Spell Mrs.

That’s the sort of word that would have really stumped me in a spelling bee. I’ve looked at it from time to time and been intrigued by it.  How does one spell out Mrs?  Where did it come from?  What is it an abbreviation for?  I remember looking it up once and I believe the information said that it was short for a french word.  However, those fantastic folks at Interesting Thing of the Day beg to differ.  They cite that

The basic distinction between “Miss” and “Mrs.” harks back to earlier times when a woman’s marital status was an important indicator of her position—and when, more to the point, a woman was considered a subservient entity with respect to her husband. Interestingly, though, both “Miss” and “Mrs.” were originally shortened forms of the word “mistress.” The modern sense of “mistress” implies an illicit relationship, but before about 1600, a mistress was simply a female head of a household—married or unmarried. As a result, the abbreviation “Mrs.” would originally have been pronounced “mistress,” and would not have been used exclusively to refer to someone’s wife. The pronunciation “misses” was simply a contracted form of “mistress.”client =

Meanwhile, when “miss” was first used as an abbreviation for “mistress” in the mid-1600s, it referred to a concubine or someone in a role more like what we would today consider a mistress. In other words, a few centuries ago, the meanings of “Miss” and “Mrs.” were, at least in some cases, roughly the opposite of what they are today! Only in the 19th century did “Mrs.” (with the pronunciation “misses” firmly established) come to refer exclusively to a married woman.

There is also, of course, the title “Ma’am,” which was short for “madam.” Although few people refer to a woman as either “ma’am” or “madam” these days, the situation is parallel to “Mrs./mistress” in that the shortened form is considered respectful whereas the longer form sometimes denotes a woman of questionable character.

So think of that.  The words we think of as respectful or questionable now were, at one time, quite the other way around.  And this is precisely why time travel would be much more difficult than portrayed on television.  Thank you.

Words! Brought to you by Misunderstandings.

Etymology always seems like such a scholarly pursuit.  You can almost imagine a bunch of scholars sitting down around a table and deciding what the language will sound like, what the words will be.  But language is very organic and grows and changes every time a people hear a new word in another language or decide to make one up to describe something.  So it’s no surprise that many words, especially in a language like English, would be from misheard words in other language or misnomers or Anglicization of other words.  Just think about all the names American officers fudged and Alglicized when immigrants where being interviewed as they came into New York.  It’s still very interesting to learn about.  The good folks at Interesting Thing of the Day wrote this article on the etymology of a most important English word: woodchuck.  Read it and learn a thing or two, like how to turn a misheard word into your own invention.

December 22, 2004

Folk Etymology

Lazing your way to a bigger vocabulary

I need to say a few words about woodchucks. (First let me pause while you say the rhyme to yourself. Go on, you know you want to. Get it out of your system. Good.) I never understood what the word “chuck” was supposed to mean in the rhyme. Chuck isn’t often used as a verb; when it is, its most common meaning is “to throw” (as in, “Chuck that AOL CD in the trash”). This is naturally not the type of thing we expect a woodchuck to be capable of (as indicated by the counterfactual nature of the question in the rhyme). So the real question is why anyone would have given this animal such a nonsensical name in the first place.

(As an aside, woodchuck isn’t the only nonsensical name this animal has. It’s also called a groundhog. Oddly enough, “groundhog” is a fairly literal translation of the Dutch word aardvark, even though aardvarks don’t look anything like hogs. Woodchucks (Marmota monax) are rodents, or more precisely marmots, and are not even distantly related to either aardvarks or hogs. The most salient similarity among the three species is a propensity for burrowing.)

Gimme a W
The name woodchuck is derived from a word in one of the Algonquian languages spoken by Native Americans—either the Cree word otchek or the related Ojibwa word otchig. The English-speaking settlers in North America found these words hard to pronounce, so they substituted syllables that sounded more familiar and yet approximated the original sound; hence “woodchuck.” The process of consciously or unconsciously changing the shape of a word to reflect the existing morphemes (minimal units of meaning) in a language is known as folk etymology. This process frequently occurs when one language “borrows” a word from another and the speakers of the borrowing language mishear, or misunderstand the origin of, the original word.
English has many examples of folk etymology. Cockroach comes from the Spanish word cucaracha. As with woodchuck, the Spanish word was transformed into English by substituting similar-sounding morphemes: cock (as in rooster) and roach (which at that time was simply the name of a type of fish). There wasn’t anything about a cockroach that suggested “rooster” or “fish,” of course; it’s simply a matter of the sounds fitting. The same thing happened with the word polecat (from French poule chat, a cat that feeds on poultry) and ten-gallon hat (from Spanish galón, a braid). English speakers also mistook a napron for an apron, and even an ewt for a newt.

