Words of Power's topics - tribe.net

sch....

blackegg — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:22:35 GMT

*schmaltz [Yiddish:reduced fat] = sentimental or florid music or art

*schlock = of low quality

*schlepp = 1. to drag or haul 2. to move slowly or awkwardly (awkwardly, another word spelled like what it is describing.)

*schmiemiel = an unlucky bungler, chump

any others I forgot?

posted in Words of Power - 16 replies

Active Misuse

whimofsteel — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:47:26 GMT

I was reading another blog yesterday, and someone had mistyped 'menorah' into a google image search. What they typed was 'minora' and you can imagine the response, and the reaction from someone expecting pictures of candelabra.

So what funny misuses have you committed/seen/heard about?

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Become a part of "bAbeL - art project"

seipone — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:17:45 GMT

Dear brothers and sisters,

i study art therapy in Germany and work on the arty part of my diploma at the moment - and i invite you to support my work “ babel“!
Babel is about the try to cancel the moment of disintegration, it is about identity, community,structure and the basic needs of human beings and it is about you as well, when you join this project;
Please send me one article of your clothing, which you don`t need
anymore (it doesn`t matter if there is a mark on it, a cut in it, the
zipper is not working anymore etc.) and a word (in your language, a
word, which you like, which you don`t like, which you use often or
never, it can be a name, too) to this adress :

Sandra Becker
Hunscheidtstraße 162
44789 Bochum
Germany

in case you like to send me more material - like little messages,
infomation about you, your life, your country,the article of clothing
( maybe there is a story about it - you never liked to wear it, it was
a gift, you wore it in an important moment) - i will be pleased about
it.
my plan is to put all together in a new way - so that there will be one dress and one poem at the end for one performance/ film/installation, but it is not clear how it will be exactly - at least the most important thing depends on you. maybe the dress and the poem will go on a journey again, maybe they will come back to you, maybe you get a message from them, maybe you won´t see them again, maybe....the ideas become more and more with every package i get from you what ever will happen - i let you know. and be sure; whenever you give something - you get something.
the artwork will be shown at the diploma exhibition of the FH Ottersberg (Germany) on march 21th 2008.
you will find a documentation on my tribe-blog.

i hope that it will be possible to support me,
looking forward to get a message from you,

Become a part of babel !
sandruschka

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Cloaca

blackegg — Fri, 12 May 2006 20:20:50 GMT

it just *sounds* nasty...don't it?

posted in Words of Power - 4 replies

Mutatis mutandis

Jimi — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:53:21 GMT

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
A direct translation from Latin of mutatis mutandis would read, 'with those things having been changed which need to be changed'. More colloquially, it can be interpreted as 'the necessary changes having been made,' where "the necessary changes" are usually implied by a prior statement assumed to be understood by the reader. It carries the connotation that the reader should pay attention to the corresponding differences between the current statement and a previous one, although they are analogous. This term is used frequently in economics and in law, to parameterize a statement with a new term, or note the application of an implied, mutually understood set of changes. The phrase is also used in the study of counter-factuals, wherein the requisite change in the factual basis of the past is made and the resulting causalities are followed.

Examples:

"His cat" and "His dog" should be changed to "Her cat" and "Her dog", mutatis mutandis for pony, sheep and cow. [i.e. "His pony" becomes "Her pony," and so on.]
What we said about oil goes mutatis mutandis for natural gas.
The two parties finally signed the contract mutatis mutandis.
1982 Convention, ARTICLE 111: Section 2. The right of hot pursuit shall apply 'mutatis mutandis' to violations in the exclusive economic zone or on the continental shelf, including safety zones around continental shelf installations, of the laws and regulations of the coastal State applicable in accordance with this Convention to the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf, including such safety zones.
Etymology:

Both "mutatis" and "mutandis" come from the Latin verb "muto" (principle parts muto, mutare, mutatus), meaning "to change." "Mutatis" is the ablative plural neuter perfect participle used as a substantive (this supplies the "things" in the translation--"with those things having been changed which need to be changed."), and "mutandis" is the ablative plural neuter gerundive. The phrase is an ablative absolute construction.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Hiatus

Chris — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:27:19 GMT

This is a great word! The reason I like it is because the word itself contains a phonetic hiatus. I think that's rather fun. Look it up and be amazed.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

GUILTY

Fri, 26 May 2006 10:22:37 GMT

a word that can sometimes make the average person (especially those who have lost everything) feel that there is a small amount of justice in the world.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060525/bs_nm/enron_trial1_dc_4

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Jejune.

blackegg — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:26:02 GMT

I like the sound of this word.
ji-*joon
it means intellectually unchallenging.
though it sounds like an automobile engine turning over.

posted in Words of Power - 2 replies

Scurf

blackegg — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:18:31 GMT

Scurf = a thin layer of scales as in dandruff
also; a scaly deposit or covering.

sounds like what it is.
A good word to know for all us 'flakey' folks.

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

a different word for.....

melanie — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:14:57 GMT

Hi Folks,

I'm new to this tribe. I'm an editor by trade so of course have thoroughly enjoyed browsing the topics here. I'm looking for suggestions for an insult. What is another derisive way of referring to a rich girl? I'm looking for something that could be used by 10 year olds....I'd love to read your suggestions.

Cheers,
Melanie

posted in Words of Power - 2 replies

Off the cob

blackegg — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:28:56 GMT

= corny.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Flappers 2 Rappers

blackegg — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:28:27 GMT

American Youth Slang by Tom Dalzell
a great book to browse....

check out these entries for 'vomit'....

...chunk, spew, yak, barg, throw donuts, technicolor yawn, decorate your shoes, laugh at the carpet, worship the white throne, pray to the porcelain god, drive the porcelain bus, Ralph, Earl, go to Europe with Ralph and Earl in a buick (this one is ACTUALLY in the book!), lose your cookies, blow chunks, and ...my personal favorite.....talk to Ralph on the big white telephone.

ahhh. now doncha just wanna talk to a buick while eating cookies with carpet?

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

dystopia

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:09:41 GMT

dystopia (dis-TOH-pee-uh)
opposite of utopia

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

stoic

acoustichrmny — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 18:36:48 GMT

sto·ic (stō'ĭk)
n.

One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain.

Stoic A member of an originally Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C., believing that God determined everything for the best and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Its later Roman form advocated the calm acceptance of all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will or of the natural order.

adj. also sto·i·cal (-ĭ-kəl)

Seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by pleasure or pain; impassive: “stoic resignation in the face of hunger” (John F. Kennedy).

Stoic Of or relating to the Stoics or their philosophy.
---
i was called this not too long ago for the first time...not sure whether to take it as a compliment or to run for the hills and hide my head in shame.

posted in Words of Power - 3 replies

Please pick a new Moderator.

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:44:02 GMT

Here's a powerful word: Censorship.

Here's another: Constitution.

Here's another: Fascism

I'm out. Tribe Sucks. Any questions see my profile blog. I'll keep my profile for a week while I select new moderators for my tribes, then that'll go as well.

posted in Words of Power - 4 replies

portmanteau

SuccessWarrior — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:26:25 GMT

A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaux) is a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words. It can also be called a frankenword (incidentally, this is another example of a portmanteau).

posted in Words of Power - 3 replies

diaspora

acoustichrmny — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 04:49:15 GMT

http://www.answers.com/diaspora&r=67
---
Di·as·po·ra (dī-ăs'pər-ə)
n.
The dispersion of Jews outside of Israel from the sixth century B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time.

often diaspora
The body of Jews or Jewish communities outside Palestine or modern Israel.

diaspora
A dispersion of a people from their original homeland.
The community formed by such a people: “the glutinous dish known throughout the [West African] diaspora as … fufu” (Jonell Nash).

diaspora
A dispersion of an originally homogeneous entity, such as a language or culture: “the diaspora of English into several mutually incomprehensible languages” (Randolph Quirk).
[Greek diasporā, dispersion, from diaspeirein, to spread about : dia-, apart; see dia– + speirein, to sow, scatter.]

diasporic or diasporal adj.

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

Yes

JeanPowers — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:27:29 GMT

or ok

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

Brevity

lokifreign — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 12:30:43 GMT

I suffer from a lack of it.

posted in Words of Power - 5 replies

doyenne

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 12:04:42 GMT

(doi-EN) nounn

pronunciation: http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/pronounce?id=D0371900&path=prons/D0371800.wav

A women who is the eldest or senior member of a group or profession.

[From Late Latin decanus (chief of ten), via Old French deien and Middle French doyenne. Her male counterpart is a doyen.]

Another word derived from decanus is dean, which originally referred to a chief of ten men, then leader of ten monks and, finally, to the administrative head of a cathedral or college. A few other non-obvious ten-based words are decussate, intersected or crossed to form an X; dicker, probably from Latin decuria, parcel of ten, with reference to the bundle of ten animal hides Caesar's legions used as a unit of trade; decimate; decibel; and the names of currencies used in various countries, including the qindarka (Albania), stotinka (Bulgaria), and dinar (various Eastern European and Mid-Eastern countries).

