Grand Funk Railroad

GRAND FUNK RAILROAD (AKA Grand Funk and GFR) is an American hard rock band popular during the 1970s. They were constantly touring and played many large arenas worldwide. They were very popular but didn't receive equivalent critical acclaim.

The band's name is a play on the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, which is a railroad line that runs through Flint, Michigan, the hometown of the band members.

Grand Funk Railroad was formed as a trio in 1969 by Mark Farner (guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals), and Mel Schacher (bass). Brewer had been in the band Terry Knight and the Pack, and Knight became the band's manager and suggested the band's name.

They disbanded in the 1980s but were reformed with replacement members and had "The American Band Tour 2019 - Celebrating 50 Years of Funk" starting in January 2019.

       

walled gardens

There are literal walled gardens in the world. These gardens are surrounded by walls to keep out animals, unwanted human visitors and in some places, the walls shelter the garden from wind and frost. They can also be decorative and there may be smaller walls within the walled perimeter. 

A later development was the walled or gated community. One of the primary purposes of a gated community is to offer its residents safety. Some were built near areas that were considered unsafe. Besides having walls, a gated community increases safety by having membership, guards and by eliminating through traffic.

These days if you hear the term there is a good chance that it is a figurative walled garden that is a closed platform or closed technology ecosystem. Since we borrowed the term "ecosystem" from nature and have since created manmade ecosystems (or damaged others), it makes sense that we turn botanical garden ecosystems into technology ecosystems.

A good example of such an ecosystem is Apple’s hardware, software and services which work harmoniously together and do not work with other hardware, software and services. Apple users tend to remain, not always by choice, in their walled garden. This has also led to antitrust scrutiny (note the Epic vs. Apple case. Google, Facebook and others would like to keep you in their walled gardens.

Coleslaw

My wife made coleslaw this past weekend for a barbecue and I asked some guests why it is called coleslaw. No one knew. One person said it's cold slaw and it means cold salad. Wrong and right.

coleslaw Wikimedia CC BY 3.0, Link

Coleslaw is the correct spelling for the cabbage-based side salad often served alongside barbecue. It is sometimes mistaken as "cold slaw" as it is usually served cold. The word derives from the Dutch koolsla, with cole referring to cole crops such as cabbage.

purple cabbage slaw, Wikimedia CC BY 3.0, Link

Coleslaw's origin can be traced back as far as the ancient Romans, who served a dish of cabbage, vinegar, eggs and spices. The version Americans generally eat today comes from the Dutch who founded New York state. They grew cabbage around the Hudson River that they used in a shredded cabbage salad they called koosla. Kooll means cabbage and sla is salad

tsundoku, sudoku and otaku

A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word adopted from one language (the donor language) and incorporated into another language without translation.

You can probably guess from the title of this article that I'm writing about three Japanese loanwords today. There are a good number of Japanese loanwords in English: karaoke, karate, tsunami, typhoon, teriyaki, sake, sushi, manga, anime, tofu, emoji, origami, shiatsu, ramen, and wasabi make up just a partial list.

Tsundoku is a new loanword for me. It's one of those words that has a larger meaning - almost a lifestyle. It is used to mean acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in your home without reading them. Related words are tsunde-oku meaning to pile things up ready for later and then leave them, and dokusho which means reading books. Tsundoku also seems to refer to those books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf or nightstand. As currently written, the word combines the characters for "pile up" (積) and the character for "read" (読) - a "reading pile."

The word dates back to the Meiji era (1868-1912) and appeared when someone, perhaps jokingly, took out that oku from tsunde oku and substituted doku (to read). Tsunde doku would be difficult to pronounce, so it was compressed into tsundoku.

I initially confused tsundoku with Sudoku, that logic-based number-placement puzzle that my wife plays every morning as a kind of meditation. No connection between the two words other than some letters. These puzzles are quite old, but for Westerners, they became familiar in the 19th century, and then in the late 1970s when they first appeared for Americans in puzzle books. At that time they were known as Number Place puzzles. In 1986, the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli published them under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number."

Otaku literally means “house" but in English and Japanese, the word is used to describe someone who spends a lot of their free time at home. In the original Japanese usage that meant home playing video games, reading manga and watching anime. In either language, this person has little or no interest in more social or outdoor activities. It isn't always considered a bad word to have attached to you since fans of anime and manga use it to describe others with similar interests.

Why a fount but not a font of wisdom?

I saw someone post on a blog about a teacher who had been for him a "font of wisdom" in his high school days. "Font" looked wrong to me. Was it supposed to be a "fount of wisdom?" 

I had to look it up. 

A "font" these days is most commonly used to refer to a typeface, such as a serif, sans serif, or Helvetica or Times New Roman. That origin comes from the late 16th century from French fonte, from fondre "to melt" in reference to the process of casting or founding the actual pieces of type once used in printing. 

This didn't seem to play any role in the wisdom expression. 

Font can also mean a structure in a church that contains water for baptism ceremonies. The water in a baptismal font is still, but the water in a fountain spurts with abundance. So, fount (a fountain shortening similar to mount for mountain) is more symbolically fitting for the sense of someone or something putting forth an abundance of knowledge or wisdom.

A fount of knowledge is used to something, but more likely someone, who contains all the answers or information.  

 Saying font for fount might also be considered a mondegreen - that's the topic another post.