Althouse: Sagging magnolia.

April 11, 2010

Sagging magnolia.

Time for the later-blooming trees to pop.

28 comments:

Lem Vibe Bandit said...: It looks like its Phil Mickelson's game to loose.

wv: subses; 4/11/10, 5:47 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: An awful long hug of Mickelson to his wife.. I cant help but wonder.; 4/11/10, 5:55 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: A little dig at Tiger perhaps?; 4/11/10, 5:58 PM
Anonymous said...: We all have a choice, and that choice was again made clear to us today.

You can do it the Tiger way, cheat on your wife and family, and snip at the sports reporter after the round.

Or you can do it the Phil way and be safely enfolded (and enfolding) in a loving embrace with your best friend wife.

Even if Tiger had won, he was going to be alone today.

Phil would have been with true friends, surrounded by love, even if he had lost today.; 4/11/10, 6:17 PM
chickelit said...: A little dig at Tiger perhaps?

No worries Lem. The Economist sagely took note this week that "There is nothing Americans like more than a redemption story--particularly when the man being redeemed is supremely good at his job."; 4/11/10, 6:31 PM
MadisonMan said...: The magnolia in our front yard is just about to go. (And yes, southerners, I know, I know, it's not a real magnolia).

My favorite magnolia is about to open as well. It's on the little park near my house.; 4/11/10, 6:35 PM
Unknown said...: Ann Althouse said...

"Sagging magnolia."

Just because it's of a certain age doesn't mean it should be expected to sag if it's taken care of itself.

Maybe it should try that Shake-Weight thing.; 4/11/10, 6:38 PM
themightypuck said...: Lefty won health care reform and The Masters. Who will stem the tide?; 4/11/10, 6:43 PM
themightypuck said...: By the way, Lefty won The Masters impressively and actually made a putt on the 18th. Hi5. Putting is Phil's Achilles heel and the difference between him and Tiger in the long run. But not today. His shot out of the trees on 13 was magical.; 4/11/10, 6:48 PM
David said...: It happens to all of us eventually.

If I could afford it, I'd move to Sag Harbor.; 4/11/10, 6:59 PM
David said...: Quayle: Tiger's post round interview was especially sour and graceless. No humility, no gratitude, no congratulations of others.

Will success spoil . . . .

"fraid so.; 4/11/10, 7:03 PM
David said...: Lem--I wonder too. Amy's still in major chemo. Not a good sign.; 4/11/10, 7:04 PM
Solar said...: The democrat party won health care reform, the American people lost.

Phil Mickelson swings with his left, but is otherwise right handed.; 4/11/10, 7:25 PM
themightypuck said...: Phil is the closest thing Tiger has had to a nemesis. I bet Tiger hates losing to Phil. Or so I like to think. A part of me thinks Tiger doesn't register competitors and is really just fighting himself and the ghost of a younger Jack Nicklaus. The thing about Tiger is that he had a pretty erratic round, majorly lost it on the 14th and still carded a 69. Not bad. On the other hand, he would have needed a 63 to beat Phil.; 4/11/10, 7:28 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I recently heard about a survey that says sports viewers largely lean republican.; 4/11/10, 7:38 PM
themightypuck said...: That seems pretty obvious since males skew Republican and males are sportsfans. (or are they, I'm assuming since I didn't hit the link.); 4/11/10, 7:50 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: GOPers are most likely to watch the PGA Tour, college football and NASCAR, according to the study. But if GOP ad buyers want to reach more frequent voters, they should focus on the PGA; golf fans told researchers they were much more likely to vote than NASCAR fans say they are. Meanwhile, Dems hold the largest advantages among basketball fans, both those who watch the NBA and the WNBA. And fans of World Wrestling Entertainment are also much more likely to favor Dems -- if they vote. Wrestling fans are less likely to cast ballots than any other sports fans.

That last bit I think is a good thing.; 4/11/10, 7:58 PM
traditionalguy said...: Unless you are in your eighties, it is hard to appreciate the popularity of Atlantan Bobby Jones from the mid 1920 to mid 1930's. He was an American hero up there along with Lindbergh for his showing off beating the British at their own game over and over. Hollywood made his personality and demeanor famous in a series of short films titled "How I Play Golf". (If you listen to them, you will hear the true Atlanta accent, not the fake one usually attributed to us.) He planned to make the Masters a single tournament that he controlled to invite the best amateurs (Bobby always remained an amateur) to play against the best Pros in the world. He built the course and he sent the invitations, and based upon his reputation they came. It still happens just as he planned it every year. It is its own event. It is not under the USGA or PGA control. It's the only Major held at the same place every year. It under went a year long systematic slander attack by the NYT, but never even noticed they existed.( We will soon see if the Pope is as strong). Augusta is the second oldest city built in the Royal Colony of Georgia, built upriver a year after Savannah, by Lord Olgethorpe's original Trustees. They are not very impressed with new myths that want to change their old traditions.; 4/11/10, 8:02 PM
Penny said...: Magnolias don't "sag". They blossom pretty much when we expect them to, and come back the next year as beautiful as ever.