Begging to Differ
Closely related to folk etymology (or even, according to some people, a subset of the phenomenon) is a process called back-formation. Back-formation occurs when speakers remove a portion of a word, incorrectly assuming it’s a suffix, to form a new word. For example, the word pea was pease in Middle English, but that sounded like a plural, so the “s” sound at the end was dropped to make a false singular. Similarly, the word emote is mistakenly assumed to be the root of emotion, which is logical enough since -tion is a common suffix in English. But in this case, the word dropped whole from French (émotion) into English, so that derivation is erroneous. Other words in English that have been mistakenly created by back-formation include liaise, enthuse, laze, and evanesce. Some back-formed words, however, after enough time in circulation, become generally accepted: donate, sculpt, and even beg (from beggar) fall into this category.

A postscript about the woodchuck: The Algonquian words from which “woodchuck” was derived actually refer to the fisher (or wejack), a carnivorous mammal (Martes pennanti) that bears only a superficial resemblance to the woodchuck. So woodchuck turns out to be not only folk etymology, but a misnomer at that. —Joe Kissell

From Shroud Eaters to Dracula, a history

I always find the origin of a story to be quite an interesting thing.  The origin of a belief, still more so.  And what with vampires being such a hot commodity of late, it’s time to learn where it all came from; or, at least, where part of it came from.  Archeologists in Italy have unearthed the origins of those believed to be vampires in group plague graves, found with bricks in their mouths.  Writers, start your engines.  There’s another story in this somewhere.  I know it.  Perhaps I’ll write the story myself, if I can ever make it to the end.  Enjoy this article from the AP and this associated slide show.

Italy dig unearths female ‘vampire’ in Venice

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer Ariel David, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 13, 7:59 pm ET

ROME – An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws — evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire. The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.

The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.

“Vampires don’t exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did,” said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. “For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire.”

Medieval texts show the belief in vampires was fueled by the disturbing appearance of decomposing bodies, Borrini told The Associated Press by telephone.

During epidemics, mass graves were often reopened to bury fresh corpses and diggers would chance upon older bodies that were bloated, with blood seeping out of their mouth and with an inexplicable hole in the shroud used to cover their face.

“These characteristics are all tied to the decomposition of bodies,” Borrini said. “But they saw a fat, dead person, full of blood and with a hole in the shroud, so they would say: ‘This guy is alive, he’s drinking blood and eating his shroud.’”

Modern forensic science shows the bloating is caused by a buildup of gases, while fluid seeping from the mouth is pushed up by decomposing organs, Borrini said. The shroud would have been consumed by bacteria found in the mouth area, he said.

At the time however, what passed for scientific texts taught that “shroud-eaters” were vampires who fed on the cloth and cast a spell that would spread the plague in order to increase their ranks.

To kill the undead creatures, the stake-in-the-heart method popularized by later literature was not enough: A stone or brick had to be forced into the vampire’s mouth so that it would starve to death, Borrini said.

That’s what is believed to have happened to the woman found on the Lazzaretto island, which was used as a quarantine zone by Venice. Aged around 60, she died of the plague during the epidemic that also claimed the life of the painter Titian.

Much later, someone jammed the brick into her mouth when the grave was reopened. Borrini said that marks and breaks left by blunt instruments on several among more than 100 skeletons found by the archaeologists show that the grave was reused in a later epidemic.

Such a reconstruction of events is plausible, as is the link to the superstitions about “shroud-eaters,” said Piero Mannucci, the vice president of the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology.

“Maybe a priest or a gravedigger put the brick in her mouth, which is what was normally done in such cases,” Mannucci said.

The anthropologist, who did not take part in Borrini’s research, said that at a time when bacteria were unknown, such superstitions were a way for the terrified population to explain the waves of plague epidemics that killed millions during the Middle Ages. Jews were also often accused of spreading the disease.

