Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Californa (For California)

California came to mind today because we are airing out our suitcases and retrieving our Mouscacaps for the trip to Anaheim in a few weeks. Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco in the 1860s and his later observations about the place were not very kind:
"That California get-rich-quick disease of my youth spread like wildfire. It produced a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life, its poetry, its soft romantic dreams and visions, and replaced them with a money fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions and the sleep which does not refresh. It has created a thousand useless luxuries and turned them into necessities, and satisfied nothing." Fortunately, Twain was talking about another time. We tend to enjoy these visits to California. Californa is on the C, or moderate probability section of Typographical Errors in Library Databases at http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard/typoscomplete.html, meaning that the error had from 8 to 15 hits in OHIOLINK at the time of its discovery. As we told you yesterday, be careful of changing your records because there is evidence that Californa is a legitimate spelling of the occasional place name. Today's photo was taken at Huntington Beach, and the full version can be seen at http://www.pbase.com/terryballard/image/32325230 .

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