The Christmas truce

Well, we were in those trenches I don't know how long. Then it came, Christmas morning. So we stuck a board up -- "Merry Christmas." They also stuck one up -- "Merry Christmas." So we were saying, Well, I don't think they'll fire today. No, I don't think they will.

Then lo and behold, it was a German coming down out of the trench, run right into the River Lys, he did. And here was a German coming down the riverbank with his hands up above. One of our chaps threw his equipment off. He went out to meet him.

Well, he shook hands. Then we all got out.

In a 1954 interview, Frank Richards of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers remembers the Christmas truce of 1914.

Link: Frank Richards interview (from the BBC archives, requires the RealPlayer)

Link: The Christmas truce (from the BBC)

Men and women?

I'm still waiting for the New York Times to acknowledge an error in a review of Bob Spitz's The Beatles (see here for the details). Checking the Corrections page today, I noticed this oddity:

Because of an editing error, a television review yesterday about "Isaac: Have a Better Day," a new talk show on the Style network starring Isaac Mizrahi, referred incorrectly to the studio audience, which he addresses as "girls." It is an audience of men and women, not college students.

College students aren't men and women?

I'm sending an e-mail to the Times about this one too.

Kid joke, overheard

Child: It smells like updog in here.

Parent: What's updog?

The gone dead train

I wanna go home and that train is done gone dead
I wanna go, that train is done gone dead

King Solomon Hill, "The Gone Dead Train" (1932)

The bus too.

I remember the New York transit strike of 1980, which kept me from even thinking of getting up to Columbia University to hear Jorge Luis Borges read.

Here's a wish that this strike is settled -- and soon. Good luck, fellow New Yorkers.

Literacy falling

Further confirmation that there's a difference between a degree and an education:

The average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation's most important test of how well adult Americans can read. . . .

When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.

The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts.

Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated "below basic" literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose.

Link: "Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds" (from the New York Times)

The dowdy world on film

I sometimes refer to what I call "the dowdy world" -- meaning modern American culture as it was before certain forms of technology redefined everyday life. The dowdy world is a place with dictaphones, rotary phones, afternoon newspapers, "radio programs," and telegrams. In the dowdy world, a fountain pen is an everyday tool, not a jewel-laden collector's item. And yes, there are pay phones. In the dowdy world, even a crime boss has to drop a nickel to make an important call.

I sometimes like watching a movie just for the pleasure of getting in touch with the dowdy world in all its black-and-white splendor. Few movies have given me as much of this odd pleasure as The House on 92nd Street, a 1945 film about the FBI infiltration of a Nazi spy-ring in Manhattan. It's part thriller, part police-procedural, told in documentary fashion with a solemn narrative voiceover. The movie was recently released on DVD, billed as film noir, which it's not. (But noir sells.)

The House on 92nd Street pleases even with its opening credits -- presented in the form of a typed document, the pages held at the top by a big shiny clasp. As the scenes go by, one sees file cabinets, file trays, card files, desktop blotters, rocking blotters, desk sets, ledgers, teletype machines, typing stands, pencils, fountain pens, and rubber stamps. These objects are sometimes the focal points of scenes, as when a morgue attendant reads through the pocket notebook found on a body and the camera closes in on its pages. At other times, these objects -- which may well have been virtually invisible to a 1945 audience -- take on a curious importance just by virtue of their antiquity. Look at that fountain pen, I say to myself. It's right there, so big that it's easy to identify as a Waterman.

The follow-up movie The Street with No Name (1948) has similar delights. In this film the FBI is after crooks, not Nazis. A teletype machine -- spitting out a directive signed "J. Edgar Hoover" -- is the first speaking character in the movie. An enormous wooden card file sits on the desk of a bail bondsman. Look at that card file, I say to myself. It's the bondsman's database, and he pops the hood and retrieves a card in less time than it would take to point and click. A stapler, the dowdy kind, shiny steel, with a knob to push down on, is strangely prominent in a shot of an FBI staffer. And everyone seems to have a pencil at hand -- or else is gesturing for one, as when Inspector Briggs (Lloyd Nolan), taking a phone call, needs to get down an address. He then speaks the words, telegram-style, as he writes them:

"Anderson . . . Manufacturing . . . Company. Fraser . . . Road at . . . Caron."

*

In 2008 I made a post with screenshots of the Dixon Ticonderogas of The House on 92nd Street: Is there a pencil in The House?

I shall now click my mouse and send these words from the dowdy world into the future.

All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Clark Terry

Trumpeter and flugelhornist Clark Terry is 85 today. Happy birthday, Clark Terry.