So who's "directing" this picture?

MUST be someone who doesn't understand magnolias. One of my favorite flowering trees, by the way.

I am a magnoliaist, and I will have none of your "sag".; 4/11/10, 8:03 PM
themightypuck said...: Interesting. I love NASCAR and Golf but not so much college football (although I've been to my share of USC games). I'm definitely not GOP although I voted for Arnold and Tom Campbell.; 4/11/10, 8:08 PM
chickelit said...: Magnolias don't "sag".

Well they look droopy to my untrained eye. Are you saying that they're not magnolias?; 4/11/10, 8:17 PM
David said...: Sports viewers lean male, and males lean Republican.; 4/11/10, 8:27 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: Best Practices: Gloves for women are coming back in-style because a facelife can't hide aging hands.

Cheers,; 4/11/10, 8:29 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: I was showing Karen the petunias growing in the Aerogarden in the back bathroom when she noticed an Egyptian statue new to her. Then she picked up the onyx Ramses and said, "I always liked this." I mentioned the statue is a pun.

"Really? How so?"

"Uh, um, eh, well although it can be viewed as the god Horus protecting the king as child, it actually says Ramses."

"How?"

"Well, you see, broken into it's components it all add up to Ramses. It's like hieroglyphics in statue form."

"But how so?"

We didn't have time then, but now we do. I urge you to skip this if you have no interest in such things. This description is for Karen. She's interested.

The statue of Ramses as a child is widely known and often reproduced. This, the real statue better describes the pun inherent in that composition because the solar disc makes more clear the falcon Horus is presented in the aspect of the sun. Horus has so many aspects. Here the child's side lock is oddly placed on the child's hip so that it doesn't interfere with the headdress, a fairly extreme artistic liberty. Still with the usual finger to mouth that denotes "child." As a glyph that is transliterated ms, usually translated 'mes.' The 'e' could be any vowel because it's really not known. The plant the child is holding is a sedge, transliterated sw and usually translated as su (sa, se, si, so, sy, whatever)

Sun = ra
Child = mes
sedge plant = su

Ramessu

It's the sort of hieroglyphic writing that's usually seen within cartouches, although this is not the way ramses is spelled within the cartouche by which we know him as Ramses. It's not unusual at all to see statuary as three dimensional hieroglyphics this way. Compressed one atop/within another, it amounts to a pun. This statue, and its variations is broadly understood as a pun statue. Were you take a tour of the Cairo museum, that's how the curator or guide would describe it. Look for this sort of writing within the compositions of all Egyptian statuary just as you see the art within the writing on the walls and the writing inherent in the paintings that the words describe. Often you can see the same or similar compositions in all of them.

Some eleven pharaohs were named Rameses. This is the famed builder, Ramses II

Ramses means "begotten by Ra". Pharaohs actually have five formal names, only two are written within cartouches, the pre-nomen and the nomen. The nomen is the name taken up when the individual becomes pharaoh and it's the name we usually know them by. But we know them by the short distinctive unit of the name within that cartouche. The rest of the glyphs in the cartouche are descriptors and regular titles that muck it up (for us) and make the name more difficult to remember and to say. It also distinguishes them from other pharaohs with the same name. In the case of Ramses II the pre-nomen and the nomen are drawn in separate cartouches, you will notice there is not a child with a finger in its mouth:

The first cartouche is the pre-nomen. The circle with the dot is Ra (or Re). Because it's the name of the god, it's an honorific and placed first within the cartouche even though it's not pronounced first. This practice of placing the God first no matter what can make translating a bit tricky until you become accustomed to recognizing the famous names and regular descriptors and titles.; 4/11/10, 9:04 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: So. The first cartouche is translated Usermaatre Setepenre. User (Weser) is the dog on a stick, Maat is the lady with the feather on her head and holding the ankh. Re (Ra) is the circle with the dot and is drawn in the front instead of at the end. Then Setep is the hoe in a ditch, n is the zig-zag water lines, the Re again, except, again Re is drawn in the front of the second grouping.

