Status Updates From The African Svelte: Ingenio...

"You can find pillows of communities and strength in many obituaries generated by funeral homes. You begin to think that the recumbence of their clientele has had a linguistic effect on the funeral directors' vocabulary." (205)

"86. spreading like wildflowers
...
Wildflowers and wildfires both spread, of course —the one benignly, even prettily, and slowly, for the most part,* the other quickly and threateningly.

* 'for the most part' because wildflowers, like wildfires, sometimes have their own destructive and invasive behavior. My uncle, Frederick Engels Menaker [sic]" (189)

"'Gamut' started in medieval times as the name of the lowest note, G, in the music scale, and later came to designate the entire scale — thus the figurative use of 'run the gamut.'" (166) I never thought that this is where my reading a music history textbook as bedtime reading would pay off, but no, not quite. Ut re mi is where the ut comes from (added to gamma)