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

prior

acoustichrmny — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:00:02 GMT

pri·or1 (prī'ər)
adj.
Preceding in time or order: “[They] insist that foreign vessels seeking access obtain prior approval” (Seymour M. Hersh).
Preceding in importance or value: a prior consideration.
[Latin. See prior2.]

pri'or·ly adv.
pri·or2 (prī'ər)
n.
A monastic officer in charge of a priory or ranking next below the abbot of an abbey.
One of the ruling magistrates of the medieval Italian republic of Florence.
[Middle English priour, from Old English and Old French prior, both from Medieval Latin, from Latin, superior.]

pri'or·ate (-ĭt) or pri'or·ship' (-shĭp') n.

Thesaurus
prior

adjective

Going before: advance, antecedent, anterior, earlier, precedent, preceding, previous. See precede/follow.
Just gone by or elapsed: antecedent, anterior, earlier, foregoing, former, past, precedent, preceding, previous. See time.

Legal Dictionary
pri·or (`prī-ər)
adj.

Earlier in time or order
Taking precedence (as in importance) (a prior lien)

WordNet
The noun prior has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the head of a religious order; in an abbey the prior is next below the abbot
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The adjective prior has one meaning:

Meaning #1: earlier in time
Synonym: anterior
---
Translations
Translations for: Prior
Nederlands (Dutch)
voorafgaand, vorig, hoofd van mannenklooster, oudste

Français (French)
prieur, précédent

Deutsch (German)
adj. - früher, vordringlich
n. - vordringliche Kriminalverurteilung
n. - Prior

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. (θρησκ.) ηγούμενος (μονής), (πληθ.) (ΗΠΑ, καθομ.) προηγούμενες συλλήψεις ή καταδίκες adj. πρότερος, προηγούμενος, προγενέστερος

Italiano (Italian)
priore, anteriore

Português (Portuguese)
n. - prior (m) (Ecles.)
adj. - prévio

Русский (Russian)
первичный, предварительный, настоятель

Español (Spanish)
adj. - previo, anterior
n. - encarcelamiento previo
n. - prior

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - prior
adj. - tidigare, föregående, förhands-, äldre

中国话 (Simplified Chinese)
adj. - 在先的, 在前的, 优先的, 更重要的, 居先的
n. - 小修道院院长, 大修道院副院长

中國話 (Traditional Chinese)
n. - 小修道院院長, 大修道院副院長
adj. - 在先的, 在前的, 優先的, 更重要的, 居先的

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 前の, 先の, より重要な, 優先する
n. - 小修道院長, 大修道院次長

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) رئيس دير للرهبان, سابق, قبل (صفه) أولي, مسبق‏

עברית‬ (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮קודם בזמן, בסדר או בחשיבות, קודם, לפני‬
n. - ‮הרשעה קודמת‬
n. - ‮ראש מנזר, ראש מסדר דתי‬

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

muliebrity

weezy — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:13:59 GMT

muliebrity (myoo-lee-EB-ri-tee) noun

Womanly qualities; womanhood; femininity.

[From Latin muliebritas (womanhood), from muliebris (womanly), from mulier (woman).]

Virility is the masculine equivalent of the term.

posted in Words of Power - 2 replies

octothorpe

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 11:49:50 GMT

(OK-tuh-thorp) noun

The symbol #.

I always called it the pound sign. I knew that the Ampersand was the & symbol, but I never knew that the # had a name. Okay, okay, I'm a little out of control with fascination at this remarkable turn of events, but come on, did any of you know that it had a name?

And, here is its name-creation story: In the early 1960s, Bell Labs introduced two special keys in its innovative touch-tone telephone keypads, "#" and "*", for which it needed fresh names. Having eight points, "octo-" was an obvious first element. Since the engineer involved in introducing this innovation was active in a group seeking the return of Jim Thorpe's medals from Sweden, he whimsically added "-thorpe", creating octothorpe. (Jim Thorpe was disqualified because of his professional status, but his medals were restored posthumously.) The "#" is also known as a pound sign, crosshatch, number sign, sharp, hash, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, gate, hak, oof, rake, fence, gate, grid, gridlet, square, and widget mark.]

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

megillah

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:13:10 GMT

\muh-GHIH-luh\ noun

slang : a long involved story or account

Pronunciation: http://www.startsampling.com/sm/wod/images/webster_sound2.gif

If you've noticed, most blogs are excuses for people to write megillah's that no one they know wants to hear in conversation.

Origin:

Although "megillah" is a slang word in English, it has perfectly respectable Hebrew origins. "Megillah" derives from the Yiddish "megile," which itself comes from the Hebrew word "mĕgillāh," meaning "scroll" or "volume." ("Mĕgillāh" is especially likely to be used in reference to the Book of Esther, which is read aloud at Purim celebrations.) It makes sense, then, that when "megillah" first appeared in English in the mid-20th century, it referred to a story that was so long (and often also tedious or complicated) that it was reminiscent of the length of the mĕgillāh scrolls. The Hebrew word is serious, but the Yiddish "megile" can be somewhat playful, and our "megillah" has also inherited that lightheartedness.

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

as

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:18:39 GMT

ADVERB:

To the same extent or degree; equally: The child sang as sweetly as a nightingale.
For instance: large carnivores, as the bear or lion.
When taken into consideration in a specified relation or form: this definition as distinguished from the second one.
CONJUNCTION:

To the same degree or quantity that. Often used as a correlative after so or as: You are as sweet as sugar. The situation is not so bad as you suggest.
In the same manner or way that: Think as I think.
At the same time that; while: slipped on the ice as I ran home.
For the reason that; because: went to bed early, as I was exhausted.
With the result that: He was so foolish as to lie.
Though: Great as the author was, he proved a bad model. Ridiculous as it seems, the tale is true.
In accordance with which or with the way in which: The hotel is quite comfortable as such establishments go. The sun is hot, as everyone knows.
Informal That: I don't know as I can answer your question.
PRONOUN:

That; which; who. Used after same or such: I received the same grade as you did.
Chiefly Upper Southern U.S. Who, whom, which, or that: Those as want to can come with me.
PREPOSITION:

In the role, capacity, or function of: acting as a mediator.
In a manner similar to; the same as: On this issue they thought as one.

IDIOMS:
as is Informal
Just the way it is, with no changes or modifications: bought the samovar as is from an antique dealer.
as it were
In a manner of speaking; as if such were so.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English ealsw ; see also
Usage Note:
A traditional usage rule draws a distinction between comparisons using as . . . as and comparisons using so . . . as. The rule states the so . . . as construction is required in negative sentences (as in Shakespeare's "'tis not so deep as a well"), in questions (as in Is it so bad as she says?), and in certain if- clauses (as in If it is so bad as you say, you ought to leave). But this so . . . as construction is becoming increasingly rare in American English, and the use of as . . . as is now entirely acceptable in all contexts.·In a comparison involving both as . . . as and than, the second as should be retained in written style. One writes He is as smart as, or smarter than, his brother, not He is as smart or smarter than his brother, which is considered unacceptable in formal style.·In many dialects, people use as in place of that in sentences like We are not sure as we want to go or It's not certain as he left. This construction is not sufficiently well established to be used in writing.·As should be preceded by a comma when it expresses a causal relation, as in She won't be coming, as we didn't invite her. When as expresses a time relation, it is not preceded by a comma: She was finishing the painting as I walked into the room. When beginning a sentence with a clause that starts with as, one should take care that it is clear whether as is used to mean "because" or "at the same time that." The sentence As they were leaving, I walked to the door may mean either "I walked to the door because they were leaving" or "I walked to the door at the same time that they were leaving."·As is sometimes used superfluously to introduce the complements of verbs like consider, deem, and account, as in They considered it as one of the landmark decisions of the civil rights movement. The measure was deemed as unnecessary. This usage may have arisen by analogy to regard and esteem, with which as is standardly used in this way: We regarded her as the best writer among us. But the use of as with verbs like consider is not sufficiently well established to be acceptable in writing. See Usage Notes at because, equal, like 2, so 1, than.
Regional Note:
American dialects often vary from Standard English in the form and usage of relative pronouns. Where Standard English has three relative pronounswho, which, and thatregional dialects, particularly those of the South and Midlands, allow as and what as relative pronouns: "Them as thinks they can whup me jest come ahead" (Publication of the American Dialect Society). The car what hit him never stopped.

posted in Words of Power - 3 replies

casus belli

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 12:44:37 GMT

I am practically obsessed with the events in Iraq. I don't think we out to be there because the casus belli was institutionally deceptive at the best and criminal at the worst.

(KAY-suhs BEL-y, BEL-ee) noun, plural casus belli

An action or event that causes or is used to justify starting a war.

[From New Latin casus belli, from Latin casus, occasion, belli, genitive of bellum, war.]

posted in Words of Power - 2 replies

just

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:30:00 GMT

ADJECTIVE:

Honorable and fair in one's dealings and actions: a just ruler. See Synonyms at fair 1.
Consistent with what is morally right; righteous: a just cause.
Properly due or merited: just deserts.
Law Valid within the law; lawful: just claims.
Suitable or proper in nature; fitting: a just touch of solemnity.
Based on fact or sound reason; well-founded: a just appraisal.
ADVERB:
(jst, jst; jst when stressed)
Precisely; exactly: just enough salt.
Only a moment ago: He just arrived.
By a narrow margin; barely: just missed being hit; just caught the bus before it pulled away.
At a little distance: just down the road.
Merely; only: just a scratch.
Simply; certainly: It's just beautiful!
Perhaps; possibly: I just may go.

