Saturday, September 13, 2008

Letters to the Times

Of London, that is:

Sir, The complexity of English spelling, grammar and punctuation has its advantages. The two phishing e-mails and the letter telling me I had won a Spanish lottery, all received in the past week, were readily identifiable as fakes because of their poor standards. Apparently, I would have had to pay the lottery agent 5 per cent of my wining fund.

Shaun Thorpe
London W12

*

Sir, Mr Francis suggests (letter, Sept 11) that if youngsters are not taught how to spell, they will not be able to enjoy the pleasure of a crossword.

I have often found it convenient to overlook spelling conventions when squeezing words into the inadequate spaces allowed.

Paul Adams
Westcott, Surrey
Related posts
If it's Wensday, this must be England
Phishing

Friday, September 12, 2008

Martin Tytell, typewriter man

From today's New York Times:

Martin Tytell, whose unmatched knowledge of typewriters was a boon to American spies during World War II, a tool for the defense lawyers for Alger Hiss, and a necessity for literary luminaries and perhaps tens of thousands of everyday scriveners who asked him to keep their Royals, Underwoods, Olivettis (and their computer-resistant pride) intact, died on Thursday in the Bronx. He was 94. . . .

Mr. Tytell was proud of the rarity of his expertise, and relished the eccentric nature of his business. "We don't get normal people here," he said of his shop. And he was aware that his connection to the typewriter bordered on love.

"I'm 83 years old and I just signed a 10-year lease on this office; I’m an optimist, obviously," Mr. Tytell told the writer Ian Frazier in a 1997 article in The Atlantic Monthly, commenting on the likelihood that typewriters weren’t going to last in the world much longer. "I hope they do survive — manual typewriters are where my heart is. They're what keep me alive."
Ian Frazier's 1997 article is online:

Typewriter Man (The Atlantic)

Hi and Lois' dictionary


[Hi and Lois, September 12, 2008.]

Thumb-notches at the top! Not drawn from life.

[Yes, they're thumb-notches. The alphabetical tabs are thumb-index tabs or index tabs. Thumb-indexing or thumb-notching goes back to at least the late 19th century. I wrote to Merriam-Webster years ago to ask what those thingamajigs are called, never guessing that the reply would be relevant to Hi and Lois.]

Related posts
The cabinet of Hi and Lois
Hi and Escher?
House? (1)
House? (2)
9 - 6 = 3
Returning from vacation with Hi and Lois
Sunday at the beach with Hi and Lois
Vacationing with Hi and Lois

George Orwell on historical truth

A thought for the day:

During the Spanish civil war I found myself feeling very strongly that a true history of this war never would or could be written. Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist. And if I felt that even in 1937, when the Spanish Government was still in being, and the lies which the various Republican factions were telling about each other and about the enemy were relatively small ones, how does the case stand now? Even if Franco is overthrown, what kind of records will the future historian have to go upon? And if Franco or anyone at all resembling him remains in power, the history of the war will consist quite largely of "facts" which millions of people now living know to be lies. One of these "facts," for instance, is that there was a considerable Russian army in Spain. There exists the most abundant evidence that there was no such army. Yet if Franco remains in power, and if Fascism in general survives, that Russian army will go into the history books and future school children will believe in it. So for practical purposes the lie will have become truth.

This kind of thing is happening all the time.
George Orwell, "As I Please" (Tribune, February 4, 1944), in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: As I Please, 1943-1945 (David R. Godine, 2000)

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Broken pencil sharpener nets suspension

A ten-year-old has been suspended from school for having the blade from a broken pencil sharpener in his possession:

The problem was his sharpener had broken, but he decided to use it anyway.

A teacher at Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School noticed the boy had what appeared to be a small razor blade during class on Tuesday, according to a Beaufort County sheriff's report.

It was obvious that the blade was the metal insert commonly found in a child's small, plastic pencil sharpener, the deputy noted.

The boy — a fourth-grader described as a well-behaved and good student — cried during the meeting with his mom, the deputy and the school's assistant principal.

He had no criminal intent in having the blade at school, the sheriff's report stated, but was suspended for at least two days and could face further disciplinary action.

District spokesman Randy Wall said school administrators are stuck in the precarious position between the district's zero tolerance policy against having weapons at school and common sense.

"We're always going to do something to make sure the child understands the seriousness of having something that could potentially harm another student, but we're going to be reasonable," he said.
The most reasonable thing to do: cancel the suspension and apologize.

Given recent incidents in which pencils and ballpoint pens have served as weapons, the war on broken sharpeners seems — sorry — pointless.

[And I'm thinking now of my grade-school friend Henry Rothstein, who once wrote with a broken-off point rather than sharpen.]

[Update, 10:15 p.m.: According to the police report, the boy is a "very good student and has not been in any previous trouble." He used the blade to sharpen "his pencil" (his only pencil?), a pencil one inch in length — too short of course to sharpen with a sharpener.

The key words for this story? They would seem to be humiliation and poverty.]

WTC, 1985



A 1985 postcard, found in a bookstore.

Related posts
At the World Trade Center and St. Paul's Chapel
September 10, September 11
9/11/01
Words from Walt Whitman

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

"[Y]ou feel sorry for them"

Maurice Sendak, eighty, on awards and honors:

"They made me happy, but at a certain point in your life, you see through them. You don't mock them, you don't hate them, you feel sorry for them."

Paper clips

I do my best to concentrate in my office, but sometimes it's difficult. Students I've never seen will stand at my door asking if I have a paper clip. I ask a friend: can you imagine when we were students asking a professor for a paper clip?

I can. I am standing at a door. A professor selects a paper clip from a desk drawer and shoots it into the air. The clip misses and flies past me, faster than light, into the hallway of the future, where it plinks against the floor. The plink travels at the speed of plinks to the ears of some students walking in that future, on that floor. A paper clip: just what they need.

And now I can get some work done.

I dream of Inara George and Van Dyke Parks

We were in a library. Inara George was waiting in line for the water fountain. "You're Inara George!" I said. "I really like your voice!" She thanked me. Van Dyke Parks was sitting at a table working on an arrangement, writing chord symbols on unlined paper. I noticed Cm7 and Gm7. "Is it hard to do that without a piano?" I asked. "I have one," he said, and produced a cardboard keyboard. We shook hands, and I left the library.

I should've asked where they were playing. The answer: Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, September 13, 8:30 p.m.

Related posts
I dream of Citizen Kane
I dream of Mingus
John Ashbery and Fred Astaire on The Mike Douglas Show
Proust was the next president
Review: Inara George and Van Dyke Parks

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Ed Koch endorses Obama

I was hoping in a comment yesterday that some congressional Republicans would publicly express their dismay re: McCain-Palin. That hasn't happened (yet). But former New York City mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, has just endorsed Barack Obama. From Koch's statement:

Protecting and defending the U.S. means more than defending us from foreign attacks. It includes defending the public with respect to their civil rights, civil liberties and other needs, e.g., national health insurance, the right of abortion, the continuation of Social Security, gay rights, other rights of privacy, fair progressive taxation and a host of other needs and rights. If the vice president were ever called on to lead the country, there is no question in my mind that the experience and demonstrated judgment of Joe Biden is superior to that of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a plucky, exciting candidate, but when her record is examined, she fails miserably with respect to her views on the domestic issues that are so important to the people of the U.S., and to me. Frankly, it would scare me if she were to succeed John McCain in the presidency.
You can read Koch's full statement here: Koch backs Obama, calls Palin "scary" (Ben Smith's Blog, at Politico)