Alysa Auriemma tells a running joke about how, for years, people have clamored for Geno Auriemma’s daughter to write a book — expecting that if she did, it would likely be a memoir detailing what it’s like to have one of sports’ legendary champions as your father or offering an up-close-and-personal look at nearly four decades of greatness.
Next month, she’s finally publishing a book. But if you’re holding your breath for something related to her dad or basketball, you’re out of luck.
In recent times I’ve made it a mission to highlight a category of English that linguists fondly call “orphaned negatives”. These are the words that inexplicably lost their mojo at some point in the past, becoming a sorry crew of adjectives that includes unkempt, unruly, disgruntled, unwieldy and inept. Yet previous generations had the potential to be kempt, ruly, wieldy, ept and – most recently thanks to PG Wodehouse – gruntled. Some were even full of ruth (compassion), feck (initiative) and gorm (due care and attention). Now is surely the time to reunite these long-lost couples. It may not work for everything – there is no entry (yet) for “shevelled” or “combobulated”, but Mitchell airport in Milwaukee has gloriously provided its passengers with a “recombobulation area” in which to release some of the tension of air travel.
There is an assumption that the more scientific the approach to predictions, the more accurate forecasts will be. But this belief causes more problems than it solves, not least because it often either ignores or excludes the lived diversity of human experience. Despite the promise of more accurate and intelligent technology, there is little reason to think the increased deployment of AI in forecasting will make prognostication any more useful than it has been throughout human history.
This is a place that celebrates itself as a village du livre, a “book town.” Its public lampposts and trash cans are adorned with bibliophilic hieroglyphs.
But what happens when the main attractions become less attractive? This is the challenge the village du livre must now confront.
“Life is changing, but nothing is dying,” said Anne Laffut, the mayor of Libin, the municipality where Redu sits. “Everything is evolving.”
While the sense of hearing may not be any more important or privileged than sight, and while it is possible to live a rich life without it, “we have abundant evidence to trust that sound is a force shaping our minds.” Ms. Kraus’s greatest triumph is in making the invisible visible, in vividly rendering those vibrations of air through the medium of her words and reminding us to pause and listen.
Despite losing the dining table to it
for weeks, our family stays
with the puzzle, teetering plates
I could see the branches reflected in the surface of the table
It was snowing in the Appenzell, it was snowing in Denver
The air had that purple light in it at night
It was snowing on the windy Blue Ridge plateau