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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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As this weekly words' board is is not overcrowded I give it another try. At first sight of this weeks first word 'epithalamion' I thought it was a medical word about the brain, some part of it (that's what you get when you haven't done your latin).
As to wedding poems, when I was a child it was common use at the occacsion of a wedding (or copper,silver, golden wedding feast)that one member of the family laid down the exploids of the couple in an alphabetical epos from A to z on a borrowed melody with a refrain for all to join in.
Now it is completely out of fashion and considered crummy.
I think it was a 19th century left over.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I thought it was a medical word about the brain So did I! But not until I read from the def.: [From Greek epi- (upon) + thalamus (bridal chamber).] So, is the thalamus...never mind, Google Images just answered my question. thalamus
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thank you so much Jackie , the hypothalamus. I have seen the word in connection to the thyroid gland. But one forgets.I'm not yet that accustomed to internet and often forget about all the comfortable search possibilties.
(hypothalamus; one of the three stations in the pituitary-thyroid feedback loop)
I will go after pituitary myself now.
Cheers.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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re: As to wedding poems, when I was a child it was common use at the occacsion of a wedding (or copper,silver, golden wedding feast)that one member of the family laid down the exploids of the couple in an alphabetical epos from A to z on a borrowed melody with a refrain for all to join in.
I have seen these (written out, in caligraphy,) that were given as a post wedding present. (post WWII wedding)
as a kid, i was expected to "sing for my supper" and have a poem or song to perform on holidays.
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Carpal Tunnel
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That's a neat thing, and a shame that our culture is losing it, in my opinion. We have refugees from a couple of African countries in our church. On the Sunday closest to their home countries' Independence Days, we have recognition services for them, which includes them getting up and singing, and oh! What enthusiasm, and what energy they have, in their singing!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
re:
as a kid, i was expected to "sing for my supper" and have a poem or song to perform on holidays.
How much nicer to sing an ode to your meal than to say the mute,(eyes closed) little prayers I remember.
In the sixties, was it the group "The Mamma's and the Pappa's that had this song going : "Sing for your supper and you'll have breakfast?"
Yes, already in elementary schools in western society, group/-class singing is gone or disappearing. What a waste of beautiful waste of time!
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Carpal Tunnel
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i (we, i was married at the time) made the kids to it too.
my son liked to do magic shows, and became quite adept at slight of hand. when he was young, the old aunts and uncles went along, and pretended to be surprized, but one year, they actually were!
when they were young teens, they discovered archie mcfee (out of seattle) and invested in fun stuff like the 'can of nuts' (out pops a snake) and little packets of what look like candy, but unwrapped are plastic, (very realistic plastic) bugs. Dribble cups were popular too.
these jokes were mostly limited to summer BBQ's or informal dinners. (much to my kids disappointment)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The brain has a specific structure called the thalamus, and it also has a hypothalamus. I had not known the meaning of thalamus before epithalamion was the WOTD. I'm not sure why early anatomists assigned the thalamus its name, but it is sort of a central point through which many types of signals and stimuli travel. All the sensory inputs except smell travel through the thalamus. I've often wondered if this is at least partly responsible for our inability to conjure up a smell in our head, whereas we can sort of hear a favorite song in our memory without even humming to ourselves. The word epithalamion reminded me of an older thread about the light verse form known as the double dactyl. One of the best ones I've encountered on the internet uses the word. It's an extended example of the form. Its author is, according to the source page, Jan D. Hodge. Romeo and Juliet Saddest of tragedies-- Juliet Capulet tumbles in love with fair Romeo's grace, but to her sorrow an irreconcilable quarrel denies her her lover's embrace. Troublesome circumstance-- Romeo Montague, killing her kinsman in combat of arms, finds himself subject to prosecutorial fervor and flees from his Juliet's charms. Frantic and woebegone, Romeo's Juliet hopelessly hoping her lover to keep, gets from her chaplain a pharmacological wonder that brings on a death-aping sleep. Rushing to be with her, Juliet's Romeo swallows a poison, be- lieving her dead. Waking, she--pitiful epithalamion!-- joins him in death on that sorrowful bed.
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Very interesting, this thalamus story. Come to think of it, true, we cannot conjure up a smell in our head. But we can memorize smells up to a point where we can almost smell it, don't you think? A coffee factory on a street in Hoboken and the chocolate factory close to where we used to live. The smell through the open window in the night train towards the Provence. How all of a sudden somewhere down Lyon in comes the smell of the south.Lavender and thyme. Memory and smells are closely connected. Maybe it's good we can't conjure up smels in our head and so are protected from too great apetites.(chocolate!  ) And yes,it is a strange idea to have a bridal chamber as part of our brain.
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Pooh-Bah
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A lot of anatomic names seem to reflect a fairly straightforward approach: the foramen magnum in the skull is just that, a "big hole"; the tough, fibrous coating of the brain, the dura mater, is the "tough mother"; the bone that looks like a plow is named just that, vomer. I suspect the thalamus gets its name from the fact that various sensations are joined there, but that is pure conjecture on my part. It might have been assigned that name long before the neural connections were understood.
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