IDIOMS:
just about
Almost; very nearly: This job is just about done.
just now
Only a moment ago.
just the same
Nevertheless.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English juste, from Old French, from Latin istus; see yewes- in Indo-European roots

OTHER FORMS:
justly (Adverb), justness (Noun)

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

and

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:27:57 GMT

CONJUNCTION:

Together with or along with; in addition to; as well as. Used to connect words, phrases, or clauses that have the same grammatical function in a construction.
Added to; plus: Two and two makes four.
Used to indicate result: Give the boy a chance, and he might surprise you.
Informal To. Used between finite verbs, such as go, come, try, write, or see: try and find it; come and see. See Usage Note at try.
Archaic If: and it pleases you.

IDIOMS:
and so forth /on
And other unspecified things of the same class: bought groceries, went to the bank, picked up the dry cleaning, and so forth.
Further in the same manner.
and then some Informal
With considerably more in addition: This project will take all our skill and then some.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English; see en in Indo-European roots
Usage Note:
It is frequently asserted that sentences beginning with and or but express "incomplete thoughts" and are therefore incorrect. But this rule has been ridiculed by grammarians for decades, and the stricture has been ignored by writers from Shakespeare to Joyce Carol Oates. When asked whether they paid attention to the rule in their own writing, 24 percent of the Usage Panel answered "always or usually," 36 percent answered "sometimes," and 40 percent answered "rarely or never." See Usage Notes at both, but, with.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

the

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:26:47 GMT

DEFINITE ARTICLE:

Used before singular or plural nouns and noun phrases that denote particular, specified persons or things: the baby; the dress I wore.
Used before a noun, and generally stressed, to emphasize one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent: considered Lake Shore Drive to be the neighborhood to live in these days.
Used to indicate uniqueness: the Prince of Wales; the moon.
Used before nouns that designate natural phenomena or points of the compass: the weather; a wind from the south.
Used as the equivalent of a possessive adjective before names of some parts of the body: grab him by the neck; an infection of the hand.
Used before a noun specifying a field of endeavor: the law; the film industry; the stage.
Used before a proper name, as of a monument or ship: the Alamo; the Titanic.
Used before the plural form of a numeral denoting a specific decade of a century or of a life span: rural life in the Thirties.
Used before a singular noun indicating that the noun is generic: The wolf is an endangered species.

Used before an adjective extending it to signify a class and giving it the function of a noun: the rich; the dead; the homeless.
Used before an absolute adjective: the best we can offer.
Used before a present participle, signifying the action in the abstract: the weaving of rugs.
Used before a noun with the force of per: cherries at $1.50 the box.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English the, alteration (influenced by th-, oblique case stem of demonstrative pron.), of se, masculine demonstrative pron.; see so- in Indo-European roots

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

so

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:15:53 GMT

ADVERB:

In the condition or manner expressed or indicated; thus: Hold the brush so.
To the amount or degree expressed or understood; to such an extent: She was so weary that she fell.
To a great extent; to such an evident degree: But the idea is so obvious.
Because of the reason given; consequently: She was weary and so fell.
Afterward; then: to the gas station and so home.
In the same way; likewise: You were on time and so was I.
Apparently; well, then. Used in expressing astonishment, disapproval, or sarcasm: So you think you've got troubles?
In truth; indeed: "You aren't right." "I am so!"
ADJECTIVE:

True; factual: I wouldn't have told you this if it weren't so.
In good order: Everything on his desk must be exactly so.
CONJUNCTION:
Usage Problem
With the result or consequence that: He failed to appear, so we went on without him.
In order that: I stayed so I could see you.
PRONOUN:

Such as has already been suggested or specified; the same: She became a loyal friend and remained so.
INTERJECTION:

Used to express surprise or comprehension: So! You've finished your work at last.

IDIOMS:
so as to
In order to: Mail your package early so as to ensure its timely arrival.
so that
In order that: I stopped so that you could catch up.
With the result or consequence that.
so what
Used to express contempt or lack of interest.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English sw; see swo- in Indo-European roots
Usage Note:
Many critics and grammarians have insisted that so must be followed by that in formal writing when used to introduce a clause giving the reason for or purpose of an action: He stayed so that he could see the second feature. But since many respected writers use so for so that in formal writing, it seems best to consider the issue one of stylistic preference: The store stays open late so (or so that) people who work all day can buy groceries.·Both so and so that are acceptably used to introduce clauses that state a result or consequence: The Bay Bridge was still closed, so (or so that) the drive from San Francisco to the Berkeley campus took an hour and a half.·So is frequently used in informal speech to string together the elements of a narrative. In most cases, this practice should not be carried over into formal writing, where readers need connections to be made more explicit.·Critics have sometimes objected to the use of so as an intensive meaning "to a great degree or extent," as in We were so relieved to learn that the deadline had been extended. This usage is most common in informal contexts, perhaps because, unlike the neutral very, it presumes that the listener or reader will be sympathetic to the speaker's evaluation of the situation. Thus one would be more apt to say It was so unfair of them not to invite you than to say It was so fortunate that I didn't have to put up with your company. For just this reason, the construction may occasionally be used to good effect in more formal contexts to invite the reader to take the point of view of the speaker or subject: The request seemed to her to be quite reasonable; it was so unfair of the manager to refuse. See Usage Note at as 1.
Regional Note:
New England speakers often use a negative form such as so didn't where other varieties would use the positive so did, as in Sophie ate all her strawberries and so didn't Amelia. Since this usage may confuse a speaker who has not previously encountered it, it is best avoided in writing.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

if

JeanPowers — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:14:04 GMT

CONJUNCTION:

In the event that: If I were to go, I would be late.
Granting that: If that is true, what should we do?
On the condition that: She will play the piano only if she is paid.
Although possibly; even though: It is a handsome if useless trinket.
Whether: Ask if he plans to come to the meeting.
Used to introduce an exclamatory clause, indicating a wish: If they had only come earlier!
NOUN:

A possibility, condition, or stipulation: There will be no ifs, ands, or buts in this matter.

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ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English, from Old English gif; see i- in Indo-European roots
Usage Note:
In informal writing both if and whether are standard in their use to introduce a clause indicating uncertainty after a verb such as ask, doubt, know, learn, or see: We shall soon learn whether (or if) it is true. In such contexts, however, the use of if can sometimes create ambiguities. Depending on the intended meaning, the sentence Let her know if she is invited might be better paraphrased as Let her know whether she is invited or If she is invited, let her know.·In conditional sentences the clause introduced by if may contain either a past subjunctive verb (if I were going) or an indicative verb (if I am going; if I was going), depending on the intended meaning. According to the traditional rule, the subjunctive should be used to describe an occurrence that is presupposed to be contrary to fact, as in if I were ten years younger or if Napoleon had won at Waterloo. The main verb of such a sentence must then contain the modal verb would or (less frequently) should: If America were still a British colony, we would have an anthem that human voices could sing. If I were the President, I should (or would) declare November 1 a national holiday. When the situation described by the if clause is not presupposed to be false, however, that clause must contain an indicative verb, and the choice of verb in the main clause will depend on the intended meaning: If Hamlet was really written by Marlowe, as many have argued, then we have underestimated Marlowe's genius. If Kevin was out all day, then it makes sense that he couldn't answer the phone. Note also that the presence of the modal verb would in the main clause should not be taken as a sign that the verb in the if clause must be in the subjunctive, if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false: If there is anything I can do to help, I should be happy to do so. He would always call her from the office if he was (not were) going to be late for dinner.·Again according to the traditional rule, the subjunctive is not correctly used following verbs such as ask or wonder in if clauses that express indirect questions, even if the content of the question is presumed to be contrary to fact: We wondered if dinner was (not were) included in the room price. Some of the people we met even asked us if California was (not were) an island.·With all deference to the traditional rules governing the use of the subjunctive, it should be noted that a survey of the prose of reputable writers over the past 200 years would reveal a persistent tendency to use the indicative was where the traditional rule would require the subjunctive were. A sentence beginning If I was the only boy in the world, while not strictly correct, is wholly unremarkable. But the corresponding practice of using the subjunctive in place of the indicative may be labeled a hypercorrection.·In spoken English there is a growing tendency to use would have in place of the subjunctive in contrary-to-fact clauses, as in if I would have been the President, but this usage is still widely considered incorrect. See Usage Notes at doubt, should, wish.

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

facinorous

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 12:18:55 GMT

Oh, I'm in a mood today . . . I think first on the agenda is to set bags of flour precariously above my neighbor's doors and watch from a distance. Then I'm going to spread poison on the lawns in a suburb to spell out anti-war messages in a dead grass medium.

(fuh-SIN-uhr-uhs) adjective

Extremely wicked.

[From Latin facinorous, from facinus (bad deed), from facere (to do or make).]

BTW . . . I'm very saponaceous, so don't worry about me getting caught.

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

dasypygal

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:31:02 GMT

(da-si-PYE-gul) adjective

Having hairy buttocks.

Okay, I can't resist the nightmare . . . in which I imagine that the "Belly" (his true name now) is also dasypygal.