Usermaatre Setepenre interprets to English as "the justice of Re is powerful, Chosen of Re" The transliteration for these signs is wsr-mAat-ra stp.n-ra , that's what runs through our head when we see these signs.

Usermaatre Setepenre interprets to English as "the justice of Re is powerful, Chosen of Re" The transliteration for these signs is wsr-mAat-ra stp.n-ra , that's what runs through our head when we see these signs.

Incidentally, that transliteration before translation has a corollary with phonetics in American Sign Language. When receiving fingerspelling we do that, just accept the sounds that come across instead of struggling to assemble words as we go. Now we just sound out what we see and then passively let our brain reassemble and make sense of the muck. It can lead to some rather funny results and really stupid blockages. For the longest period of frustration my brain stayed stuck on 'st' meaning the combined phonemes and refused to translate for me "street" or "saint." A guy would be talking about his "stuhBenard" or he lived on "Columbinestuh." When it finally did translate automatically for me I'd get them mixed up to quite amusing affect. Also 'ph' remained 'puh-huh' for the longest time so words like 'phone' and 'Phoenix' and even 'phonetic,' the word for the process that was supposed to be helping me with all this, totally goofed me up. Of course now that does not happen.

Now for the nomen, the name we know Ramses by, the bottom cartouche. The Ramses part is located in the second half of the cartouche. There's other junk in front of it. You'll recognize the Ra, but here the Mes, instead of a child with a finger in his mouth, is represented by the three vertical lines gathered at the top. The sign represents three fox skins tied together. If the glyph was drawn more elaborately you'd see they aren't straight lines at all but lumpy lines that look like plants or something. They're actually skins in the most elaborately painted glyphs. It's something religious. Following the the three fox skins, ms, is a rope that looks like an upside down U with a piece broken off. That's an S. The the sedge plant, us. Ra-mes-s-su. Consider the S doubled to be another of the redundancies we find so charming.

Ramesisu meriamon, Born of Re, Beloved of Amon, transliterated as ra-msi-sw mri-imn.

Ra. This time Ra really is pronounced first and not not just written first as an honorific, although it's first in the second grouping and not first of the first like before, and like we'd prefer. Just one more of those inconsistencies students become accustomed. DEAL WITH IT!; 4/11/10, 9:04 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Then finally, the mri-imn is written nonsensically. The imn, or mn, is the game board that looks like chess pieces. Imn = Amon, the name of a god. One could reasonably expect it to be first in the group as honorific but it isn't. AND THAT'S WRONG! JUST WRONG! Amon should be written first even though it's not pronounced first. The thing that looks like a feather is actually a plant frond. It's stands for the sound represented in English with Y. It's the 'i' in mri. The water zig-zag is n and it also is redundant for the n already present in the game board imn. If we were to be literal about it, it would turn out y imn-n mr, but we don't take it literally because we know those Egyptians to be inconsistent in these and other ways and who do inexplicable things. They're funny. So just forget about the water zig-zag this time, all it does restate the n and make the whole thing prettier although it does make it much more difficult to chisel the name in stone. They had no mercy on their poor stone chiselers. The two parallel horizontal lines connected with concave short lines at each end represents a road, a pathway, a channel. It's pronounced 'mr' (mar, mer, mir or whatever) . The frond is Y. Together they form meri or mery. It's written backwards here and without the proper customary honorific placement for Amun, most likely for stylistic reasons. You'll notice Amon (mn) does honorifically precede mr but illogically and untraditionally follows y. The y belongs at the end, not in the front of the grouping, and certainly NOT in front of a god, but YOU try to draw a goddamn frond in the place where it belongs and see how YOUR cartouche comes out, eh. You end up with the vertical glyph right in the place where you absolutely need to have a horizontal glyph. Therefore, artistic liberties are taken even though it means displacing a god from his proper honorific position. BLASPHEMY! If you read that literally it would be y-imn-n-mr, and yet we know it to be imn-mry, Amon beloved, or beloved of Amon to our English hearing ears.; 4/11/10, 9:04 PM
JAL said...: Lem --

Mickelson's wife had to get permission from her oncologist to attend today because (according to my 93 year old mother who is a golf nut) her cancer treatment has meant she has been in bed.

She (and another family member -- his mother? her mother?) is very ill with cancer.; 4/12/10, 12:01 AM
Michael Haz said...: I hate it when my magnolias sag. Damn age thing, I suppose.; 4/12/10, 5:51 AM