Homophonic Monday - B

Please bear with me, but I can't stand a bare bear that scrapes the bark off a tree while the dog barks at it.

B
bail, bale
bailee, bailey, bailie
bailer, bailor, baler
bailing, baling
bair, bare, bear
bait, bate
baited, bated
baiting, bating
baize, bays, beys
bald, balled, bawled
ball, bawl
balm, bomb
baloney, Bologna
band, banned
bans, banns, bands
bar, barre
bare, bear (please, bear with me) bear (as in grizzly)
bard, barred
bark, (like a dog) bark (on a tree) barque
baron, barren
Barry, berry, bury
barrel, beryl
basal, basil
base, bass (low note), bass (fish)
based, baste
bases, basis, basses
bask, Basque
bat, batt
baud, bawd
bay, bey
bazaar, bizarre
be, bee
beach, beech
bean, been
beat, beet
beau, bow (with which you shoot an arrow or how you tie your shoe) bow (to bend at the waist) bow (the front of a boat)
beaut, butte
been, bin
beer, bier
beetle, betel (nut) Beatle (one of the Fab Four)
bel, bell, belle
belligerence, belligerents
benzene, benzine
berg, burg
berger, burger, burgher
bergle, burgle
berth, birth
besot, besought
better, bettor
bi, by, bye, buy
bight, bite, byte
billed, build
bird, burred
bit, bitt
blew, blue
bloc, block
bloat, blote
boar, Boer, boor, bore
board, bored
boarder, border
bobbin, bobbing (that’s a stretch)
Bocks, box
bode, bowed
bogey, bogie, bogy
bold, bolled, bowled
bolder, boulder
bole, boll, bowl
boos, booze
bootee, booty
born, borne, bourn, Bourne (Identity)
borough, burro, burrow
bough, bow
bouillon, bullion
boy, buoy
brae, bray
braid, brayed
brain, brane
braise, brays, braze
brake, break
breach, breech
bread, bred
bread, bred
brede, breed
brewed, brood
brews, bruise
bridal, bridle
broach, brooch
broom, brougham
brows, browse
brr, burr
bruit, brut, brute
buccal, buckle
build, billed
bundt, bunt
burger, burgher
bus, buss
bused, bussed, bust
but, butt
buy, by, bye
buyer, byre

Random Thoughts Friday

Each Friday I will leave you with some quotes from favorite authors or people I admire.

Jack London. Rather a handsome devil.

The last two paragraphs of CALL OF THE WILD brought tears to my eyes the first time I read them in a Classics Illustrated comic book. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. I was so moved I memorized them. Reading the Classics Illustrated led me to reading the book which led me to reading other books about wolf dogs, other books by Jack London, then other books about the far north, then other adventure novels, then true life survival stories. There were many authors I was influenced by in my childhood, but I always seem to come back to Jack London as being the first where, I guess, I became conscious of the power of words when they are strung together in certain ways. So I give Jack London the credit for inspiring me not only to read more, but to write.

"In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.

"But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack."

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

“Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?”

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

“One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.”

“I wrote a thousand words every day”

Homophonic Monday - A

The English language is fascinating and confusing. Homophones are perhaps my favorite group of words. Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different spellings and different meanings or words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings and may have different pronunciations. Got that?

Because I will be away for the next couple of months and may not get to blog much, if at all, I have decided to leave you with a list of homophones. I doubt seriously it is a complete list, but it’s a good start. Also, some words, depending on how you pronounce them, might not seem like true homophones, but they are so close I’ve included them anyway. What the heck, the more the merrier.

And so, every Monday until I run out of letters, you can look forward to lists of words. Enjoy. Oh…and feel free to add any you can think of. I will leave it up to you to research definitions. It would be neat if you left a comment in the form of a sentence that uses homophones.

Are you ready?

I took a deep breath of air ere I began to read Jane Eyre. But I did err, as e'er I do, for I forgot I was not heir to that book.