EWWWW!!!

[From Greek dasy- (hairy, dense) + pyge (buttocks).]

A related word is dasymeter, an instrument for measuring the..., no, not that, rather the density of gases. Another related word is callipygian, having a beautiful behind.

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

Ventripotent

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:33:18 GMT

ventripotent (ven-TRI-pot-ehnt) adjective

Having a large belly; gluttonous.

True story . . . a fellow at a sci-fi convention I attended recently was so ventripotent that his belly hung out below his shirt, between his knees. Despite the size of his baggy shirt, he couldn't keep that pink bubble from peeking through.

I still have nightmares.

(origin - [From French, from Latin ventri- (abdomen) + potent (powerful).]

The word ventriloquism, the art of speaking such that the voice seems to come from somewhere else, is derived from the same root.
Ventriloquism is, literally speaking, speaking from the belly.)

posted in Words of Power - 5 replies

Just because you're paranoid...

popefauvexxiii — Mon, 30 May 2005 11:21:38 GMT

independent cinema at its best:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pell/video/DCMC_final_lg.html

words dont get much more powerful than when they are beamed directly into your head...

posted in Words of Power - 0 replies

Symbiotic Concupiscence

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 08:44:00 GMT

symbiotic adj. < "simbI'âtik > : 1. living together but not necessarily in a relationship beneficial to each.

concupiscence n. < kân'kyüpis&ns > : 1. Sexual lust; carnal passion. [ETYM: French, from Latin concupiscentia.]

I just love the effect that it has on Lara Flynn Boyle's character in "Threesome."

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concuspience
Threesome: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111418/
Associated: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gbase/Calendar/Film?Film=oid%3A138634

posted in Words of Power - 6 replies

sansculotte

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:00:33 GMT

sansculotte \sanz-koo-LAHT\ noun

1 : an extreme radical republican in France at the time of the Revolution
*2 : a radical or violent extremist in politics

Combined with this from the Quote Collector's Tribe, courtesy of Patrick:

George Orwell:
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Fighting for the truth, despite the crushing opposition of the government, despite the threats from the police--protectors of the rights of the wealthy--of arrest is a noble pursuit in keeping with the foundations of the beginning of our Republic. Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X are all sansculotte brothers of today's revolutionaries.

posted in Words of Power - 6 replies

usufruct

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 05:56:51 GMT

usufruct \YOO-zuh-frukt\ noun

*1 : the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another
2 : the right to use or enjoy something

When they sold the land, the Arnolds retained the usufruct to pick the apples in the orchards they had planted.

posted in Words of Power - 5 replies

luftmensch

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 15:36:59 GMT

LOOFT-mensh ("OO" as in "foot")\ noun

: an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income

An adaptation of the Yiddish "luftmentsh," which breaks down into "luft" (a Germanic root that can be tied linguistically to the English words "loft" and "lofty"), meaning "air," plus "mentsh," meaning "human being." "Luftmensch" was first introduced to English prose in 1907, when Israel Zangwill wrote "The word 'Luftmensch' flew into Barstein's mind. Nehemiah was not an earth-man .... He was an air-man, floating on facile wings."

My first sentence:

Here is a guy whose very life aspires to luftmensch. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/01/kid_lives_at_24hour_.html

posted in Words of Power - 1 reply

The Poet and the Murder

JeanPowers — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 19:13:56 GMT

Just finished reading this. Since we were talking about "words" - their usage in phrase or speech gait what of the ability to mimic that art not only in beat but also in the physics of writing?

The Poet and the Murder is a true story of literary crime and the art of forgery (by Simon Worrall)

SIMON WORRALL, AUTHOR, "THE POET AND THE MURDERER": It`s about a forged Emily Dickinson poem that was bought by the Jones Library in Amherst. They believed it was a genuine poem. It was spotted by the curator of special collections at the Jones Library in April, 1997, in a Sotheby`s catalog.

It was advertised as a genuine Emily Dickinson poem. It was a 15-line poem, and the first unpublished Emily Dickinson poem in 40 years, which was quite an event. Her manuscripts are very rare and very valuable, and there hadn`t been a new poem on the market for some 40 years.

LAMB: So we`re in Amherst at the moment.

WORRALL: Yeah, the story...

LAMB: The Jones Library.

WORRALL: That`s right. The story starts in Amherst, which, of course, it should be noted is Emily Dickinson birthplace. So the discovery of this brand-new poem which was up for sale at Sotheby`s, at the June, 1997, auction was a big event for Amherst, and above all, for the curator of special collections there.

It has -- the desire to buy it was motivated not just by wanting to add to the collection that they have of manuscripts, including Dickinson manuscripts. Robert Frost, of course, lived in Amherst. They have a number of those. It was also motivated by a desire to bring this poem home, if you like.

And Daniel Lombardo (ph), who was the curator, who organized a fund-raising drive to raise the money -- the Jones Library is not a very wealthy library compared with Harvard or Yale, some of the big privately endowed libraries. And it was a battle for this little town library -- it`s actually the local library in Amherst. It`s not the Amherst College library, it`s actually the town`s public library. But it has this special collections section where they have a pretty good collection of original manuscripts related to writers connected with Amherst.

So for him, it was an exciting moment. It was the chance to bring this wonderful new Emily Dickinson poem home to Amherst.

LAMB: On the back of your book, you have a picture of Emily Dickinson.

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: Why -- why is her poetry so valuable?

WORRALL: She`s a great poet, and her reputation, I think it`s fair to say, has risen progressively since her death in 1880. She was regarded for a long time as just being too difficult and eccentric in terms of the way that she wrote. It`s a very modern, expressionist, sort of idiosyncratic way of writing, much more like e.e. cummings than 19th century poets. And for a long time, I think the public just had a lot of trouble with these short, very complex poems that she wrote.

Starting in, I guess, the 1920s and progressively through the `50s -- a big edition came out -- the `40s and `50s -- her reputation began to soar. And really, in the last 25 years, above all, her reputation has really soared, and she`s now regarded -- I think it`s Harold Bloom (ph), the literary critic, that has said that, in his opinion, she`s one of the two great American -- greatest American poets. And I`ll let you guess who the other one is.

LAMB: Who?

WORRALL: Walt Whitman.

So she`s overtaken, if you like, a lot of other candidates or potential candidates for being now regarded as one of the two great American poets.

LAMB: And you went to her home there in Amherst?

WORRALL: Yes, that`s right. The Homestead, it`s called, which has been preserved as a museum and renovated. They`ve now renovated the house next door, The Evergreens, where her brother and sister-in-law lived. It was an extraordinary world that she inhabited. She was a very reclusive person. She lived at home in The Homestead, which was a large -- one of the larger houses. It was a very well-to-do family, the Dickinson family, one of the best families in Amherst, old New England Yankee family.

Emily ended up staying at home really all of her life, except for a couple of short visits. And indeed, for the last some 25, 30 years of her life, she never left the grounds of the house. And she lived there and worked there, wrote her poetry in her bedroom upstairs.

And for anybody who hasn`t been there, it`s really well worth going. It`s a bit like -- you know, I think all writers` houses are interesting, and there`s certainly -- when you go up the stairs and you go into the bedroom, you can see the bed that she slept in all of those years and the table by the window, where she wrote these extraordinary poems, none of which, of course, were published.

I mean, she was a -- she left a great riddle and a great mystery to the world when she died. She was herself a great riddle and a great mystery in her life because she was so rarely seen. You know, she dressed in white frequently. She was rarely glimpsed. She almost never went into the town. She was a recluse. Howard Hughes is the wrong comparison, but she was as reclusive as Howard Hughes, certainly.

LAMB: How long did she live? And when did she die?

WORRALL: She was born in 1830 and died in 1883, I think it is. Sorry if I get the date wrong. But she -- she died in her late 40s of complications with her kidneys.

LAMB: And what impact did it have on her life and her poetry and her image that she never married?

WORRALL: Well, that`s an interesting question. I`ve not thought about that. I think in her life, it had none at all because she wasn`t known as a poet except to a very small collection of friends and supporters. She had a number of friends who were editors of literary journals or newspapers, and they knew of her work, but she didn`t get it published. It was really just -- it was 10 years ahead of the times. Her poems were so modern in their sound and so unlike the kind of poetry that was being written during her lifetime that she didn`t find an audience at that time. So she was really -- except for a small number of people, she was entirely unknown to the public.

That changed soon after her death. But her reputation -- it took quite a long time for it to really become established and for the facts about her life to become clear. And they never have, actually, because she left so little evidence of who she was, apart from these extraordinary poems that were found in a locked box. You know, this was a secret activity for her. The writing of poetry was her private confessional, if you like. It`s where she wrote down all of the things that moved her and she cared about most.

LAMB: How many poems did she write?

WORRALL: She wrote -- I think the number is 1,789, something like that...

LAMB: One thousand, seven hundred...

WORRALL: Seven hundred and eighty-nine, yeah. I think 700 were found in this locked box, and then another 1,089 were found elsewhere. Some of them had been sent to friends in letters or just as gifts. She wrote poems, you know, for -- after somebody had died, she sent a consoling note and often a little poem. And none of them had titles. None of them had dates. And only 10 of them had been published in her lifetime, and those against her will.

