Contib* (for Contrib*)

Given the titular force with which Sidney Poitier's character emphasized his name and honorific in the movie They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (a campy 70s sequel to the classic In the Heat of the Night), he most likely wouldn't have been too happy with the misspelling Tibs either. The Poitier persona was both passionate and precise. He was also handsome, soft-spoken, principled, and the very essence of cool—perhaps especially to longingly liberal, but de facto segregated, teenage girls who were White Like Me. Over the years, I fell madly in love with Sidney Poitier (mixing the personal and political) in Lilies of the Field, A Patch of Blue, and (be still, my Lulu-imbued heart!) To Sir, with Love. Contib* turns up 76 times in OhioLINK, so let's all contribute to ridding our catalogs of this all too frequent typo.

(In case you haven't already figured it out, that's Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte in front, plus Sidney Poiter standing a little ways behind them, at a civil rights rally in 1963, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Senoir* (for Senior*)

Like most senior citizens, Pierre-Auguste Renoir suffered some physical impairment in senescence, mainly rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. This condition affected him mightily (contrary to myth, he did not need to have the brush strapped to his fingers, though he did require an assistant to help him grasp it), but this did not ultimately prevent him from painting. He joined forces with a younger accomplice in order to continue sculpting and employed a moving canvas or "picture roll" to facilitate the making of oversized paintings—activities he could not otherwise manage with such limited mobility. Renoir lived from 1841 to 1919, which means he produced the charming self-portrait to the right when he was 69 years old. The artist enjoyed painting plenitudinous women as well as painting en plein air, both of which probably did a lot to keep him feeling young at heart. There are six cases of Senoir* in the OhioLINK database today (and two of Junoir*).

(Renoir's Self-Portrait, 1910, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Seatle (for Seattle)

On May 7, 1977, the American racehorse Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby, on his way to winning the Triple Crown.

The horse was named, naturally, for the city of Seattle. “Slew” comes from the sloughs (slow-moving channels) loggers used to move heavy logs. His owners thought the spelling, slough, would be difficult to remember, so they changed it to Slew.

Looking down a list of the names of Derby winners is quite interesting. Themes quickly appear: many horses are given combative names featuring speed or strength, like Assault, Cannonade, Exterminator, and Jet Pilot. Other names recognize the inherent gamble involved in horse racing: Bold Venture, Spectacular Bid, and Genuine Risk.

Then, there are those names that stick out for being different and slightly perplexing: horses called Needles, Ponder, Macbeth II, Iron Liege, and Behave Yourself.

Leanne Olson

(Photo of Slew with Paul Mallory as a foal at White Horse farms on August 5th, 1974, from SeattleSlew.com)

Dalai Llama (for Dalai Lama)

I wonder if the Dalai Llama might be a cousin of our other animal friend, Salmon Rushdie?

Now, for this post I could write about the important work the Dalai Lama XIV has done…or I could share with you some trivia about llamas.

Llamas are, like the man himself, usually gentle creatures. However, when overloaded, they will lie down, spit, hiss, and kick. And since they weight around 250 pounds (113 kg), they can kick HARD.

Llamas have a gestational period of 11 months, which sounds like a long time until you consider the elephant (18-22 months). The llama, like the alpaca, does not exist in the wild—they were possibly bred from guanacos during the time of the Inca civilization.

Leanne Olson

Seige (for Siege)

We've all felt under siege at one time or another, I'm sure. And it's never as fun as building snow forts to defend from enemies on the playground.

Outside of a real war, we can be under siege from family members, work projects, or, in my case, tent caterpillars. Last summer, hundreds of the tiny monsters crawled all over my house, and I found myself very glad of two sets of locked, glass sliding doors protecting me. (Why locked? Because it's not that far out of the realm of reality that those little guys might learn to turn a door handle.)

George Romero put the siege concept to great use in his film Dawn of the Dead, with humans barricading themselves in a shopping mall against the hungry zombies lurking outside. The 1978 film was a commentary on consumerism and excess, but I'll admit it mainly makes me think, whenever I go to the mall, "Where is the best place to hide from zombies? Just in case..." It's always best to plan ahead.

The errors in our library catalogues can make us feel surrounded and helpless at times, but starting small can help: vanquish seige, a typo for siege, from yours now! Be careful to stick with "seige" and not "seige*", or you may nab a few author's names by mistake.

Leanne Olson

(Movie poster from Wikipedia.)

HMTL (for HTML)

Initialisms always get me. They’re different from acronyms in that they don’t spell out a word, so it’s much harder to notice when you’ve made a typo. I’m sure I’ve typed “HMTL” more than once; I know for sure that I’ve misspelled “URL” as “ULR” at least a few times. Perhaps mixing it up with household cleaner CLR?

Tim Berners-Lee (pictured here) invented HTML, or hypertext markup language (not hyper markup text language) and the World Wide Web. If you’re interested in the future of the web, check out his short talk at TED.

TED is a website that brings together brief (10-20 minute) presentations by giants in technology, business, journalism, and entertainment, and every time I visit, I lose myself online, spellbound for hours.

Leanne Olson

(Photo from howstuffworks.com)

Spectrocop* (for Spectroscop*)

The album cover for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, with white light separated through a prism into a rainbow, is a famous example of spectroscopy. The rainbow on the cover is also seen by some fans as a way to link the album with the film The Wizard of Oz—when both are played together, synchronicities seem to occur between the lyrics, music, and action on the screen.

The prism and music are linked in another way. When Isaac Newton began his prism experiments, he noted that the spectrum of colour was continuous, but separated it into 7 colours, like the 7 notes of the musical scale: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Spectrocop* is a typo of moderate probability on the Ballard List.