Not sure. l I’ll have to write something before I decide. Soon.

Not that soon, as it happened. Yesterday afternoon I went to a play by a local (Toronto) playwright-friend whose marketing skills I admire as well as his writing. I have been much too passive in my production efforts, not only now because of my age and energy level but also because as a female of a certain class and era, I have been less aggressive . I was never very good at shameless self-promotion. Call it modesty or laziness.

This is about my friend’s play. Dave Carley is not a household name, but he has had 450 productions of his works (I’ve counted about a dozen plays, don’t have a definitive list), and he has made a living, augmented by a day job related to his expertise. His work has been seen in Toronto Fringes and small local theatres as well as elsewhere in Canada and the United States. I haven’t been elsewhere but I try to get to all his local productions. This one, Canadian Rajah, a two-hander, is not entirely new but it’s new to me and it’s one of the best of his that I have seen.

Based on a fascinating true story, the play haunted Dave’s mind for twenty years before he wrote it down (aka created it), and it couldn’t have come at a better time than now, with its story of racist imperialism. I don’t want to drop any spoilers, just to say it’s quite moving; the acting is excellent, Dave’s writing is impeccable. The play just launched and runs Wednesday through Sunday for the next three weeks at Campbell House.

I’ve loved the movie even before Bill Murray became a latter-day saint. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s funny with lots of action and it has a moral. My son Matt is coming over to watch my old video of it. I have an inherited VHS machine that still runs. When it dies, everything will be over.

In the meantime, a few more words, some of which I don’t expect to find:

tweedling (or tweedle) As I thought. I was sent from the online dictionary to a Merriam-Webster post informing me that the online is inadequate but MW has it - but I can’t have it. Anyway, it has something to do with bagpipes and the noise they make. You can check it out if you want to pursue it.

dimpse Also not in the online but I wrote down an explanation when I saved the word: “Devon dialect for dusk.”. It’s a nice word.

kylix |noun (pl.kylikes or kylixes): an ancient Greek cup with a shallow bowl and a tall stem. ORIGIN from Greek kulix . Surprise! I didn’texpect to find that one.

Her’s another:

cruft I am referred to Charles Cruft: (1852–1939), English showman. In 1886 he initiated the first dog show in London. The Crufts dog shows are now held annually. But that’s not what I want. Again, I copied what my book told me: cruft, aka crust, crud, stuff. It’s an amalgam of the three and easy to envision. We can use that, I think.

spatulate adjective: having a broad, rounded end: his thick, spatulate fingers. • (also spathulate) Botany & Zoology broad at the apex and tapered to the base: large spatulate leaves. The author of a new book I read about today, cautions against over-using spatulate. I haven’t.

The book, by the way, is Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, just published, by Benjamin Dreyer. It sounds like fun. He also decries the New Yorker’s over-use of

diaresis (USdieresis) noun (pl.diaereses |-siːz| ): 1 a mark (¨) placed over a vowel to indicate that it is sounded separately, as in naïve, Brontë. • [ mass noun ] the division of a sound into two syllables, especially by sounding a diphthong as two vowels. 2 Prosody a natural rhythmic break in a line of verse where the end of a metrical foot coincides with the end of a phrase. ORIGIN late 16th cent. (denoting the division of one syllable into two): via Latin from Greek diairesis ‘separation’, from diairein ‘take apart’, from dia ‘apart’ + hairein ‘take’. (I like it.)