Mike Zim

Annotations and comments

Mike Zim has posted nine annotations/comments since 4 February 2018.

The most recent first…

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Third Reading

About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61

Mike Zim  •  Link

"lan Bedford on 14 Mar 2004 ... "The Seaman's Grammar and Dictionary" was written by Captain John Smith, who was one of the founders of the Jamestown colony in Virginia." "

Happy coincidence, a clue in tonight's Jeopardy! show "17th century writing" category:
"In his 1624 history of Virginia & New England, he included the famous story of his rescue"

Clever contestant Yogesh's answer: "Oh, I don't know. I'll just guess a random name -- um, who is, uh, John Smith?"
https://www.j-archive.com/showgam…

Second Reading

About The end of the second cycle

Mike Zim  •  Link

Phil,
Your daily feeds have been the manna in the small wilderness of my room.
Thanks to you, and to all the commentators.
Mike
Columbus, Ohio

About Wednesday 10 August 1664

Mike Zim  •  Link

"... abroad to ... find out one to engrave my tables upon my new sliding rule ... . So I find out Cocker, the famous writing-master, and get him to do it, "

Cocker's 1678 Arithmetick book inspired the idiom "according to Cocker", which fell out of use in the early 20th century. It predated "according to Hoyle", first used in 1906.
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa…
"Curiously, Edward Cocker wasn’t known in his lifetime for his skill in arithmetic. He was an expert engraver and what was then called a pen-man, a calligrapher. Samuel Pepys praises him several times in his Diary, in particular because Cocker was the only man Pepys found with the skill to engrave his new slide rule."

https://wordsmith.org/words/hoyle…

About Thursday 30 April 1668

Mike Zim  •  Link

Following on Terry, Australian Susan, and psw's posts regarding Beating the bounds
"Sometimes the boys were themselves whipped or even violently bumped on the boundary-stones to make them remember. The object of taking boys along is supposed to ensure that witnesses to the boundaries should survive as long as possible."

Coincidentally, this week I was contacted by a 90 year old man, who was 12, when he delivered newspapers to my (pro wrestler) father in 1943, in Toledo, Ohio.
He shared wonderful stories about dad living in a small camper trailer with two other wrestlers. He delivered the Toledo Blade in the afternoon, and the 3 men were often weightlifting outside, in their swimming trunks (to get that tan), laughing and drinking beer.
An amazing connection! (Unlike Gangdays, he remembered without being beaten.)

About Sunday 15 March 1667/68

Mike Zim  •  Link

nix: “Arida ossa, audite verbum Dei” --
I remember the spiritual, but I never knew it had Latin lyrics.
... [C7] Your [F] toe bone connected to your foot bone
Your [Gm7] foot bone [C7] connected to your [F] ankle bone

Favorite cover, in The Singing Detective, 1986.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_…

About Saturday 8 February 1667/68

Mike Zim  •  Link

Paul Chapin
"I love the image of Sam furtively buying the book in the plain brown wrapper, taking it home well concealed and with the stated intent of burning it. It brought to mind a scene in a Woody Allen movie, where he buys a skin magazine and about half a dozen highbrow magazines to cover it up. Then the newsstand proprietor yells to his assistant in the back of the store, "How much do we charge for Big-Busted Mamas (or whatever the title was)?" "

The movie was Bananas (1971), and the magazine of interest was "Orgasm".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2…

About Tuesday 16 July 1667

Mike Zim  •  Link

JWB "It should be noted Johnson's Dictionary published well before Geo III & the Tory Bute came to power offering fellow party faithful Johnson 300 pounds per annum, which he took & wrote almost nothing worthwhile afterwards."

Beg to differ, my favorite Johnson work came after 1762, when his pension commenced.
"Journey to the Western Islands" (1773), and "Prayers and Meditations" (1785).
ps, "Lives of the Poets" was published in 1777. (I suspect Boris Johnson's 2011 "Johnson's Life Of London" is a hat tip to that book's title.")

About Saturday 27 October 1666

Mike Zim  •  Link

"...they presently voted that the King be desired to put all Catholiques out of employment, and other high things; while the business of money hangs in the hedge."

Patrick Kurp's comments about "hangs in the hedge":
"So writes Samuel Pepys in his diary on this date, Oct. 27, in 1666. What interests me is less the anti-Catholic bigotry that raged in England in the seventeenth century, which is well-known, than that concluding expression, “hangs in the hedge.” The OED gives a straightforward definition: “to be put on one side, to be ‘on the shelf.’” We might say “put on the back burner.” In other words, not to explicitly dismiss something but to defer it, put it off. Hedgerows can be impassably dense ecosystems (they slowed the Allied advance through Normandy) of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and other vegetation. Anything might “hang in the hedge,” tangled in the tight weave of branches, as though on bales of barbed wire."

evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/20…