Podcast appearances and mentions of ann patty

More than 30 of the year's Virtual Memories Show guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2016 and the books they hope to get to in 2017! Guests include Glen Baxter, Ross Benjamin, Harold Bloom, MK Brown, Nina Bunjevac, Hayley Campbell, David M. Carr, Myke Cole, Liza Donnelly, Bob Eckstein, Glynnis Fawkes, Rachel Hadas, Liz Hand, Glenn Head, Virginia Heffernan, Harry Katz, Ed Koren, David Leopold, Arthur Lubow, Michael Maslin, David Mikics, Ben Model, Christopher Nelson, Jim Ottaviani, Ann Patty, Burton Pike, Frank Sorce, Willard Spiegelman, Leslie Stein, Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins), Andrea Tsurumi, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, and me, Gil Roth! Check out their selections at our site! Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

When it comes to learning new things, what's on your bucket list? A retired book editor decided to try to learn Latin, and ended up learning a lot about herself. There's a word for someone who learns something late in life. And when it comes to card games, how is it that the very same game goes lots of different names? What you call Canfield, other people may call Nertz! Finally, a bit of vulture culture: Words for these birds depend on what they're doing: A kettle of vultures is swirling in the air, while a group of vultures standing around eating is called … a wake. Plus, cat's eyes, Bott's dots, dumpster fire, spagglers, Dan Ratherisms, pussle-gut, and let's blow this pop stand. FULL DETAILS A restaurant review in the Myanmar Times describes a steak that "could not have been more middle-of-the-road if it was glued to a cat's eye." This analogy makes sense only if you know that cat's eye is a term for the reflective studs in the middle of a road that help drivers stay in their own lanes. Card games often go by several different names, like Canfield and Nertz, or Egyptian Racehorse and Egyptian Rat Screw, or B.S. and Bible Study. These names, and the rules for each, vary because they're more often passed from person to person by word-of-mouth rather than codified in print. Incidentally, the use of the word Egyptian in various card game names stems from the fact that playing cards supposedly originated in Egypt. A woman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, say that there, if someone's fly is open, instead of saying XYZ for Examine Your Zipper, many people say Kennywood is open. Kennywood, it turns out, is a nearby amusement park. A San Diego, California, woman is baffled by her husband's saying: If a frog had a pouch, he'd carry a gun. It has to do with wishing for the impossible, similar to the saying If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It's one of many Dan Ratherisms, folksy sayings popularized by the Texas-born CBS newscaster. The trendy term dumpster fire, meaning "a chaotically horrible situation," may have originated with sportswriters. Quiz Guy John Chaneski's quiz is a challenge to find the odd word out, etymologically speaking. For example, which word doesn't belong in the following group? Bigot, saloon, quiche, tornado. In Spanish, mordida literally means "a bite," but it's a kind of bribe. It predates the English phrase put the bite on someone by more than a hundred years. One proposed etymology for the Spanish term is that divers rescuing treasure from wrecked Spanish galleons were allowed, on their final dive, to keep as many coins as they could bring up crammed into their mouths. Another story goes that the underlings of a Spanish nobleman collected a special tax to help pay for his extensive dental work, then simply continued the practice after the work was paid for. Both of these colorful stories are probably too colorful to be believed. Mordida! is also a popular cry at birthday celebration in parts of Latin America, where the birthday boy or girl is encouraged by cheering guests to plunge face first into a cake. A listener in Abilene, Texas, says that his Maryland relatives always referred to asparagus as spagglers, so he was shocked when he got to college and realized no one else knew what he was talking about. This vegetable goes by lots of other names, including spargus, spiro grass, asper guts, dusty roots, and aspirin grass. In upstate New York, it's even called Martha Washington or Mary Washington. No word if Dan Rather coined this phrase, but shakier than cafeteria jello describes something that's pretty jiggly indeed. Is it a pitched battle or a pitch battle? Originally, a pitched battle was conducted according to traditional rules of warfare, which called for combat in a prearranged time and place. The pitch in this term has to do with positioning, in much the same sense as to pitch a tent. Bott's dots are little round pavement markers, named for California highway engineer Elbert D. Botts. Having retired as a New York book editor, and looking for a way to fill her time, Ann Patty embarked on the study of college-level Latin. She chronicles those studies and the life lessons learned in Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin. Someone who begins to learn late in life is called an opsimath. What's on your opsimathic bucket list? A caller from Vermont says his Mississippi-born grandfather always called him a pussle-gut, and admonish him about an unseen wampus cat. The former, also spelled puzzle-gut, simply means "a fat or pot-bellied person," the pussle being related to pus, as in the bodily ooze. American folklore is full of stories about the wampus cat, a terrifying, hybrid mythical creature.   A listener in Springfield, Illinois, recalls that an elderly relative would respond to the question "How are you?" with the answer Forked end down. By that, he meant, "I'm fine." If you've ever drawn a stick figure, you know that the forked end is where the feet are, so forked end down means someone's feet are firmly planted on the ground. In the American West, forked end up long referred to the unfortunate position of a rider thrown from a horse.   A hike in San Diego's Mission Trails Regional Park has Martha pondering terms for turkey vultures. A flock of vultures in flight is called a kettle, a committee, or a volt, while a group of vultures feeding on carrion is called a wake. Let's blow this popsicle stand is an adaptation of Let's blow this pop stand, meaning to leave a place, and in a way that's showy. Think Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The glow in the eyes of some animals is called eyeshine, and the adjective that describes such shimmering in a cat's eyes is chatoyant, from French for "cat." This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. -- A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate Site: http://waywordradio.org/ Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/ Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/ Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/ Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2016, Wayword LLC.

Ann Patty, author of "Living With a Dead Language: My Romance With Latin," talks about her transformative experience of learning Latin. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

Ann Patty, author of "Living With a Dead Language: My Romance With Latin," talks about her transformative experience of learning Latin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ann Patty, author of "Living With a Dead Language: My Romance With Latin," talks about her transformative experience of learning Latin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why did former publisher and book editor Ann Patty start studying Latin at age 58? Find out in our conversation about her book, Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin (Viking). We talk about her deep dive into a dead language, the "Living Latinist" revival, her unceremonious exit from the NY publishing world, the terror of the blank page, the perils of groupthink, how her pursuit of Latin reconciled her to the memory of her mother, and more! More info about this episode at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

This week, El Al helps herd biblical sheep to Israel. Our Jewish guest is Matthew Futterman, senior special writer for sports at The Wall Street Journal and the author of Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution. He tells us how NFL quarterbacks used to sell real estate in the off-season to support themselves, plus what he’s looking forward to at this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio and why water polo is an underrated Olympic sport. Our Gentile of the Week is longtime book editor Ann Patty, whose memoir, Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin, is about how she decided to learn Latin after leaving the publishing industry. She tells us about the Vassar students she met in her introductory Latin class, and the week-long Latin camp she’s attending this summer. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha Frankel’s guests this week are Mark Green, Emily Barton, Diana Abu-Jaber and Ann Patty.