Meandering

To meander, wandering this way and that, like the ancient Greek river Maiandros, by way of the Latin Maeander. The word itself has meandered down to us. There was no guarantee it would ever arrive here after its strange journey.

That river was in Phrygia, Anatolia, now Turkey. The province also bequeathed us the the cap of liberty, the bonnet rouge, through, evidently, some confusion with the pileus, the conical hat worn by the manumitted in Rome. It was a revolutionary American symbol before it was Revolutionary French one, by the way. Absurdly, however, about the only vestige of it here is in the U.S. Senate, a house designed to contain democracy, which sports a red Liberty cap on its seal. But I meander…(2nd Century CE marble of the young Attis, sporting a Phrygian cap; picture from Wikipedia.)

One can meander in thoughts, among books, especially dictionaries and…