Friday, August 17, 2012


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From:  Bartlett (via Wordsmith Talk forum)  Subject Reduplicative World Tour
When I retire (someday) I have long planned to take a world tour of places with two names the same! Walla-Walla as you noted in the introduction to this week's theme, and also: Baden Baden, Bora Bora, Pago Pago, Ubu Ubu, Paw Paw, New York, New York, Bella Bella, and Wagga Wagga, just to name a few.
From:  Eleanor Jackson  Subject:  reduplication
A children's book, Double Trouble in Walla Walla by Andrew Clements, is a hilarious read replete with irrepressible and rhythmic reduplication throughout.  I used to read it to my grandchildren amid uncontrollable giggling from all of us. Highly recommended fun for adults and kids!  And on another note, when I was a sorority pledge many years ago, we were required to memorize all the chapters and their locations.  The easiest one of all was Gamma Gamma chapter in Walla Walla (Whitman College).
From:  Chuck Domitrovich  Subject:  reduplications
In addition to Walla Walla, Washington state also has Hamma Hamma and Tumtum.
From:  Gene Oubre  Subject:  Luego Luego
Luego in Spanish means later (hasta luego meaning until later), but when it is reduplicated, it takes on a different meaning of later, meaning more immediately, meaning "right away" or "just after".
From:  David Amdal  Subject:  plurals by reduplication
The Indonesian language uses reduplication to indicate plurals.  So one fish is ikan, two or more fish are ikan ikan.  Usually printed ikan2 in newspapers, etc.

Doctor:  Treatment is not complicated:  eat, rest and take this . . . the scrawled prescription read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.  Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course.
Patient:  Obeying instructions, I spent two days in bed, eating and sleeping and reading Sherlock Holmes.  I confess I overdosed on my prescribed treatment, gulping down one story after another.  paraphrase from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Nicholas Jones talks to Diane Setterfield about her first novel, The Thirteenth Tale, a compelling emotional mystery in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling.  http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/authors/interviews/diane-setterfield-author-of-the-thirteenth-tale-talks-with-juliet-stevenson-and-nicholas-jones

The Decameron is a collection of 100 tales by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio written between 1350 and 1353.  It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic.  Many notable writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer are said to have borrowed from it.  The tale begins with 7 women and 3 men who move to a country villa to escape the Black Death in Florence.  The group stays there for fourteen days and on ten of those days they each tell one tale on a set theme.  Each day a different person is King or Queen and they decide what the theme will be.  One character Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit.  http://listverse.com/2007/12/10/10-days-of-the-decameron/

Like The Decameron or 1001 Nights, Roman Payne’s novel, Rooftop Solioquy,  has a “frame story,” or an outer-story and inner-story: the opera that Alexandre (as the narrator is [usually] called in Rooftop Soliloquy) is writing, is a love story, a combination of The Odyssey and Midsummer Night’s Dream.  http://www.greatnovels.org/

