Orange Crate Art

Saturday, December 23, 2017

A Covered Swivel Rotary File

A Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day: a Covered Swivel Rotary File, better known as a Rolodex, circa 1960, in olive and woodgrain. See also the museum’s 1958 Rolodex.

You can sign up for Object of the Day e-mails here.

From the Saturday Stumper

A clue from the Newsday Saturday Stumper, 20-Across, five letters: “Central Brussels.” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Today’s puzzle is by Matthew Sewell. Finishing a Saturday Stumper is always cause for minor self-congratulation.

“Or,” or “, or”?

The teaser for a New York Times article asks, “Is it better to shower in the morning or at night?” The article’s headline asks, “Should you shower in the morning, or at night?” Is there a difference between “in the morning or at night” and “in the morning, or at night”?

Only the worst kind of curmudgeon would insist that the commaless question could be misunderstood as an inquiry about whether or not to shower. Cue the curmudgeon: “Yes, it is better to shower in the morning or at night. Do so and you will be less likely to offend.” To misread the commaless question in that way is to mistake an alternative question (x or y ) for a yes-no question (also called a polar question).

But sometimes a comma is crucial to avoid misreading. “Would you like coffee or tea?” is the question to ask if you want to know whether to boil water and get out cups. “Would you like coffee, or tea?” is a entirely different question. Read aloud and you can hear your voice mark the difference between the yes-no question and the alternative question. Since both Times questions are alternative questions, I would prefer a comma in each, if only for the sake of consistency. That’s the kind of thing people might have thought about at the (now-gone) copy desk.

Another way to justify a comma before or : the comma marks the omission of words, as in “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Should you shower in the morning, or should you shower at night? Would you like coffee, or would you like tea? Earl Grey, or Irish Breakfast?

The Times headline ends with a clever touch that turns the alternative question into a polar question: “Should you shower in the morning, or at night? Yes.” In other words, there’s no easy way to decide. Well played, Times.

[About the post title: Why the comma after the first or ? Because I’m asking an alternative question.]

NPR, sheesh

Heard yesterday on All Things Considered: “You crafted this movie from scratch.”

As I wrote in a 2015 post, “When everything from poems to pot to munchies is crafted, it’s time to say vogue word and move on.”

Better: “You wrote and directed this movie.”

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Friday, December 22, 2017

Winter afternoons

Emily Dickinson, the first stanza of 320:

We’ve had only two winter afternoons thus far, but I’ve been thinking about this poem and noticing the light over the past few days. Together the poem and the light have made me think of my undergraduate self, walking in the late afternoon on a nearly empty campus in late December, the dead zone between the end of classes and the start of final examinations. I wouldn’t call the slant of light on such an afternoon oppressive. I’d call it melancholy and assertive: pay attention as I, the only sun in the sky, sink. This afternoon there’s no sun, no slant: the sky is merely white, and now turning grey.

Dickinson’s poem sits in a folder in my head with Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” and “Neutral Tones” and Ted Berrigan’s “A Certain Slant of Sunlight.” But I didn’t have that folder as an undergraduate.

Related reading
All OCA Dickinson posts (Pinboard)

Roswell Rudd (1935-2017)

The trombonist Roswell Rudd has died at the age of eighty-two. The Ottawa Citizen has an obituary. Like Jaki Byard or Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Rudd played the whole history of jazz on his instrument. A YouTube sampler, with music by Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Rudd, and Traditional:

“Blue Turning Grey Over You” (with Lafayette Harris) : “Ko-Ko” (with Steve Lacy) : “Brilliant Corners” (with Steve Lacy) : “Twelve Bars” (with Lafayette Harris) : “Bamako” (with Toumani Diabaté) : “Dry Bones” (with Sonic Youth)

Bonus: Rudd appears in Jazz on a Summer’s Day (dir. Bert Stern and Aram Avakian, 1960) as a member of Eli’s Chosen Six, the Yale Dixielanders who motor their way through the film.

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December 23: Francis Davis’s 1993 profile of Roswell Rudd, “White Anglo-Saxon Pythagorean,” is online.

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December 26: The New York Times has an obituary.

Zippy and Proust

[Zippy, December 22, 2017.]

The title of today’s strip: “Remembrance of Flings Past.”

Related OCA posts, Venn-style
Proust : Proust and Zippy : Zippy (Pinboard)