Swany’s Whey

At this, soothing joys in their turn thrill father Aeneas’ anxious heart. He bids all the masts be raised with speed and the yards spread with sails. Together all set the sheets and all at once, now to the left and now to the right, they let out the canvas; together they turn to and [...]

Alma Gluck sings Stephen Collins Foster’s Old folks at home while her husband Efrem Zimbalist plays Dvořák’s Humoresque as an obbligato. Recorded in New York in 1914. From the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox.

Tags: beer, hiawatha

Science: “Glaciers have a reputation as geological buzz saws. They grind down mountains and carve deep valleys. But a new study reveals that glaciers can sometimes protect mountains as well. Over the past 5 million years, recurring glaciers near what is today Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America, have wrapped themselves around [...]

Tags: glaciers, mountains

A sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord.

Tags: bay, bight, fjord, sea

It’s raining; it’s pouring. The old man is snoring. He went to bed and bumped his head, And he couldn’t get up in the morning. But how in the world can the old folks tell, it ain’t gonna rain no more?

Tags: bed, rain, snoring

Montaigne, Essays, 40: “Pyrrho the philosopher being one day in a boat in a very great tempest, shewed to those he saw the most affrighted about him, and encouraged them, by the example of a hog that was there, nothing at all concerned at the storm.” Technorati Tags: storm, hog

Tags: storm

Language Log: “The OED gives the following etymology for chance: [ME. chea(u)nce, a. OF. cheance (= Pr. cazensa, It. cadenza):–late L. cadentia falling, f. cadent- falling, pr. pple. of cad-ĕre to fall: cf. CADENCE.]“

Tags: chance