w-w-w-w-W-AK-ing

(Saturday morning,  late-lying abed,
 head full of cobwebs…)

Logy  like a   pot of  honey

slowly  seek  release

from        layer upon   layer   of

dream - drenched     sleep …

Women & Wisps

who, when

she danced,

left a stab of perfume    in the air,

like a white azalea

-- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca  (1938)

~

the smoke of her cigarette   whirling back over her shoulder

like a sweet-smelling  scarf    in the wind

-- William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (1946)

~

Mary Ann Weaver  on Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi:

She was an icon -- beautiful, imperial, aloof -- passing, almost dreamlike, through the dust and exhaust fumes.

-- Pakistan (2002), p. 172

Daffy Dactyls

Headline in today’s  New York Times:

Incursions by Turkey

put Greece on Alert

(Chant to the beat of  “To market to market / to buy a fat pig”.)

Politico-prosodical footnote:
While world history is being made on the fly,

POTUS is venting  unedited -- and without scansion.

At the least, he should be required to phrase everything

in dactylic measures.

That would also  give time  for reflection.

The World’s Scarcest Resource

What -- oil?  water?  tungsten maybe?

No -- linguists!  Satisfactory intepreters and translators.

We earlier outlined Germany’s shortage of adequate translators, in a CT context:

   Where is an Arabic Linguist when you Need One?

There, the unmet need was for Arabic.  And now, in the more general context of the massive influx of immigrants to Germany, today’s Die Zeit documents how, since 2017, over two thousand interpreters had to be let go -- in large part, owing to inadequate command of German:

http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2018-04/bundesamt-migration-fluechtlinge-dolmetscher-zusammenarbeit-beendet

So:  Should you ever have the good fortune to run into a practicing, credentialed philologian -- Be nice to them!  Do them little kindnesses -- Bring them coffee!  And managers -- Double their salary.  A really good linguist is hard to find.

For further True Life Adventures of these rare beings,  try this:

   Why do linguists wear red capes?

   Forensic Linguists  Save the Day !

   Navy Linguists  Save the Day !!