A question for non-smokers and ex-smokers only: when did you last see an ashtray? Meaning a traditional tabletop ashtray, not the enormous outdoor kind. My answer: I can’t even remember.
Monday, January 25, 2021
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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: 7
Probably at my mom and dad’s house, but not since the 1970s. I still remember it: heavy, dark red glass, four notches in the rim, and a design in the bottom that looked like embedded coins. My dad smoked cigarettes when he was younger, but by the time I came around (I’m the youngest child), he had weaned himself off cigarettes with cigars Antonio y Cleopatras, I think), and quit smoking completely by the time I was five. But even when he was on cigars he never smoked in the house, which makes me wonder why we had an ashtray in a prominent, permanent place on the family room table. For guests, I suppose.
Just this morning! I keep my pocket contents in the same big ol’ 1960s amber ashtray my father had until his death.
It's an interesting question. My great grandfather was a copper miner in Bisbee, Arizona. He died in 1913, and I have a couple odd objects I grew up with and he supposedly fabricated from copper. One is a small, star-shaped ashtray which I have on a small table in the living room. I was just looking at it yesterday, wondering if I should leave it there. It's metamorphosed from an ashtray to an art object.
I just realized that I have an ashtray just a couple of yards away. But it’s functioning as a home for paper-clips. I still don’t know when I last saw an ashtray that was meant to serve as an ashtray.
Here in the UK smoking indoors is prohibited pretty much everywhere (except in private houses with the owner's permission). So the only ashtrays you're likely to see roundabout are outdoor ones. Here at the pub/cafe we have a few such, in a designated smoking area, but sadly our experience is that some smokers think it's OK just to use flower pots or similar, so don't avail themselves of what's provided for the purpose.
A sight I recall (with no fondness): students ignoring outdoor smoking areas with standing ashtrays and choosing instead to smoke right in front of the doors to buildings, with butts accumulating on the pavement around them. Say anything and you’re a square, a killjoy, a creep.
I used to have a generic square crystal ash tray from my favourite cafe, a gift after they went nonsmoking. Alas, it fell off the top of my microwave.
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