Thank you, Iowa!

Proust is for hunters

I heard a branch snap behind me. I closed the book and slowly lowered it between my knees, which made it almost impossible for me to turn and investigate the sound. I was immediately struck by the absurdity of the situation: I was standing 20 feet up a tree in single-digit temperatures reading Proust.

Common sense deer hunting (Michigan Live)
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks turns 65 today. Happy birthday, Van Dyke!

There's a 2002 Dutch television documentary on VDP at YouTube, with many choice remarks. E.g., on crowds: "I can make it in a queue system, but it is just generally safer to stay at home." (Thanks, Timothy, for reminding me about this documentary.)

Van Dyke Parks documentary: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (YouTube)

Other Van Dyke Parks posts (via Pinboard)
The Music of Van Dyke Parks (fan site)

Syllabub

Is today's Word of the Day meant to get on the nerves of those who haven't yet begun to prepare for a new semester? O, cruel!¹

syllabub \SILL-uh-bub\ noun
: milk or cream that is curdled with an acid beverage (as wine or cider) and often sweetened and served as a drink or topping or thickened with gelatin and served as a dessert

Example sentence: On special occasions, grandma would serve syllabub for dessert.

(I started working on my syllabub syllabi yesterday.)

¹ King Lear 3.7.70

Teaching disorganized students

Ana Homayoun tutors disorganized teenagers:

She requires her clients to have a three-ring, loose-leaf binder for each academic subject, to divide each binder into five sections — notes, homework, handouts, tests and quizzes, and blank paper — and to use a hole puncher relentlessly, so that every sheet of school-related paper is put into its proper home.

Students must maintain a daily planner; they are required to number the order in which they want to do each day’s homework and draw a box next to each assignment, so it can be checked off when completed.

Homework must be done in a two-hour block in a quiet room, with absolutely no distractions: no instant messaging, no Internet, no music, no cellphone, no television.

While some girls need help getting organized, at least three-quarters of her students are boys.

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success (New York Times)

Having seen many a college student struggle (and fail) to find a needed piece of paper in a bulging folder, I applaud any effort to develop better organizing skills. But I'm puzzled: the parents of the high-schoolers described in this article can afford private tutoring ("high-priced," the Times says) but cannot teach these skills themselves?

Calendar downloads

Small calendars for the new year, well designed and free:

Compact calendar
Monitor-edge calendar
Thumb calendar
UNIX calendar command (handy for making a three- or four-month calendar to keep in a pocket notebook)

A poem for New Year's Eve

From John Clare (1793-1864):

               The Old Year

                        1
      The Old Year's gone away
      To nothingness and night
      We cannot find him all the day
      Nor hear him in the night
      He left no footstep mark or place
      In either shade or sun
Tho' last year he'd a neighbours face
In this he's known by none

                        2
      All nothing every where
      Mists we on mornings see
      They have more of substance when they're here
      And more of form than he
      He was a friend by every fire
      In every cot and hall
A guest to every hearts desire
And now he's nought at all

                        3
      Old papers thrown away
      Or garments cast aside
      E'en the talk of yesterday
      Are things identified
      But time once torn away
      No voices can recall
The eve of new years day
Left the old one lost to all

Goodbye, Old Year. May the New Year be a year of greater hope and greater peace for our world.

Related posts
A poem for New Year's Eve (by Ted Berrigan)
Happy New Year (from the film Marty)

Telephone exchange names on screen (no. 3)

[From Born Yesterday, dir. George Cukor, 1950.]

"Hello? CHestnut 7180. I'd like to speak to Thomas Jefferson please."

After visiting the Jefferson Memorial, Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday) dials.

Someone on the set didn't know how to spell DEcatur, which was, according to the Telephone EXchange Name Project, a Washington, D.C. exchange name. But there's no sign that CHestnut was in use in D.C. I like it that both the written number and the spoken number are missing a digit.

Related posts
Telephone exchange names
More telephone exchange name nostalgia
Telephone exchange names in classical music
Telephone exchange names in poetry
Telephone exchange names on screen
Telephone exchange names on screen (no. 2)

All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Names in a series

Anyone of a certain age knows the standard sequence for naming the four Beatles: John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

Is the sequence of names on this T-shirt a joke on that standard sequence? Or is it evidence of the young designers' distance in time from all things Beatle?

The "John & Paul & Ringo & George" shirt, which makes a brief appearance in the film Helvetica, is the work of the graphic design company Experimental Jetset.

Related posts
Helvetica
I remember Sgt. Pepper

The most literate American cities

From a study of reading habits in American cities (pop. 250,000 or more):

The release of the 2007 America’s Most Literate Cities survey coincides with renewed widespread interest in reading and literacy. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently published a “disturbing story” indicating that, at all levels, Americans are reading less and reading less well, and that this behavior correlates with declining measures of the health of our society. . . .

One of the most disturbing trends is that while Americans are becoming more and more educated in terms of their time spent in school and their education level accomplished, they are decreasing in terms of literate behaviors. This is particularly obvious in our lack of support of bookstores and the constantly diminishing circulation of newspapers. Forty-three of the 59 cities studied have a higher percentage of high school graduates than they did five years ago, and 46 of the cities have a higher percentage of college graduates, so clearly the trend across the country is for people to stay in school longer and achieve a higher grade level of accomplishment. Nevertheless, every city in the study declined in Sunday newspaper circulation save one — St. Paul, Minnesota — and only four — Cleveland, Indianapolis, Louisville, and St. Paul — had consistent increases in weekday circulation. So while Americans are becoming more and more “educated,” they are reading newspapers less.

We are also supporting local bookstores far less often. Not a single city in our survey has more independent bookstores now than five years ago. Fifty-seven out of 60 cities reported fewer retail booksellers in 2007 than in 2003; in several, the number of booksellers per capita dropped by half of what was reported in 2003. At the macro level, the market does seem to reflect the “alarming” story that the NEA reports.

America's Most Literate Cities 2007 (Central Connecticut State University)

Related reading
NEA Announces New Reading Study (NEA press release)
To Read or Not to Read (NEA report, .pdf download)