August 13  Over the decades, thousands of art lovers have clandestinely found their way by foot, snowshoe, snowmobile and ski to a field about 50 kilometres north of Toronto to peer at and walk around Shift, a still relatively unknown outdoor installation completed in 1972 by internationally acclaimed sculptor Richard Serra.  Clandestinely, because Shift’s six large concrete forms, each 20 centimetres thick and 1.5 metres high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside, were a private commission in 1970 from Toronto art collector Roger Davidson for land owned by his family.  Serra was only 32 and a relative unknown in the international art world when he finished Shift, one of the first of the many large site-specific works that have become his signature in the past four decades.  Currently hailed as “the world’s greatest living sculptor,” he works mostly in steel and it’s not uncommon for one of his larger pieces to sell for as much as $10-million (U.S.).  Now, as development pressure around Toronto intensifies, including in the Township of King, where Shift is found, a struggle over the fate of this pioneering work of minimalism is under way.   A significant moment in the Shift saga is occurring this week in the township as the Ontario Conservation Review Board (CRB) holds a hearing on the installation possibly being designated a heritage property.  The hearing, which started on Monday, is happening more than 21/2 years after the township’s council voted to designate Shift, situated on agricultural land currently planted with corn, a protected cultural landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act.  Hickory Hill Investments (a subsidiary of Great Gulf Group of Companies, a Toronto-based developer) owns the land on which Shift is found and announced in early 2010 that it would appeal that decision to the CRB, a quasi-judicial agency that reviews the protection of heritage properties throughout Ontartio.  Although parts of the 96 hectares where the Serra sculpture is located are covered by the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, Hickory Hill has housing and other development plans for some of the site.   At the conclusion of this week’s hearing, the CRB has at least 30 days in which to report to King Township that it recommends heritage designation, sides with the developer in recommending no such designation or draws no conclusion with respect to both sides.  At the Monday-morning hearing, Chris Barnett, counsel for Hickory Hill, said that “saving” Shift by using the Ontario Heritage Act is unnecessary because “it is not at risk” by the developer. His client “recognizes it as a significant piece of art,” he said, and has no intention of demolishing it. Moreover, the township can ensure its conservation with heritage easements (currently crops are sown within 1.5 metres of the concrete forms) and binding title agreements for future owners without securing heritage status. Such a designation now would be akin to “reaching within a private piece of property … to conserve a private piece of art” – an unprecedented action under the Heritage Act, he suggested.  In a 2009 draft agreement subsequently voted down by King councillors, Hickory Hill said it wouldn’t “harm, alter or destroy” Shift in its development of the site.  However, the draft said the developer would have no responsibility for the maintenance or repair of the installation, including “damage by third parties, weather or the elements.” Moreover, the developer would not allow, contrary to the wishes of Serra aficionados and some King residents, regular public access to the sculpture.  (In 2007, Hickory Hill proposed any such access should be limited to one day a year.)  Public access and visibility may prove moot at the hearing. Matiland noted that provincial legislation does not define a cultural landscape by the nature of its access, visibility or whether its privately owned or public or a mix thereof.  James Adams  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/fight-waged-over-richard-serra-sculpture-in-field-north-of-toronto/article4479378/

Four modern naval and Coast Guard vessels, plus a reconstruction of one of the oldest, will be the focal points of the first Navy Week in Toledo's history next week.  But while the ships' parade up the Maumee River will get Navy Week into full swing on Aug. 23, sailors are scheduled to begin event-related community appearances and presentations Aug. 20, and a series of Navy Band and Marine Corps Band concerts are set to start Aug. 21 with lunchtime performances at two Toledo sites.  The visit by the guided-missile frigate USS De Wert, coastal patrol boat USS Hurricane, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mobile Bay, frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec, and U.S. Brig Niagara are part of a six-city Navy Week tour of the Great Lakes timed to commemorate the War of 1812, during which the Battle of Lake Erie played a pivotal role in determining the future of both the United States' westward expansion and Canada's future independence.  Read more and link to scheduled events at:  http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/08/16/Navy-vessels-converge-on-Glass-City-for-week-of-festivities.html   

Aug. 15  If you build it, they will come.  But if you make it free, they may well come in droves. 
Attendance at the Detroit Institute of Arts more than tripled last week compared with the same five-day period in 2011.  Starting Aug. 8, the DIA opened its doors for free to residents of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties in exchange for voters' approval a day earlier of a property tax in all three counties to support the museum.  Nearly 8,000 visitors poured into the museum through Sunday, about 5,000 of whom were admitted free as residents of the tri-county area.  About 2,000 people paid general admission fees, and 900 others were admitted free as members.  http://www.freep.com/article/20120815/ENT05/308150122/Attendance-more-than-triples-at-DIA-after-millage  See also:    http://www.freep.com/article/20120807/ENT05/120807090/dia-millage-supporters-last-minute-votes

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