Rudyard kipling

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

When did brothers and sisters become ‘siblings’?

I've never cared much for the word sibling, though I hardly knew why. The reason must be that it was introduced by a scientist, Karl Pearson, who in 1900 wrote of the “inconvenience of our language having preserved no word for either member of a pair of offspring of either or both sexes from the same parent.” So he reintroduced “a good Anglo-Saxon word,” and it stuck. It’s not quite that simple, for cultural anthropologists had, a decade earlier, adopted sib for a kindred group, apparently from the parallel German word Sippe. My aversion to sibling was merely its artificiality. We never used to use it in speech, but would say brother or sister.

sibling

Thursday

Lesley Downer

On the road to Mandalay

Traveling in Myanmar, it’s hard not to think of Rudyard Kipling’s immortal lines: ‘On the road to Mandalay,/ Where the flying fishes play.’ These days both Kipling and Myanmar (or Burma, as we still think of it) are out of favor. The mere mention of a visit elicits raised eyebrows and hisses of disbelief, though it seems that travelers can visit China, which is just as repressive, with impunity. But despite the disapproval, Myanmar retains its allure. Even the names are magical. Who wouldn’t want to take the road to Mandalay or sail the Irrawaddy? There were no flying fishes the day I arrived in Mandalay.

burma mandalay

Wednesday

The Spectator

The lockdown list: books to read during quarantine

Now we’ve got time on our freshly cleaned hands, The Spectator’s literary luminaries are lubricating the wheels on time’s wingèd chariot and seizing the chance to boost their morale and brain function, reflect on the meaning of life and catch up on a good book or six. Each day, the Lockdown List carries our bibliophilic recommendations. Day 74: Indian summerRoss Clark The success of Black Lives Matter has deflected attention from a group which has no less a cause for grievance over its treatment throughout US history: native Americans. Indeed, to this day Native Americans, thousand for thousand, have an even greater chance of being killed by police officers as do African Americans.

custer