Open Writing

My teacher wife and I have been dueling with collective nouns lately, with her referring to a "shush" and "baffle" of librarians, while I've offered a "gradebook" and "lounge" of teachers. It started with a birthday gift: a book of collective nouns, single words used to describe groups of objects. Animals are usual examples, with grists of bees, obstinancies of buffalo, and quivers of cobras. On my study wall is the "Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns." Created by David Malki!, author of the steampunk phenomenon comicstrip Wondermark, this fictional list features liberties of mummies, tangles of Gorgons, and lawns of gnomes.

"Steampunk," according to Wikipedia, is "a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s … steampunk involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century and often Victorian era Britain—that incorporates prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy." And "steampunk" has a nice ring as well.

Amusing words dominated my other birthday books this year, such as "Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts." There I found "sea ants" (five-to-six-inch-long Persian Gulf crustaceans whose "tender, white tail meat has a sweet flavor"), "sea beef" ("Scottish for the flesh of a young whale"), and "microparticulated protein product" ("A fat substitute prepared from egg whites and/or dairy products and used as a thickening agent") among over 25,000 entries on "restaurant management, wine and wine-making, cooking equipment, food history, food safety and sanitation," as well as more mundane topics like "ingredients and preparation methods."

The best birthday word book was Donald Orth's legendary "Dictionary of Alaska Place Names." Known among librarians and collectors of Alaskana simply as "Orth's," it's a cornerstone of Alaskana reference collections. As Anchorage Public Library's former Alaska bibliographer Bruce Merrell put it in a 2006 Alaska Magazine article, "Instead of Webster, we have Orth. If I could have only five books about Alaska, "this book would be on the list."

Orth's great work, well over 40,000 entries and 1,000 pages long, was published by the USGS in 1967 for $8.50, but it's long out of print. Today you're lucky to find copies for less than $200, for besides being highly collectible, Orth's is useful and fun to browse. Opening it at random revealed Alaska's forty-eight Boulder Creeks, six Boulder Points, four Boulder Bays, and on the Seward Peninsula there was a locality named Boulder "on the left Bank of Boulder Creek."

As Larry Gedney wrote in a 1982 Alaska Science Forum article, "the average prospector did not appear to display much originality. Thus we find scores of Creeks, Hills and other features bearing names like Prospect, Eureka, Bonanza, Cache, Grubstake, Placer, Nugget, and Bullion. Among them are plenty of rocks (Granite is the favorite with 61 entries) and minerals (Gold with 92)." Gedney noted "Taking creeks alone, there are 67 Bear Creeks, 47 Moose, 29 Eagle, 28 Sheep, 27 Beaver, 26 Fox, 23 Caribou and 20 Ptarmigan."

In his introduction, Orth wrote, "Each name entry consists of two paragraphs. The first gives its application and location and presents variant forms. The second paragraph presents the history and meaning of the name." For instance, the Boulder Creek that contributes to the Chikaloon River near Palmer was called that "by local prospectors interviewed by Lt. J.C. Castner, USA in 1898" and wound up on an official map. An expedition led by Capt. Glen also visited the Creek shortly thereafter and named it Shoonoven Creek, "presumably for Pvt. George W. Van Shoonoven, USA, a member of Capt. Glen's expedition." So the prescient Mr. Orth included both.

Orth's descriptions may be more complete, but Noel Wien Library's map database workstation is loaded with goodies. You can print color topological maps of the entire U.S., take Google Earth flights around the world, map out car trips in North America and Europe that have detailed directions and can be drawn to specifications for routes that are rural, urban, historical, scenic, etc., and you can even explore the stars Why, there's enough at your library to captivate even gazetteer of geographers, or as one geographer put it, a cart o' graphers.