Debri

That sign was out again in the supermarket last night. This time my son was with me, and he took a picture with his cell-phone. (Thanks, Ben!)

My son's getting older

"Dad, have you ever heard of a poet called Charles Bukowski?"

Eris

From the BBC:

The distant world whose discovery prompted leading astronomers to demote Pluto from the rank of "planet" has now been given its own official name.

Having caused so much consternation in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the object has been called Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord.

Enchiladas, anyone?

Link: Astronomers name "world of chaos" (BBC)

Dopyeras for sale

Twelve stringed instruments made by John and Rudy Dopyera, along with two workbenches, are being offered are for sale as a collection. From the Elderly Instruments website:

The Dopyera brothers were born in what is now Slovakia, and came to the U.S. with the wave of Eastern European immigrants around the beginning of the 20th century. (In fact, the word "Dobro" is both a contraction of "DOpyera BROthers" and the word for "good" in their native tongue.) Engineers, tinkerers, businessmen, and accomplished musicians (their family had a history of violin making going back centuries, and Rudy was by many accounts an exceptionally talented and soulful Gypsy-style violinist), the two Dopyera brothers combined their Old World skills and traditions with the booming technology and futuristic tastes in art of pre-WWII America. Who else thought that spun aluminum might be a good material for sound projection? Who else engraved beautiful Art Deco designs on the bodies of their guitars? Only the Dopyeras.

The unusual, experimental, and mostly one-of-a-kind instruments in this collection – John’s unusual (and spectacular sounding!) resophonic violin, Rudy’s balalaika-inspired Lullabyka, the Art Deco-influenced steel body uke and tenor guitar, even the actual workbench on which John perfected the fabled tri-cone resonator system – are uniquely American (and uniquely Dopyera) innovations.

The instruments shown on the Elderly website are fantastic - i.e., "so extreme as to challenge belief" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary). Who could resist something called the Troika Resophonic Balalaika? Best of all: the Dopyera Resonator Violin, its body looking like a pair of metal colanders painted gold.



Link: The John and Rudy Dopyera Collection (from Elderly Instruments)

Words from James Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

James Baldwin, "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind," in The Fire Next Time (1963)

Tea and health

Seen on the side of a box of teabags (Lipton, I think):

Tea is not a substitute for fruits and vegetables.

Birthday

Two years ago:

"If you're going to be this uptight and worried about it, you're not going to be a very happy blogger. Just say 'This is my new blog; I’m trying it out. Thanks to my son and daughter. I hope it works out.'"

Orange Crate Art is two years old today. I will say thanks once again to Rachel and Ben for showing me that I could learn a little HTML. And I will say thanks to Elaine, who listens to posts in the making. I'm grateful, always, to Van Dyke Parks, whose beautiful song gave me "a place to start" and who was gracious and enthusiastic about my use of his title. (If you've never heard "Orange Crate Art," you can find it here and here.)

And thanks, always, to everyone who's read or commented or e-mailed, ever.

Total posts: 570.

Most visited post: How to e-mail a professor.

Most visits in a day: 2,477 (June 23, 2006), most of them going to Cool laptop, a post on using bakeware to cool a laptop.

Most unexpected side effect: Being asked by the Wall Street Journal to comment on the new Proust translation. (See this post for an explanation.)

Longest post: Letters from Aldo, excerpts from a dear friend's letters. I'm happy that this post has more comments than any other: it's a strange and wonderful thing to see people gathered together and remembering someone in this medium.

Link » A place to start, first post, September 15, 2004

Link » You say it's your birthday, blog post, September 15, 2005

Banned books

From Google:

Google Book Search is our effort to expand the universe of books you can discover, and this year we're joining libraries and bookstores across the country to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week – a nationwide initiative to help people learn about and explore banned books. You can start by browsing these 42 classics – books we couldn't be more pleased to highlight.

The three American novels I'm teaching this semester - Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - are all on Google's list of 42 "challenged" books. You can see the list via the link.

Too bad Google censors itself for China.

Link » Explore Banned Books (via Boing Boing)

Overheard

"Hotel rooms usually come with coffee, don't they?"

Link » "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Multitasking: "not paying attention"

From Jared Sandberg's column "Cubicle Culture":

Multitasking, a term cribbed from computers, is an information age creed that, while almost universally sworn by, is more rooted in blind faith than fact. It's the wellspring of office gaffes, as well as the stock answer to how we do more with less when in fact we're usually doing less with more. What now passes for multitasking was once called not paying attention. . . .

"Multitasking doesn't look to be one of the great strengths of human cognition," says James C. Johnston, a research psychologist at NASA's Ames Research Center. "It's almost inevitable that each individual task will be slower and of lower quality."

Link » Why Multitasking Doesn't Work (Wall Street Journal, subscription required)

Related » Multitasking Makes You Stupid

Also related » Clutter