Word of the Month - Sports

         Sports.  This one simple word, which we’ll be hearing an awful lot of as the Superbowl and the Winter Olympics take over conversation next month, actually has a lot of interesting linguistic stuff going on.  The etymology goes back to Middle English, about 1300 when Anglo-French disport meant “pleasure, enjoyment” as a noun, as well as a verb meaning “to take pleasure or amuse oneself.”  The roots here are dis- meaning “away” plus -port meaning “to carry,” as in porter, portage, import, export, deport, and even important (but that’s  a story for another day).  So basically, the roots of disport meant “to carry away.”  Disport was shortened into sport around 1400.  So it’s interesting to note that sports didn’t begin as serious competitions of physical skills and rivalry, but simply as escapist entertainment.

        The second interesting thing about the word sport is that when it was shortened from disport, it was not broken at the etymological boundary, but in the middle of the prefix.  This is a sort of metanalysis, which you can read more about in my post about The Wandering N.

        Next, the more specific verb meaning “amuse oneself with outdoor exercise” arrived in the late 1400s, and the noun meaning “game involving physical exercise” arrived around 1520.  But the broader meanings of general entertainment and pleasure still continued in use for quite a while.  Although the broader meaning is now mostly obsolete you can still see it in the phrase in sport, meaning “just for fun, joking,”  as well as in the nursery rhyme where “The little dog laughed to see such sport.”  The noun meanings “a person exhibiting good or bad sportsmanship” and “a good fellow, amiable person” are later developments from the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

        Another interesting thing is the subtle difference in usage between British and American English.  Both can talk about a single sport, such as “the sport of football,” or “field hockey is my favorite sport,” and both can talk about the plurality of sports as in “Medals will be awarded in 116 sports at the 2026 Winter Olympics.”  But for the general, uncountable category of athletic activity, British English says “I love watching sport,” while American English says “I love watching sports.”  One can make a logical defense of either version, but it’s really got nothing to do with logic.  For some reason at some point the usage pattern diverged, but for this I can find neither explanation nor dates, I’m very sorry to say.

        So, will you be watching sport or sports this February?  Do you have a favorite sport or do you not care about sport(s) at all?  And if what you really care about is block prints depicting sport(s), check out my prior posts Winter Olympics and Winter Games.

[Picture: Halted, woodcut by Lillian Scalzo, ca. 1935 (Image from Armstrong Fine Art);

Hockey Players, color woodcut by Louis Schanker, 1940 (Image from MoMA).]

Color in the Snow

         Snow naturally lends itself to black and white (or possibly grey and white), and yet here are three artists who have used full color to depict their snowy scenes.

        First, last night’s snowstorm as illustrated in 1946 by Kawase Hasui (Japan, 1883-1957).  I’ve featured block prints by Hasui before, including an island (my favorite), some fruit, and another snow scene.  In this one I particularly love the lighted windows in the dusk, something I absolutely never tire of seeing in either real life or art.  As for the snow, one thing that’s interesting is that it’s not just white but a range of greys and blues, some really quite dark.  Even though we tend to think of snow and snowflakes as being white, it’s much more realistic for them to look grey under some circumstances, such as when they’re blocking the light from a lighter area.

        Next I have an urban scene by George G. Adomeit (Lithuania/USA, 1879-1967).  I love that the car places us in 1933, and Adomeit has used browns and warm greys which reinforces that sepia-toned sense of a vintage scene, even though I assume he had no such perspective at the time.  One of the most interesting things about this print is the use of textured paper.  In general textured paper is considered a problem because it prevents the block from printing cleanly, but in this case it works really well with the picture.  I also really like the way the broken fence in the foreground frames the scene both visually and from a storytelling perspective.

        And for a final piece I’ve got the majestic vista of a snowy landscape that dwarfs the human buildings, by Nina Sage (UK).  The buildings are warm browns against the huge cool grey and blue expanse of snow and ice.  I particularly like the way the lake (or fjord?) is depicted.  I previously shared a nuthatch by Sage.

        All three of these look to be multi-block prints with at least four colors, and certainly more for some.  Now, sometimes I feel like extra layers in block prints are unnecessary and gratuitous, complicating something that is remarkable precisely because of its simplicity - but in the case of these three pieces I do really like the subtle layers of detail that the extra colors add.

        And now I’ll soon have to stop admiring snow in art and go out to shovel snow in real life!

[Pictures: Snowstorm at Shiobara, color woodcut by Kawase Hasui, 1946 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Back of Houses in Snow, color woodcut by George G. Adomeit, 1933 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

The Boathouse, linocut by Nina Sage (Image from VK Gallery).]

