gerundickal or gerundical

I have long enjoyed how some words like picnic or panic get a "k" when you get to the gerund or present participle. That is, Édouard Manet and his friends were picnicking on the grass. You wouldn't want it to be picnicing because that would rhyme with the icing on a cake, not picnicking by a lake.

And then I came across havocked which I really liked. It's the past tense of havoc as in wreaking havoc or "The parade really havocked my trip through town but it was fun to watch."

This morning, I was reading the review by Robert Rubin of Shutdown: how Covid shook the world's economy, by Adam Tooze (Viking), in yesterday's New York times book review. Rubin says "The best we can hope for, [Tooze] argues, is what we in the United States got: disjointed 'subnational' action, crisis management by 'ad-hockery.' (Europe, Tooze writes, is even less capable.)." One does feel like they were havocked by the ad hoc over the past year and a half. But you can take pleasure in twisting words. Without the k, I guess ad-hockery would rhyme with grocery and not with mockery.

materials science?

One of the oft-used subject headings in the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals is "Building materials." Very handy in an architectural index but we also index lots of articles on design, including those on the materials used. Fabrics, plastics, paper, glass, substances of various sorts. The collective term in the literature is often just "Materials" so I suggested to editor Ted that we might want to add the subject heading "Materials."

First stop: AAT. There, I found "materials (matter)" which is in the Materials hierarchy of the Materials facet. My first reaction was that the qualifier "(matter)" was unnecessary but it does make it clear that we're not talking about cloth. AAT often uses qualifiers that you don't necessarily need in context.

A couple days later. I'm up at the library for Team Trivia where we three older librarians (60, 70, and 80) actually finished with the highest score. We always decline the prize (tonight, a coupon for a pizza from a local pizza parlor). I checked the McNaughton leisure reading shelves before I left the library and noticed Stuff matters: exploring the marvelous materials that shape our man-made world by Mark Miodownik (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Obviously, I had to check to see what subject heading(s) the book had been given. The only subject heading in the CIP on the title page verso is "Materials science--Popular works." Nope. Won't do. I wonder why they didn't just use "Materials" which is in LCSH. The scope note there is somewhat restrictive: "Here are entered comprehensive works on the basic engineering and industrial materials used in the construction of devices, apparatus, structures, equipment, etc."

For your information, "Materials science" in LCSH is related to the broader term "Physical sciences." In AAT, "materials science" is in the Disciplines hierarchy of the Activities facet. That is, you can get a college degree in materials science. Materials are what you make something out of. cf http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/

rhymes and homonyms

One of the last credits for Woody Allen's film "Zelig" is to Adele Lerner, now retired from the archives at the Cornell Medical School. Adele and I saw each other twice a year during the 1980s when we'd each represent our respective subject library associations at the Council of National Library and Information Associations meetings. Since the excitement of seeing Adele's name in the "Zelig" credits, all the endless credits, I've watched them for all movies. It's a little upsetting when the film locations are not given or even hinted at.

I've just finished watching "Being Julia," the 2004 film directed by István Szabó, written by Ronald Harwood and Somerset Maugham, and starring Annette Bening. (More credits can be seen on imdb.com by clicking on the link under the film name above.)

My favorite credit for "Being Julia" is:
Loop Group - Sync or Swim
Who knows (who cares) what a Loop Group is? And of course it never hurts to have Jeremy Irons and Miriam Margolyes in the cast.

relics and desire

February disappeared. I meant to write up some of my thoughts from the College Art Association annual conference in New York City. It hasn't happened. Daniel and Gary very kindly let me stay several extra days so I could do a bunch of gallery hopping and see friends and whatnot.

One of the shows I saw was "Objects of Devotion and Desire" at the Leubsdorf Art Gallery at Hunter College. It's on until April 30th and the catalog is available in PDF from the exhibition website. The show was put together by medievalist Cynthia Hahn and the students in a contemporary art class. It included a few reliquaries from the Metropolitan as well as recent works of art that played off the theme.

I read Hahn's catalog essay on the bus ride back upstate. She traces the history of relics and uses the neologism re-licing "in order to put the focus on a verb or action rather than a noun or object" (p. 9). My first thought was that this was a lost opportunity to turn a "c" word into a "ck" word when you use the "ing" ending of the present participle, e.g., picnicking, frolicking. Then, it occurred to me that "re-licing" would be "relicking." This had potential for seeming naughty ... but perhaps is wonderfully appropriate for relics.

The picture is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the work is: Arm reliquary. 13th cent. (with 15th cent. additions). French. Silver, silver-gilt, glass and rock crystal cabochons over wood core. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Accession number 17.190.353. For more information, click on the name of the work.