“Socialism — it starts with democracy”: so says a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Today’s installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American is a must-read.
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
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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
Blog Archive
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2022
(1004)
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▼
May
(81)
- Masking, still masking
- Ten movies, two seasons
- Mystery actor
- SMASH
- “Tenants”
- Memorial Day 1922
- A Brooklyn public library
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- Mary Miller, lying
- Aaron Rupar collecting
- “Better than the one that I’m in”
- College enrollment down
- Inara G. and Van Dyke P.
- “Ten hours to Chicago”
- HCR on “the right to bear arms”
- Red flags
- “Why are you here?”
- Herschel Walker voting
- The last pay phones in NYC?
- SFW on the shelf
- Domestic comedy
- Mary’s and Rhoda’s apartments
- Grain, oil, and pastries
- Phonics redux
- Mozart in Lviv
- Lambini & Sons
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- Roger Angell (1920–2022)
- New directions in chicken soup
- House hyphens
- Some Miller votes
- Griffy and Lippy and Sluggo
- Elaine Fine, “Adoration” arranger
- Free COVID-19 tests, round three
- Was it ever thus?
- Garfield, with, without
- In search of lost LA
- A pencil sculpture
- A BFD, I hope
- Garfield minus Garfield
- Mystery actors
- FSRC: annual report
- Streaming screenshots
- “America is minorities”
- Gnome Bakers
- Today’s Mutts
- Buffalo
- Egghead paperbacks
- 224 > 205
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- “Indefensible”
- Sunshine of my mondegreen
- “Music from Nancy”
- Separated at birth
- “Striking similarities” between commencement speeches
- “Coming back as a cat”
- A pencil truck
- Another vote from Mary Miller
- Heather Cox Richardson’s latest
- Lou’s who
- Mystery actor
- Word Matters on Orwell’s “Politics and the English...
- Timothy Snyder, from “9 Theses”
- Pinboard is down
- Seven channels
- Mother’s Day
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- Visitors to the newsroom
- Squareword
- Mary Miller in the news
- Eleven movies, one season
- “Chopped prose”
- A Chock-centric post
- Maureen O’Hara for Lipton Tea
- Rights and wrongs, old and new
- Harry Carney’s baritone
- Roe
- Space hotel
- Mystery actor
- Donald Evans’s stamps
- Outtakes (12)
-
▼
May
(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: 3
Yes, democracy is such a starter drug. Once you let "those people" have the vote you never know what they'll expect next. The right to privacy, perhaps?
It's not unheard-of even today for politicians on the right to suggest that the franchise should be limited to those who own property. We haven't progressed much in 250 years.
Funny you should say “those people”: one of my best teachers in high school, Albert Kornblit, always warned us against the people who talk in those terms — “those people,” “they,” “them.”
I’ll never forget walking out of a store in downstate Illinois, and the woman exiting behind us said to Elaine, “They’re everywhere.” There’d been a Black person in the checkout line. Unfortunately, Elaine was too shocked to reply.
I checked with Elaine: she says that the reason she didn’t say anything is that she had no idea what the woman meant.
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