So when she died, the world -- her family, initially, and then the world discovered this really -- it`s one of the great literary riddles of the world, actually, is "When were these poems written, and to whom were they written?" because as I say in the book, if you look at a writer like William Wordsworth in England, because he was published and the poems appeared at specific dates and had titles and were written about in -- in reviews, you can establish a chronology of the writer`s life. You know when William Wordsworth wrote lines written about Tintern Abbey. You know how old he was, what he -- what was going on in his life, why he wrote the poem. None of this is known about Emily Dickinson.

LAMB: On page 4 of your book -- "That God cannot be understood everyone agrees. We do not know his motives nor comprehend his deeds. Then why should I seek solace in what I cannot know? Better to play in winter sun than to fear the snow."

What`s that?

WORRALL: That is the forgery. That is a poem that was forged by Mark Hoffmann, an extraordinarily gifted forger, also a double murderer, and hence the title of the book, "The Poet and the Murderer." And that was the poem that was -- that appeared in the Sotheby`s catalog in April, 1997. And it was seen by the curator of the Jones Library. It`s a 15-line poem.

The date that the forger, Mark Hoffmann, ascribed to it is 1871, which is important because Emily Dickinson was, what, 41 at that time, and she was writing these kinds of poems. Her great years as an artist, her most prolific years and the years in which she wrote her greatest poetry for which she`s remembered were the sort of late 1850s, early `60s, 1862 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) This is a little bit after that. Her talent started to cool a little bit, her production started to lessen, as well, and she did less revision of her poems. And she wrote these kind of little homily pieces, which this is.

It`s not -- when the experts looked at it, when Daniel Lombardo looked at it and then asked Ralph Franklin (ph) at Yale University to have a look at it, as Daniel Lombardo was thinking of buying the poem, he wanted an outside opinion, and he took it to somebody called Ralph Franklin, who was the head of the Beinecke Library in Yale, at Yale University. And Franklin is the world`s acknowledged expert on Dickinson`s manuscripts, her handwriting, the whole publication history -- the history of her "workshop," as it`s called.

And Franklin looked at the poem, and both he and Lombardo felt it wasn`t a great poem. You know, I think the best comment I heard was if this was Emily, it was Emily on a bad day. But she did write other poems around this time and later that were not -- you know, they were little homilies, her so-called "wisdom" pieces. And that led them to think, well, OK, the -- in terms of the content, it could be an Emily Dickinson poem.

LAMB: So far, we have Amherst, Massachusetts, the Jones Library -- is it a private library, or is it a local public library?

WORRALL: It`s a public library funded partly -- well, partly by the town of Amherst and partly by donation for the special collection.

LAMB: We got Ralph Franklin, who is with the Beinecke Library, rare books and all that, at Yale.

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: Then how does both Salt Lake City and Las Vegas come into this?

WORRALL: Right. Well, perhaps I should go back to the beginning of the story, how I got to find out about it. I read a little article in "The New York Times" that said this poem had been found and it was the first unpublished Emily Dickinson for 40 years. It was going on sale. And it was a half a page article. It talked about Dickinson, her reputation, some of those things we`ve been talking about. But I didn`t really think twice about it. I happened to read it. Six months later, I read a very small piece in "The New York Times" that said the unpublished Emily Dickinson poem recently purchased by the Jones Library in Amherst for $21,000 has been returned to Sotheby`s as a forgery.

LAMB: So go back to that for a second. "The New York Times" had bought off on the idea that this was a real poem.

WORRALL: Everybody had.

LAMB: So they did a big article. And Sotheby`s was involved selling it, a New York-based sale that they were going to have.

WORRALL: Yeah.

LAMB: And so up till that point, everybody thought this was the real thing, and you friend, Dan Lombardo, who...

WORRALL: Yes.

LAMB: ... runs the Jones Library, was going to buy this thing.

WORRALL: Absolutely. And the -- probably the -- the main reason that he was satisfied -- he did, you know, his own so-called "due diligence." He looked at the poem. He looked at other poems the Jones Library had -- genuine Emily Dickinson poems. One I think we`ve got on the table called "A Little Madness in Spring," which comes from the same date.

LAMB: This is actually a photocopy of...

WORRALL: A genuine...

LAMB: ... an Emily Dickinson writing and poem.

WORRALL: Famous poem of hers that the Jones Library owned from much the same date. And the first thing that Dan Lombardo did was to compare the letter forms, the writing, the handwriting of the poem "That God cannot be understood" with this poem. And Ralph Franklin did so also. And I think it`s safe to say that Lombardo decided to buy the poem because Ralph Franklin, the great expert -- if anybody in America, if anybody in the world would know what is a genuine Emily Dickinson poem, based above all on the handwriting -- the content was good enough. Wasn`t great, but it could be Emily Dickinson. Above all, it was the -- it was the handwriting. And Franklin at Yale University took the poem that turned out to be a forgery, and he has charts of letter forms. Emily Dickinson`s handwriting -- this is one of the interesting kind of puzzles in the whole story -- changed enormously during her lifetime. Indeed, if you compare manuscripts from when she was in her 20s to manuscripts at the end of her life, you would barely believe that the same person had written these poems. And very cleverly, the forger -- in a sense, it shows the greatness of the forgery. He`d chosen a time, 1871, where her handwriting was particularly complicated. Ralph Franklin has described it as her handwriting was "coming apart." She was writing -- she had trouble with her eyesight at that time, and she had hypertension. And that may have affected how she wrote. And you`ll find different letter forms that she used, for instance, a letter "E," small "E," which she used before 1871, and then afterwards -- she used a different form after 1871. There`s one small "E" looks like a normal "E," and then there`s another "E" that looks like a "3" turned backwards. It doesn`t look like what you and I would call a small "E" at all. Both of these letter "E`s" occurred in this poem.

So when Franklin went to look at his charts with all of the letters, he was finding, "Well, golly," you know, "here`s this letter `E,` here`s that form." There were two forms of the letter "D." Everything checked out. Everything. The letter "T" was right, the way she wrote her "H" was right. Not just generally right, but minutely and specifically right for 1871. So when he looked at this, he thought, "God damn it," you know, "this has to be genuine" -- Franklin I`m imagining talking now. "This has to be genuine" because, as he felt, nobody in the world could possibly know these details about her handwriting except him, actually.

LAMB: The book, "The Poet and the Murderer," the poet is Emily Dickinson, the murderer is Mark Hoffmann. Where is he today?

WORRALL: He`s in a medium-security prison in Draper, Utah.

Mark Hoffmann was a Mormon, brought up in Salt Lake City, very bright, very gifted young man. As a teenager, was interested in chemistry and history, science. He went to Logan State University, studied biology, was very interested in science, chess, very rational mind, inquiring mind. But he was brought up in a very strict Mormon environment, and he became disgruntled with the Mormon church. He had a lot of questions about what he regarded were problem areas of Mormon doctrine and theology. To put it bluntly, he simply didn`t believe many of the founding legends of the Mormon religion.

And he was also very troubled by a family secret that there was. His grandmother had been married in a polygamous marriage after the time that polygamy had been banned. And it was a sort of a family taboo to talk about it, and he became obsessed by this -- his own story, the story of his own family. He wanted to find out what was the truth about his grandmother`s marriage. And nobody wanted to talk about it. His family refused to talk about it. The community at large refused to discuss it because, of course, polygamy has been a very problematic institution legacy for the Mormon church.

And I think that this inquiring young mind that had a lot of questions, like all teenagers -- you know, I have a teenage son, and full of questions. And the most important thing with teenagers, I think, is to keep a dialogue open, and there wasn`t one. Really, he was told, you know, "Shut up and believe," to paraphrase it slightly crudely. And I think that generated a great deal of resentment in him, and he became a twisted person inside. I think he also became a person who was forced to become one thing on the outside while he was actually another thing on the inside.

And he began to forge Mormon documents, which at first -- he was a brilliant con man and a master of human psychology, one of the great criminal minds, actually, I think, of the 20th century. He knew what people wanted. It was as though he could look inside your heart and tell what it was that you cared about most, certainly in terms of manuscript collecting. He knew what people wanted, and he created documents that would answer that -- that need.

LAMB: You say in the book, or you quote somebody in the book as saying that he forged 1,000 documents.

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: And sold them.

WORRALL: That`s right. He -- as far as we know, because the full tally isn`t -- isn`t in, but as far as we know, it`s about 1,000 documents.

LAMB: How old is he today?

WORRALL: He is in his late 40s.

LAMB: And he`s in prison.

WORRALL: Yeah. He was sentenced to prison in 1986 for murder. He eventually -- his career as a forger -- he -- he created these 1,000 documents. Initially, they were, above all, Mormon documents. And what he did was diabolically cunning. He initially created documents that appeared to authenticate some of the central tenets of the Mormon religion.

Mormonism, as you probably know, has had a bit of a problem because it has not had historical proof of some of its founding legends and myths, which is unusual for such a young religion. I mean, it`s normal that things from the Christian -- early Christian era have disappeared, but Mormonism dates back to the 19th century, but we don`t really have any had facts and documents to prove its founding legends. And there was always a worry within the Mormon hierarchy that this was the case. And there was a great hunger for what they called "faith-promoting documents," documentation that could prove that what was said in the Book of Mormon was true.

