Overheard

"It looks like bacon with my glasses off."

Previous "Overheard" posts

PowerPoint and the war

In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall.

Edward Tufte, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint"

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Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD's [Office of Secretary of Defense] contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology -- above all information technology -- has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war. To imagine that PowerPoint slides can substitute for such means is really the height of recklessness.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich

You can see several of the slides here:

Iraq War Plan Assumed Only 5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006 (The National Security Archive)

Related reading

Andrew Bacevich (faculty profile, Boston University)

"Delusional" Iraq plans envisaged only 5,000 troops by now, group says (CNN)

A Prewar Slide Show Cast Iraq in Rosy Hues (New York Times)

Edward Tufte, The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint (edwardtufte.com)

Toast

Wikipedia on toast:

Toast is often buttered.

Toast (Wikipedia)

Calvin Trillin on marriage

Calvin Trillin, talking about his book About Alice, a memoir of life with his wife Alice Trillin, who died in 2001. The two were married for 36 years:

I wrote once years ago that long-term marriage is now intertwined in the public mind with the music of Lawrence Welk. You really sort of have branded yourself a square if you've been married a long time and write about it in anything other than a list of atrocities or what various people did to each other in the marriage.

I don't feel embarrassed by having had a happy marriage. I feel a little bit embarrassed about the idea that I know something about it. I guess there are industries in this country based on the idea you can know something about it, or you can learn about it or something, but I think an awful lot of it is just luck.

Calvin Trillin talks about About Alice (PBS NewsHour podcast)

"Ice and Snow Blues"

I'm gonna build me a castle, out of the ice and snow
I'm gonna build me a castle, out of the ice and snow
So I can freeze these barefooted women 'way from
     around my door

That's the first chorus of Clifford Gibson's "Ice and Snow Blues," recorded in New York City on November 26, 1929. This lyric is one of the most striking blues conceits I know, a surreal image of the singer-guitarist in a frozen Xanadu. Barefooted women, keep out!

As I learned by chance this afternoon, the ice-and-snow conceit did not originate with Gibson. Pearl Dickson's "Twelve Pound Daddy" (recorded in Memphis, December 12, 1927) has it too. It happens that I have this song on Frank Stokes' Dream: The Memphis Blues, a compilation LP that I bought as a young blues fan, 35-or-so years ago:

I'm gonna build me a castle, out of ice and snow
Lordy, out of ice and snow
So when my blues come around, I can freeze them
     from my door

I wonder whether the weather in November 1929 inspired Clifford Gibson to make ice and snow the starting point for a new song. On Monday, November 25, 1929, the New York Times had an item with the charming title "Mercury to Rise Today: Bears Rake Leaves Into Den as Snow Falls in Palisades Park." The paper noted a Saturday "cold snap that sent New York into its heavy overcoats and covered much of the remainder of the country with snow and frost." Was Gibson making his way from St. Louis to New York during that cold snap? Did he get off the train in New York with this unusual blues conceit in mind? Did a recording engineer suggest doing a song about the weather?

Today's weather brought Clifford Gibson's song into my mind, as I'm typing in a house that's covered in ice and snow. There are no barefooted women outside though -- or inside either. My wife Elaine is here, and she's wearing socks. Happy Valentine's Day, Elaine!


[Above, a tree in the front yard.]

Links

Clifford Gibson (1901-1963) was a brilliant guitarist. His 1929-1931 recordings are available on one CD: Complete Recorded Works, 1929-1931. (Included: A killer duet with Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman.)

Pearl Dickson's "Twelve Pound Daddy" can (still) be found on Frank Stokes' Dream: The Memphis Blues, 1927-1931 (Yazoo Records).

It was a page from Michael Gray's The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that alerted me to the Pearl Dickson connection: Background on "Ice and Snow Blues" (Amazon Online Reader, Amazon account required).

Julia Child and Rachael Ray

My daughter, whose does a great Rachael Ray imitation, will like this commentary, by chef Anthony Bourdain:

Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better -- teach us -- and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion -- you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing . . . Just sit there. Have another Triscuit . . . Sleep . . . sleep. . . ."

From a longer commentary on Food Network personalities:

Nobody Asked Me But (ruhlman.com, via kottke.org)

September 6, 2011: That link is gone, but the commentary lives on at the Internet Archive.

Levenger Pocket Briefcase, revised

In the mail this week, the latest Levenger catalogue, offering three styles of the Pocket Briefcase®. The Pocket Briefcase is a beautiful object, but an expensive one (the standard model sells for $38). A simple modification brings much of its utility to all. Behold the Pocket Briefcase revised:

Before

A portable, pocket-sized leather writing pad and a supply of 3 x 5 cards can become your indispensable tools for on-the-go thinking.

After

   binder clip
A^portable, pocket-sized leather writing pad and a supply of 3 x 5 cards can become your indispensable tools for on-the-go thinking.

Yes, the Pocket Briefcase revised is the good old Hipster PDA.

Hipster PDA (43 Folders)
Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase

How to get up early

Lifehack has a very useful post today on how to get up early -- to be specific, at 5:00 a.m.

[Note to self: The tips offered could also help with getting up at 6:10 a.m.]

How to start your day at 5:00 a.m. (Lifehack.org)

Related post
How to be a morning person

"It is snowing."

A prose-poem from Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960):

Souffle

Il neige sur mon toit et sur les arbres. Le mur et le jardin sont blancs, le sentier noir et la maison s'est écroulée sans bruit. Il neige.

*

Breath

It is snowing on my roof and on the trees. The wall and the garden are white, the path black, and the house has given way without a sound. It is snowing.

Reverdy's poems are often extremely difficult to translate. This one isn't. The only word that poses difficulty (for me) is écrouler. My little paperback French-English dictionary gives "to collapse," "to crumble," "to flop (as in a chair)." My ancient Harrap's Shorter is more helpful; it gives "to collapse, fall in, give way, tumble down." I like the idea of a house giving way to the snow. What about bruit? Noise seems too noisy here. For sans bruit, Harrap's gives "noiselessly, quietly." An adverb in this poem though would be too decorative. "Without a sound" goes better with the stillness of the scene. ("Without a sound," oddly enough, is Babel Fish's suggestion for sans bruit.)

I once brought "Souffle" into a grade-school class that I visited each month to share some poetry. I read the poem a couple of times and asked the children what sort of feeling they thought the poet had about the snow. I thought I would hear something about mystery and silence and stillness and whiteness. No; the mood of the poem, they said, was excitement. Why? Because Pierre can go out and play in the snow! It made me happy that those children thought of a poet as someone just like them.

[Note: Mary Ann Caws' bilingual edition of Selected Poems offers the same translation of "Souffle." But the above translation is mine. I didn't peek.]

"Baby, It's Cold Outside"

It is. It's 11°F outside (3°F with the windchill). Here are four versions of Frank Loesser's song, via YouTube:

June Carter Cash and Homer and Jethro
Rock Hudson and Mae West
Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews
Fred MacMurray, Ann Miller, and Dinah Shore

The recording of the song can be found on Ray Charles and Betty Carter (1961).

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" (Wikipedia)