Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • A bit of info on ‘American Feverfew’

    A bit of info on ‘American Feverfew’

    Came across this at the Cornell Plantation botanical garden.

    I like the name. “Feverfew.”

    My dictionary gives the origin as “Old English feferfuge, from Latin febrifuga, from febris ‘fever’ + fugare ‘drive away.’

    It’s also a fun word to type, mostly two fingers on the left hand, until that final “w.” It gives it — “feverfew” — a satisfying rhythm to my fingers on the keyboard.

    Here’s some more info about it from the state of Missouri: The name “feverfew” indicates the plant was used medicinally. Some Native American tribes made a poultice of the leaves to use for treating burns. Apparently the plant was also used as a diuretic. Today people plant it as part of a prairie restoration or native wildflower garden.

    fever-few-body

    And here are some citations of “feverfew” from the Oxford English Dictionary:

    c1000   in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) I. 134   Febrefugia..feferfuge.
    c1000   Sax. Leechd. I. 134   Curmelle feferfuge.
    c1425   in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) I. 645   Hec febrifuga, fevyrfew.
    1562   W. Turner 2nd Pt. Herball f. 79v,   The new writers hold.. that feuerfew is better for weomen.
    1597   W. Langham Garden of Health 234   Feuerfue comforteth the stomacke, and is good for the Feuer quotidian.
    a1646   D. Wedderburn Vocabula (1685) 18   Matricaria, feverfoyly.
  • What DJT meant to say (an edited transcript)

    What DJT meant to say (an edited transcript)

    I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them.

    Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize. I’ve traveled the country talking about change for America, but my travels have also changed me. I’ve spent time with grieving mothers who’ve lost their children, laid-off workers whose jobs have gone to other countries, and people from all walks of life who just want a better future. I have gotten to know the great people of our country, and I’ve been humbled by the faith they’ve placed in me. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down.

    Let’s be honest — we’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today. We are losing our jobs, we’re less safe than we were eight years ago, and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground.

    I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.

    Transcript from NYTimes.com.

  • A good time to look up

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    Nine views of the sky over the past nine days in upstate New York.

  • RIP Gene Wilder

  • Yes, I took photos of toilet seats in Korea

    2016-07-23 19.27.06

    “Full up” is exactly the opposite of what you want a toilet to tell you.

     

     

    2016-07-23 19.22.42

    I know Hello Kitty is popular everywhere, but biscuits? on the toilet?

     

     

    2016-07-23 19.22.23

    Yes, it sounds poetic, but maybe “drips” shouldn’t mix with plumbing-related things.

     

     

    2016-07-23 19.21.55

    So true.

     

  • New poem ‘That Day in Assisi’ just published

    Thank you, The Ekphrastic Review, for publishing my poem!

    You can read it here: http://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/that-day-in-assissi-by-michael-janairo

    It is inspired by this painting:

    zlot057h

     

     

     

  • ‘Just like everything else in nature’

    Here’s another bit of English from Korea. Here’s more info about the the firm that made these, Lufdesign.

    Korea-English_ - 49

  • MY ENTRY: NEW YORKER CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST #532

    Screen Shot 2016-08-07 at 8.32.19 PM

  • Book review: Harry Frankfurt’s ‘On B.S.’

    The following book review originally appeared in the July 31, 2005, edition of the Albany Times Union. A recent op-ed in The Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria called “The unbearable stench of Trump’s B.S.” references the book in describing the extreme lack of concern for the truth in statements from the Republican presidential candidate. The book, though, isn’t about Trump in general; rather, it is a challenge to everyone to examine how we may add to the world’s B.S. through our own contributions or by allowing others to get away with it.

    k7929‘Hot air’ philosophy brings world into focus
    By Michael Janairo

    For reasons that will be obvious, the title — and thus the subject — of the book in this review cannot be printed in its entirety in a family friendly newspaper such as the Times Union.

    That word (think bovine excrement), the author writes, is sometimes replaced by humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel, buncombe, imposture or quackery . But the book rightly calls these words “less intense” and suggests they have more to do with “considerations of gentility” than the phenomenon to which they refer. They lack the sharpness and subversion inherent in the vulgarity.

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