Dinnn* (for Dinner, etc.)

I just found out (on the prom episode of The Real O'Neals) that August 9th was National Rice Pudding Day. Darn! I can't believe I missed that. I love rice pudding. Although it happens that some people definitely don't. As Winnie-the-Pooh's HUNNY-hustling progenitor, A.A. Milne, famously once put it: "What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's perfectly well, and she hasn't a pain. And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!— What is the matter with Mary Jane?" Rice pudding can be concocted quite easily in a crockpot with a few basic ingredients. Last night I was perusing a wonderful old letter from my German great-great-grandmother to her daughter, Karolina, who had gone to live in the United States. She's telling Lina about her niece, "Little Lina," and writes: "She is truly a wonder child, at fourteen months of age. She is already able to ask for everything clearly ... Bread, sugar, water, cake, she really knows everything." Those were trying times in Germany, it seems, but it sounds like our precious Kleinkind knew what was gut. Perhaps it was lovely rice pudding for dinner again! Today's typo was found five times in OhioLINK, and 52 times in WorldCat.

(Dessert made with rice, milk, and sugar, flavored with lemon peel and cinnamon, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Aleins (for Aliens)

I braved the cold and driving rain without an umbrella the other night to catch the final entry in the silent film series at Albany Public Library, called When an Alien Robot Crash-Lands in Troy, NY. (It might bear mention here that Troy is home to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is "the oldest continuously operating technological university in both the English-speaking world and the Americas.") This time it was the debut of a 50-minute film by a local artist named Bobby Kendall, with live accompaniment by the band Lastdayshining. Maybe it was the wet slog to get there, or maybe I've just seen too many locally produced, low-budget "indies" in my day, but I had somewhat dampened hopes that weren't entirely assuaged in its first few minutes. However, I soon grew quite enamored of this strange little sci-fi saga. Our eponymous robot was a small, crudely made thing, such as a child would construct (two white boxes for the body and head, cardboard arms, big red eyes, and a black line for the mouth) and it navigated on four wheels, like an all-terrain-type vehicle operated by remote control. It starts out roaming this rusty old industrial park on the outskirts of town, dotted with discarded computer equipment and other sad relics of our day. It approaches various objects, touches them gingerly, and then moves on. It rambles through the nearby woods, where it seems to take a shine to a wilted sunflower head, and then down to the banks of the Hudson River, where it's surprised by water. The plotline, such as it is, is rather slim and whimsical, which isn't a bad thing, and it provides fitting food for thought. For example, I loved the way that, unlike the robot and its startled response to all it sees, the people it passes on the sidewalks of Troy's historic downtown district, and milling about at the farmers market, hardly give it a first glance, much less a second one. They must have thought it was just a dumb toy or an advertising gizmo; or perhaps they really didn't notice it at all, the way folks will often "look right through" those who aren't part of their own circumscribed worldview. But the best thing about this movie, in my opinion, wasn't the alien robot, or even the local color; it was the truly deft and touching way that it was filmed. It was like a cinematic love letter to the city, artfully and affectionately rendered by Kendall, and beautifully scored by Lastdayshining in a blend of "post-rock" and chamber music styles. Kendall and his band are currently in the process of recording an original score to another silent film about an awesomely cinematic city, Fritz Lang's Metropolis. A relative of mine, who also loves Troy, NY, once built himself a radio-controlled "robot" as well. He dubbed it YLLIB in a backwards homage to its creator. It occurs to me that this one could have been likewise named YORT, pronounced as one syllable or else EE-ORT (sort of like the dysphoric donkey in A.A. Milne's "100 Aker Wood"). But whatever you call your robot, or however you say its name, remember it's "I before E " in the case of aliens from outer space, along with any you might find in your own database. There were three found in OhioLINK today, plus 14 in WorldCat.

(Poster for showing of When an Alien Robot Crash-Lands in Troy, NY, at the Albany Public Library, October 28, 2015.)

