Eileen and I have been staying with my brother and his wife since last Sunday. It gives me a chance to get out of town and see people I love. There’s been plenty of time for reading and playing my sister-in-law’s wonderful piano.

I have been thinking a lot about retirement. I continue to enjoy my work. But my boss’s recent hiatus due to a cancer scare brought home to me how important it is to me to work with someone who can “handle” me. Also, my interests in non-work related stuff is blooming. I purchased a wonderful 2 volume set of T. S. Eliot for me to unwrap on Christmas day.

Shortly thereafter I searched for Christopher Ricks (one of the editors) and found some wonderful lectures by him on YouTube.

I’ll put them here since I told my brother I would make it clear which ones I have listening to and benefiting from.

I have listened to the first one of these twice already. I am loving the edition and it’s good to go through Eliot’s poetry again after reading a couple of bios and now having the Ricks/McCue notes.

Ricks’ lecture on the sounds of Eliot’s poetry has blown me away. He has sent me scurrying to Tennyson as well. I had no concept of how masterful Tennyson’s use of sound and diction is.

Another thing I learned from Ricks is that even though the OED continues to update online everything three months, if you look carefully you can access the original second edition online.

Here is the example Ricks cites in his note, “OED and the present edition” Poems vol 1 p. 1252.

Here is the way Jazz is presently defined in the online OED.

Ricks says in his notes that he accessed this 2014. It remains unchanged as far I can see. But, Ricks also points out how it read in the second edition.

The changes between the two are radical including what quotes are included and why.

I took me some poking around before I could figure out how to access the second edition on line.

I have circled the link above. I find this very valuable and am glad that the OED is allowing access to previous edition for comparison of changes. How cool is that?