The Followspot

Potamophilous, scintillate, lagoon

Also ethereal, gossamer and imbroglio. Effervescent, pelagic and chiaroscuro.

These are some of the 100 Most Beautiful Words in English, in sounds and meaning, as collected by Dr. Goodword, aka Dr. Robert Beard, at alphaDictionary.com.

We can quibble about some of his choices and probably add some others. Come to think of it, I think "quibble" is a lovely word. Many "-ble" words are. Dabble. Scramble. Foible. Dr. Beard's list is, however, a good place to start. It's heavy on words with Latin and French origins, which is not surprising.

If you enjoy this kind of wordplay, check out Dr. Goodword's 100 Funniest Words in English. I dare you not to smile: Blunderbuss, flibbertigibbet, kerfuffle, gardyloo!

Nature, the night and Battlestar Galactica

 
The women of Battlestar Galactica 

My family and friends indulge my obsession with "Battlestar Galactica," the epic story that will soon come to an end on the SciFi channel. Critics and fans have pleaded with the uninitiated to forget the campy 1970's original and join in watching this mythic "re-imagining" by Ronald Moore and David Eick.

There are myriad reasons to watch BSG: First, there's the powerful ensemble acting from a wonderful cast lead by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. There's the collection of strong, kick-ass women in a society that has given up gender discrimination. There's the consistently amazing scoring by Bear McCreary. Then there's the story itself -- a post-9/11 saga of the near-extinction of humanity following a genocidal attack by the sentient machines man himself created to make life easier. The remnants of human society subsequently retreat across the galaxy, ever hunted and harried by the humanoid Cylon machines, in a desperate search for a planet named only in their religious scriptures -- "Earth".

 
A signpost -- the 12 Constellations, supposedly as seen from Earth

In lesser hands, this would be the stuff of the typical space opera, filled with noble heroes, weird-looking aliens and ray-guns. "Battlestar" is, instead, gritty, bleak and filled with the fears and longings of a beaten people hanging onto to life by a thread, always in danger of running out of fuel, water and food. A dead fighter pilot's belongings are routinely auctioned off to the highest bidders. A prize for finding a habitable rock to land on will be the last tube of toothpaste in the universe.

There are no magic technological fixes when these people get into a bad situation. They get hurt, they are scarred, they die. The fleet, under the protection of the Battlestar Galactica -- a sort of space-faring aircraft carrier -- set out with 50,298 survivors. As the hastily-sworn-in president of the 12 colonies, Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) says: "The human race is about to be wiped out. We have fifty thousand people left and that's it. If we want to even survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and start having babies." And there you have the backbone of the story. Along the way, the refugees must continually answer the question, "Are we worthy of surviving?" By last Friday's episode, the last before the two-week, three-hour finale, the survivor count was down to 39,521.

Tonight, though, I'd like to write about how I found a wonderful book through "Battlestar Galactica." You see, last week's episode was titled "Islanded in a Stream of Stars." I thought it was a beautifully poetic phrase and it's been one of the pleasures of the series that the writers typically reference a wide range of cultural touchstones. Then on one of the many blogs and sites devoted to BSG reviews and analysis, I found the source of the title. It's from "The Outermost House," by Henry Beston. Subtitled "A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod," it's apparently one of the great American works of nature writing. I had never heard of it (there are a lot of things I've never heard of, to my chagrin) but I had to buy it immediately. Here is the enchanting passage that inspired the episode title:

“When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.”

The book arrived today and I'm just filled with happy anticipation to hold such wonderful writing in my hand and sadness and loss that this beautiful Galactica saga is coming to an end. Do yourself a favor. Get the pilot miniseries, included in the Season One package, and start watching from there.