Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 00:05:51 EST From: an inflatable rubber ducky! Subject: EXERCISE: The Proverbial Truth? Comments: To: resting on a bed of pins! *POP* [yipes--another week slipping into the pages of the diaries and journals, weathering grey newsprint molding in the catbox, and just these few letters and punctuation marks to build a bridge across the tides and spew of time...] 1. Pick a number! From one to six, roll a dice, throw a mental dart into the bullseye of your brain, or whatever you like, but pick your number. 2. May we see your number, please? Ah, that would be: 1. Ingratitude is worse than witchcraft. 1846-59: Denham Tracts, ii. 83 (F.L.S.) 2. The higher the plum-tree, the sweeter the plumme. 1639: Clarke, 88 3. Euery one for him selfe and the diuel for al (Every man for himself and the devil for all) 1578: Florio, First Fruites, fo. 33 4. How easy a thing it is to find a staff if a man be minded to beat a dog. 1563: Becon, Early Works, Pref., 28 (P.S.) 5. The couetous man is good to no man, and worst to himselfe. (The covetous man is good to none, but worst to himself) 1614: Lodge, tr. Seneca, 443 6. And a proverb haunts my mind As a spell is cast; "The mill cannot grind With the water that is passed." c. 1890: S. Doudney, Lesson of the Watermill [quotes from The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs by G.L. Apperson, ISBN 1-85326-321-4, Wordsworth 1993. It may be worth noting that many of these proverbs have been stated several times with slightly variant wordings--you should see the history of "A penny saved is a penny earned"!] 3. So, you have your proverb. Ponder on it. Turn it inside out, check out the stitching, see how it fits... 4. And write a scene showing us the silver lining of your proverb. You might do a poem, you might do a short story, you might even just do a meditation phrased in grandiloquent phrases ringing deep in the hearts and minds of our peoples... [incidentally, if these are proverbs, are there also amateur verbs? what are they like? or how about converbs, the tortured criminals of the linguistic community, rattling their tinny cups against the stone walls and iron bars that do not a prison make? adverbs, just to fill the commercial space?] tink