I was lucky to talk with Clark at length some years back, when I did an hour-long interview with him on the FM station at my university. It was a high point in my life -- the chance to ask questions of a great musician and Ellingtonian.

You can learn more about Clark Terry and see his touring schedule at his website: clarkterry.com.

Larry David's notebook

From a New Yorker piece on Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm:

Like many comedians, Larry David carries a pocket notebook for writing down ideas. "You're in a parking garage, and Larry’s wallet is empty--he forgot to ask his assistant to go to the cash machine," [Robert] Weide, who directs several episodes a year, says. "So he says, 'Shit, I have no money for the valet--could you give me a few bucks?' So you find yourself giving money to Larry David, who has a few bucks. And then out comes the little notebook."

"What would I have done if he hadn’t been there?" David said. "That could have been funny."

The notebook is a ratty brown thing that looks as if it might have cost forty-nine cents at a stationery store. Its pages are covered with David’s illegible scrawl.

Ratty? I think not. The notebook, as seen in Curb Your Enthusiasm, seems to be a Boorum memo book, made by Esselte Pendaflex. The photograph above is of one of mine ($1.55 whenever I bought it, not all that long ago). Sad to say, I can't find one reference to this well-made item online. Has it become, like the Blackwing pencil, a part of the past?

Larry David's notebook is prominent in "The Wire" (first season, episode six of Curb Your Enthusiasm). It's so important to its owner that written inside it is an offer of a $500 reward for its return. Trouble comes when a neighbor finds the notebook and wants Larry to make good on the reward.

Link: James Kaplan, "Angry Middle-Aged Man"
(from the New Yorker, 19 January 2004)

Update: A call to Esselte Pendaflex confirms that these notebooks are still available. The person I spoke with (a fan of CYE who didn't know about the notebook connection) said that they can be ordered from Able Office Products (1.800.870.6872).

Update, July 9, 2008: Reader Steve Windham found brown Oxford pocket notebooks for sale here. Thanks, Steve!

Update, April 5, 2012: Steve Windham has found a Roaring Spring Sewn Memo Book that looks very much like the brown notebooks of yore. He also reports one online source, selling notebooks by the case. Thanks again, Steve.

Update, September 7, 2012: Steve Windham has found an online source for single Roaring Springs Sewn Memo Books. Thanks again, again, Steve.

Red Nose Beaujolais

I was surprised to find tonight that Orange Crate Art is the only page that turns up if you're searching for "red nose beaujolais" with either Google or Yahoo. I happened to mention Red Nose Beaujolais (here) in a moment of Thanksgiving reverie. This single-page result is not exactly a Googlewhack, but it is pretty surprising.

If anyone is wondering, Red Nose Beaujolais is a wonderful wine. When my wife and I sample the three or four varieties of Beaujolais nouveau available from our local "wine-merchant" (aka "the liquor store"), we always seem to agree on which one or ones we like best. This year it was Red Nose Beaujolais. You heard it here first.

45/15

Nothing moves me to procrastinate like the prospect of grading dozens of essays. But I've been making great efforts toward getting-things-done instead of putting-things-off. And having just graded 53 essays in a day-and-a-half (yes, I didn't do much else), I can recommend one strategy that's done more than any other to help me get around grading-induced procrastination. Here it is, in all its complexity:

Work for 45 minutes.
Take a break for 15 minutes.
Repeat as necessary.

My 45/15 rule is a variation on a strategy that I saw mentioned by doctoral student Zach Pousman in a MetaFilter thread a few months back on being productive in college. Zach cited PhinisheD, a website for people working on dissertations and theses, and described a 40/20 rule he found there:

Do your work in 40 minute blocks with a twenty minute rest between each. This is a set. Then, if you've got 3 hours between classes or in the afternoon, do 3 sets of work as above. Though you'll only work two hours, you'll get so much more done! Swear.

I didn't like the idea of losing a third of each hour, so I changed things a bit. My 45/15 rule has made grading much more do-able work, by removing the Sisyphean feeling that has always set in when I realize how many papers I still have to grade (20 done, and 33 still to go! O endlessness!). Now I know that in 45 minutes I can take a break.

45/15 also helps by appealing to my left-brained penchant for routine, giving a shape to the blurry hours. Of course, now that I've graded all these papers, I have no routine, and will have to wait until Wednesday, when my first finals come in, to start grading again. Four days with no routine! But I think I can manage.

[If any of my students are reading this post: the essays for the most part were really, really strong. You can get your essay back on Monday or at your final exam.]