Three oddball factoids from American history.

"Well, that was some weird shit."
-- George W. Bush, surveying Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017

Following are three weird items I've run across lately while perusing the digital archives.

1. For starters, the forgotten American president Rutherford B. Hayes is venerated in Paraguay (story at Atlas Obscura).

Maria Teresa Garozzo de Caravaca is disappointed to learn that Americans don’t share the same degree of appreciation for Hayes. “It really surprises me,” she says. “Everyone knows who Hayes is here.” His name was recently proposed for a multimillion-dollar bridge under construction over the Paraguay River. He’s appeared on stamps. There is even a soccer team in Asunción named Club Presidente Hayes, whose players are known as “Los Yankees.” On one reality-TV show, the grand prize was an all-expense-paid trip not to Disney World, but rather to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums in Fremont, Ohio.

2. Smithsonian Magazine reports: "The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension Dies at Age 90."

Irene Triplett, whose father defected from the Confederate Army and enlisted with the Union, collected $73.13 a month.

3. Dispassionate etymology does not support the theory that the word "hooker" (a prostitute or sex workers) come from the surname of the Civil War's Joseph Hooker, a Union commander who famously botched the battle at Chancellorsville. It has long been supposed that Hooker's indifference to drinking and other diversions on the part of his troops prompted the term. However, the essay here is very much worth reading.

An Exploration into Why the Word ‘Hooker’ Came to Describe Sex Workers, by Trista (History Collection)

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "The Black Bartenders That Created the Dive Bar."

I'll introduce this long but amazing read, and step out of the way.

The word "dive" as shorthand for a certain type of tavern experience has roots in England, migrated to Americas' cities by the Great Lakes, and contains a big African-American component.

It's a must read for anyone who is serious about what they're drinking -- and where.

The Black Bartenders That Created the Dive Bar, by David Wondrich (The Daily Beast)

The roots of the dive bar go back to the 19th century and quite possibly to Buffalo, New York.

Part of writing history is finding a path around the load of stories and “facts” that have been handed down to us so that you can see the real people standing behind them. When it comes to the history of drinking in America, one of those “facts” is that bartenders were always beefy white guys with mustaches. That path is not easy to find, maybe because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.

There are two enduring traditions of the American bar. The first one involves mixing delicious drinks from quality ingredients in elegant surroundings. It’s got lots of mahogany and polished brass and people on their best behavior sipping from jewel-like glasses holding icy little puddles of concentrated delight. Back when drinks cost fifteen cents or two for a quarter, at these joints your quarter only got you one drink. Nowadays, these are the places where a hipster with interesting ink all over her arms mixes you a spectacular Bittered Mai Tai with cachaça and nocino and charges your credit card $15 for it. Let’s call this the fancy tradition—fancy drinks in fancy bars for fancy people.

Then there’s the other one. The one with friends in low places. The lowdown tradition, let’s call it, is, of course, the one with the shots and the ice-cold bottles of Miller High Life; the one where there’s a jukebox, which is always playing something as old and familiar as the street where you learned to ride a bicycle, where the person on the next stool is as likely to work in the post office as a law office, and where “maintenance” is spelled d-u-c-t-t-a-p-e. It’s the one with the dives ...

A reminder about the origins of a civic identifier: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

The following is a repeat of a previous installment of Shane's Excellent New Words, but because the topic arose on Twitter -- who is a New Albanian, and who is not -- now seems an ideal time to recall that we're all New Albanians, each and every one of us.

(As an intentionally obscure side note for most readers, allow me to observe that "maybe it is something you should have thought about during the settlement.")

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This week's words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany, Indiana (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany, Indiana

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994 (of which I'm no longer a part), but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Carceral, or a state that swallows the poorest first.

The article is Locking Up the Lower Class by Nathaniel Lewis (Jacobin), and before returning to an excerpt, my attention was drawn to the tweet by its use of the not-so-common word "carceral."

Carceral (CAR-sur-al) is an adjective, and means "pertaining to prisons or a prison."

1570s, from Latin carceralis, from carcer "prison, jail; starting place in a race course" (see incarceration).

