A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Welcome to Volume 195 of Dovi’s Digest.
My late grandmother was a regular old dame. She wouldn’t be caught anywhere not wearing her twinset and pearls. Her hair was always immaculate, as was her makeup. Even in the last few months of her life she made herself up when seeing anyone, determined to make a good impression no matter the circumstances.
Ever the lady, my grandmother took tea every afternoon: sometimes actual tea, sometimes gin and tonic, always cucumber sandwiches. The silverware was always polished and the China was always dusted just in case the queen stopped by at some point (the irony of this is that when my grandfather would bring home someone for lunch unannounced, she would go into a tizzy, and retire to her bed with a headache, leaving my grandfather to make sandwiches for the guest).
One of the things my grandmother prided herself on was her etiquette, and as someone who grew up squarely in the Emily Post era, she was fastidious about it. This rubbed off on my dad, and we grew up in a house where emphasis was placed on table manners in particular. We knew the difference between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon before we could walk (this is an exaggeration mom and dad!), learned how to properly place ones knife and fork, plus quite a few others like no elbows on the table, never reach across someone, a used serviette goes on your lap, use utensils from the outside in, don’t eat until the host eats, and never, ever (EVER) chew with your mouth open or talk with your mouth full. These have all stayed with me into adulthood.
These rules seem slightly antiquated now, and I’m sure if it were written now there would be many updates (almost definitely including no phones at the table), but they persist. Why do we have these rules? Are they exclusionary? Who is it for? Why are my elbows not allowed on the table? This week’s headline article answers some of those questions, and as for the last one, I looked it up: it’s because your elbows take up space, however if utensils aren’t in use, they’re acceptable.
Thank you to everyone who has added more books to the recommendation list! Check out the sheet here.
You can also submit a book, so if you would like to contribute, you can either use the form here, or you can edit the sheet directly at the link above.
Do you know a word you think others should know about? Submit it here!
In this week’s added extras:
A simple and addictive infinite crafting game.
A new game involving letters and tiles.
Do you enjoy the Digest? Would you like it to get better? Then please consider sharing it, as the more articles I’m sent, the better it is. It only takes a few seconds, and all you need to do is click here 👇. Thank you!
There were ZERO correct answers to last week’s brainteaser, I’ll leave it up for another week, but there is a new one too.
In addition to not looking like a Neanderthal at the dinner table, you can find out how High School Musical changed the face of Disney movies, why scientists are worried about the moon shrinking, how slow trains can be a good thing, the story of Truman Capote ruining his career by taking on America’s elite women, the longest ever concert (it’s been going for over 20 years, with over 600 still to go), and go inside the sand mafia (yes, you read that right. There is a black market for beach sand). Enjoy!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
Who is Etiquette for?
Etiquette is about respect, not table manners.
High School Musical Changed Everything: An Oral History of The Disney Channel Original Movie
Led by executives Gary Marsh and Michael Healy, DCOMs went from scrappy sports movies with a lot of heart to multibillion-dollar IP heavyweights.
Why Scientists Are Starting to Worry About the Moon Shrinking
Some seismic activity is near the lunar south pole, where NASA wants to send humans.
Fast Times on America’s Slowest Train
A surreal train ride between Chicago and New Orleans proves that Amtrak still has a lot to offer. (Not including speed or the food.)
Feud: Capote vs the Swans: How a Scandalous Truman Capote Story Exposed the Secrets of US High Society
A star-studded new miniseries from Ryan Murphy looks at how the author betrayed the confidence of some of America's most elite women – and destroyed his career in the process.
In An Ancient Church in Germany, A 639-Year Organ Performance of a Composition Is About to Have Its Next Note Change
Composers count themselves lucky when musicians continue to perform their music after their death. But the American avant-garde composer John Cage, who died in 1992, never would have guessed that a single performance of his music would begin in 2001 and still be playing. In fact, it isn’t due to conclude for another 616 years.
Inside the Crime Rings Trafficking Sand
Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped?
Quote of the Week:
One must not be a name-dropper, as Her Majesty remarked to me yesterday.” – Tory MP Norman St-John Stevas
Word of the Week:
(Courtesy of Josh H)
Bodacious
/bəˈdeɪʃəs/ bow·day·shuhs
Adjective
Informal• North American
1. excellent, admirable, or attractive.
