the dividend

The Last Hurrah. The hotel bar inside Boston's Omni-Parker was a political hangout in the 70s. It is steps from the state house so not hard to imagine.

Bit of an underhanded compliment coming here but the place is sort of hotel-carpet-uncool, but that makes it all the better. Never very busy, so makes a good bolthole.

With your drinks you receive an endless supply of warmed almonds, pistachios, cashews etc, i.e. dinner. If you order a martini you are left with the shaker and any remnants inside; as a southern friend calls it, the dividend. #vocab

kitchen tunks

"Kitchen dances used to be a common part of life in rural New England. With no television and few movie theaters, the local dance was often the only entertainment around. Although most towns offered occasional large public dances, most dancing took place at the kitchen junkets; also called kitchen tunks.

The kitchen was used because it was generally the largest room in the house. All the furniture would be removed —including the stove in summer —and the fiddler would be placed out of harm’s way, maybe in a doorway or even the sink." -New England Fiddles.

"The men chipped in to pay the fiddler, and the women brought the lunch—sandwiches, cake and coffee. After barn chores, around 9, everyone arrived and threw their coats onto a bed, which usually also had a few sleeping children on it... The dancers filled the kitchen, and sometimes spread out into other rooms, dancing until way past midnight, when they would pile back into their sleighs for the ride home." -via Old Stone House

A few years ago I picked up a fantastic documentary (on VHS no less) called The Unbroken Circle which traces traditional and country (not C&W) music in Vermont, from radio cowboy bands to contemporary square dancing and callers. The producers followed up by releasing a great cd, Kitchen Tunks.

"Recorded from 1984-86 in homes and at community events by folklorist-musician-educator Mark Greenberg, "Vermont: Kitchen Tunks and Parlor Songs"... Many of the songs provided home-made evening entertainment for rural Vermonters before the dominance of mass media, while many of the tunes provided the music for Saturday night kitchen tunks, farmhouse parties with friends and neighbors dancing to old-time tunes played live by local fiddlers, harmonica players, and other musicians." -via Mutlicultural Media.

The selections reflect Vermont's Yankee and French-Canadian traditions as well as the impact of Southern styles and popular music... fiddlers, harmonica, sing songs ranging from childrens ditties to comic tales to hymns, whistling, a foot-operated piano "rig," and square-dance calls.

Listen here. (try 37, 39, 40, and 11, 12, 13)

More on kitchen tunks in the Dictionary of American Regional English (killer resource btw).

tired and emotional

Well worn euphamism for drunk used in the UK. See Exhibit A.

compulsive inboxing

Older article by Tim Ferris i just re-found. Worth looking at again, it discusses ways to ween yourself off email and generally smarten up your business practice. Greatest hits below, then the whole thing after the jump. BTW, great expression... "compulsive inboxing"...

-For each email he sends, he gets 1.75 to 2 messages in return. This phenomenon highlights the unscalable nature of most time-management approaches: striving to do more just produces increasingly more to do.

-Don't scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that can't be addressed until Monday. This is the perfect way to ruin a weekend with preoccupation.

-Externalize follow-ups and to-do's in a small notebook like a Moleskine (or Field Notes ed.) instead of entering the "bet you can't eat just one" inbox.

-Once a decision generates more than four emails total in a thread, someone needs to pick up the phone to resolve the issue.

-Stop asking for suggestions or solutions and start proposing them.

-Less is more. Further reading.

warms you twice

"Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice." -Henry Ford
Some argue wood heats you four times; chop, split, stack and burn. Putting the siblings to work above.

doctor slang

Article on the history and preservation of slang and shorthand terms used to describe patients. Will have to ask Pops about this... The Dr. Alex Fox in the article is no relation. Doctor slang is a dying art.

TOP MEDICAL ABBREVIATIONS
CTD - Circling the Drain
GPO - Good for Parts Only
GLM - Good looking Mum
FLK - Funny looking kid
TEETH - Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy

great word: "MOAB"

Will the MOAB (mother of all bailouts) lead to TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it)? Survivalists think so (and use great acronyms too). Via article at Treehugger. The problem for treehuggers is that "if we are going to choose to drown in debt, than so will a good many other dreams also drown." (i.e. worrying about emissions, recycling etc...who cares if you are busy stockpiling ramen and generators). As blogger Mark Ontkush writes at Treehugger, the survivalists also have some hugely practical ideas that we might all take a look at.

[Photo doesn't totally jibe w/ article, but East Coast rural-gothic feel. Like it.]

great word: "chimping"

Term used for looking at back of one's digital camera after taking a shot. See SportsShooter.