Megan’s Neighborhood

It all began with a song, we used to sing together all the time.
Growing up you dreamed of becoming the new Lucio Battisti and you carried your guitar everywhere, you always had a song to sing, a lyric to write, a note to grasp.

You were the only one who actually believed i could sing and encouraged me to sing your songs, even though they told my own story not always in a good light, you made me sing your songs.
It was because of you that i began to divide my life in songs, every heartache a song, every tear a song, a memory.
I realize now how precious you were, so precious you really didn't belong here.
I don't have a phone, i don't have a mobile either, i refuse to be interrupted, to be disturbed... how selfish i am. A telegram told me last Wednesday you were gone. I didn't know telegrams still existed.
They found you Sunday afternoon, you missed mass and the priest got worried, he found you. I didn't know you were catholic.
I'm only guessing here but i believe Saturday night you read all you've ever written, you played all your songs, you recorded a couple and decided you were done. Decided you've seen enough, suffered enough, loved enough. I don't know how you ended it, they won't tell me.
I left everything for you again and crossed the Atlantic to pick you up, this time from a mortuary, hurts me beyond words the fact that you had no one else and i didn't know it. I expected to see the friends you talked about, i expected to find a grieving girlfriend, but there was only you, a priest and me.
It didn't hit me, you know? Not when i got the news, not when i arrived in Cole, not when i filled that form they give you in mortuaries, not when they showed me your picture, not at mass, not in the cemetery, not when the earth swallowed you... it hit me when your landlord approached me outside your building and told me to clear the apartment pronto, he already had people interested. I lost it.
All i can remember is the shaking, i began shaking and i couldn't control it, i wanted to cry and i couldn't.
Your apartment was a mess: papers, books, magazines, it could have been my apartment, but it wasn't.
Horrible, its horrible to travel half way across the world only to find nothingness, and come back with a box full of music sheets, some cds, your old military style jacket and a pair of grunge-era boots.
I'm going to miss you terribly. I know that in the last couple of years i've become even more paranoid, even more secluded, i know that i hurt you, i know all these things, and i know that i was so demanding i ended up tiring you, losing you.
Now i'll sing alone and yes, it all ended with a song.

I should get this on DVD.

I was four years old when it was in theaters. 

Hi guys

I have another cold.  I just hope it doesn't get worse. 

Anyway, wishing you a ....

Blimp – Airship Management Services, Inc.

The term “blimp” is supposedly onomatopoetic, the sound the airship makes when one taps the envelope (balloon) with a finger. Although there’s quite a bit of disagreement among historians, credit for coining the term is usually given to Lt. A. D. Conningham of the British Royal Navy in 1915.

Several other once-promising theories still circulate, but most have been discredited. Perhaps this word will never really be cracked.

• Source: “Etymology of ‘Blimp’” (1967) – AAHS Journal

This is a year ago video.  Couldn't find one that has the date of "March 04th" on it, though....

Threshold – PHOTO BY AKSHAY RAI (Flickr™)

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Some old dictionaries include the expression “eliminate: to put out of doors,” meaning to eject someone proved undesirable. Latin eliminatus combines e (“out”) with limen (“threshold, doorstep”), so to eliminate anything you put it past the threshold of your home, or your body.

And where does threshold come from? Old English, of course – trescold (“treading place”); this word evokes the link between treading and threshing. One does not typically think of the doorstep as the place where threshing is held, but where else more convenient, with all the chaff kept outside for the wind to blow away?

• Source: Paul West – The Secret Lives of Words

Ohmygod!  Someone actually asked my question about him and Natalie!

Feel free to watch. ---->  http://video.usanetwork.com/player/?id=223285  Only forty minutes long.

Manger – PHOTO BY CHRISTIAAN VANDEN HEUVEL (Flickr™)

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For those familiar with French, manger is the verb “to eat.” Today’s word is actually the other manger – you know, away in a manger – but the two are related. Manger – a place where animals feed, or the feeding trough itself – comes from Old French mangeoire by way of Vulgar Latin (manducatoria) and Latin (manducare – “to chew”). The above photo is of a Bronze Age manger, much like the one referred to in the Jesus story. (That’s right: they were made of stone, not wood.)

The skin disease mange emanates from this etymology in the fourteenth century and the adjective mangy (as of a dog) two hundred years later.

• Source: Paul West – The Secret Lives of Words

Flamingo – PHOTO BY ART GOEREN (Flickr™)

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Not surprisingly, the name of this reddish-pink, leggy wading bird belongs to flame – a combination of Germanic -ing, suffix for “belonging to,” and the Latin flamma, “flaming.” The word can be traced from Provençal through Portuguese, flamenco to flamengo.

Flamingo, by the way, has nothing to do with flamenco, which comes from the Spanish word for “Flemish,” natives of Flanders. During the Middle Ages, the Flemish were noted for their flashy, exuberant dress; this is why the Spanish word for “Flemish” meant “gypsy-like.”

• Source: Paul West – The Secret Lives of Words