Meteoric Connecticutiana

The university-affiliated Peabody Museum sent out an email today noting the fast-approaching bicentennial date of the falling of the Weston Meteorite. You can read about that briefly on the museum's website. Apparently the first few years of the 1800s were when people were first catching on to the existence and origin of meteorites. There was a lecture about this tonight but I didn't go to it.

The museum had not, however, sent out an email in November about the 25-year-anniversary of a meteorite fall in Wethersfield, Connecticut, which you can also read about on the museum website. That meteorite smashed through the roof of a house, interrupting the evening of a married couple who were watching television at the time. No one was harmed; the offending rock was discovered beneath the dining room table. I'll be happy enough if this never happens to me.

If you look for other information about meteorites on the Internet, you will primarily learn that most of them appear to be for sale.

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Turning to nonmeteoric Connecticutiana, the New Yorker's cartoon issue included a charming spread from Aline and R. Crumb relating their attachment to a mechanical packing-tape dispenser, manufactured in nearby Shelton, CT. The cartoon isn't online, unfortunately. Keep an eye out for it, though. Zany gadget-oriented whimsy is all too rare to come by.

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On the more trivial topic of nonmeteoric non-Connecticutiana, one of the department editors forwarded around a link to this blog devoted to inappropriate use of quotation marks. Mostly it evokes a kind of kooky, pointless obsessiveness, but some funny examples of unintended insincerity pop up. Or things that are just weird.

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"Connecticutiana" should be pronounced lightly as "CON-net-i-kew-SHEEAH-na," with the second stress greater than the first, and "SHEEAH" whisking into the space of one syllable. Setting aside its nonexistence I think it's a pretty elegant word.