News Round-Up

         It’s time for updates on a whole slew of recent projects…

        1. Back in December I participated in “Speed-Date a Book” with Strong Women-Strange Worlds, in which I made a fun two-minute pitch for Bittersweetness & Light in the form of a fantastical weather report.  Alas, the recording isn’t perfect: at the end it doesn’t show the whole panel of “contestants,” and even worse, during my pitch it shows only my slides and not me, which is in keeping with technology’s increasingly emphatic attempts to gaslight me.  I assure you I was there in front of the screen during the live event!  (Have I somehow become a ghost or a vampire?)  But at any rate, you can still enjoy my pitch, which you can watch here.

        2. Also back in December I had several art shows and was working on several blocks.  Here’s the progress I’ve reached: one had a test print and is ready for final tweaking and proper printing, one is probably about two thirds of the way finished, and the third is just barely begun.  I’ll need to start two more to use as sample blocks at upcoming workshops in the next month, but I’m certainly hoping to get back to more of my own sweet carving, as well.

        3. More recently I just spent the weekend at the Arisia sci fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA and it was fantastic!  I was on the half-dozen panels listed in my last post,

plus two group readings.  I sold lots of books and a ton of art, and my piece “Symbiote City (Venusian Medusae)” won the Con Chair’s Choice Award!  You can read more about the piece at this prior post (which is also relevant for the panel I was on, about “Designing Things that Don’t Exist”).  And on top of all that, I had a lot of really nice conversations with people about art and writing and sharing the things that give us hope.  Really Good Stuff!

        4. Looking somewhat ahead, I am plunging into work on my next book, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, because it’s high time to get cracking on decisions about what to include, what order to put things in, what additional pieces of artwork I need to fill in gaps, and so on.  I just received marketing postcards in time to give them out at the conventions; I just received the enamel pins that are one of the Kickstarter backer rewards; and I just got a bunch of beta reader feedback that I need to digest and process and use for decision-making.  It’s all very daunting and very exciting!

        5. Meanwhile, there will need to be lots of matting and framing for Boskone in three weeks… not to mention all the other stuff I was complaining about in my Jan. 5 post!  (Also meanwhile, I’ve had to migrate to a new newsletter program and at the moment I cannot even express how intensely I’m hating it.  Ugh!  But there are plenty of other things to worry about, both more positive and more negative, so that’s a problem for another day.)

        6. Another fun tidbit is that I currently have artwork on display in public outdoor art galleries in two towns.  I absolutely love this format, in which the artwork of multiple artists beautifies otherwise boring or ugly fences around town, and the selection rotates to new locations at intervals so that it stays fresh and interesting to everyone going about their daily rounds.  It’s an honor to have my work accepted in these two projects, and between this and my successes at Arisia I’ve been feeling very affirmed in my art recently.

        All of which means that, as always, I do hope you know that if you’ve bought my work, read my books, left reviews, told your friends, or supported me in any one of  many ways either tangible or intangible, it really does make a difference to me and I do appreciate it very much.

[Pictures: Screen shots from my Speed-Date pitch for Bittersweetness & Light, all graphics by AEGNydam, 2025;

Rubber blocks plus test print of Needham cupolas by AEGNydam, 2026;

Photos from Arisia, (photo of me at Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading by Randee Dawn), 2026;

Photos of assorted other projects and art by AEGNydam, 2026.]

Abstracts for the New Year

         Here are a couple of abstract woodcuts that somehow seem suitable for the vibe of a new year stretching ahead.  The artist is Yukio Hasumi (Japan, b. 1927), about whom I can find no information beyond the birth date - not even a death date, which means they’re 99 this year!  Hasumi did a number of pieces with similar marks and color gradations, and I find it interesting that they used variations of the same branching, seaweedy patterns over and over.  I’d be curious to learn whether there was a significance behind the forms, or did the artist just feel like it.  Many of Hasumi’s woodcuts include “Saku” as the title, which may mean “to bloom.”

        In the absence of any further information to give you, I simply share these pieces and invite you to sink in and see whether they speak to you.  Given their dates (1970-71), they probably aim to expand your mind!

        Meanwhile, I’ve been very busy preparing for the Arisia con this weekend, in which I’ll have a very full schedule of art show, readings, panels, and shifts at the Broad Universe book table in the Dealers Room.  My panels include:

    The Moral of the Story Is…  (You all know from the April A to Z Challenge how much I love a moral!)