"That was a bodacious party."
2. audacious in a way considered admirable.
Album of the Month:
Prelude to Ecstasy - The Last Dinner Party
After forming in London in 2021, The Last Dinner Party’s live shows garnered an if-you-know-you-know kind of buzz, which went into overdrive when they released their stomping, euphoric debut single “Nothing Matters” in April 2023. All of which might have put a remarkable amount of pressure on them while making their debut record (not least given the band ended 2024 by winning the BRITs Rising Star Award then topped the BBC’s new-talent poll, Sound of 2024, in January). But The Last Dinner Party had written, recorded and finished Prelude to Ecstasy three months before anyone had even heard “Nothing Matters”. It meant, says lead singer Abigail Morris, that they “just had a really nice time” making it. “It is a painful record in some ways and it explores dark themes,” she adds, “but making it was just really fun, rewarding and wholesome.”
Prelude to Ecstasy is rooted in those live shows, its tracklist a reflection of the band’s frequent set list and its songs shaped and grown by playing them on stage. “We wanted to capture the live feels in the songs,” notes Morris. “That’s the whole point.” Featuring towering vocals, thrilling guitar solos, and orchestral instrumentation (plus some daring, do-it-all spirit), the album sounds like five band members having a wild amount of fun as they explore an intense set of emotions and experiences with unbridled expression and feeling.
The songs—which expand and then shrink and then soar—navigate sexuality (“Sinner”, “My Lady of Mercy”), what it must be like to move through the world as a man (“Caesar on a TV Screen”, the celestial “Beautiful Boy”), and craving the gaze of an audience (“Mirror”), as well as loss channelled into art, withering love, and the mother-daughter relationship. And every single one of them feels like a release. “It’s a cathartic, communal kind of freedom,” says Morris. “‘Cathartic’ is definitely the main word that we throw about when we talk about playing live and playing an album.”
Favourite song: The Feminine Urge - I can’t tell you why a song about shared generational trauma between mothers and daughters spoke to me, but it did. It’s one of two songs from the album that I’ve added to my library.
Honourable mention: Sinner - a turning point in the album, sort of “it’s party time” while also being about belonging and finding your own sense of self.
Album rating: 6/10. Not really my cup of tea to be honest, and I don't know how to categorise it. But I can see the attraction, and someone else might give it an 8 or a 9.
Facts of the Week:
Pilates was devised as a way to keep prisoners-of-war fit.
Most yoga poses date back only 150 years.
Until the 1970s, almost no women ate their own placenta.
Genetically speaking, placentas belong to the baby, not the mother.
Debussy's father owned a China shop.
In 2013, a Chinese father hired virtual hitmen to kill his son's character in the computer game he played so he would focus on getting a job.
Japanese employees can hire someone else to get told off by the boss.
Russians can hire a private jet to take Instagram pictures in, but it never takes off.
Cartoon of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
(Courtesy of Craig N)
Headline of the Week:
Brainteaser of the Week:
A man steals a $100 bill from a store register. He then uses that $100 bill to buy $70 worth of goods at the store. The store owner hands him back $30 in change. How much money did the store lose?
Last week’s brainteaser:
The Scrabblegram is a form of constrained writing in which you must write a piece of text that uses all 100 tiles in an English Scrabble set, and no other letters. The blank tiles must be used, and as per the rules can be any letter.
This example by David Cohen is considered one of the best examples in the genre:
It is a remarkable piece of text because not only does it make sense and paint an amusing picture, but it also flows beautifully, rhymes and has the correct number of syllables for a limerick. (A billfold is North American for wallet.)
Cohen wrote the above Scrabblegram in 1997. It was the winning entry in a competition organised by GAMES Magazine to tell a story using all the tiles of a Scrabble set. After a hiatus of about 2 decades, Cohen began a few years ago to start writing Scrabblegrams again: he has since written more than 400 including one which puzzle guru Alex Bellos has nominated as the greatest wordplay puzzle of all time.
Take a breath. The clues below are a Scrabblegram. They are quick crossword clues, and come with word lengths (the numbers in brackets.) Your task is to find the answers – which are also a Scrabblegram.
Thanks for reading Dovi’s Digest!