And Hoffmann knew the culture, grew up in it. He began to create documents that appeared to support central parts of the Mormon legend. To give you an example, he -- he forged what would have been the first Mormon artifact, a letter from the prophet Joseph Smith`s mother. He forged the last, which was a letter from Joseph Smith written in prison. These are -- for the Mormon church, these are huge, huge documents, you know. And he forged something called the "Anton (ph) transcript."

It`s too complicated to get into, but for the Mormon church, these were extraordinary. It would be a bit like finding a new letter by Saint Paul -- and I don`t exaggerate here -- you know, for the Christian religion.

And he sold these to the Mormon church and thereby won their confidence. He was also himself a well-respected dealer of historical documents in Salt Lake City, genuine historical documents, which he used then as a front. And he enmeshed the Mormon church and its hierarchy -- and it`s worth noting here that the president of the Mormon church, Gordon B. Hinckley, who was involved with many of these transactions, has a figure in the Mormon religion a bit like the pope in Roman Catholicism. Hoffmann was eventually dealing on one-on-one terms with Gordon Hinckley, who thought, of course, that he was buying genuine documents.

LAMB: You say that the Mormon church has 12 million people in it worldwide?

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: Go back to, again, the date thing. He`s been in prison, you say, since 1986.

WORRALL: Yeah.

LAMB: The Amherst library purchase was 1997.

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: Now, where were you when you first read that "New York Times" story?

WORRALL: I was at home on Long Island, having breakfast, and read the story about this Emily Dickinson poem turned up. Of course, nothing was known about Mark Hoffmann. There was no connection. And as I said, I didn`t really note it. And then I read a second article that said it was a forgery. And I remember putting down the paper and turning to my wife and saying, "Who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing?" Then I remembered the first article...

LAMB: What were you doing for a living?

WORRALL: I`m a full-time journalist. I`m a magazine writer. And of course, you always -- you know, as a magazine writer, you have your antennae up for a great story. And I just was intrigued by this and thought "Who could manage that? Who would?" You know, he`d fooled Sotheby`s. He`d fooled the Jones Library. He fooled everybody, whoever this was, if it was a forger, which it was.

And I called up Dan Lombardo, the curator of the Jones Library, who had bought the poem and then done his own -- as suspicions arose, Dan -- one of the stories I tell in the book -- it`s the story of a small-town librarian who thinks he`s doing the best thing for his, you know, little home library and finds he`s enmeshed in this extraordinary story of money, forgery, auction houses, a rare documents dealer in Las Vegas, gun dealers in Salt Lake City. And the trail eventually leads back to Mark Hoffmann, to a prison cell in Utah.

And when I heard the outlines of the story from Daniel Lombardo, the first 45 minutes over the phone, then I had that, you know, classic -- the hair stand up on the back of your neck. I just couldn`t believe that behind this Emily Dickinson poem -- and there was an irony to me immediately, of course. Here`s this most reclusive of people, who didn`t publish in her lifetime, who called publication -- publication is "the auction of the mind of man" -- of all people, she became the object of this extraordinary, convoluted literary scam.

And I was just fascinated by all of the multiple levels of it. And I tried in the book to tell, you know, all of these different stories -- the story of Emily Dickinson, the story of Mark Hoffman, Daniel Lombardo`s story -- and to mesh them together, if you like.

LAMB: And the Mormon church.

WORRALL: And the Mormon church because you couldn`t tell Mark Hoffman`s story without looking at the culture that he grew up in, which shaped him in a -- in a deformed kind of way.

LAMB: Now, you`re from where originally?

WORRALL: I`m British, yeah.

LAMB: What part of...

WORRALL: Born and bred.

LAMB: ... Britain?

WORRALL: Well, I was an Army brat, so I grew up -- at age 6 months, I was shipped off on a plane to East Africa, and then Paris and then Singapore, came back to England when I was 9.

LAMB: And when was the first time you came to the United States?

WORRALL: Well, I came first in `73, just traveling as a young -- I`d just graduated from college, but I`d always had a sort of relationship, always been interested in America and the American myth and American literature. And I studied literature at college. And I lived in Germany for a number of years in the `80s. And then I met my now wife in the early `90s and moved over here and, you know, became a correspondent, magazine writer, writing on American stories for Europe publications mostly.

LAMB: Are you still a British citizen?

WORRALL: Yes, I am.

LAMB: And you live here full-time since...

WORRALL: Well, I`ve lived here full-time since `91, yes.

LAMB: Since 1991?

WORRALL: Yeah.

LAMB: So this is five years ago, when you got into all this.

WORRALL: Yes.

LAMB: Have you met Mark Hoffman?

WORRALL: No, despite repeated attempts. He`s about as reclusive and secretive as Emily Dickinson. And he -- we tried -- the book originated as a magazine story that was commissioned by "Harper`s" magazine in New York and...

LAMB: What year?

WORRALL: This is 1998, that kind of time, 1999 I wrote the first story. And it had a tangled publication history. "Harper`s" couldn`t bring it down to a length that we thought worked. It was then bought by "The New Yorker." "The New Yorker" walked away from it, eventually. And I won`t get into too much detail on that, but they were worried that Sotheby`s were going to sue them, which I don`t think they would have.

It was eventually picked up -- the article -- God bless him, by George Plimpton at the "Paris Review," who -- we had to do a lot of legal -- very thorough legal vetting. And you know, I remember having to write -- answer 290 questions from Plimpton`s lawyer because there was a lot of legal issues at stake. The book doesn`t quite prove that Sotheby`s knew this, that they were selling a forgery by a double murderer, but it certainly asks a lot of questions about what they did know. And I leave it to the audience, the reader, to decide what it is -- you know, what they did or didn`t know.

LAMB: And since the book, Sotheby`s has had its own problems since then?

WORRALL: Sotheby`s has had its own very great problems. Of course, the former chairman of Sotheby`s Alfred A. Taubman is currently in the same situation as Mark Hofmann. That is he`s in a federal penitentiary for the price fixing, what became known as the price fixing scandal, commissions fixing.

And I think in a sense that says a lot about the kind of culture. I can`t speak about nor would I want to comment on how it is now, but I think it`s safe to say that now what we know about what the chairman of Sotheby`s was doing that was illegal for which he`s in jail, I think it`s fair to say that as most companies reflect habits and behavior of their CEOs, whether it`s Enron or Sotheby`s, I think it`s fair to say that the culture of Sotheby`s at that time was not quite as, how should we say it, as honest as it could have been.

LAMB: Did you ever ask the New York Times why they believe this was a real poem?

WORRALL: No, I didn`t actually. I didn`t. I think they had no reason to wonder why it wasn`t.

LAMB: Would they have taken that from Sotheby`s?

WORRALL: They would have taken it from Sotheby`s. Here it was in the Sotheby`s catalog. There seemed to be, you know, sufficient reason. It looked like an Emily Dickinson poem, and I suppose they were generally satisfied that Sotheby`s had done its due diligence and their experts had decided it was authentic and ipso facto it was.

LAMB: Who owns Sotheby`s?

WORRALL: Sotheby`s is owned - well I think it`s about to be sold actually, isn`t it, because Alfred A. Taubman was both the chairman and the owner of Sotheby`s?

LAMB: Originally a British company?

WORRALL: Originally a British company, absolutely, founded in the late 18th Century, and it`s very interesting and one of the stories I tell in brief, a sort of snapshot history of Sotheby`s, is one of the interesting things is, you know, in the early days of Sotheby`s Foundation in London in the 18th Century, which was a fairly raffish century, probably our most you know raffish, Sotheby, the auction houses were regarded in a very poor light.

They were regarded as, you know, basically secondhand salesmen of people`s old furniture and paintings and honesty was not something they were associated, and they certainly weren`t associated with glamour. They were sort of yard sales, glorified yard sales.

And, of course, our age obsessed as it is with celebrity has sort of transformed, and the auctions houses have been very clever in transforming themselves into, you know, icons of high life really. You know to go to a Sotheby`s sale or a Christie`s sale now, whether you buy a Vermeer or a Van Gogh or not is regarded much the same as, you know, having a seat at the best restaurant in New York or, you know, going to watch polo in Bridgehampton.

LAMB: So did anybody ever publish this in magazine form?

WORRALL: Yes, it came out in the Paris review.

LAMB: Got to the Paris Review. You finally got to that point?

WORRALL: Yes, thanks to George Plimpton who loved the story and actually called it Emily Dickinson goes to Las Vegas, which I thought was great, because one of the connections, one of the back stories, was the document, the poem had passed through the hands of a historical documents dealer in Las Vegas, of all places, not a place that`s really known for historical documents or its culture but more for gambling obviously.

It had passed through the hands of a historical documents dealer there called Todd Axelrod (ph) and it was discovered by Daniel Lombardo and later by myself that it had been in Axelrod`s possession for a number of years. He exhibited it in his showrooms for sale for $40,000. Then the trail sort of went cold and years later it popped up at Sotheby`s.

And, incidentally, one of the great - the initial article was a sort of piece of detective work. It was connecting all of the dots. We had a sort of skeleton structure of how this poem had got from Mark Hofmann`s hands, a double murderer currently in jail in Utah via Las Vegas to Sotheby`s in New York and to the Jones Library in Amherst.

