Of Fireworks, Yogurt, and Hiati
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by JL Wall
Several notes:
1) Is “hiati” the proper plural of “hiatus”? I could just check a dictionary, but that would be less fun and “hiatuses: is too clunky to begin with.
2) In the process of moving myself and my possessions several blocks, I left my (now-recovered) laptop cord behind so I have read nothing about the world for the last week: except that moment in the library where I checked my e-mail and then decided to skim the Dish for a two-minute recap of the news and Sarah Palin had resigned. Trust me: it was even weirder if you’d fallen out of touch with the news for a little while.
3) Since John is tossing out food advice as well, mixing some yogurt in with sauteed vegetables makes a nice light cream sauce-esque dish, but with the expected flavorful quirks of yogurt. (You probably need to pick your vegetables correctly with this — I used eggplant and cucumber, with some lemon juice for good measure.) Stir and cook in the pan with the vegetables for a few minutes until it begins to look like a vaguely curried dish, toss with pasta, and serve. Still not quite sure on the proper amount of yogurt to mix in, though (I used a single-serving 7 or 8 oz. cup).
3a) A helpful reminder: when stuffing mushrooms, keep in mind that the mushrooms will shrink in the oven.
3b) If you’ve got access to really fresh tomatoes and want a quick and pretty simple yet absolutely wonderful dish, keep this recipe from the UE cookbook for raw tomato sauce among your options. (I think that recipe may have been among the reasons I became a regular reader of this blog.)
4) Unless you really want to ruin your Fourth of July fireworks-watching, go ahead and remove Adam Kirsch’s poem, “Washington” from your Fourth of July reading list. Suffice it to say, I don’t want to be thinking about “the show of danger, / Rocket in abstract, imitated bomb, / And play of fire” — I just want to watch the damn fireworks.
Plural would be “hiatus” or “hiatuses.” Not “hiati.”
Who needs dictionaries when you have online pedants?
The part of my that’s a native English speaker suspected as much — which means it must say something about me (not so complimentary, probably) that I want to treat any word ending in -us like it’s Latin.
Ah, but pedantic Latinist in me feels compelled to point out that “hiatus” is a fourth declension noun, not a second declension noun, and so the Latin plural ends in -us, not in -i.
I’ll drop it now. I’m pretty sure that I’ve gotten it out of my system. :)
NICE!
Well, that’s good. Now the whole world has access to the fact that the fourth declension has always been the one I’ve had the most trouble with/sometimes try to forget exists.
So I’ll amend: I want to treat any word ending in -us like it’s Latin second declension masculine.
(Just so we’re clear: I’m far more amused by this exchange than the above comment may imply.)
Well, you know, one spends a decade and a half studying Latin grammar, and gets so few opportunities to share that knowledge outside of the classroom. So it’s very difficult to resist the temptation at times.
Of course, I realize that it’s a bit unfair for me to be doing this pseudonymously, while you have your actual name up here for all to see….