Re-cur—Get another dog again?

I fell in love with basset hounds when I was in the ninth grade. Waiting outside for the school doors to open, my best friend and I noticed a droopy dog across the street. We became smitten and named it “Harold.” We made up a song about basset hounds to the tune of “Jesus Loves the Little Children”:

Jesus loves the little bassets

All the bassets of the world.

Their long ears and their big feet,

Golly gee, they’re really neat!

Jesus loves the little bassets of the world.

Soon, we noticed “Harold” surrounded by a litter of puppies, so we renamed her “Haroldine.”

My mother was strenuously anti-pet, so I did not adopt my first basset, Noble, until I left home. That basset was stolen from my yard one night. Years later, I adopted my second basset, Beaumont, while in graduate school in Carbondale, Illinois. Beaumont’s story is a sad one which I will leave untold.

When I got a job teaching college in Poultney, Vermont, I adopted Herself the Elf, my soul-mate basset. I spent many happy basset years with Elf. As she grew into a senior basset, I adopted Hermia. Hermia grew, Elf crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and finally Hermia crossed the Rainbow Bridge, as well, in 2007.

Occasionally, people ask me if I am going to get another dog, and I wonder if I get another dog if I will “re-cur,“ once again playing around with prefixes, as I enjoy doing. However, since I am a devoted basset lover, if I get another hound, I will not be “re-curring,” as the “American Heritage Dictionary” defines a cur as “A dog considered to be inferior or undesirable; a mongrel.”

However, the word “recur” as defined in the dictionary basically means a repetition or returning to something. So if I were to get another basset, I would be recurring in a way, returning to being owned by a basset or repeating the experience of living and loving a basset. But as for now, in exploring retirement I have chosen to remain empty-nested of bassets.

Hallux--you have two! Where are they?

When I was in elementary school I rode the bus to school. Our block had many elementary-aged kids living on it, so we spent a lot of time together on the bus and on the street. The younger of us learned many lessons from the older—lessons in life and school-types of lessons. In fact, I did not learn the word “epidermis” in science class; I learned it on the bus from the older kids.

Their teaching method, however, was not one I would recommend. One afternoon on the way home, the older kids taunted us younger ones with “Your epidermis is showing.” We wriggled and pulled on clothing, to no avail. Embarrassed, we made every adjustment we could possibly think of to our book bags and anything else in reach. Finally, as the bus neared our stop, they relented and told us our skin was showing. When it came time to learn about the word “epidermis” in science class, the kids on our block had a rueful advantage.

Recently, I learned another arcane term relating to body parts, this time not from neighborhood bullies but from a crossword puzzle. The clue was “hallux,” and I got the answer by getting enough letters from other clues to verify the word in the dictionary. Instead of manipulating your possible ignorance of the word, like the bullies on the bus, I have written a riddle to see if you can guess the meaning:

I am essential to maintaining your balance. I also provide a canvas for art. To children, I am known for going to market. What am I?

Here are the answers to the clues: I am essential to maintaining your balance. (Think of the digits of a foot.) I also provide a canvas for art. (Think of a cosmetic treatment of the feet and toenails.) To children, I am known for going to market. (Think of “piggies” in a nursery rhyme.) If you have not guessed by now, the “American Heritage Dictionary” on-line provides the answer: hallux: “the innermost or first digit on the hind foot of certain mammals. The human hallux is commonly called the big toe.” When I get a pedicure, I have a design painted on the nail of my halluces. Here’s hoping you do not stub your hallux!

NOTE 1: Frequently, nursery rhymes have hidden meanings which tell stories, such as of the plague or of political abuses. “This Little Piggy” is one of the few that exists simply to entertain children!

NOTE 2: I also learned a second vocabulary word on the school bus, this one from the bus driver—reprieve. We had been acting up and the driver threatened to report us to the school principal. The next day, she informed us she had granted us a “reprieve.” We learned a new word. We must have learned to behave better, too, because I do not remember the driver having to threaten us with unknown vocabulary words again.

Chickens--WDSS (What Does Shakespeare Say?)

Some of the most vexing questions in life involve chickens. Which came first—the chicken or the egg? Why did the chicken cross the road? In a recent blog, “Fowl question—Chicken or Cock?” I address another perplexing question—why does English have two words for the domestic fowl, “chicken” and “cock”? To add some perspective to these questions, I have posed another: What Does Shakespeare Say About Chickens?

Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write in “Old English” but instead wrote in Early Modern English—the same English that we speak today, although the language has continued to evolve. When Shakespeare was writing, French was waning as an influence on English. It makes sense that Shakespeare uses “cock” more than he uses “chicken” in his works, according to entries in Alexander Schmidt’s “Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary,” because “cock” evolved in the English and French traditions and “chicken” in the Germanic tradition.

Many of the usages of “cock” in Shakespeare’s works involve their alarm clock function, crowing cocks. In “Hamlet,” the crowing of the cock sends the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father away. In “The Tempest,” Sebastian describes the rather verbose Gonzalo as “The old cock” and his prattling as “crowing.” In “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Speed tells Valentine that he can tell when Valentine is in love because [you are] wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock.” In “The Taming of the Shrew,” Petruchio and Kate have the following conversation early in his attempt to woo Kate:

Kate: What is your crest? A coxcomb? (fool’s hat)

Petruchio: A combless cock (gentle rooster), so Kate will be my hen.

Kate: No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven. (a chicken chicken, that is one who will not fight)

Shakespeare makes very few references to chickens, and most of those are metaphoric. In Sonnet 143, he employs a simile of housewife leaving her child aside in order to chase an errant chicken to evoke the feeling of neglect that an ignored lover might feel. Near the end of “Macbeth,” MacDuff, after receiving the news that his wife and children have been slaughtered, utters in disbelief, “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam/ At one fell swoop?”

As the consummate artist, Shakespeare even addresses both the chicken and the egg in one fell swoop. When Pandarus and Cressida discuss whether Troilus loves Helen of Troy, Pandarus asserts, “Troilus? Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle [spoiled] egg.” Cressida replies, “If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens in the shell.”

As a lover of chickens, especially rubber chickens, I would be remiss not to mention Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale.  This tale, widely acclaimed as perhaps the most artful one in the Canterbury Tales, has chickens in major roles, although I must also admit the tale includes reports of some smoking chicken sex. However, in the interest of family-friendliness, I will say no more about Chanticleer’s conjugal life with his many chicken wives.

In closing, I will leave you with a little chicken trivia. The first known appearance of the chicken crossing the road joke goes back to “The Knickerbocker” (The New York Monthly) magazine in March, 1847. Also, Harvard physicist David Morin imagines how famous physicists might answer the question. Finally, an anonymous site offers answers that famous philosophically minded characters—both real and fictional--might provide to the question. Hamlet offers my favorite: “That is not the question.”