Including your "YMCA" ads-l message in a Comments on Etymology

[James A. Landau]

JJJRLandau at aol.com

It was my son Joel Landau who found the article and sent it to me.  My only
contribution was to ask what the association was between the song "YMCA" and
homosexuality.

Somebody sent me an off-list response explaining the homosexual connections
of the song.  I failed to save the message, so could whoever sent it to me
please send a copy either to the ADS-L list or to gcohen at UMR.EDU?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MWCD10 and MWCD11 both date "scuzzy" as from 1969.  I personally heard the
word in 1966 from someone who described one of his roommates in the 1964-65
school year as "the scuzzy to end all scuzzies".

It would seem that "scuzzy" is a 1960's term.  Having made that statement, I
must announce my bafflement at finding that in the 1880's the contractor for
the British Columbia section of the Canadian Pacific Railroad (I believe the
same contractor who later built the IRT in New York City) had a steamboat on the
Fraser River that was name the _Scuzzy_.  (Source: a book entitled, if I
remember correctly, _The Impossible Railroad_, about the building of the Canadian
Pacific).

           - Jim Landau

PS.  My daughter is now a freshman at the University of Chicago.  The
"Resident Masters" in her dormitory are an Assyriologist and something I never heard
of before, a Sumerologist.

I met a U of Chicago co-ed named "Maire Daly".