[From the dowdy world: a voice speaks.]
“Quiet, fellas — it’s long distance.”
Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Overheard
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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
#1 hit
In memory of
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 4
This post reminded me of a passage in the book "Art and Adventure of Beekeeping" by Ormond and Harry Aebi (1975), which is just about the best book on the use of observation and intuition to solve problems I've read.
In it Ormond Aebi recounts a incident in the 1920s, as a small boy, growing up in rural Orgeon. It involved handling poison oak while trying to get a glimpse of bees constructing their nest and the subsequent rash. It’s worth quoting in full.
"I sat in misery and cried. Mother tried every remedy she knew but none gave me any relief. At last one morning she decided to telephone long distance to Grandmother who might know a cure. There was no charge for that particular long distance telephone call in those those days. However, Mother had to wait until all lines were clear the entire distance before a call could go through and that might be from ten minutes to three days---too often the latter. There was no way to tell when the distant lines would be clear, so Mother had to keep trying. She got her call through to Grandmother in about ten hours. This was surprisingly soon as we were on a seventeen-party line and some of the farther lines had as many as twenty subscribers. As the telephone was an easily accessible news media, everyone 'rubbered' when the telephone rang. Rubbernecks lowered the electrical power in the telephone lines forcing Mother to shout her questions into the mouthpiece and Grandmother to yell on her end of the line in reply.
Everyone along the line knew that little Ormond had poison oak and heard Grandmother's cure. Before she hung up Mother told Grandmother that she would phone again in three days sometime around noon to let her know if I was well. This alerted everyone to keep off the lines and listen for Grandmother's three long rings and two short ones as Central relayed Mother's call to Grandmother's hand-cranked battery-powered wall telephone."
Thanks for sharing that story. The difficulty of communicating (and getting information) and the sense of community are both pretty sobering. I will look for this book in the library.
It's the 'fellas' that does it for me.
Same here, pal.
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