Carol Reid

Repitition* (for Repetition*)

A common mistake in both writing and speech is the misuse of the "past perfect"—or more generally speaking, the inclusion of have or had when they aren't required (along with the other way around). Here, by way of a word-nerdy relative I visited over the holidays, is a wonderful example of the correct use of this tense, where despite the insane repetition of the word had, the sentence itself remains fully grammatical (albeit lacking punctuation and "emphasis"): James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher. You just might need a palate cleanser after that linguistic mouthful, so allow me to recommend the A. A. Milne poem "Disobedience." Have fun with this one (if this is the kind of thing you tend to have fun with) and remember this: If you go down to the end of Grammartown, you had better go down with me! There were 27 cases of Repitition* in OhioLINK, and 305 in WorldCat.

(James John Elementary School cornerstone, Portland, Oregon, 1929, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Crysan* (for Chrysan*)

A constant reader and typo contributor from the Netherlands wrote us the other day to say that she had found 705 cases of Chrystal* in WorldCat, adding that this typo does not yet appear on the Ballard list. She's right, it doesn't, although we did in fact blog on the combined typo Chryst* + Cryt* (for Crystal, etc.) back in 2009. Since I'm currently in the process of memorizing the poem "The Dormouse and the Doctor" by A. A. Milne, I have decided today to feature the contrasting Crysan* (here the H is mistakenly omitted, rather than added to the word in question), a typo for chrysanthemum*. I loved this poem as a child, despite (or maybe even a bit because of) the fact that I was totally unfamiliar with delphiniums, and only vaguely aware of geraniums. And I'm pretty sure I didn't know what a dormouse was either, though I knew that one figured prominently in the book Alice in Wonderland. The Milne poem attempts to answer an age-old, if garden-variety, mystery by concluding: "And that is the reason (Aunt Emily said) / If a Dormouse gets in a chrysanthemum bed / You will find (so Aunt Emily says) that he lies / Fast asleep on his front with his paws to his eyes." In this poem the unctuous yet clueless doctor prescribes for his patient "Milk and Massage-of-the-back," along with "Freedom-from worry and Drives-in-a-car," but mostly insists upon chrysanthemums (yellow and white). We found nine cases of today's typo in OhioLINK (six of which were for the expected errors, with two for various surnames and one for "Crysand Press"), plus 177 in WorldCat.

(Chrysanthemums, c. 1875, by James Tissot, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Epherm* (for Ephemera, etc.)

I like to memorize poetry and was casting about for a new poem to learn the other day when I came across an old childhood favorite entitled Forgiven, by A. A. Milne.

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day...
And Nanny let my beetle out—
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out—
She went and let my beetle out—
And Beetle ran away. . . .

Today I'm cataloging some ephemera, which strikes me as the sort of word one might mis-key from time to time, so I decided to look it up in OhioLINK and, sure enough, 11 cases of Epherm* popped up, a couple of which could have been correctly spelled Greek words, but most of which were clearly typos. One in particular caught my eye: A Bibliography of Ephermal [sic] Bibelots, by Frederick W. Faxon, 1897. A bibelot is "a small object of curiosity, beauty, or rarity; akin to a bauble." All of this put me in mind of a segment I recently saw on CBS Sunday Morning about British "micro-sculptor" Willard Wigan. Wigan started fashioning vanishingly minute tableaux after a teacher once told him he was bound to be a failure, a cruel remark that made him feel "small." His mother offered some sage advice: "If you keep making small things, your name will get bigger!"

"It began when I was five years old," says Wigan. "I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticise me." Wigan employs dust, eyelashes, sugar crystals, grains of sand, seeds, and so on in the making of his minuscule creations. His work is often hard to see, but having been dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World," it's hardly ephemeral. (Except for the time that Wigan, while working on a wee Wonderland, inhaled his tiny Alice!) If you haven't had your fill yet, take a close look at these other amazing artists as well.

(The First Family in the eye of a needle, by Willard Wigan.)

Carol Reid

May 25, 2007 – Jame

When A. A. Milne wrote the rollicking line "James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree…" there could only have been one person answering to that handle. But some names are so similar they give rise to a highly ambiguous typo: Jame can be a misspelled reference to either James or Jane.
(It can also be a correctly spelled foreign-language word, or a surname, or even—given the creativity some parents are seized with when it comes time to label the baby—a quirky English forename.) This probable typo pops up 133 times in OhioLINK. You may have to do some checking to figure out whether your "Jame" is a Jane or a James, although you can often determine that from the context, as names generally appear more than once on a bibliographic record.

Carol Reid