Sometimes, the Poet Laureate recites poems to me

Here's the story I wrote last week on Kay Ryan, the 16th Poet Laureate, who begins her tenure this fall.

Lepidopterist Mania

When my parents were in town, my mother and I went to the Natural History Museum, where we went to the Butterfly Pavilion. For $6 you can see hundreds of brightly colored butterflies flit around the room, land on plants, or (if you're lucky) land on your head.




Lepidopterist: a person who catches and collects, studies, or simply observes members of an order comprising butterflies, skippers, and moths.

The most famous lepidopterist? Nabokov.

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting." — Vladimir Nabokov

Word Connoisseur

Is there a better phrase to follow one's name in an obituary than "word connoisseur"?

M-W Word Of The Year

Each year the major English dictionaries declare a "word of the year," a word that perhaps has just recently entered our vocabulary, or an older word that for some reason has been critical in popular usage and culture. Oxford selected locavore a few weeks ago, and yesterday Merriam-Webster decided on theirs. W00t.

Um, what?

This "word," which started in gaming culture, uses TWO ZEROES instead of two ohs. This makes it not a word. We wouldn't say, 4ever, and have it count as a real word. Though 4ever, of course, is an abbreviation, which disqualifies it anyway, and w00t is, well, what is it? I've only seen it used in the context of "so and so did this, it's great! w00t!" Was it necessary to create something in addition to "woo," which I think is much more acceptable, because it doesn't use numbers. It would suffice in any sentence in which w00t is used, and it also has the distinction of being a real word, although in a different context. Note that "woo" in the other usage is not in the dictionary.

Here's a list of the past M-W words of the year.

Like a House on Fire

I'd never heard the phrase "they get on like a house on fire" before, and now I've heard it twice in two days. The first time was last night in a Bill Bryson book, and the second time was this morning in a Daily Mail article about Sarkozy's new girlfriend. After confirming with friends that I'm not simply ignorant for being unclear on its meaning, I googled the phrase and found the etymology. It essentially means that people get along really well, though it can also mean that people take to each other quickly (which was my supposition of what the term meant).