Borrini said the discovery shows that vampires in popular culture were originally quite different from the elegant, aristocratic blood-drinker depicted in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” and in countless Hollywood revisitations.

“The real vampire of tradition was different,” he said. “It was just a decomposing body.”

Into the Woods, again

I’ve just read the most delightful book called Into the Woods by Lyn Gardner with illustrations by Mini Grey. It may seem long for the purpose, but I think that it’s just perfect for reading aloud and I couldn’t resist the temptation in several parts.  I’ve been up all night reading it.  It’s an engrossing read and I highly recommend it.  It’s about three sisters who are born to terribly neglectful parents, Zella (Rapunzel) and Reggie Eden, and who are left no navigate an increasingly dangerous world ruled by a wolfish Pied Piper.  Several of the fairy tales are written into this true “into the woods” motif, from both the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, though in quite interesting ways.  Some are merely legends, some are more dire than imagined.  Some are true, and some have so ingrained themselves into the imagination of the people that they seem true anyway.  The illustrations are quite a value added, too.  There is a particularly interesting illustration of a library devoted entirely to retellings of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.  One is called I was a Rat by P. Pullman.  I can’t help but wonder if it is an inside joke or a pointed jab.  Either way, keep an eye out and, whatever you do, Don’t go into the woods.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

I just came across a very interesting article in the NY Times that has some of the favorite book dinner companions of contemporary authors. I can’t say that I’ve never read a book over my hamburger, but Ive never really thought about it.  I was usually already reading and then got hungry and so I read and ate at the same me.  The most interesting thing about this article though is the insights about how these particular books went well with their particular meals.  Maybe I’ll try it out.  Pride and Prejudice with bangers and mash?  Nah.

March 8, 2009

Sketchbook

Dinner Companions

By LEANNE SHAPTON

Alone in London last spring, I took Grégoire Bouillier’s short book “The Mystery Guest” to my favorite restaurant, propping it up over my baba ghanouj, chorizo and tortilla. I slurped mansaf soup between page turns and crumbled bits of yogurt pistachio cake into the book’s gutters, simultaneously finishing my meal and the story. It was a lovely date. A week later, at the Hay Festival, a literary gathering in Hay-on-Wye, the writer A. A. Gill was asked who his ideal dinner companion would be. His reply: “One of the great joys is to go to a restaurant you can’t afford and sit and eat with a book.” This led me to wonder whom other authors were taking to dinner, so I asked a few of my favorites.

Jay McInerney

Over a recent solitary meal at Otto in New York, I was reading A. J. Liebling’s “Between Meals,” a kind of gastronomic memoir of Liebling’s early years in Paris. I find that it stimulates my appetite.

Rebecca Miller

“The Assistant,” by Robert Walser, is a rare glimpse of suppressed hysteria and paranoia in a male psyche. It’s such a modern, interior book, and it’s funny, too, and strange. Perfect for moments of alienation while eating a sandwich alone.

Lydia Davis

“The Catcher in the Rye” is so over-­assigned to high schoolers that I had forgotten how present, real and funny Holden Caulfield’s voice is. Certain things he did so suavely in an older New York can’t be done anymore, but the many varieties of “phonies” he complained about still exist.

Bruce Wagner

“In the Land of Pain,” by Alphonse Daudet, is a collection of notes that sprang from Daudet’s slow, agonizing death from syphilis — sort of the abridged memoirs of a saint, and an instant mood-elevator.

Jo Ann Beard

“One Man’s Meat,” by E. B. White, is a book of bright essays about dark days in America and a perfect complement to vegetarian dining.

Sam Lipsyte

“The Green Child,” Herbert Read’s allegorical novel about a race of underground crystal-worshipping humanoids, recently made a wonderful companion as I wolfed down experimentally chewed leftovers while my wife prowled Facebook for exes to befriend.

Daniel Kehlmann

Schopenhauer’s “World as Will and Representation” is the most enjoyable, and the funniest, of all the major works of philosophy, perhaps because it’s the bleakest — a reminder that a world in which living beings have to survive by eating each other can hardly be called a good place.