And one of the reasons the story fascinated me was this extraordinary journey across America that this document had taken and passed through these different hands. In the initial article, the main thrust of it was to join the dots together. How did it get from Hofmann to Las Vegas, from Las Vegas to Sotheby`s? What did Sotheby`s know? What did the dealer in Las Vegas know? Who was telling the truth? Was anyone?

LAMB: Is there more information in this book than there was in the article?

WORRALL: Much more.

LAMB: About what basically? What kind of things are new in the book?

WORRALL: Well, obviously when I got an advance from Penguin Putnam Dutton who published the book and had a year to write the book, and one of the first questions you`re asked is, you know, what`s in this that could make a book? Why do we want to know more about this?

And really what has become expanded greatly is the role both of Emily Dickinson, her life story, which is a parallel story of in a way almost secret identity in the way that Mark Hofmann`s is. There`s much more about the Mormon Church.

There`s much more about the history of literary forgery, which I became fascinated in, and I tried to tell a lot of different stories, but to keep the story moving forward fast. There`s a chapter I do on handwriting.

I became fascinated in the neuro psychology of handwriting, the complexity, and every time we pick up a pen and a piece of paper it`s an extraordinary, complex process that`s involving 50 muscles in our shoulder, arm, and hands and neurological reactions. And so I wanted to tell lots, as many different stories as I could in the book.

LAMB: As I read the book, I kept saying OK, who did he murder? Who did he murder? Who did he murder? And, you don`t tell us for a long, long, time.

WORRALL: That`s right.

LAMB: Did you do that on purpose?

WORRALL: Yes, of course. Yes, of course.

LAMB: Do you want to tell our audience who he murdered?

WORRALL: No. I think I`ll leave it for them to go and buy the book.

LAMB: How much did you decide before you sat down to do interviews that you would not tell an audience like this in other words?

WORRALL: Oh, like this?

LAMB: Yes.

WORRALL: Not much, actually, but that, I did give that away several times, and it`s just - it`s better that the reader discovers that.

LAMB: It does take a long time and you did that on purpose?

WORRALL: Yes, absolutely. I mean every writer does that, whether, you know, whether it`s a non-fiction book or a novel, of course you know you delay the climax of the book, if you like, and not that that is the sole climax.

And to go back to that thing about what changed in the book, the real breakthrough with the writing of the book and where it took on a new dimension and became much more, as I hope it is, than a long magazine article, and I don`t think it is, it`s a book, was when I started to see these uncanny parallels between the two main characters, the poet and the murderer.

And at this point I need to say, of course, I`m in no sense equating Mark Hofmann, a forger and a murderer with Emily Dickinson, but they do have one thing in common and I think it`s why, one of the reasons I was fascinated by both of them.

And I think people will be interested when they read the book because we`re all fascinated by genius, whether it`s Michael Jordan, you know shooting three pointers or a great ballet dancer, or a great painter or great writer. We`re all fascinated by those people that seem to have some extra superhuman talent.

Emily Dickinson certainly did, very, very great, wonderful, wonderful poet who I - one of the pleasures of writing the book was finding out a lot about her. Mark Hofmann was also a genius. He`s in my opinion the greatest literary forger that there`s ever been and there`s a long history of literary forgery ever since man first picked up actually a papyrus reed and scratched on a...

LAMB: Let me go back to that, though. You`re saying he`s the greatest forger in history?

WORRALL: Yes.

LAMB: How do you make that determination?

WORRALL: Well, I think the variety of the - not the volume. He did 1,000 documents which is a lot but there was a great French literary forger in the 19th Century who did many more than that, I think, something like 30,000, extraordinary number.

So it`s not the volume, it`s the quality and the variety and you know just to sort of backtrack a bit for the viewers, you know, I think we`re all more familiar, as I was when I came to the story, with art forgery. There`s been some very famous art forgery, Van Meegeren who did the Vermeers and many others. Books have been written.

But literary forgers have not been so extensively covered, and it`s a fascinating sort of - I came to think of it as a sort of parallel world of literary creativity because these are very gifted people who invent poems or documents. They can simulate the handwriting. They alter the paper.

Hofmann was a great technician. So it`s not the quantity, it`s the quality and the technical skill. Most literary forgers, they specialize, you know, as most art forgers do. They do Vermeer or they do Monet. Literary forgers tend to specialize as well.

They`ll do, if it`s an American forger, there was a very great one in the 19th Century called Joseph Cozie (ph) a little Irish-American, lived in New York, did great, great forgeries, fooled everybody, everybody. He did what would have been the original manuscript of Poe`s "The Raven" or a working copy of it, got everything right, Edgar Allan Poe`s handwriting, the paper, everything.

But most forgers have tended to specialize. They choose one thing. They do Lincoln or they do Daniel Boone or they do Edgar Allan Poe because they get good at that one thing and then they stick with that. Hofmann as far as we know did 130 different handwritings, and not just clip signatures but sustained documents.

LAMB: Lincoln, George Washington?

WORRALL: Everybody. I mean he forged all of the great figures of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Lucy Smith, the prophet`s mother, and the list goes on and on. They found a list in his prison cell in 1989 in Utah where he listed the Mormon forgeries and his non-Mormon forgeries, and on the list of non-Mormon forgeries he did there is every iconic American figure, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Martha Washington, Miles Standish, Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln, and fourth down on that list that was found was the name Emily Dickinson.

LAMB: Who is the person that caught him?

WORRALL: Well he was, and again I don`t want to give too much away, he murdered two people. He was about to be exposed or he believed he was about to be exposed as a forger and as a fraudulent. He was a con man as well. He ran what are called ponsy (ph) schemes, using historical documents.

He would take money for documents he hadn`t produced. He would take money to buy documents that were going to be worth a huge amount of money and then he wouldn`t deliver the documents and then, you know, he would run these schemes.

And like all criminals, you know, he started to get too clever and he thought he could never be caught and he started to get greedy. And one of the curious things about Hofmann was that his Achilles heel, if you like, and every criminal has some fatal flaw, his was that he was a passionate collector of children`s, historical children`s books, above all British children`s books.

When he went to prison, he had America`s finest collection of historic children`s books, above all he had a First Edition of "The Lord of the Rings," signed by Tolkien. He had the First Edition of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," extraordinary. He had Enid Blighton books. He had Beatrix Potter books signed by the author.

Of all the strange things, and this was his obsession, actually he was collecting them to leave to his children, and he was spending, actually the roots of his downfall was that he was himself buying at auction and at Sotheby`s among others large numbers of genuine First Editions. This was his passion.

He was a bibliomane as they`re called, somebody who is maniacally obsessed with old books. He loved them, had a genuine love of them, and above all children`s books, and he amassed this extraordinary collection and he was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction buying these things.

And, of course, his forgeries, he couldn`t produce them fast enough to pay for all of the books he was buying, the genuine documents, and he started to cut the corners. He was about to be exposed and he savagely murdered two people with pipe bombs, and he was then arrested on suspicion of those.

But to prove he was a murderer, they had to first prove that he was a forger, that there was a motive for the murders, and the motive was the forgery, and they could not at first find any sign of forgery in the documents.

They had been, incidentally, one of his great forgeries, the Oath of Freeman, which would have been, if it were genuine, the first piece of printed Americana, the first document printed on the North American Continent in 1638. Hofmann forged it. It was nearly bought by the Library of Congress here in Washington for one million dollars.

After they had bombarded it, you know, with all of the expertise they had, that document passed a Carbon 14 dating test at the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory in Davis, California. It was that good.

LAMB: By the way, has anybody come after you legally?

WORRALL: Not yet, no.

LAMB: Not yet?

WORRALL: No, hopefully not.

LAMB: Expect them?

WORRALL: I don`t think so. I don`t think so. Sotheby`s doesn`t sue people because - I hope I`m not proved wrong. It just doesn`t want to go to court and make things worse.

LAMB: The Mormon Church, are they happy with your book?

WORRALL: I don`t know. It`s been reviewed in the Mormon newspaper, The Deseret News. I thought it would get savaged and it was a reasonably polite and friendly review. They did say that I did a hatchet job on Salt Lake City and painted an outdated picture of the Mormon Church but you know. Of course the thing about that, and I`d like to say that is, I had to look at the culture of the Mormon Church from the inside, from the eyes so to speak, through they eyes of Mark Hofmann.

LAMB: Did you talk to Gordon Hinckley, by the way, the president of the church?

WORRALL: No, I didn`t.

LAMB: Did anybody at the Mormon Church talk to you?

WORRALL: No.

LAMB: Did you try to talk to them?

WORRALL: No, I didn`t actually. I relied on my main source for the Mormon, for the LDS account of this whole episode, very painful episode in their modern history, was a very, very good book that was written in the `80s by Richard Turley called "Victims," which was a book commissioned by the LDS Church and it had chapter and verse of all of his Mormon forgeries, and I relied - that was in a sense that was their official statement.

That was their official summing up of this whole painful event, and to be honest I assumed that Gordon B. Hinckley would not interview with me, and if he did, he probably would not say anything that was different from that book.

