Willa Cather, “The Best Years,” in The Old Beauty and Others (1948).
Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Idealists and ridicule
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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.”
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.
View Profile
Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“https://vote.gov/register”
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.
Search this blog
Creative Commons
StatCounter
Subscribe
Click to subscribe in a reader.
Top twenty tags
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
#1 hit
In memory of
Blog Archive
-
▼
2015
(782)
-
▼
September
(69)
- Mencken on professor
- Nabokov’s orthodontia
- Elsie de Nord
- Sushi sardines
- Afterthought
- A Nabokov pencil sharpener
- Sherry Turkle on our phones and our selves
- Calling Henry
- Domestic comedy
- Literature and choreography
- Nancy: “BLOG”
- None is , none are
- Faill
- Recently updated
- On not owning an Apple Watch
- Captioning New Yorker cartoons
- The Magic Rub eraser
- Yogi-isms
- Nabokovian handwriting
- Domestic comedy
- Lands’ End: The White Album
- Jack Larson (1928–2015)
- Spelling in the news
- Speed-cops on patrol
- Craft vogue
- Domestic comedy
- A clever c(l)ue
- “Floss, Floss, Floss!”
- Force of Evil
- Word of the day: guarantor
- The “gutticles of the percha”
- Undergrads and creative writing
- A teaching dream
- A plumbing tale
- Eleven years young
- Looking at schools
- Contrapuntalism in Japan
- AP-Chicago feud
- Garlic, wild-style
- Domestic comedy
- Irving’s Toy & Card Shop
- The World Book Encyclopedia
- “Here’s a post that might make you think of candy ...
- September 11
- A Nabokov schoolroom
- Domestic comedy
- English American English
- NYC schooldays
- The U of Iowa has a new president
- Whitman’s last pencil
- Karr and Nabokov
- A Nabokov digression
- A letter to Martin Milner
- Martin Milner (1931–2015)
- Recently updated
- A Nancy Labor Day
- Labor Day
- notepad.cc
- James Ward’s supplies
- Big fish, little fish
- A Nabokov pencil
- Abdul-Jabbar on Sanders and Trump
- Word of the day: Waldeinsamkeit
- From “Before Breakfast”
- xkcd survey
- Word of the day: zucchini
- Idealists and ridicule
- A Metropolis wink
- Hi and Lois watch
-
▼
September
(69)
favorite posts
- Against “deep reading”
- Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer
- At the World Trade Center and St. Paul’s Chapel
- Being wrong about beauty
- Bobbing for apples
- “Bon Appétit!”
- “The Case of the Purloined Prairie”
- “The ’Clipse”
- Couric and Palin and Orwell
- Digital naïfs
- Donald Trump’s spelling
- Ebinger’s
- Ellington for beginners
- “Extra credit?”
- Five desks
- Five pens
- Fluke life
- The gold standard, haircuts, and everyone else
- Happy birthday, Mr. Piletti
- Hoagies, pizza, and English studies
- Homeric blindness in “colledge”
- How to Write a Sentence
- Imaginary liner notes
- Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times
- Invitation to a dance
- Is there a pencil in The House?
- John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat
- A Kerouac notebook page
- The kitchen shink [sic]
- Klenosky!
- “Make My Jotter Quit!”
- Lady Elaine’s can
- Mysteries of the tollbooth
- National’s et cetera
- Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado
- Obama revisions
- Obama thoughts
- On “On the New Literacy”
- On “Politics and the English Language”
- “On the Road”
- The Oteris and Marty
- The other little book
- Out of the past
- Peppa Pig and the Brontës
- Phones Are For People
- “The Poet”
- Politics and theory
- Proust: involuntary memory, foolish things
- P.S. 131
- Pullum on Strunk and White
- Re: the Beloit Mindset List
- Some have gone and some remain
- “The Spokesmen”
- Sports Illustrated and Proust
- The Springfield Daily Gazette
- That (in)famous line
- Things I learned on my summer vacation
- Van Dyke Parks in Chicago
- W(h)ither grammar
- What I hear in “Walk Away Renee”
Nancy, October 19, 1950.
Happy Birthday, Dad! I love you!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rachel! <#
ReplyDeleteShade!
ReplyDeleteI’m with the idealists here — stuff rolls right off me. : )
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who ALWAYS assumes good intentions (at least in the people she likes)--a kind of idealism I'd sometimes like to borrow.
ReplyDeleteEasy with people I like (which might help explain why they’re people I like), more difficult with, say, various people in the public eye.
ReplyDelete