    Writing Hope (You know from Bittersweetness & Light, not to mention… well, everything, how much I love hopeful stories!)

    Cartography in Sci Fi/Fantasy (You know from the “maps” link over in the sidebar how much I love fantasy cartography!)

    Designing Things that Don’t Exist (You know from the number of times I’ve been on similar panels how much I enjoy this topic!  You can find some related posts here.)

    Songs, Poems, and Stories in Modern Sci Fi/Fantasy (You know from the “poetry” link in the sidebar how much I love fantasy poetry!  You can find a few specific posts to explore here.)

    Faiths of Fantasy and the Future (You know from the fact that I was on this panel last year how interested I am in the topic!  Here’s what I said about the panel then.)

        You can see my whole schedule and full panel descriptions here.  If you’ll be at Arisia don’t hesitate to say hello!

[Pictures: Saku Q-11, color woodcut by Hasumi, 1970;

Saku SZ-6, color woodcut by Hasumi, 1971 (Images from The Cleveland Museum of Art).]

The Sky is Falling!

         In my last post I mentioned the story of Chicken Little - as we call it in the USA.  In England the tale often begins with Henny Penny, who’s the second character in most American versions.  In fact, the names of all the characters involved are highly variable, although they’re usually rhyming or alliterative, such as Chicken Licken, Hen Pen, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, or Ducky Daddles.  But the basic outline of the story is relatively constant: a bird gets hit by some little falling thing (acorn or leaf) and concludes that the sky is falling.  As they run along in a panic, they tell all the other birds they meet, who join the mass hysteria until they all meet a fox.  The wily fox sees that he can manipulate the panicking crowd, and tricks them all into entering his den to be eaten.  The moral of the story is: don’t panic over stupid little things.  The name “Chicken Little” and the cry “The sky is falling” have both become idiomatic in English, signifying people who leap to catastrophic pessimism over nothing and their hysterical, fear-mongering cries.

        Versions of the fable appear in European literature by the early nineteenth century, but were presumably circulating orally long before being seen in print.  Stories with similar patterns and morals also appear many centuries earlier in Buddhist texts.  These fables involve a hare convinced by the sound of a falling fruit that the earth is breaking up.  These versions generally have a happier ending, in which some more benevolent animal (who may even be the Bodhisattva in another form, in some versions) stops the stampede of hysterical animals, finds out the truth about the source of the panic, calms everyone down, and sends them safely home.  Aesop has a fable which doesn’t include the threatened end of the world, but does feature mass hysteria.  In his version panicking hares cause a panic among frogs, which leads another animal to remind the hares that everyone’s life is full of fear and trouble, so you may as well just chill out and bear it.

        The one thing all these stories have in common is that the sky is not, in fact, falling and the world is not breaking up.  The morals point out how foolish it is to leap to overly pessimistic conclusions, how irresponsible it is to incite panic, and how doubly foolish it is to believe the fear-mongering of others without evidence.  The Chicken Little stories also raise the moral of how easily bad actors can manipulate fearful people, so that such foxes can more easily prey on such foolish, helpless fowl.  That’s the moral I think we’re seeing lived out in this time: bad-faith foxes doing their best to keep foolish fowl whipped up into hysterical fear over irrelevances and scapegoats, the better to distract them from real issues, and thus devour them.

        There is another twist to the story that I want to raise up now, though: what about fears that really are justified?  What if the sky really is in danger of falling?  In that case it’s surely reasonable to be afraid, but Chicken Little still gives us a moral about how not to behave.  Even when fear is justified, dashing around in a panic is still not going to help anyone.  Rather than playing right into the greedy hands of the foxes who would manipulate us, instead, how about gathering all the other fowl (and hares, and frogs) and trying to figure out how we can all actually help solve the problem.

        My musings on this traditional story highlight one more point I want to make.  The reason these tales stick around for centuries is that they continue to have relevance to the work of being human.  The reason they have so many variants is that they continue to be adapted to the particular situations in which we find ourselves.  These stories carry universal threads while simultaneously allowing constant tweaking and changing.  That’s their magic and their power, and that’s why storytellers, authors, and artists have continued to revisit them generation after generation.  And that’s why I, too, have been exploring them through art, poetry, and stories for my upcoming book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns!

[Pictures: first and third, anonymous illustrations from Chicken Little by Mara L. Pratt-Chadwick, ca. 1905 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive);

second, wood engraving by William Roberts from The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny, ca. 1855 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive).]