Junot Díaz

Michel Faber’s “Under the Skin” is one of the most frightening books I’ve read. Faber takes one of the hoariest clichés in the world — aliens harvesting humans for supper — and flips it into a nightmare of the sort that will turn you into a vegetarian.

Etgar Keret

The last time I reread Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” was during the Lebanon war. The other night, in the middle of the Gaza bombing, I was reading it again in a Chinese restaurant here in Tel Aviv. I started laughing and crying, which goes with sweet and sour.

Sheila Heti

I have been trying to convince myself there’s no such thing as destiny, so I borrowed Stuart Kauffman’s “Investigations,” a book of radical theoretical biology, from a friend. Since he had read it before me, it easily stayed open on the table beside my bowl of pasta.

David Bezmozgis

Arkady Babchenko, the author of “One Soldier’s War,” served in both Chechen wars. In chapters as brief as a page or as long as a novella, he reflects on the brutality and absurdity of the Russian Army. Like the best war memoirs, it makes you value your food, your health and your liberty.

A. M. Homes

I carry the paperback of John Cheever’s “Falconer,” bound with a ponytail elastic, its pages now yellow. The cover crumbles into my salad like a dry crisp. I eat it heartily; it is pungent and rich, marrow for a writer’s bones.

Leanne Shapton’s most recent book is “Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry.” She is the art director of the Op-Ed and editorial pages of The Times.

And you thought reading wasn’t important

Well it’s important enough to lie about, apparently. I assume you’ve heard that a classic is “a book that people praise but don’t read.”  That goes double on this list of books about which Britons have lied about reading.  Ah, masterful, all pervasive Canon of Literature, is there any one you have not swayed?  (By the way, I have not read the book pictured here.  No, I’m not lying) See the list on this Yahoo Odd News tidbit:

Most Britons have lied about the books they read

Thu Mar 5, 11:44 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Two out of three Britons have lied about reading books they have not, and George Orwell’s “1984″ tops the literary fib list, according to a survey published Thursday.

Commissioned by organizers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, creator of the bestselling Harry Potter wizard series.

According to the survey, 65 percent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 percent singled out “1984.” Next on the list came “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

The Bible was in fourth position, and newly elected President Barack Obama’s autobiography “Dreams from My Father” came ninth.

Aside from a list of ten titles which respondents were asked to tick or leave blank, many admitted wrongly claiming they had read other “classics” including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville.

Asked why they had lied about reading a book, the main reason was to impress the person they were speaking to.

The study, carried out on the World Book Day website in January and February, surveyed 1,342 members of the public.

Those who lied have claimed to have read:

1. 1984 – George Orwell (42 percent)

2. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (31)

3. Ulysses – James Joyce (25)

4. The Bible (24)

5. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (16)

6. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking (15)

7. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (14)

8. In Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust (9)

9. Dreams from My Father – Barack Obama (6)

10. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins (6)

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

Getting Hit Hard

I believe I have posted here more than once aobut how being an English major was a major force in my life.  I think that I will describe myself as an English major until the day I give up the ghost.  It was so much more than books.  It was learning to read, learning to write, learning to look long and deep, gaining a breadth of thought I had not thought imaginable, learning to resepect as well as to critique.  I could not have majored in anything else.  But many companies continue to place overemphasis on having technical experience or being some kind of technology guru.  The humanities (not to underestimate the science, however) teach people how to think.  And yet, like libraries, humanities find themselves continually on the receiving end of the short stick as libraries fund the skyrocketing prices of technical journals and leave off the poetry journals.  Children can’t learn music in school.  And we are all having to justify our continued existence.  Perhaps it’s not all bad.  Being forced to reevaluate one’s funtions and beliefs can be an agent for change, only, I hope that the value may someday be apparent.  The New York Times presents a sobering article on the humanities:

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: February 24, 2009

One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: They are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice.

But in this new era of lengthening unemployment lines and shrinking university endowments, questions about the importance of the humanities in a complex and technologically demanding world have taken on new urgency. Previous economic downturns have often led to decreased enrollment in the disciplines loosely grouped under the term “humanities” — which generally include languages, literature, the arts, history, cultural studies, philosophy and religion. Many in the field worry that in this current crisis those areas will be hit hardest.

