Judi > Recent Status Updates

MAY 31

Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.
Jan Smuts, Boer general, at the Boer War peace conference, 1902.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Walt Whitman
(May 31st 1819 — March 26th 1892)

In one anonymous self-review, Whitman described 'the poet' as one of "pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headaches and dyspepsia, full-blooded, six feet high, a good feeder, never once using medicine, drinking water only — a swimmer in the river or by the ...

MAY 30

1640 Death of Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most influential figures in Baroque art in northern Europe.

Ode on Solitude

Alexander Pope
(May 21st 1688 — May 30th 1744)

... He never grew beyond 1.37m and was subject to violent headaches, which perhaps explains his reputation for irritability and hypersensitivity.

May 31

1889 ... and the success of his absorbing account of the disaster—the deadliest in American history to that point—and the scandalous negligence of the wealthy Pittsburgh resort owners that caused it gave him the courage to set out as a full-time writer of history. Not wanting to become "Bad News McCullough," though, he declined immediate offers to write about the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

...

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the seam,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
(May 27th 1819 — October 7th 1910)

MAY 29

The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights", with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.

Victoria, Queen of England, in a letter, 1870.

brooch BROHCH.

Properly, brooch should rhyme with coach. The pronunciation BROOCH, which rhymes with smooch, is usually listed but not preferred. Both pronunciations exist because, historically, brooch, an ornamental clasp, is the same word as broach (now usually used as a verb to mean to utter, introduce, or open for the first time), and most dictionaries still give the alternative spelling broach for brooch.

Liability of principal for acts of agents. Continental-European law classifies the undertaking of transactions in the place of another s "agency' only when they are legal. It excludes other acts, including unlawful acts, so that when dealing with the law of agency, the rules concerning the liability of a master for the torts of his servant do not come into consideration.

Disclosed and undisclosed agency. Continental European laws restrict the application of agency rules to cases where the agent acts openly in another's name. Thus , French jurists infer from article 1984 of their Code Civil, according to which agency is the act of the agent pour de mandate et en son nom ("for and on behalf of the principal"), the negative conclusion that in case an agent does not disclose that...

Brobdingnagian BROB-ding-NAG-ee-in.

Be sure to pronounce the second syllable like the word ding. It is often mispronounced DIG, probably because the word is often misspelled Brobdingnagian.
The word refers to the gigantic inhabitants of the imaginary land of Brobdingnagian in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, or to anyone or anything like them. It should be capitalized.

MAY 28

1837 Death of Alfred Adler, Austrian psychiatrist whose theories introduced the concept of the inferiority complex.

The Donkey

G. K. Cheterton
(May 29th 1874 — Jaune 14th 1936)

...Rudyard Kipling, having been sent the book by a friend, responded with the words: "I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the work — and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be curious to see how he'll develop in a few years."

May 30

1961 ... Africa, the fukú thrived through the generations as a contagion of calamity and injustice, and when JFK okayed the assassination of the murderously ferocious Trujillo, the Curse of the New World became the Curse of the Kennedys, or so Junot Diaz suggests in the dread-soaked overture to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Was, a novel he offers as a sort of counter spell to his island's legacy of doom.

Julian Grensfell, who wrote the poem 'Into Battle', was killed on the Western front at Ypres, May 26th 1915.

MAY 27

Virtuoso's final bow

1849 The illustrious Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini went to his Maker today — though opinion is divided on jusgh which maker that might be. Many are convinced e that the Devil himself played Paganini's violin for him. His skill was sheer wizard — he could give stunning performances on only one string — and his music and dark good looks mesmerized audiences, not least people's ...

The Glass

Edwin Morgan
(April 27th 1920 — )

... He is also a skilled translator from an impressively wide range of languages. Morgan has translated a number of plays into Scots, including his prize-winning version of Racine's Phèdre, and has written his own drama, a trilogy about the life of Christ.

May 29

1895 ... he pleaded ill health and requested a better one; the chief librarian replied, "If he was so weak that he was unable to endure five hours of work every other day, he was wrong to apply." Proust made just a few appearances in the library before being granted a series of sick leaves that lasted until 1900, after which no more pretence was made that he would have any career other that a literary one.

MAY 26

1791 The French Assembly forces Louis XVI to hand over the crown and state assets.

Ralph Waldo Emerson born in Boston, May 25th 1803 of ministerial stock. He assigned his own Unitarian ministry in 1833.

The variety of forms of Anglo-American agency. Various kinds of agency relationships are evident in Anglo-American commercial life. The factor and the poker are the most common mercantile agents dealing in transactions involving personal property. The factor is entrusted with possession of the chattels to be sold, or the documents of title thereto, and is empowered to conclude the sale at the best price obtainable.

boudoir BOO-dwahr, not BUU-dwahr.

The first syllable (you-) rhymes with too. Most dictionaries prefer the stress on the first syllable, but stressing the second (boo-DWAHR) is also acceptable.

May 28

1948 ...Gilbert sailed on the Empire Windrush for England, funded by the prudent savings Hortense had offered along with her hand. Six months later, in Andrea Levy's Small Island, Hortense too left their island of Jamaica to join him on the larger one of Great Britain in an immigrants' alliance in which their disappointment at what why find in their idealized England is leavened by their ability to adapt.

Ode on Melancholy

...

Shew dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
biding adieu; and aching Pleaure night,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
...

John Keats
(October 31st 1795 — February 23rd 1821)