Letting Down the Blog, Holding Up the Sky

         So here we are, just 5 days into the new year and I’m already exhausted and overwhelmed by all the stupid little jobs I have to do to keep my proverbial sky from falling for all my worthy and important jobs that I really do want to support, but…  But not by having to spend all my time constantly dealing with a thousand stupid little jobs for each of them.  And that’s not to mention the sky falling on the larger world stage.  Sigh.  It doesn’t help that I’m struggling with a very unpleasant cold right now, so I’m not exactly at my most energetic and resilient.  Unfortunately, I’m not able to wiggle out of most of these jobs because I’ve made commitments, but something’s got to give, and right now it’s the blog.  I’d already been scaling back my posts a fair bit, and now I’m going to do so even further.

        No, I’m not quitting.  I do plan to continue posting with some frequency, albeit less regularly.  I do intend to do the April A to Z Challenge.  But on the days when posting just feels like one more oppressive chore, I’m simply going to skip it.

        To illustrate my general malaise, here’s a wood block illustration of Chicken Little starting the panic, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  I wouldn’t call this a particularly noteworthy or artistically pleasing block print, but the illustrator of this little pamphlet did a workmanlike-enough job with it.  The illustrator is not named in the version of the booklet I've posted here, but this may be a reprint or copy (pirated or otherwise) of an 1840 version by John Greene Chandler.  In any case, I must say that Henny Penny (or Hen Pen, as this version calls her) looks quite fearsome, though!

        You probably remember the moral of the story, which is that it’s all much ado about nothing, and the senseless panic leads to the manipulation and ultimate demise of the foolish fowl.  In this current time I think a certain amount of alarm is well-justified, although my own troubles are very minor indeed.  How about if I keep the lights on here at “Black and White: Words and Pictures” by promising to come back next post with more about the folklore of “the sky is falling” stories around the world?  I’m just not going to make any promises about how soon that “next time” might be.  And in the meantime, I’ll keep trying to hold up my corner of the sky.  If you hold up yours, maybe we’ll all be able to keep the whole thing from falling.

[Picture: Chicken Little and Hen Pen, wood engraving (by John Greene Chandler?) from Remarkable Story of Chicken Little by Degen, Estes & Co., between 1865-71 (Image from University of California Libraries).]

Words of the Month - Happy Khanike and Merry Xmas

         This month as I was once again dutifully attempting to correctly spell the holiday my Jewish neighbors were celebrating, I finally did a little more research into the issue and discovered some interesting wrinkles.  First of all, transliteration causes problems right from the get-go.  The Hebrew alphabet doesn’t map directly onto the English pronunciations spelled with the Latin alphabet, so already there are choices to be considered.  Derived from a Hebrew verb meaning “to dedicate,” the two most common versions in English are Hanukkah and Chanukah.  Some sources, however, claim as many as twenty different possible “correct” spellings, although admittedly those include versions back to the seventeenth century before the spelling of even normal English words was standardized to our modern expectations.

        There are four primary points of variability: the initial letter (H or CH - or even KH), one N or two, one K or two, and whether or not to add an H at the end.  The confusion of the initial letter is  based on the fact that the Hebrew letter doesn’t have an exact English equivalent.  The CH spelling reflects an attempt to capture the uvular fricative like in loch, while the H is how most people pronounce the word in English.  But here’s the wrinkle: the ancient Hebrew pronunciation was actually closer to an H, albeit a throaty one, while the CH version is more modern.  This means that Ashkenazic Jews generally prefer the modern pronunciation and CH spelling, which is consistent with lots of other Yiddish and Hebrew words, while Sephardic Jews generally prefer the older pronunciation and H spelling.

        I’ll skip next to the question of how many Ks to use.  This point of variability is based on the fact that the Hebrew letter in question has a diacritical mark making it geminate: doubled.  This would be pronounced like the double K in bookkeeper, and thus spelled with two Ks.  Once again, however, modern Hebrew pronunciation has shifted and the majority of Jews don’t pronounce a geminate K anyway, making it perfectly fine to use a single K in the spelling.  So to return now to the question of how many Ns to use: unlike the K, there is no reason to use two Ns, either historical or otherwise, in the transliteration.  Versions of Hannukah are sometimes seen and may even be considered acceptable, but there’s no justification for them.

        As for that final H (or not), it’s simply a question of which version of English spelling seems to capture a final vowel sound better.  For example, do you prefer to spell “Oh come, all ye faithful,” or “O come?”  Sarah or Sara?  To add one final wrinkle to the whole crumpled mess, Yiddish academics actually favor the spelling Khanike, on the theory that this is the most accurate transliteration of modern Yiddish pronunciation.  I’d argue, however, that this is not how to spell the holiday in English, and therefore can be ignored by the average English speller.  I think going forward I’m going to go with Hanukkah.  What’s your spelling of choice?