Already scholars point to troubling signs. A December survey of 200 higher education institutions by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Moody’s Investors Services found that 5 percent have imposed a total hiring freeze, and an additional 43 percent have imposed a partial freeze.

In the last three months at least two dozen colleges have canceled or postponed faculty searches in religion and philosophy, according to a job postings page on Wikihost.org. The Modern Language Association’s end-of-the-year job listings in English, literature and foreign languages dropped 21 percent for 2008-09 from the previous year, the biggest decline in 34 years.

“Although people in humanities have always lamented the state of the field, they have never felt quite as much of a panic that their field is becoming irrelevant,” said Andrew Delbanco, the director of American studies at Columbia University.

With additional painful cuts across the board a near certainty even as millions of federal stimulus dollars may be funneled to education, the humanities are under greater pressure than ever to justify their existence to administrators, policy makers, students and parents. Technology executives, researchers and business leaders argue that producing enough trained engineers and scientists is essential to America’s economic vitality, national defense and health care. Some of the staunchest humanities advocates, however, admit that they have failed to make their case effectively.

This crisis of confidence has prompted a reassessment of what has long been considered the humanities’ central and sacred mission: to explore, as one scholar put it, “what it means to be a human being.”

The study of the humanities evolved during the 20th century “to focus almost entirely on personal intellectual development,” said Richard M. Freeland, the Massachusetts commissioner of higher education. “But what we haven’t paid a lot of attention to is how students can put those abilities effectively to use in the world. We’ve created a disjunction between the liberal arts and sciences and our role as citizens and professionals.”

Mr. Freeland is part of what he calls a revolutionary movement to close the “chasm in higher education between the liberal arts and sciences and professional programs.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently issued a report arguing the humanities should abandon the “old Ivory Tower view of liberal education” and instead emphasize its practical and economic value.

Next month Mr. Freeland and the association are hosting a conference precisely on this subject at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. There is a lot of interest on the national leadership level in higher education, Mr. Freeland said, but the idea has not caught on among professors and department heads.

Baldly marketing the humanities makes some in the field uneasy.

Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard and the author of several books on higher education, argues, “The humanities has a lot to contribute to the preparation of students for their vocational lives.” He said he was referring not only to writing and analytical skills but also to the type of ethical issues raised by new technology like stem-cell research. But he added: “There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy. I think that is one of the worst mistakes that policy makers often make — not being able to see beyond that.”

Anthony T. Kronman, a professor of law at Yale and the author of “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” goes further. Summing up the benefits of exploring what’s called “a life worth living” in a consumable sound bite is not easy, Mr. Kronman said.

But “the need for my older view of the humanities is, if anything, more urgent today,” he added, referring to the widespread indictment of greed, irresponsibility and fraud that led to the financial meltdown. In his view this is the time to re-examine “what we care about and what we value,” a problem the humanities “are extremely well-equipped to address.”

To Mr. Delbanco of Columbia, the person who has done the best job of articulating the benefits is President Obama. “He does something academic humanists have not been doing well in recent years,” he said of a president who invokes Shakespeare and Faulkner, Lincoln and W. E. B. Du Bois. “He makes people feel there is some kind of a common enterprise, that history, with its tragedies and travesties, belongs to all of us, that we have something in common as Americans.”

During the second half of the 20th century, as more and more Americans went on to college, a smaller and smaller percentage of those students devoted themselves to the humanities. The humanities’ share of college degrees is less than half of what it was during the heyday in the mid- to late ’60s, according to the Humanities Indicators Prototype, a new database recently released by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Currently they account for about 8 percent (about 110,000 students), a figure that has remained pretty stable for more than a decade. The low point for humanities degrees occurred during the bitter recession of the early 1980s.

The humanities continue to thrive in elite liberal arts schools. But the divide between these private schools and others is widening. Some large state universities routinely turn away students who want to sign up for courses in the humanities, Francis C. Oakley, president emeritus and a professor of the history of ideas at Williams College, reported. At the University of Washington, for example, in recent years, as many as one-quarter of the students found they were unable to get into a humanities course.

As money tightens, the humanities may increasingly return to being what they were at the beginning of the last century, when only a minuscule portion of the population attended college: namely, the province of the wealthy.