Incarceration is a noun, with which we're more familiar: "The act of incarcerating, or putting in prison or another enclosure." If you draw a circle in the dirt and stand in the middle, you're enclosed by the circle, though not incarcerated until it becomes a structure to keep you inside.

Word Origin and History for incarceration

Early 15c., "retention of pus," from Medieval Latin incarcerationem (nominative incarceratio), noun of action from past participle stem of incarcerare "to imprison," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + carcer "prison, an enclosed space," from Proto-Italic *kar-kr(o)-, of uncertain origin.

It seems best to connect carcer with other IE words for 'circle, round object', such as Latin. curvus, Gr. κιρκος 'ring', OIc. hringr, although not all of these have a good IE etymology. The reduplication in Latin carcer could be iconic; thus, the original meaning would have been 'enclosure'. [de Vaan]

Back to the carceral state, of putting it another way, a state of incarceration.

The American state locks up its residents at jaw-dropping rates. Though home to less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States contains more than 20
 percent of the world’s prisoners.

Mass incarceration, as it’s come to be known, does not affect all groups equally. In 2010, white people were imprisoned at a rate of 450 per 100,000 while black people were locked up at a clip of 2,306 per 100,000. Simply put, black people are five times as likely as white people to be in jail or prison in the US.

Previously:

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "Individual bullying is usually characterized by a person behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person."

Gahan in eclipse, but what about the Solar Eclipse of August 7, 1869 as viewed in New Albany?

The Crashers during fireworks won't ever again be as awe-inspiring as this display.

Naming rights? They're a bitch -- and here's a reprise of NAC's "SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS" column from January 11, 2017.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, anguished wails begin seeping out of the bunker's ventilation ducts: Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed during the glory days, in those simpler times before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Peerless Leader (not to mention Peerless Faucet), a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information and to squelch community dialogue can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

This weeks words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994, but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, anguished wails begin seeping out of the bunker's ventilation ducts: Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed during the glory days, in those simpler times before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Peerless Leader (not to mention Peerless Faucet), a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information and to squelch community dialogue can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

This weeks words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994, but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

Misogyny's meaning is fairly clear.

There's no place for it, in any event. Etymology speaks clearly in this instance, and it seems obvious that bias grows where hatred already fertilizes. However, it is a joyful development when we discuss what words meaning, because words have meaning ... and ideas matter, even in Truck Through City.

online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20140530-711175.html">Misogyny: Does It Mean Hate or Bias?, by Ben Zimmer (WSJ)

... Those who looked up "misogyny" in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary would find a terse definition: "a hatred of women." Etymologically speaking, that is right on the money, as the word combines the Greek root for "woman" with the prefix "miso-" meaning "hatred" (also found in "misandry," a hatred of men, and "misanthropy," a hatred of humankind).

As symposiarch, I intend to guide the conversation. We'll need an agora, or Lloyd's Landing.

You may recall that I attended a symposium earlier in the year, and now, after a nudge from the Bookseller, I've come to the conclusion that we need to begin scheduling symposia at the new and evolving Bank Street Brewhouse.

For one thing, without a kitchen, and absent the prerequisites attendant to food service the way we had been doing it, there is liberation and perfect freedom to pursue other options.

Then there's the beer. The Greeks may have used wine for intellectual lubrication, but we have session ale.

Finally, I really want to use the title Symposiarch.

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online.com/index.php?term=symposium">symposium (n.)
1580s, "account of a gathering or party," from Latin symposium "drinking party, symposium," from Greek symposion "drinking party, convivial gathering of the educated" (related to sympotes "drinking companion"), from assimilated form of syn- "together" (see syn-) + posis "a drinking," from a stem of Aeolic ponen "to drink," cognate with Latin potare "to drink" (see potion).

The symposium usually followed a dinner, for the Greeks did not drink at meals. Its enjoyment was heightened by intellectual or agreeable conversation, by the introduction of music or dancers, and by other amusements. [Century Dictionary]

The sense of "a meeting on some subject" is from 1784. Reflecting the Greek fondness for mixing wine and intellectual discussion, the modern sense is especially from the word being used as a title for one of Plato's dialogues. Greek plural is symposia, and the leader of one is a symposiarch (c.1600 in English). Related: Symposiac (adj.); symposial.