I've been away for a while
Mood:  a-ok

I've been away from blogpartyweekend for a while. With the new job, I am blogging away, but it is internal only, so I've not done a lot of blogging. This blog still gets quite a lot of traffic though. A week ago I got my second inquiry about the Marycrest community in West Nyack NY from someone who grew up there. It's an intriguing story, and one which I hope to be able to set aside a weekend or two to create a post on the blog and/or an album or two.

 One thing that I've uncovered from reading and conversation is an interesting connection between Marycrest and Radburn (my other album where I get a lot of posts). It is that the founders of both lived or spent time in the Bronx NY. Why is this important? Both were somewhat utopian communities, and both had the example of things like the Amagamated Houses or the Scholem Aleichim Houses in the Bronx - communes, but built in the the city. The Aleichim houses were centers of Yiddish culture, built around a theatre, communal store, etc. I've come across passages in my reading about communal stores and lending societies in many of the parishes in the Bronx at that time as well. While Marycrest was later - 1950s - I am curious of the extent of these cooperatives in the Bronx, and what impact them may have had on Marycrest or other experimental communes like the Friendship Houses or Maryfarm.

 

Uppdate from here
Topic: Oddments
Hello All,

It's been a while since I updated. I am thinking to use the new tool to update both my blogs (I have a new series which I am launching using Drupal - more of a content management system than a blog per-se - also has great taxonomy features.) The great thing is I can now cross-post using w.bloggar or the new Tripod client blogger tool. Basically if the blog supports xml-rpc, you can post to many from the desktop. Nice convenience.

Here's a link to my
Florida Album.

I am working on a new series of pre vs post spring hedge pix.

Testing out Qumana tool
Topic: Oddments

So I am testing out the Qumana remote posting tool . Pretty nice, good quality stuff. I use bloggar for my drupal site. This is also a nice tool. I like the ability to post to the blog, extract old entries. Nice work ! Congrats to Jamie and the crew at Tripod/Angelfire. ...

Tags: blog, blog tools, Tripod

Powered by Qumana

20 C+M+B 06
Es muss alles anders werden. So long!

Mood:  chatty
Topic: cool web apps
Spell with Flickr

Hogmanay! Novum Annum
According to my Scottish mother-in-law, on Hogmanay (New Year's Eve as it is called in Scotland), everything needs to be cleaned up - ashes from the chimney, bills paid, house straightened - so by extension, my blog should be cleaned up and ready.
So, here it is, my last entry for this blog in 2005.

Further, I'll be transitioning this blog to a new place, in early next year. So for the next few weeks, Blogpartyweekend will be in transition until I re-alias it to a new place in 2006. I will be moving to my own server, using Drupal, an open-source content management system with a lot of plugins. This will also let me expand my content. I am also looking at a new domain name or perhaps using a subdomain with a new domain name.


So here's the last entry: Eric Partridge, in his excellent book, A Charm of Words, speculated about the origin of the term hogmanay. It doesn't have anything to do with hogs, rather seems to have something in common with the medieval French "aguillaneuf" meaning "gift on the new year (an-neuf)" Partridge conjectures that it comes from ultimately from a Latin "hoc donum anni" (this gift of the year).

So a very happy new year! Happy Hogmanay!

End o' Year Treats
Mood:  happy
Topic: Oddments
Having some time before the end of the year, I've come across a great book by Eric Partridge (of whom more on New Year's Eve) called "A Comic Alphabet".
I've got some examples of these, which apparently were quite popular earlier in the 1900s, where each phrase is a pun: (say each fast with a British accent):

A for Dupois (advoirdupois)
B for Lamb (beef or lamb)
C for Yourself (see for yourself)
D for Dumb (deaf or dumb)
E for Cows (heifer cows)
F for Green (evergreen)
G for racing (Gee = British slang - horse)
H for adventure (Itch for adventure)
I for Novello (Ivor Novello- British Actor)
J for Oranges (Jaffa oranges)
K for Tea Room (Cafe or tea room)

Now some additional ones to puzzle out:
T for mouth
U for mism
V for la France
W for a bob
X for breakfast
Y for goodness sake
Z for breeze

Answers behind the cut...

Merry (x)mas (Part 3 of 3)
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Words
Following up from my earlier post on the suffix -mas used for words like _________mas (chav-mas, dog-mas, kiss-mas and so forth): The actual derivation of x-mas is a bit different and not like (x) in algebra - a replaceable variable. The "x" in xmas comes from the Greek letter "chi" pronounced "khi", the first letter of "christos" (Christ). So "Xmas" or "Xtmas" is found as an abbreviation of Christmas. The "mas" part comes ultimately from the phrase "Ite Missa Est" (Go, it is the dismissal", which are the last parts of the service of the Mass. So "xmas" is short for "Christ's Mass". There were also many other "mas" holidays in the medieval English calendar, today being one, "Childermas" (from Childer (plural of "child")+ mass), also known as the feast of the Holy Innocents, from the New Testament story. Here's a glossary of other -mas holidays, usually "quarter days" when laborers and tradesman were hired: Ladymas (1/1) Candlemas (2/1) Lammas (8/1) - "Loaf-mas" Michaelmas (9/29) Hallowmas (11/1) Martinmas (11/11)

Janus-faced
Topic: Ends

The Roman god Janus, who was the god of doorways (in Latin janua = doorway) as well as the god of the new year, was often depicted with two faces: one which looked back at the past year, the other toward the coming one. The month January is named after him.

So at this point, a good time to look back over the past year as well as to look forward to the future. Blogpartyweekend has grown and evolved over the past year. Where it started as a scrapbook of weekends, cam phone photos, and how to on blogging (the first entry was on "farragos" and "stews"), it's evolved to be more focused on things I care about: words, linguistics, and interesting web applications. Now at this point, I think it will evolve still more in 2006, and migrate closer to what I want the blog to do. Some interesting stats: the Radburn Album, which shows a suburban town in NJ, is easily the most popular, as is my Boston Brickwork Album. I get almost 200,000 pageviews in a given month.
So all in all a great success for me, and something I will develop further in the new year. Thanks for reading (whoever you are!)

Greetings of the Season!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in
this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it,
yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and
glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see
we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its
gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly,
or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you
will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of
love, by wisdom, with power.

-- From a letter written on Christmas Eve 1513 by
Fra Giovanni Giocondo