Clement weather! (Just in time for the long weekend)

There is a terrific word used today by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post: clement.  We hear about inclement weather all the time, but nice weather can indeed be termed clement (I looked it up).

“The approximately 150-foot-tall seasonal inflatable structure would be inflated during clement months for special events . . . “

The article is about a temporary dome that might be added to the Hirshhorn Museum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/hirshhorn-would-go-back-to-square-one-if-smithsonian-bursts-the-bubble/2013/05/23/a22427b0-c3dc-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z1

On a related note, please do not add any nocuous comments to this post.

I’m still waiting for a description of someone who grew up with moderate challenges in a somewhat well-off town as having had a medium-scrabble upbringing.

Puzzle: What do these words have in common: mate, peck . . .

. . . miss, pot, and blunder ?

This puzzle is the challenge used by Will Shortz this week on the NPR Weekend Edition Puzzle. Here it is, narrated — it’s the last bit of the segment:

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/16/191840752/youd-better-sit-tight-for-this-one

I suggested it to the show a few weeks ago — of course Shortz knew the answer already, but decided to use it.

I’ve been collecting these for years.  I have a few more, also.

(N.B. the palm tree photo has nothing to do with it.  I just like palm trees.)

Once again overtaken by Walter the Farting Dog

Another chapter in my glorious march to writing success: If an Amazon customer searches books for “peace story for children,” my book about Queen Isabel of Portugal comes up (this morning anyway) at #35, three spaces behind . . . Walter the Farting Dog, by William Kotzwinkle.

Walter has long been a nemesis of mine — well, at least since December, when A Map came out. For some time his book came up in such a “peace story” search well ahead of mine; then Isabel dashed in front for awhile; now she has fallen behind again.

A Map and a Mule is a peace story because Isabel nipped at least one war and one battle in their buds, through diplomacy (which I don’t bore the kids with, don’t worry) and also by riding a mule onto a battlefield. And Walter the dog is an equally distinguished peacemaker, apparently.

You might ask: Does anyone really search “peace story for children”?  Yes, they do, judging by traffic to my other blog, my peace blog. Just ask Walter.

Special offer for Chinese military hackers

Hey comrades, thanks for hitting my blog — whether you’ve just pulled it up normally or are watching along via remote as I type this. (It’s probably the latter . . . I shouldn’t have opened that email from Jurgen Klinsmann with the “Eric I need your help with our formation vs. Honduras” subject line.)

Having a good morning so far? How was the air on the way to work today — was the meter up in the “Do Not Breathe” category, or higher again?

I know you’re anxious to read my books, and I’m sure you can get them online for free by using “the Party discount” (wink) somehow, but let me point you to the paperback versions, which are beautiful and come with that new-book smell. The cover of Pearl Lagoon is a genuine map of Nicaragua — a nation vitally important to the security of the U.S., which is why we’ve had to help shoot so many people there over the years — which is stored at the Library of Congress, to give you an idea of its importance. Plus, inside you’ll find references to Chinese influence in Bluefields dating back to the beginning of the last century. Well, reference singular, anyway.

(Bonus intelligence: When I lived there I went to a dinner party once, to which guests were to bring a dish and talk about it; and one of these Chinese-Nicaraguan gentlemen brought a dessert and said it was “sweet, like Nicaragua.” The other guests loved it. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, guys, I’m telling you.)

Also in Pearl Lagoon you will find vital information about reforms that have been made to the foreign service of the U.S. as recently as ninety or so years ago (the Rogers Act). You cannot buy information this good, my friends. Actually, you can — contact me by sending a text to my microwave time display, or whatever, and I’ll give you a 6.5% discount, or 7.8% for orders of 100,000 or more.

Sports metaphors, I wish I could quit you

I know some people strongly dislike sports metaphors used in business writing, and anywhere else. Too male-centric; often confusing for people not raised here; and so on.

 But I’ve noticed it’s difficult to avoid some metaphors because I often can’t think of a non-sports equivalent that works as well; example, moving the goalposts. If one party in a negotiation suddenly comes up with a different starting point, what is a better way to say that? “Party A has revised their original position”? “Party A has been given an inch, and now wants to take a mile”? (That gets the idea across, but it’s much wordier.)

 Or knock it out of the park.  What is better than “This is something she should knock out of the park”:

 ”This is something she should really excel with?”

“This is something right up her alley?”  (Yawn)

Maybe move the goalposts is not such a bad expression, since it’s not something that ever actually happens in a game . . . of course, non-sports fans may assume it does, and that it’s just one more thing unfamiliar to them . . . 

 

Soccer tournament of my search nations

Sometimes it strikes me that the nations of the searches that bring readers to my blog, as reported to me by WordPress, would make up a pretty good international soccer tournament.

Take this list from Thursday.  Eight countries, so two divisions of four. Each team will play the other three; top two in each then play each other — first finisher of each against second of the other division — to get to the final.

So with these eight nations, we would split Spain and the UK so they’re not in the same division, since, of these eight, they’re the two highest-ranked (although we’re assuming we’re doing it Olympic-style and having the UK play as the UK and not as England) (and it’s England, of course, and not the UK, which is ranked 6th in the world by FIFA right now).  Singapore and India would also be in different divisions, as the two weakest teams.  So we could have:

Group A: Spain, USA, Jamaica, Singapore

Group B: UK, Japan, Canada, India

You’d have to assume it would Spain/USA and 1 and 2 in their group, although you never know when the USA could slip up and allow Jamaica through.

Likewise in Group B, UK and Japan should finish 1-2, but Canada could have a good showing and get through.

Semifinal 1 would likely be Spain-Japan; 2, UK-USA; with a final of Spain-UK. The tournament could be played in South Africa, since they have the stadia still in place, and no team would have a home advantage — no team would even be from that continent (hey, don’t blame me – there’s nothing in this blog that should be keeping away folks from Africa).

 

 

The Haka! Beaches! Sunsets! My book cover!

The cover for my book A Map and a Mule was done by Miki de Goodaboom, an extremely prolific [redundant?] painter who is from France and now lives in Spain.  She has an English-language blog, with frequent updates; the current post is about a painting of New Zealand rugby players performing the haka. Other recent posts features landscapes, and also the story behind my book cover.

Her blog is worth a visit:

http://www.mikidegoodaboom.com/diary/

The post about my book cover explains how she removed some antennas from the original version of the painting, at my request; she had painted that town of Serpa, Portugal, just a couple years ago, whereas my book needed to show it as it would have looked in 1297.  That’s right — the Thirteenth-Century Portuguese were wireless before wireless was cool.

I find it striking that Serpa in 1297 might otherwise might have looked just as it does today.