That may be unfortunate but inevitable, Mr. Kronman said. The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

The Dusty Places

In library school, we get a kick out of saying and otherwise thinking about articles that start off looking at librarians and their use of technology with statements like “Libraries are no longer the dusty places they used to be” or “This isn’t your grandmother’s library.”  People know, I think, that their libraries are sporting computers, mp3s, ebooks, laptops, and sometimes even ipods.  But I suppose the lack of librarians in the movies has really exacerbated the PR problem.  Therefore, I challenge any writers out there to come up with a great script about a librarian.  That’s what we need… a good summer blockbuster.  But until then, I can’t help but be encouraged when I see this article in the NY Times sticking up for librarians in the 21st century.  With not a trace of “dusty, old grandmothers” anywhere.

February 16, 2009

The Future of Reading

In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update

By MOTOKO RICH

It was the “aha!” moment that Stephanie Rosalia was hoping for.

A group of fifth graders huddled around laptop computers in the school library overseen by Ms. Rosalia and scanned allaboutexplorers.com, a Web site that, unbeknownst to the children, was intentionally peppered with false facts.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

It was an essential discovery in a lesson about the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet, one of many Ms. Rosalia teaches in her role as a new kind of school librarian.

Ms. Rosalia, 54, is part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books.

“The days of just reshelving a book are over,” said Ms. Rosalia, who came to P.S. 225 nearly six years ago after graduating at the top of her class at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. “Now it is the information age, and that technology has brought out a whole new generation of practices.”

Some of these new librarians teach children how to develop PowerPoint presentations or create online videos. Others get students to use social networking sites to debate topics from history or comment on classmates’ creative writing. Yet as school librarians increasingly teach students crucial skills needed not only in school, but also on the job and in daily life, they are often the first casualties of school budget crunches.

Mesa, the largest school district in Arizona, began phasing out certified librarians from most of its schools last year. In Spokane, Wash., the school district cut back the hours of its librarians in 2007, prompting an outcry among local parents. More than 90 percent of American public schools have libraries, according to federal statistics, but less than two-thirds employ full-time certified librarians.

Lisa Layera Brunkan, a mother of three in Spokane, said she recognized the importance of the school librarian when her daughter, who was 7 at the time, started demonstrating a PowerPoint project. “She said, ‘The librarian taught me,’ ” Ms. Brunkan recalled. “I was just stunned.”

School librarians still fight the impression that they play a tangential role. Ms. Rosalia frequently has her lessons canceled at the last minute as classroom teachers scramble to fit in more standardized test preparation. Half a fifth-grade class left in the middle of a recent session on Web site evaluation because the children were performing in a talent show.

“You prepare things to proceed in a logical sequence and then here comes a monkey wrench,” Ms. Rosalia said. “We are teaching them how to think. But sometimes the Board of Ed seems to want them to learn how to fill in little bubbles.”

In New York City, Ms. Rosalia is a relative rarity. Only about one-third of the city’s public schools have certified librarians, and elementary schools are not required to have them at all.

Ms. Rosalia ran beauty salons with her husband and volunteered in her sons’ school libraries before pursuing her graduate degree. She was recruited to P.S. 225 by Joseph Montebello, the principal, a brother of a middle school librarian in Brooklyn.

In the school, just a block from a bustling stretch of Brighton Beach Avenue with its overflowing fruit stands and Russian bakeries, Ms. Rosalia faces special challenges. More than 40 percent of the students are recent immigrants. Language barriers force her to tailor her book collection to readers who may be in seventh grade but still read at a second-grade level.

Before Ms. Rosalia arrived, the library was staffed by a teacher with no training in library science. Some books in the collection still described Germany as two nations, and others referred to the Soviet Union as if it still existed.

Ms. Rosalia weeded out hundreds of titles. Working with just $6.25 per student per year — compared with a national median figure of $12.06 — she acquired volumes about hip-hop and magic and popular titles like “Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty.” With the help of grants from the City Council and corporations, she bought an interactive white board and 29 laptops.

Ms. Rosalia introduced herself to her new colleagues as the “information literacy teacher” and invited teachers to collaborate on lessons. The early sessions focused on finding books and databases and on fundamental research skills.

Soon Ms. Rosalia progressed to teaching students how to ask more sophisticated questions during research projects, how to decode Internet addresses and how to assess the authors and biases of a Web site’s content.

