Monthly Archives: November 2007

Words: Going to the dogs, a curmudgeon and a churl

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Thanks, Walt! Once again, my new words come from your blog, from a post entitled Going to the dogs
How come I had never heard or read the expression Going to the dogs?

When I first read Walt’s post, I immediately saw that there was more to the title than met the eye. But I really wasn’t sure what it was, since Walt and Ken have a border collie, named Callie and Callie is quite a recurrent theme in their blogs.

Callie

So I googled: explain going to the dogs, and clicking the third entry, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms – Google Books Result yielded page 267 of the AHDI, where going to the dogs said to look up going to pot, which didn’t help me much as it was also a new expression for me. But thence came the light ;)

deteriorate, decline, come to a bad end

OK! There I was! I had the title right;)

Then came the first sentence:

I have to say, I’m becoming a curmudgeon. An old fart. A churl. A grumpy old guy. And I’m not even old. Yet.

Well, I thought, don’t worry about not being old. Yet. Time is working for you ;)

Callie

Now the curmudgeon bit was easier to find.
Merriam-Webster online said

a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man

which explained Walt’s comment about not being old, yet.
I had a hunch about the meaning of churl, because I knew the word churlish, but checked with Merriam-Webster and obviously, given the context, it couldn’t be a medieval peasant, but

a rude ill-bred person

All that sleuthing work, just for the blog title and the first sentence? But this is what I love about learning a language. You are never done!
Now you want to go read that post, because besides having my new words, it is really enjoyable.

Meeting Monceau

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Monceau, one of my flickr friends spent her Thanksgiving break in Paris and we had planned to meet yesterday for photographic walk at Cimetière du Montparnasse. When I got out of the métro, she was there with her huge camera, and I recognised her right away. We walked to Montparnasse Cemetery and started walking around, stopping for a shot here or there, exchanging tidbits about our lives and stories.
I have been following Monceau’s photostream for the last two years and I knew we were interested in the same things: cemeteries, letters, squared circles, architecture, among other things.

Monceau, her head in the clouds

Monceau, her head in the clouds

One of the things I most enjoy, when I take a walk with a friend photographer is that they make me notice things that I have never paid attention to before. For example, I am soooo used to the ugliness of Tour Montparnasse, towering over the cemetery, that I don’t notice it any more. But Monceau remarked several times about it. And that made me take this photo in which Tour Montparnasse just looks like one more piece of mosaic through the wing of this strange bird.

Cimetière du Montparnasse

Monument at Cimetière Montparnasse

Finally, we got chilly and decided to go to a café. We went to Le Dôme, where we enjoyed a café crème.

grand crème au Dôme

pouring milk into my grand crème

A very pleasant afternoon indeed.

Le sacre du printemps

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I was lucky enough to attend quite a few performances of varied ballets by Maurice Béjart’s company and was sorry to hear about his death. Béjart certainly was one of the stars of the 20th century and reconciled me with ballet. I would have liked to find a working video clip of Ravel‘s famed boléro with Jorge Donne, but another favourite of mine was Stravinsky‘s Le Sacre du Printemps, which I saw in June 2006, in Paris.

Another icon of the twentieth century is gone. I hope he is now dancing in heaven with Donn and Stravinsky :)

Read Béjart’s obituary in The Times