The pronunciation of Salvador Dalí’s name and Taylor Swift’s “the last great american dynasty"

As I have learned from Spanish, the last name of painter Salvador Dalí is stressed on the second syllable, not the first as it usually is in American English. He comes up in Taylor Swift's "the last great american dynasty" ("folklore", 2020), which is about his friend Rebekah Harkness, who married into money, became a socialite, composer, and philanthropist, and lost "on card game bets with Dalí." But Swift pronounces his name the American way, so when I mentioned Dalí and the song today to my Spanish teacher (a fellow Swiftie), she knew the song, but had never understood that Swift was referring to the painter and not someone named "Dolly." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 December 2024)

Ambitious first songs and poems opening debut albums and books: Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” (2006) and Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” (1966)

Today in my Volkshochschule beider Basel course on Taylor Swift, we'll be discussing "Tim McGraw", the first song on her eponymous album from 2006. As I wrote back in January, the song is a statement of the singer and songwriter's ambition, narrowly, to be better known than country singer Tim McGraw, but broadly, to be even more popular than that. The song's marking of ambition to start Swift's career reminds me of "Digging", the first poem in "Death of a Naturalist", Irish poet Seamus Heaney's 1966 debut collection. Now I'm trying to think of other songs and poems that open debut albums and books and so powerfully express the artist's ambition. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 December 2024)

Two striking copies at the St. Gallen Abbey Library

My wife Andrea bought us day-passes for the Swiss railway system for my birthday in August, so on this cold December Sunday we took the train to St. Gallen to visit the Abbey Library. Two objects on display there really struck me, and both are copies. The first is the St. Gallen globe from the 16th century, which is 2.33 meters high. But in 1712, troops from Zurich and Bern stole it when they plundered the Abbey, and the original is still in Zurich. The second is a seventeenth-century copy of a painting from the Basel Art Museum: Hans Holbein's sixteenth-century painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 December 2024)