LAMB: So the audience knows what`s going on here again, going back over it, he would take forged documents to the church and say: "Do you want this, $40,000," and if they didn`t buy it, that would go somewhere else and then the public would see, it would undermine the church. It basically would in many cases prove that a lot of their basic tenets of their religion aren`t accurate?

WORRALL: Well it was more cynical and devious than that and more Machiavellian. He first, as you said, he won the confidence of the church, producing documents that appeared to authenticate the religion. Having won the confidence of the church, his real goal and his unique and long history of literary forgery, he intended to use literary forgery, forged documents, to bring down the Mormon Church, to discredit the Mormon Church.

And having won their trust, he began to produce documents that called into question the founding myths and legends of Mormonism. It would be as though a disgruntled Catholic were to forge letters by St. Paul that proved that St. Paul was a homosexual let`s say. They were that damaging to the church.

LAMB: Then once he would sell them the documents and they bought them?

WORRALL: They would be hidden away.

LAMB: Hidden away, but he`d leak it that they were there?

WORRALL: That was the ultimate. He was a spin doctor long before - one of things that interests me about Mark Hofmann was the way that he prefigured a lot of things that have become part of our world subsequently, spin doctoring, you know, image and reality.

We live in an age of sort of shimmering surfaces, and I think he understood we were moving into that age, and he understood that ultimately, you know, there is no difference, or if you`re clever enough and devious enough, there is no difference between something genuine and something forged if it`s that good, and indeed between who you are on the outside, who you appear to be, and who you are on the inside.

And he understood something very deep about human nature, and he used that and manipulated that, and as you said, specifically to go back to your question, having created documents that were shattering for the Mormon Church if they became public and they were taken, they were bought and then hidden away so that people could not see these documents.

Mark Hofmann sort of, you know, stuck the knife in even further by and leaking stories to the newspapers, to the press, about the document that he had just sold. So the press then became, it became a news story about supposedly this extraordinary document, the Salamander Letter, the most famous of his Mormon forgeries.

That became a news story in itself that this document had been found and then, of course, that put the Mormon Church in an extraordinarily embarrassing position because they had to then admit yes, they had bought this documents and yes, they had so to speak kept it away from the public.

So they were then, if you like - Hofmann wanted to show, prove that they manipulated history that they manipulated reality and history, and he used forgery, which is itself a manipulation of history to do that.

LAMB: One of the things you point out is that he went through the Mormon ritual and was a missionary over in England for a while?

WORRALL: Yes, that`s right.

LAMB: But also went through something called the endowment ceremony?

WORRALL: Yes.

LAMB: Where did you get the information on what the endowment ceremony is?

WORRALL: These are very secret, as you know probably, Mormon rituals. One of the things that Mormons are sworn to is to not reveal any of the temple rituals, which are pretty strange to say the least, and I think anybody reading the book and reading my account of the endowment ceremony will be very surprised, you know.

People are sort of naked and in white sheets and they have oil anointed on them, and it all sounds like something out of Ancient Rome or something, not modern America. You know they`re immersed in water and all of this.

I got that information actually from somebody in Salt Lake City. I think I`ll choose not to name the name but somebody who`s an ex-Mormon and who has now devoted their time and energy to telling what they regard as the truth about Mormonism, that you know, they`re a dissident Mormon and they make those things public because they believe that both Mormons and non-Mormons have a right to know the truth about this religion.

LAMB: Has there ever been a book written that explains all the handshake and the endowment ceremony and all that?

WORRALL: Not so far as I know in that, you know.

LAMB: So is this going to be one of the first times that people can read about this?

WORRALL: That`s right. I believe so. I believe so. It`s highly sensitive information.

LAMB: Before we run out of time, I just want a couple quick things. Dan Lombardo who was the fellow that bought the original Emily Dickinson poem, forged poem, for $21,000, where is he now?

WORRALL: Well, that was one of the things I loved about the story. As I said earlier, for me it was a story partly of a small town librarian, buys this wonderful documents, thinks he`s doing a great thing for his hometown. Suddenly, he`s enmeshed in this world of deception and illusion and money and forgery and gun dealers and a double murderer.

And Dan was a - we became very close through the course of writing this book. He was of great help to me, and all power to him. Some people perhaps when he began to be suspicious of the poem might have, you know, kept the truth about it hidden, but he relentlessly went on a mission to find out what was the truth and eventually established enough evidence, collected enough evidence to confront Sotheby`s. They refunded the money.

But the experience, his journey is very interesting because the experience for him buying this forgery and finding that what he thought was going to be the pinnacle of his career and the best thing he ever did for his local community, turned out to be this awful event.

And really he thought, you know, his life was finished in Amherst and his career as a curator would be finished and he was deeply, deeply disillusioned by the whole series of events. I mean it shattered all of his illusions about the auction houses, about the manuscript trade, and he threw off his job and gave up the job and left and at one time was in pretty bad shape, you know, he really felt that his life had melted down.

But as it turned out, this came to be an opportunity and he started a new life as a writer. He`s practicing Zen Buddhism. He`s living on Cape Cod and is a very, very happy man. So, you know, in a sense, I also wanted the book to be a sort of morality tale, not just another true crime story about, you know, an interesting bad man, but a sort of morality tale. And the book ends with everybody, I think, getting their just rewards. Emily Dickinson wins eternal fame. Daniel Lombardo has a new life and the forger is where he belongs.

LAMB: Who is Doralee Olds (ph)?

WORRALL: Doralee Olds was Mark Hofmann`s wife.

LAMB: Did you talk to her?

WORRALL: Olds - yes, I did on two occasions.

LAMB: Here`s a picture of her where, back in 1988?

WORRALL: At the hearings, yes.

LAMB: And when did she divorce him?

WORRALL: In 1989, after he had been sentenced and he was in jail. Doralee Olds, Olds is the maiden name and she reverted to her maiden name once she became divorced. Yes, I talked to her twice at length, very fascinating woman and woman I felt very sympathetic towards.

There have been questions. People have raised questions about what she knew or didn`t know. I mean Mark Hofmann did his forgeries in the family house down in the basement, and people have said well how could this woman not know, you know, what was going on down in the basement that he was creating these forgeries?

But I choose to give Doralee the benefit of the doubt and there`s a reason for the specific to the culture that they both lived in, which is that Mormon wives are not expected to ask their husbands questions about what they`re doing. They`re not expected actually to ask their husbands questions about much at all, let alone you know what are you doing down in the basement honey?

So she was a sort of a true faithful Mormon wife who didn`t ask any of those questions, and I like to believe, and you could say I`ve chosen to believe because she has suffered enough and had a very, very hard time obviously, I choose to believe that she didn`t know.

LAMB: How much of all this story was reported in The Deseret News, the Mormon newspaper?

WORRALL: Oh, the original story?

LAMB: Yes.

WORRALL: Oh, a huge amount, a huge amount. I mean it was reported in "TIME" Magazine. The Hofmann case of the Mormon forgeries in the `80s was a pretty big news story. It was on television when the murders took place. It was in "TIME" Magazine. It was a big event because it was as something that involved the Mormon Church.

When it came to the book, you know that`s only part of the story. I tried to concentrate on this one forgery, this Emily Dickinson forgery, and as I said the book took on a greater depth when I discovered the strange, uncanny parallels between these two people. They both wore one thing on the outside.

Emily Dickinson was the well to do daughter of a leading family. She was another thing on the inside. They were both graced with very, very, -- you know, they were both geniuses at what they did, her writing poetry, him forging these documents, and what interested me in writing the book, if you like to bring these two characters together, a bit like electric was and see what sparks would fly.

LAMB: I hope I`m not giving anything away on this, but...

WORRALL: Don`t.

LAMB: I need to ask you about this, though, because one of the things you learn is that he has now a withered hand?

WORRALL: Yes.

LAMB: Which is an interesting irony in the whole book, how did it happen, and what impacts that had on him that you know of?

WORRALL: Yes, after his wife Doralee, we just talked about, divorced him he tried to commit suicide, Mark Hofmann in jail. He took a huge overdose of sleeping tablets and he, you know, passed out, was in a coma and he lay on his right side and crushed his whole arm and the circulation was cut off for many hours, eight, ten hours, something like that, and that permanently damaged his right hand. And, as far as I know, he`s not able to forge now as a result of it. He was also injured in a bomb blast because - now I`m starting to give away rather too much.

LAMB: Because we don`t have much time, we won`t let you go any farther with that because there are a couple things I need to ask you. Was it first degree murder that he was convicted of?

WORRALL: No, it wasn`t. It was second degree murder.

LAMB: When is he eligible for parole?

WORRALL: He`s eligible for parole in 2006.

LAMB: And The New York Times, after all they started all this, have they reviewed your book?

WORRALL: No. I`m waiting for it.

LAMB: So there hasn`t been a word in the newspaper about it, so far at the time we`re taking this?

WORRALL: No, oddly enough, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and many others have, but The New York Times seems to be staying away. I don`t know why.

LAMB: Here`s the cover of the book. Our guest has been Simon Worrall. He lives on Long Island. He`s a British citizen and he wrote a book called "The Poet and the Murderer." Thank you very much for the interview.

WORRALL: Thank you, Brian. It was a pleasure. Thanks.

http://www.tangled-web.co.uk/crimedigests/digests02/fourthessu02.html

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