Even teachers find that they learn from Ms. Rosalia. “I was aware that not everything on the Internet is believable,” said Joanna Messina, who began taking her fifth-grade classes to the library this year. “But I wouldn’t go as far as to evaluate the whole site or look at the authors.”

Combining new literacy with the old, Ms. Rosalia invites students to write book reviews that she posts in the library’s online catalog. She helped a math teacher design a class blog. She urges students to use electronic databases linked from the library’s home page.

Not all of Ms. Rosalia’s efforts involve technology. The license plate on her black BMW says “READ,” and she retains a traditional librarian’s passion for books.

During a lunch period earlier this month, Gagik Sargsyan, 13, slunk into the library and opened a laptop to research a social studies paper on the 1930s and 1940s.

“Have you looked at any books?” Ms. Rosalia asked.

A look of horror came over Gagik’s face. “No,” he said.

Ms. Rosalia, who has a bubbly manner, went to a shelf and returned with a stack of volumes on the Empire State Building, fashion in the 1930s and life during the Great Depression. Gagik recognized the Empire State Building as the place he spent his 13th birthday and started paging through the book.

At the end of every week, Ms. Rosalia opens the library for classes to come in solely to check out books. One Friday, she wore a T-shirt imprinted with the words “Don’t make me use my librarian voice.” Whirling from child to child, she swiftly pulled volumes off the shelves as third graders requested books on sharks and scary topics. By the end of one period, more than 30 students stood in line at the circulation desk.

Still, Ms. Rosalia understands the allure of the Internet. Speaking last fall to a class of a dozen seventh graders who recently immigrated from Russia, Georgia, China and Yemen, Ms. Rosalia struggled to communicate. “We have newspapers in all of your languages,” she said. She turned to the digital white board.

When she clicked on the home page of Izvestia, the Moscow-based newspaper, the Russians in the group cheered.

“Does anybody like books?” Ms. Rosalia asked. Several students stared blankly. The Russians, who spoke some English, shook their heads.

So Ms. Rosalia pulled up the home site for Teen People magazine, and Katsiaryna Dziatlouskaya, 13, immediately recognized a photograph of Cameron Diaz. Ms. Rosalia knew she had made a connection.

“You can read magazines, newspapers, pictures, computer programs, Web sites,” Ms. Rosalia said. “You can read anything you like to, but you have to read. Is that a deal?”

Go Mondegreen

I am a big fan of mondegreens. They are so much fun and moreover, everyone mishears lyrics. Strangely, people often seem to mishear in the same way. And singers should really learn to enunciate. Apparently there is a website, kissthisguy.com, that is dedicated to misheard lyrics. Exciting stuff. There are also a couple of great books by the same author that have hilarious drawings and lyrics. One of them is actually called ‘Scuse Me While I kiss this Guy, by Gavin Edwards (Find a great review of that book here). Anyway… GetBack music blog via Yahoo! has identified some of the top mondegreens:

“Excuse Me While I Kiss That Guy”

Posted Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:17am PST by Shawn Amos in GetBack

We all love to sing along with our favorite songs. We sing in the car, in the shower, and at the karaoke bar. The problem is that half the time we don’t know what we’re singing. We’re making up lyrics as we go along and hoping no one will notice. We presume that our secret is safely buried under the pumping bass coming through the speakers. Or else we’re certain that NO ONE really knows the lyrics, so it’s cool that we’re winging it. Wrong. Everyone knows. They may not know the exact words, but they know it’s definitely not what you’re singing. In fact, there’s a word for this phenomenon. It’s called “mondegreen,” and it means “the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase, such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song.” (There’s a great website called kissthisguy.com that’s named after the frequently misheard Hendrix song listed below and is dedicated to the cataloging of mondegreens.) So now that you’ve been outed, here are a few favorite misunderstood lyrics. Who was it that said, “No one pays attention to the lyrics?” Well, here’s the proof. I picked more messed up lyrics in the GetBack Mondegreen Gallery. Check them out then tell me yours. We’re all in this karaoke bar together.

