In another sign that the economy is on the rebound, Anne’s fingerless glove production is way up this year.  Pictured in this post are the gloves that Anne has knitted for Jay, herself and me.  Production has been running at such a pace that pictures of Dave’s, Jane’s and one of Anne’s students went out the door without even getting photographed.  Her next project is full fingered gloves for Chris.  These should be ready for delivery in late June.  If demand continues to grow, Anne may have to add another hand or two.

Dan stopped by the house to pick up his mail, which has been accumulating quite rapidly as of late.  He got his financial aid offering from California College of the Arts (Bay Area) and found it wanting.  Even though Claremont (LA) sent him a t-shirt, he has decided to go to CalArts (LA) instead.  He plans on sending in his deposit check to them soon. 

“Hello, my name is Mark and I am an iPhone addict.”  “Hello, Mark!”  It has been less than a week and I figure that is about as fast as heroin takes to addict.  Now I haven’t reached the level that some Stanford students have hit.  In a survey most of them admitted to sleeping with their iPhones.  Mine is left in the computer room, but it still wakes me up at night, whenever an errant email comes my way in the middle of the night.  My one disappointment is that it does not do flash, at least mine doesn’t.  Maybe there is an App for that?

The Story of English was a 1986 PBS mini-series on the subject of the history of the English language.  I saw little if any of the series when it first aired, but somehow inherited the companion  book, which I have thumbed through on more than one occasion over the years.  This week I have taken up watching this series via YouTube.  Watching complete shows on YouTube is always problematic, let alone a complete series.  Practitioners of YouTube, know where I am coming from here. 

I have watched most of Episodes 2 & 3.  After almost twenty-five years aspects of the shows seem somewhat antiquated.  I just hope that the underlying history has not yellowed.  So what have I learned so far? 

• At 35,000 words, Shakespeare has the largest vocabulary of any English writer.  Maybe, part of the reason that he is still so good? 
• The King James Bible, Shakespeare’s contemporary, comes in at less than 9,000 words, but is no less a work of poetry.
• Before it was established, the English language was first an amalgam of the disparate languages of the associated peoples that inherited England.  The history of their eventual union is written in our common tongue.
• Once English became established, it acted like a sponge, soaking up vocabulary from every other language that it met.