Simanaitis Says

On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff

Category Archives: I Usta be an Editor Y’Know

SAVORING LENNY LIPTON’S LABOR OF LOVE PART 1

MY ACQUISITION OF BOOKS arises occasionally from reading The New York Times Book Review or the London Review of Books. This time around, it involves the latter, but in a … Continue reading →

July 24, 2022 · Leave a comment

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY YEARS

THIS IS A CELEBRATION OF WIFE DOTTIE, known to many of you as Dorothy Clendenin. A person-to-person get-together was planned for relatives and friends for today, July 23, the date … Continue reading →

July 23, 2022 · 36 Comments

OUR LANGUAGE’S THEY/THEIR SQUABBLE

I SEEM TO HAVE sidestepped our English language’s non-gender hassle. Indeed, I have LBGT family and friends, though assigning any of them “he/she” or “his/her” never seems to be a … Continue reading →

July 17, 2022 · 3 Comments

POLITICAL REPARTEE

CURRENT POLITICS ARE LAMENTABLY lacking in so many aspects, among them any sense of repartee, wit, or humor. Here are earlier examples as gleaned from Dr. Mardy Grothe’s Viva La … Continue reading →

July 4, 2022 · 1 Comment

IN PRAISE OF BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE & FABLE

FROM TIME TO TIME, I feel the urge to seek trivia. Not directed research on one thing or another. Just taking pleasure from unadulterated facts I really don’t need to … Continue reading →

June 26, 2022 · Leave a comment

MUIR’S MUSIC MUSINGS PART 2

HERE ARE MORE SELECTIONS from Frank Muir’s collection of cited witticisms in his book An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything. Part 2 offers a poem, a … Continue reading →

June 23, 2022 · 2 Comments

MUIR MUSIC MUSINGS PART 1

FRANK MUIR AND DENIS NORDEN offered brilliant wit in their BBC radio programs My Word! and My Music!, both discussed here at SimanaitisSays. Books by both are delights as well: … Continue reading →

June 22, 2022 · Leave a comment

ETYMOLOGY: FILIBUSTER

HOW CAN A representative democracy obstruct a majority view? In one word: filibuster. And an example comes to immediate mind: gun control. Here are tidbits on etymology of the word … Continue reading →

June 9, 2022 · Leave a comment

OGDEN NASH’S ANIMAL PALS

RECENT RECITATION HERE OF “Feminine Rhymes” got me thinking about that master of light poetry, Ogden Nash. Which, in turn, encouraged me to reprise a collection of his works.  Linell … Continue reading →

May 27, 2022 · 1 Comment

TIDBITS OF MEDIEVAL PAPER PART 2

YESTERDAY, WE GLEANED TIDBITS from Tom Johnson’s review of Orietta Da Rold’s Paper in Medieval England: From Pulp to Fiction. Paper arrived big-time in England in the late 14th-century. Fifty … Continue reading →

May 24, 2022 · Leave a comment