posting that last link, which has provided me some company for my word-substitution problems. My errors tend not to be in names but in other nouns, such that I’ll ask D. to bring me my purse from the kitchen when I really wanted my school bag from the living room. This makes me rather difficult to understand sometimes, I’m afraid! Interestingly, I almost never do this while teaching, which is when my brain is most focused; it’s only in more casual conversation that I become difficult to understand.

  2. That’s curious; I’m positively dreadful about mixing names, especially (horrors) my children’s names, even to the point of mixing Pippa with Beatrice (whom she resembles in absolutely no particular except gender).
     
    I’m more likely just to go blank when I’m not connecting with particular concepts, items, or locations.

  3. i do it while teaching, just lose a word and pause while i find it. i teach in elementary school and the kids seldom hesitate to provide the word for me, hopefully the one i’m looking for, like “crayon” or “scissors,” which i’m often waving in my hand at the time. if i don’t pause, then i can come up with anything, usually related, but fairly random. it’s always objects, i notice, and i generally know immediately (or at least i hope so!) and can roll my eyes and correct myself. don’t have the problem with names, but then i don’t have that many close people in my life; my mother used to do, and my almost 102-year-old aunt still does the name string thing, running through her departed daughter’s, and then her four granddaughters’ names before hitting the one she needs (even if it’s me, and i’m not in that line!) and she’s still sharp, btw: she’s been doing this for at least the 50 years i’ve known her! when i get a name wrong, it’s usually because i teach art to more than 500 kids and unwisely have ventured beyond “sweetheart.”

    thinking on it, it seems to happen when we’re identifying objects and when we’re speaking in the imperative. i don’t say “eat your crayon” when i mean “bring your crayon,” for example, but i might say “bring your ruler.” nor does my aunt say “happy birthday, susan” on sarah’s birthday but will say “peggydebbiesusanhollyssarah(pippabead), bring/do X…” or she might do it when referring to one of us in the third person. i wonder if it has something to do with our relationship to those who are, or have been in some way, in our care?

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