Community organizer

From campaign manager David Plouffe's e-mail to Barack Obama supporters:

Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Indeed. Giuliani:

On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What?

And Palin:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

Community organizer. Ha ha.

Has it occurred to these people that Jesus (among others) might be described as a community organizer — and one who worked among the poor?

[No, I'm not comparing Barack Obama to Jesus. I'm only pointing out the absurdity of last night's ridicule.]

Mac writing tools

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted a three-part series on writing tools for the Mac: word-processors, text-editors, utilities. Helpful to anyone who's recently switched to a Mac or is thinking about it:

"Back to School: Writing tools": Parts 1, 2, 3

Of the programs covered in this series, I'm partial to Bean (word-processor, free), Pages (word-processor, part of Apple's iWork), TextExpander (keystroke saver), and WriteRoom (full-screen text-editor). I also like TextWrangler, a free text-editor. There's life beyond Microsoft Word.

How to improve writing (no. 22 in a series)

Novice writers often want their writing to "flow," mistaking result for process. Sentences whose movement seems inevitable and right usually result not from easy spontaneity but from careful rethinking. Here for instance is a sentence that could be greatly improved with a little more thought. From a library's monthly newsletter:

For those people who live outside the city limits, even if it is only by one house, two feet, etc., they have to pay an annual fee of $45 for their library card.

What's wrong with this sentence? The "one house, two feet" details are unneeded, and seem to hint at a history of argument with cranky residents. There's also a problem with agreement: people need to pay for their library cards. The main problem with the sentence though is the clumsy syntax: "For those people," "they have to pay." Better:

Anyone who lives beyond the city limits must pay a $45 annual fee for a library card.

From 33 words to 17: almost 50% off!

[Update: There's a better way, and so obvious:

Anyone living beyond the city limits must pay a $45 annual fee for a library card.

From 33 to 16: over 50% off!]

[This post is no. 22 in a very occasional series, "How to improve writing," dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

All "How to improve writing" posts (via Pinboard)

Domestic comedy

"Have we ever seen John Malkovich in a movie that was any good?"

"Being John Malkovich."

"Besides that one: he was just playing himself."

The cabinet of Hi and Lois

I don't want to keep going with Hi and Lois, but I must. (If nothing else, close-reading Hi and Lois offers a break from the looniness of the real.)

Today's strip reminds me of the children's game of spotting the differences between pictures. Did the same hand draw both panels?

[Hi and Lois, September 2, 2008.]

The curtains shorten.

The window panes widen.

The glazing bars shrink. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

The painting (a Cy Twombly?) shrinks and moves up and away.

Lois's shirt is on backwards. (Kidding.)

Note too that the window sill does not follow the slant of the wall — more disturbingly so in the second panel. The Flagstons must be living in a German Expressionist suburb, next door to the Caligaris.

Related posts
Hi and Escher?
House? (1)
House? (2)
Returning from vacation with Hi and Lois
Sunday at the beach with Hi and Lois
Vacationing with Hi and Lois

Red Cross

The American Red Cross

[September 1, 2008 is the day Hurricane Gustav made landfall.]

Sylvia Sweets remembered

The Flickr page for Jack Delano's photograph of Sylvia Sweets Tea Room now includes a lengthy and evocative account of life at the restaurant from Elaine (Dayos) Liatsos, daughter of John Dayos, who began Sylvia Sweets in the 1930s. A sample:

I remember well the two ladies who worked at McCarthy’s in the fifties and would come in on Friday night, when the stores were open until 9pm and order Salmon Salad on plain dark bread and my father would enjoy making it extra special for them every week — cut in fours with toothpicks.

How wonderful that this picture of the gone world (thanks, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) should find so many old and new friends in this century.

Related post
Sylvia Sweets Tea Room

Domestic comedy

"Do you want chocolate chips in the cake?"

"No, just yellow."

Back-to-school shopping

Jana Pruden still wants to go back-to-school shopping:

I never even liked school very much, but the Back to School season was still something special. Back to School was a time of such great newness it always left me feeling that anything could happen.

With my school supplies laid out all clean and perfect in those final days before school started, I could always catch a glimpse of the better me that could possibly emerge that school year.

Ah, supplies. Thomas Merton has a wonderful passage with a similar feeling.

Shopping for supplies was a late-summer ritual when my children were in elementary school. El fanatico (that's me) insisted on the best — Dixon Ticonderoga or Faber-Castell or Mirado pencils. It was only years later that I learned that all supplies were pooled for class use. I think that my kids didn't have the heart to tell me.

The school supplies we now buy are (thank goodness) for personal use — books, computers, notebooks, pens.

House?

The siding contractor has walked off the job.

You can see what the artist is after in the three Ernie Bushmiller panels at the top of this page. In Nancy, the result is elegant. In Hi and Lois, just clumsy. Time marches.

[Hi and Lois, August 29, 2008.]

Related posts
Hi and Escher?
House?
Returning from vacation with Hi and Lois
Sunday at the beach with Hi and Lois
Vacationing with Hi and Lois