Word: chthonic

Today, in an article comparing the act of literary creation to playing a game of chess:

Let us say that we wish to put Jules Verne's pre-Freudian chthonic womb-fantasy Voyage au Centre de la Terre against Jane Austen's paradigmatic quasi-romance Sense and Sensibility. — "Reading to the Endgame" by D. Graham Burnettt & W. J. Walter (Cabinet, Fall 2009)

Chthonic comes from the Greek khthonios, which means "in, under, or beneath the earth," and designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld. But wait—there's more:

While terms such as "Earth deity" have rather sweeping implications in English, the words khthonie and khthonios had a more precise and technical meaning in Greek, referring primarily to the manner of offering sacrifices to the deity in question. (Wikipedia)

So there were Chthonic cults. And they worshipped Persephone. Just the other day Ryan and I were eating pomegranates, which always remind me of Persephone, thanks to my high school Latin teacher. 'Spose I should have taken his Greek course, too.

Term: long song

Didn't expect to have another word/term to post this soon. Just returned from a show at the Music Gallery featuring Mongolian throat and long song singers, and several horsehair fiddles. Thanks to the likes of Björk and Tagaq, I've heard some throat singing, but wasn't aware of long song. These performers were amazing to hear, filling the room with sounds that felt like.. always. Deep in the ground, both preternatural and familiar. Folk music. (Could've done without the extraneous new age-y soundscapes, however.) From the long song wiki:

This genre is [so named] because each syllable of text is extended for a long duration. A four-minute song may only consist of ten words. The main feature of the long song is the prolonged, tenuto notes with deeply modulated vibrato on the vowels. These majestic vibrating notes called shuranhai give the song profound philosophical, meditational character and they often depict the spacious mountain valleys and the tranquility of the Mongolian soul.

The performance consisted of songs from Red Sky's Tono production—the group is taking part in the Cultural Olympiad for Vancouver 2010. Usually a dance piece accompanies the show, but I'm glad it was just musicians tonight.

IC wrote a review of the show for MONDO. Read it here.

Word: alpenglow

Today, this sentence:

Without the smoke, the view from this spot would be stunning: a cerulean lake foaming with whitecaps and mountain flanks draped in alpenglow. -- "Icefields of Dreams," by Teresa Earle with photography by Fritz Mueller (Canadian Geographic, January/February 2010)

What is alpenglow? From the context, one may infer that it's the light's effect on mountain ranges. Here's the wiki explanation.

Alpenglow (from German: Alpenglühen) is an optical phenomenon. When the Sun is just below the horizon, a horizontal red glowing band can sometimes be observed on the opposite horizon. Alpenglow is easiest to observe when mountains are illuminated but can also be observed when the sky is illuminated through backscattering.

In the same issue of Canadian Geographic (which celebrates International Polar Years, past and present), a beautiful geological map of the Arctic. Click on the link, then do the zoom for a better look.

Big score in Newmarket

Every year, friends and family (and so on, and so on) of Pearson employees are invited to participate in a massive warehouse sale. Books are sold dirt cheap and the money goes to charity—sounds good to me. It took three hours of waiting to make the front of the line, but when we were finally unleashed, I managed to score some pretty unbelievable finds. Among the wreckage: $2 each.