foregrounding earwigs

The 20th saw the media frenzied churning over the 40th anniversary of man on the moon (cue the Gil Scott-Heron track, Whitey on the Moon). That set off a long-delayed ruminating nostalgic fugue state in your faithless narrator. I went to David Bromige’s memorial service (link) in Sebastopol on the 5th instant, and while marveling at how few people I knew there, ran into George Lakoff. I said hello and reminded him that I had taken a couple of classes from him 30 years ago or more. I read a short poem of David’s on the death of poetry. Then we all piled into the VW microbus and trundled on off to Saul’s in Berkeley for some sour dills and chicken soup. Black Oak Books next door has gone out of business. This last weekend, I went to Hackenberg Booksellers, because yet another linguist had died. And, so, I looked through stacks of books, some priced and others not. I bought 3 Malkiel monographs and a Burkert Homo Necans.