TOM PETTY: “American Girl”

What people sing: “That Wonderbra that she was gonna keep”

The actual lyric: “She had one little promise she was gonna keep”

This is the second single from Petty’s 1977 debut album. Frankly, Tom mumbles so much when he sings that one could be forgiven for misunderstanding him.

QUEEN: “Bohemian Rhapsody”

What people sing: “Scare a moose, scare a moose, will you do my fan Van Gogh?”

The actual lyric: “Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the fandango?”

Immortalized by everyone from Wayne & Garth to Mig (from “Rock Star: INXS”), Queen’s 1975 six-minute single is a lesson in rock grandiosity and made-up lyrics. When the band is coming up with words like “Scaramouche,” who can blame someone for writing their own lyrics?

[Nota Bene: Scaramouche is apparently a name deriving from the Italian word for "skirmish" and has been used as a name in several works.]

JIMI HENDRIX: “Purple Haze”

What people sing: “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”

The actual lyric: “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”

The granddaddy of famous misunderstood songs, this one has been a joke for over 40 years since its 1967 release. Hendrix said the lyrics were inspired by a dream in which he was walking under the sea. Between the crazy dreams and the crazy stuff running through his veins, Jimi himself probably wasn’t sure what he was singing.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: “Blinded by the Light”

What people sing: “Wrapped up like a douche, another loner in the night”

The actual lyric: “Cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night”

Springsteen’s tune from his debut album is full of inside Jersey references and non sequitur silliness. A listener can misinterpret lyrics for days. It’s the ‘76 Manfred Mann’s Earth Band cover that’s responsible for the signature mondegreen on this one.

BECK: “Loser”

What people sing: “Someone get the door”

The actual lyric: “Soy un perdedor”

Beck only has himself to blame for going bilingual here. No one was ready for that one in 1994. He started a Spanglish craze.

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS: “Plush”

What people sing: “Where you going with the master plan?”

The actual lyric: “Where ya going with that mask I found?”

Frankly, I like the made-up version better. Stone Temple Pilots could use a little help anyway in the lyric-writing department. There’s some questionable stuff going in their songs, aside from the stolen Zep sounds.

Copyright and The Crying Author 2

You gotta love writers.  And you gotta respect their right to earn money from their creations…. but jeez, sometimes, I wonder.  It seems like copyright and people’s conception of what people owe them has gotten way out of control.  Yahoo! Tech has an article about  Kindle 2 and its new feature that will on-the-fly convert text to speech has kicked a cloud of dust from the Author’s guild, which says that the feature is illegal because it would be like Amazon selling their own versions of an audiobook.  I don’t know…  I think if I were an author I’d just be glad people were willing to buy my stuff at all.  Besides, as many of the articles comments pointed out, this seems similar to other software solutions for the visually impaired.  One wants to give people their due but… damn.

The Tech Blog

Legal ruckus over Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature

Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:17PM EST

It was hardly the most interesting or earth-shaking part of Jeff Bezos’s introduction of the Kindle 2 on Monday, but one small, experimental feature in the device is already causing a minor uproar. Specifically: The Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function, which will use a computerized voice to read aloud anything displayed on the device’s screen. The problem? The Authors Guild says that that’s against the law.

The challenge revolves around audiobooks, which are treated separately from printed material from a copyright standpoint. A retailer can’t record a copy of a book on a CD and sell it or bundle it along with a novel without paying a separate fee, just as buying a copy of an audiobook doesn’t entitle you to a free copy of the printed version.

Amazon — and many legal observers — vehemently question this stance, noting that an automated text-to-speech system isn’t the same as a pre-recorded audio book. Some have even compared computerized speech systems like these to reading a children’s storybook aloud at bedtime. Since the Kindle doesn’t store a copy of the book on the device in an audio format, but rather converts from text on the fly, it seems likely that Amazon is on the right side of the law on this one.

Still, we’re in a legal gray area that hasn’t really been tested in court, and if our legal history has taught us anything, it’s that judges can sway either way on these issues. If the Kindle 2’s audio quality is good enough, it could eat substantially into the sales of audiobooks, and that alone tends to be a persuasive argument in the courtroom.

The Authors Guild doesn’t seem ready to go to court yet, however. In a memo the organization sent to its membership this morning it said publishers and authors should “consider asking Amazon to disable the audio function on e-books it licenses.” Get ready for a long road ahead on this one.