Not fascism, which was never a contender. Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is surreal.
Monday, December 19, 2016
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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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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
-
▼
2016
(890)
-
▼
December
(81)
- New Year’s Eve 1916
- A poem for the day
- Domestic comedy
- Unique Original Pretzel “Splits”
- “Technology is the only thing that really entertai...
- Quotation marks and the Internet
- “The Scope of Hate in 2016”
- More “some rocks”
- Crafting nonsense
- EXchange names on screen
- ”With no idea where he was going”
- George Herriman’s Krazy Kat
- Still life with telephone
- Twelve more movies
- Christmas 1916
- A song for these times
- Caroline, no!
- I’m dreaming of a liverwurst sandwich
- “Hypothesis Song”
- Relativity: LPs
- John Ashbery, New Collages
- From an old notebook
- “Missile Mail”
- Sidedoor, a podcast
- Words as money
- The Warfel Law of Divided Usage
- Some winter rocks
- “This Week in Hate”
- A Brooklyn bar menu
- Blue-light special
- Reaching for a book
- M-W Word of the Year
- Long overdue
- A 2017 calendar
- Not from The Onion
- Man, oh man
- “Tremendous”
- Crafted
- Make it known
- Yoda, n.
- Sardine disco balls
- Martinis or cheap cigars
- From The Day of the Owl
- Truman Capote meets Willa Cather
- Griffith and Keane
- No TV news
- “This Week in Hate”
- BIZZ
- Klinkenborg’s snow
- Deresiewicz v. D’Agata
- Quadrille revival
- Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams
- A new rubric
- Lies and inconsistencies
- For Nancy Ritz
- Christian music
- From the Saturday Stumper
- The Netflix DVD problem
- John Glenn (1921–2016)
- Windrip’s universities
- Quit
- Ann Patchett’s favorite bookstores
- Lambuth serendipity
- A David Lambuth sampler
- The other little book
- “This Week in Hate”
- The De Palma-Dunning-Kruger effect
- Canned Heat punchline
- From an old notebook
- Not O. K.
- Art of sardines
- Still at it
- Peng Chang-kuei (1919?–2016)
- Shameless spouse-promotion
- MetaTV
- Merriam-Webster v. fascism
- A Side Street police station
- “Try the wireless”
- Bernie Sanders on the United Technologies deal
- Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson
- Sardines in translation
-
▼
December
(81)
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”
- ChatGPT’s twenty-line poems
- “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
- Politics and theory
- “The Poet”
- 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.
comments: 1
I take it as a sign that the word has been worn to a new thinness, though I would have thought it fairly threadbare already.
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