aerogram (n.) a message sent by radio.

Most of us (of a certain age at least) probably think of an aerogram as a letter sent by air-mail; but before that the word meant a message transmitted by air waves.

It's estimated that there are around 15,000 stars within a 100 light-year radius of our sun, and on that basis I made a guesstimate of maybe around 100,000 other planets that our broadcast transmissions could have reached so far. I wonder if, on any of those worlds, someone is sitting there thinking to themselves, "Oh how wonderful, a lunch invitation!"

The photo is the Parkes radio telescope, which is about a 90 minute drive from my house, was commissioned in the year I was born, and played a huge role in (among other things) relaying live images of the first moon landing. Of course, its job is to listen for messages from space, not send them, but I couldn't resist such a great image.

My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.

Thanks for reading.

Image credit:

CSIRO [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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