        Meanwhile, what about Christmas?  The OED does include a number of different spellings, including such gems as Cristesmæsse and Kyrstemes, but since these are simply obsolete, we can ignore them.  The only real competition for Christmas is Xmas, so what’s the deal with that?  Many people think Xmas must be a modern version, and possibly even a secular one, but neither charge is true.  In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written around 1100 (when English was still Middle English), it was on at least one occasion written Xres mæsse.  Here the X is not Latin but Greek Chi.  Chi rho are the first two letters of Christ in Greek and were often used as an abbreviation both standing alone and in other words such as Xpian and Xpmas.  The X (chi) alone as an abbreviation for Christ dates back to at least 1380, and the exact spelling Xmas in English is first recorded in the early 1700s.  So definitely neither modern nor secular.  I still think it’s hideous, though, and will stick to Christmas, myself!  Only 338 days until Hanukkah and 359 days until Christmas, but I’m ready!

[Picture: December, woodcut by Wharton Esherick, 1923 (Image from Wharton Esherick Museum).]

Merry Christmas!

         Today in celebration of Christmas here’s a rather unusual block print of the Holy Family.  A multi-color piece that involves both woodcut and screenprint, it’s by Sadao Watanabe (Japan, 1913-1996).  He was aiming for “unpretentious honesty of purpose” and used crumpled handmade paper, with screen printing for the blocks of color while the black is printed from a wood block.  The style of these people is inspired by Buddhist prints, while obviously the subject is Christian.  I can’t say I love this one, but it does make for interesting variety, which is always fun.  I do like the flowered hill and trees of the background.

        If you want to see a variety of Christmas and nativity block prints, you can find many of them linked from this post.

        To all who celebrate Christmas, may yours be full of love, light, comfort, and joy.  And really, I wish all the same things to you regardless of what holidays you observe!

[Picture: Flight Into Egypt, woodcut and screenprint by Sadao Watanbe, 1971 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art).]

Snow Queen

         It’s an unseasonably warm, windy, rainy day here, and all our snow is gone.  But we can still be in the seasonal spirit by considering the Snow Queen.  Hans Christian Andersen’s is the most famous, and today I have a couple of illustrations of that fairy tale, by Dugald Stewart Walker in 1914.  There are many illustrations of the Snow Queen, but I’ve picked these as being closest to the block print vibe, even though they’re presumably pen and ink.  At any rate, here’s the Snow Queen materializing from a snowflake.  I particularly like the snowy city below and the background of the sky.  Then I also have a tailpiece illustration which shows little demon babies falling with the snow, which obviously would be scary, but kind of amuses me because it’s so different from my usual image of snowflakes as fairies or butterflies or something happy-pretty.

          As for Andersen’s tale, I’ve never much liked it (I’m afraid I’m not a big fan of most of Anderson’s stories), although it does have some interesting imagery, such as snow-bees, and the shards of distorting mirror.  However, Andersen’s is not the only Snow Queen in fiction.  The Disney movie “Frozen” was vaguely inspired by Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” but takes the character in a completely different direction.  (You can read my review of the movie here.)  Then there’s C.S. Lewis’s White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, who may also have been inspired by Andersen’s Snow Queen, and is certainly very similar in being a cold, heartless antagonist who rides in a sleigh and freezes people.  I feel sure there must be others, and I feel sure the general idea must predate Andersen, but I can’t cite any characters.  Can you?

        Finally I have a somewhat strange color woodcut by Andrea G Artz from 2024.  This represents a figure sculpted of snow, which was part of a large project that apparently included digital work, video, etc.  I don’t know that this Snow Queen has anything to do with Andersen or other folklore, but I can see the figures in the background as trolls!  It’s certainly a very different style and emotion.

        Maybe next time we have snow I’ll have to build a snow queen of my own.  But I wouldn’t want mine to be a mere cold-hearted villain with all those stereotypes.  No, I think she’d be gently blanketing all the roots and burrows to keep them safe through the winter, and she’d be all about sparkling and shining light.  How do you imagine a Snow Queen?

[Pictures: “The biggest snowflake became the figure of a woman,” illustration by Dugald Stewart Walker from Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen, 1914;

Tailpiece of “The Snow Queen,” illustration by Walker (Images from New York Public Library, Internet Archive);

Snow Queen, woodcut by Andrea G Artz, 2024 (Image from Ghost Weight Fine Art).]