Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Ryhth* (for Rhythm, Rhythmic, etc.)



This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s had an extended stay in a hospital or rehab, but these facilities are self-contained worlds with a rhythm entirely their own.  I’ve just spent the last two weeks with my mother as she recovers from knee surgery, and I’ve been struck by how time seems to pass much differently than on the “outside,” and also by the communities that develop within such facilities—the nurses, fellow patients, and visiting family members you meet again and again in the hallways or at meals.  Although I’ll be very glad when she’s discharged, it will be a little strange knowing that I won’t see any of these folks again, and for a while at least, I will wonder how some of her comrades have fared.

Just as the rhythm of everyday life can be interrupted by surgery, so too can your catalog searching groove be thrown by typos like Ryhth*.  There are 20 instances in OhioLINK and 181 in WorldCat.

(“Exercise to shoulder and elbow to increase motion following fracture and dislocation of humerous is being given by an Army therapist to a soldier patient” from the catalog of the National Archives)

Deb Kulczak

No comments: