Phrontistery

I love learning new words and having the chance to showoff my new vocabulary. So I was wonderfully surprised when I stumbled on the Phrontistery website. It showcases many words and uses and serves as a remarkable resource. I was particularly impressed with its collection of words related to manias and obsessions. Click on the link above.

I am a verbomanic. What are you?

Rest in Peace, Pascual Perez

I was saddened to learn of the death of Pascual Perez, the erratic, but colorful pitcher who experienced success and infamy in the 1980s and early 1990s. This lanky right-hander from the Dominican Republic had a unique personality that I was able to witness firsthand when I went to see the Yankees play the Indians in Cleveland in 1989. He was pitching for the Yankees then and although I can't remember the score of that game, there were two moments that I will never forget: with a runner on first base, Pascual, before going into his motion, peered through his legs and pretended to throw to first base--a startled Don Mattingly just raised his arms up in exasperation; the second moment later in the game was when he threw a 30 mile-per-hour changeup to home plate. The batter didn't swing, but it was still funny.

Pascual was never a great pitcher, but he had a great personality that endeared him to many fans, me included. In the Fydrichian tradition of engrossing fans and opponents with bizarre on-field behavior, Pascual makes it easy for me to root for him and baseball. I am not sure if any other sport has produced so many wonderful characters.

Rest in Peace, Pascual. You will be missed.

Two Lunar Writers

Thomas Wolfe

What do Thomas Wolfe (1930-1938) and Federico Garcia Lorca have in common? How about the moon? Both have used the moon and the imagery, sentiments and landscapes it evokes to supplement their some of their works. For me, we see Garcia Lorca make full use of this in his obra maestra (masterpiece) "Bodas de Sangre." He was described as a lunar poet by his biographer Ian Gibson and you would be hard pressed to dispute this claim. Lorca's allegorical style and personification in "Bodas de Sangre" give this work an energy and drive unlike any others.

I recently began to read the works of Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel is an excellent book which showcases Wolfe's superb lyrical skills. His descriptions of landscapes and people are stellar. But it is in the book I am currently reading, Of Time and the River, where he describes in magnificent and resplendent detail landscapes and people under the moon. These days people do not read books that are longer than 300 pages in length, so they are highly unlikely to attempt to read some of Wolfe's books (between 600 and 900 pages. How sad. Check out this segment from Of Time and the River:

"The moon blazed down upon the wilderness, it fell on sleeping woods, it dripped through moving leaves, it swarmed in weaving patterns in the earth, and it filled the cat's still eye with blazing yellow. The moon slept over mountains and lay like silence in the desert, and it carved the shadows of great rocks like time."