[By me.]
I found this poem, circa 2006, while looking through an old thumb drive. Not bad, says I.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
“Songs in the Park”
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. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
View Profile
Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“We all live right next door”
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.
Search this blog
Creative Commons
StatCounter
Subscribe
Click to subscribe in a reader.
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
Pinboard tags
Blog Archive
-
▼
2025
(997)
-
▼
October
(96)
- Bob Dylan’s Nobel essay (again)
- Orange pumpkin art
- Domestic comedy
- Sludge
- Words of the year
- A would-be crash blossom
- An AI blog comment?
- An AI restaurant response
- Jack DeJohnette (1942–2025)
- Nancy milk
- Word of the day: m’onderstanding
- A billboard in Alton
- Mental acuity
- IWTYO, Erie Canal edition
- Honeycrisp apples, then and now
- June Lockhart (1925–2025)
- Bonwit Teller
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- The age of noir
- A puzzle in signage
- Mental acuity
- MSNBC, sheesh
- From the side of a carton
- COLD BREWSKI’S
- Looking around
- Pencil tributes
- Language devolving
- The hand
- Never no bottom
- Unluckies
- Domestic comedy
- Look out, Mary!
- David Frum on Stefan Zweig
- Mel Brooks on John Candy
- Twelve movies
- No Kings, NYT
- I like this advice
- In the Golf Ball District
- Nancy, NO ICE
- No Kings Day in east-central Illinois
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- Mental acuity
- Sock it to ’em, JB
- There are signs and then there are signs
- Olivia Jaimes’s final thoughts about Nancy
- No Kings Day coming
- Dinner and a show
- Adam Kinzinger on that GOP group chat
- A fellow graduate of P.S. 131
- Words and other words
- “Songs in the Park”
- From a Liquid to a solid
- Necking
- Single malt what?
- A joke in a neo-traditional manner
- A building and an arch
- “My hair!”
- Great Lives : Derek Bailey
- King Records documentary
- Orwell: 2+2=5
- HCR on this day
- Chock full o’Signs
- Diane Keaton (1946–2025)
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- Alcove, niche, nook
- Guitar blossoms
- The Nobel Peace Prize
- Off to the engine factory
- “Antifa” then and now
- A telephone alcove or nook
- No thanks, I’m good
- Pam Bondi’s notes
- Mental acuity
- Mystery actor
- Let there be at least some light
- Thank you, Governor Pritzker
- Billie Holiday at Storyville
- MAGA no more
- Failing to meet the moment
- VDP on Brian Wilson
- Orange supplies
- Current events
- Kimmy goes back in time!
- My daughter’s humormeter
- Today’s Saturday Stumper
- To all electric-scooter operators
- Literalists and kleptomaniacs
- Pronoun watch
- Fowler and The New Yorker
- A friend in the art
- In the can
- New directions in supplies
- Unhinged, unwell
- Pocket notebook sighting
- Notebooks of a doppelgänger
- Not well (stairs)
-
▼
October
(96)
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: 4
“Whole cinderblocks of summers”— what a wonderful image! It ties in, for me, with your New York City tax photos – – a poignancy for things that are lost – – and yet you remember something “greater than cellars”.
And later? Who knows!
Nice, Michael.
Thanks, Fresca. Elaine thinks it was suggested by a cinderblocks-and-plywood desk I had as a grad student. I don’t know what it means, but I like it.
I like it too, it’s evocative in that way that things that aren’t pinned (dead) to a board can be.
I just remembered that my blog profile description says, “Exactly! And then, what?”
!!
Post a Comment