A
a while, awhile
accede, exceed
accept, except
accessary, accessory
acclamation, acclimation
acts, ax
ad, add
adds, ads, adze
ade, aid, aide
addition, edition
adherence, adherents
admittance, admittants
adolescence, adolescents
advise, advice
aerie, airy,
aerial, areal, Ariel
aero, arrow
affect, effect
affluent, effluent
aids, aides, AIDS
ail, ale
air, e’er, ere, err, heir, Eyre (as in Jane)
aisle, I’ll, isle
all, awl
all ready, already
allot, a lot, alot
all together, altogether
allowed, aloud
allude, elude
allusion, illusion, elusion
alms, arms
aloud, allowed
alter, alter
amend, emend
an, Ann
analyst, annalist
ant, aunt
ante, anti, auntie
antecedence, antcedents
anyone, any one
anyway, any way
apatite, appetite
appose, oppose
arc, ark
are, hour, our
armer, armor
arrant, errant
ascent, assent
ascent, assent
assistance, assistants
ate, eight
attendance, attendants
auger, augur
aught, ought
auk, awk
aural, oral
aureole, oriole
auricle, oracle
away, aweigh
awed, odd
awful, offal
awhile, a while
axes, axis
axel, axle
ay, aye, eye, I

Leaving on a Jet Plane

This says it all.

Happy Birthday America!

This is a great video because it has all the real time sounds.

Enjoy!

13th Floor Elevators

One of the first psychedelic bands was the 13th Floor Elevators. They put out four albums between 1966 and '69 and influenced bands like R. E. M. and ZZ Top. They were on the Dick Clark Show twice, and played in San Francisco at the Avalon and Fillmore. They shared billing with the likes of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Grace Slick and the Great Society (Pre-Jefferson Airplane) and Moby Grape.

One would think a band like them would have originated in San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. But they didn't. At a time when you were be suspect and could get picked up by the police for having hair touching the collar or for wearing a goatee, these guys definitely pushed the envelope, stepped out of the box. So it's interesting that they came out of Austin and the Texas Hill Country.

Who would have thought the first band to actually promote psychedelics would spring out of such an ultra-conservative (for the time) environment?

Below is a clip of them from the Dick Clark Show playing they're biggest hit, "You're Gonna Miss Me." Of course, they aren't doing it live, but...who cares?


And yes, that guy really did play the electric jug. It's that funny little rapid noise you hear in the background.

Some of the band members are still around, not together or as the Elevators, but they're out there doing their thing. Some of them are right here in the little town where I live, making music.

Cool.

Today in History

Today is my birthday, which should be history enough...yet I just have to add these few little odd bits of information; things that supposedly also happened on the 28th.

Although I have not be able to find out any info on this important moment, in 1820 the tomato was supposedly proved nonpoisonous.

The tomato is native to South America but it appears the Aztecs were the first to actually cultivated it. We even get the name tomato from them, "tomatl." A member of the nightshade family, it is related to potato, eggplant, tobacco, chili peppers and the poisonous (and hallucinogenic) belladonna. It was probably Cortez who brought the tomato to Spain and the Mediterranean. It was being cultivated there by 1540, and by 1692 turned up in recipes. With Spain's expansion into the world the tomato made it's way into Asia. With all that evidence of being edible you'd think the English and other Europeans would have gotten that it wasn't poisonous. Sometimes those Europeans are kind of slow. It was actually being cultivated in England by the 1590s but, because of it's family background, was only used for decorative purposes. However by the mid 1700s even the British had taken to eating tomatoes. Thomas Jefferson grew them after the Revolution and they showed up in New Orleans around 1812. But it was probably the arrival of Italians into the U. S. that put the tomato on the map, returning it to it's native hemisphere after several hundred years wandering the world. Only then did it find a lasting and endearing place in North American cuisine. Did you know the leaves of the tomato are poisonous?

In 1838 Queen Victoria was crowned.

In 1939 Pan Am (how many of you remember Pan Am or actually flew Pan Am? I do and did) opened a transatlantic route. On an interesting side note, Charles Lindbergh flew around the Caribbean and Latin America in 1927. He landed in Puerto Rico. My mother, age 10, was taken by her father to the place he landed and she got to see his plane. I don't think she got to see him. Lindbergh also landed on St. Thomas. In fact the place he landed is where the airport is and the beach next to it is called Lindbergh Beach.

In 1967 George Harrison was fined for speeding. Such a wild and crazy guy.

Other people who were born on this day include, Henry VIII, Mel Brooks, Gilda Radner and John Cusack (such a cutie.)

Happy Birthday to us.