Good reading: What are some cultural faux pas in New York? (Quora, via kottke.org). I especially like this warning: “Never ever ever EVER refer to the city as ‘the Big Apple.’”
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 8
It must grate locals as much as such monikers favored by out-of-towners as Chi-town (sets my teeth on edge!) and Frisco, the latter uttered under pain of being tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge and discovering whether the Spaniards were kidding when they named a town across from Sausalito Tiburon...
And “Beantown.”
(For anyone wondering, tiburón is the Spanish for shark.)
"Chi-Town" is definitely a no-no here.
I decided to not to include the Spanish tiburón plus English translation in parentheses, because it would have spoiled the rhythm of my posting. This is the Internet. Readers can get instant translations of single words faster than they can book a hotel room. Still it was a kindness of you to have included it. Does this mean that I have been annotated?
Pete, do you mean in the Windy City? :)
“Does this mean that I have been annotated?”¹
¹ Yes.
My mother constantly referred to The Queen City as 'Cincy.' No self-respecting person in Cincinnati would ever do so.
And then when we moved to California, she committed 'Frisco,'
too.
The worst I have heard was the very rude "Shitty of El lay." It seems the monikers are meant to extract pain as much as evidence pleasure. Hymietown also comes to mind. Compared to them, an apple whether big or little or worm-eaten seems tame.
Elaine, I didn’t know about The Queen City. Thanks for that.
Anon., I think you’re missing the point. Nicknames like “The Big Apple” aren’t meant to be insulting. For the locals though, such names tend to be cringe-inducing. Saying “The Big Apple” in NYC would immediately mark the speaker as clueless.
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