Barack Obama and Ralph Ellison

From Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia today:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.

In other words, e pluribus unum.

It's an interesting time to be teaching Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), the story of an African-American man who tries to do the right thing, at college and in the shadowy Brotherhood. Ellison's narrator is a brilliant, compelling speaker who hires out his eloquence to an organization and pays heavily for finally speaking his own thoughts. At the end of his journey, he offers a powerful affirmation of the unity and multiplicity of American identity:

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. . . . Our fate is to become one, and yet many — This is not prophecy, but description.

An American culture that allows for difference — "one, and yet many" — is Ellison's alternative to the homogeneity of the melting pot, emblematized in the novel's magical "Optic White" paint, which absorbs darker liquids and renders them invisible. One, yet many; many, yet one: that's the possibility of a more perfect and more complex union.

Political tropes of the day

The campaign aides cited in this New York Times article do just fine. But watch the reporter overreach:

One aide wearily compared the campaign to a cross-country race whose finish line keeps creeping farther away. Another likened its current state to a game of chicken, where neither campaign can afford to slow down, lest the other side interpret it as a sign of weakness. But even enemies as bitter as the Germans and the French climbed out of the trenches during the Christmas truce of 1914 to sing carols together. (They went back to killing each other shortly afterward.)

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A few words from Buck Mulligan

"Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty."

Buck Mulligan, in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922)

I've taken these words out of context: Buck Mulligan is speaking of June 16, 1904, and he's parodying Horatio Lord Nelson.

But all that aside: Happy Saint Patrick's Day.

(The name Leddy is Irish.)

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From the main page of the New York Times online:

The Spitzer scandal, hot on the low heels of the Hillary heckling, is raising hackles.

If you're wondering, hackles are "erectile hairs along the neck and back especially of a dog."

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DOTHETEST

A quick test of awareness: DOTHETEST.

Greek diners on the wane

Dark prophecy:

“When Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”

Diners in Changing Hands; Greek Ownership on the Wane (New York Times)

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Signage problem

Noticed on a state road, in front of a high school, nailed to telephone poles, two sets of signs celebrating, one word at a time, a team's journey to "state." It seems that the signmakers were working without a shared sense of message.

Five yellow signs:

WE    ARE    PROUD    OF    YOU.

And then five white ones:

HONK    IF    YOU    DO    TOO.

Yes, I honked.

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Necker cube

Drawn in the margins of eleventyteen loose-leaf pages. Did you know that it has a name?

[Eleventyteen: "many," my father-in-law's coinage.]

Necker cube (Wikipedia)
Animated Necker cube (Mark Newbold)

Wriggley's and Wrigley's gum

I don't know how long I've had this practical joke or where it came from. It's been sitting for some time in a box with other dowdy objects — a package of Blanco y Negro cigarette papers, a box of Dennison "Merchandise — 4th Class Mail" gummed labels, a Traveler's Expense Book (with an illustration of a hatted businessman, an airplane at his shoulder, an automobile emerging from behind his upper arm).

What I do know is that the chances for Wriggley deception will soon vanish, as Wrigley has moved to repackage its Spearmint gum and other "traditional" brands. The Chicago Tribune reports:

With the repackaging, Extra and the traditional brands [including Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Spearmint] will come in a flat, square pack rather than a bulkier rectangle. The "Slim Packs" are essentially the same as those for Wrigley's "5" brand, a sugarless gum introduced last year that's been a hit, particularly with younger consumers.

The new pack is aimed at being a better fit in a consumer's pocket or purse. It's also a way for Wrigley to showcase old brands in a trendier format.

The changes are a response to the success of what the Trib calls "a key gummaking rival," Cadbury, the maker of Dentyne and Trident.

[Update: I have a vague memory of my son getting this novelty from a friend in elementary school. Ben, may I offer you a piece of gum?]

Wrigley's Spearmint design, 1913-2004 (Wrigley)

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Inept political metaphor of the day

From an article on Eliot Spitzer's resignation:

"I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."

For Spitzer, that will likely be one toe at a time.

How does a person rise one toe at a time?

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