Willa Cather and James Schuyler

From James Schuyler's "Hymn to Life" (1974): "Willa Cather alone is worth / The price of admission to the horrors of civilization."

Like James Schuyler, I like Willa Cather. (Also James Schuyler.)

Earphones and trolleys

In today's news:

A 21-year-old man wearing earphones walked in front of a Green Line train and was struck by a trolley near Boston College, according to an MBTA spokesman.

The Boston College student suffered head injuries and facial lacerations and was taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital, said Joe Pesaturo, the spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. He was conscious and talking as he was transported to the hospital, Pesaturo said. . . .

Witnesses told investigators that the man was wearing headphones when he walked across the trolley tracks. "The trolley operator attempted to get his attention by blowing the horn, but it was to no avail," Pesaturo said.

T: Student wearing earphones hit by Green Line trolley (Boston Globe)

Meme of seven

My wife Elaine has tagged me with with the meme of seven. Thank you, dear. The rules:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

2. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog — some random, some weird.

3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.

4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

5. If you don't have seven blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

Like Elaine, I'm reluctant to tag people. But if, reader, you would like to explore the meme of seven, consider yourself tagged. Here are my facts:

I am a distant relative of Tess Gardella, an actress and singer who performed in blackface under the name "Aunt Jemima." Tess Gardella was Queenie in the original 1927 production of Show Boat. (Miss Gardella had no connection to pancakes.)

As a fourth-grader, I had the lead role in a school play. I was Cos, a visitor from outer space who arrives in a department store at Christmastime. On the night of the performance, I had a very high fever and did the play anyway. I remember the beginning of the play, when I was hiding under a table in the store, with a foil-covered box (i.e., helmet) on my head.

For an elementary-school talent show, I sang George and Ira Gershwin's "Fascinating Rhythm": "Oh, how I long to be the boy I used to be! Fascinating rhythm, oh, won't you stop picking on me?"

I love liverwurst, a food from childhood and delicatessens, whose arrays of cold cuts, salads, breads, and rolls I always found fascinating (more interesting than supermarkets, more "city" too). I still buy liverwurst once or twice a year, but now even the people behind the supermarket's deli counter make faces about liverwurst, so I buy it pre-packaged.

I once tried to see how many steps of our Brooklyn stoop I could span by jumping up from the pavement. I believe the limit was two. The bruising on my leg was a wonder to behold.

Once, in my eagerness not to be late to a poetry reading by Gwendolyn Brooks, I ran into a glass door (which had been locked in the open position just a moment before). Nothing was broken, on the door or me. I applied a cold can of Coca-Cola to my head and went to the reading with my fellow grad students.

I have received only one ticket for speeding, in my early twenties, on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I was flagged for going 80 (the speed limit was then 55). That I have received no tickets since attests not to my ability to avoid capture but to saner driving habits.

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008)

[Salute: The Canal to the Sky, from The Salute Series. Screenprint, 1960.]

The painter Grace Hartigan died yesterday in Timonium, Maryland:

For many years, she also mixed with poets of the period in New York — John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara, with whom she was a confidante. . . .

"The air was electric," she told a Sun reporter in 1963 of the New York art scene. "We were each other's audience, meeting for coffee because no one could afford a drink, and all were talking about art. It was pure. There were no temptations because there was no money in it."

Grace Hartigan dies at age 86 (Baltimore Sun)

Frank O'Hara's poem "In Memory of My Feelings" is dedicated to Grace Hartigan. It contains these lines: "Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible."

"Plagiarism free"

Talk about an irony-deficiency!

I found the above (I won't link to it) via a Google Alert. Google Alerts are sometimes good "for to" learning.

E is for?

Today's Hi and Lois offers an exploration of discord across generations, pitting the smugness of the young against the seething rage of the old(er). Rage! — sing, goddess, the rage of Hiram Flagston!

The bookcase sums up the imaginative impoverishment of these characters: it functions as a display surface for a baseball, the bookends keeping three books from toppling to ruin. And yet the same bookcase is a goad to the reader's imagination: for what's up with that E?



It might stand for Elaine, who suggests that it fell from one of the books. I thought it might be a note to the colorist, though the bookcase isn't ecru. Or is E for enigma? I may never know.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle

Van Dyke Parks' extraordinary first LP Song Cycle turns forty this month. And now in a college newspaper article comes the news that Song Cycle will be re-released, probably in spring 2009. Says Parks: "The world is not holding its breath. Still, I'll breathe easier as an artist, once I’ve finished this custodial duty."

As Song Cycle is still available (on CD and LP), I'm guessing and hoping that the re-release will present the recording in a super-deluxe edition.

Scholastic madeleines

Scholastic Book Club members emeriti will feel a pang when looking through this Flickr set:

Nostalgia for the Scholastic Book Club

I was surprised to find Rosamond du Jardin's Wait for Marcy, a "girls' book" that I read for my seventh-grade English class. I was more surprised to find the book's title still in my head.

(Yes, the girls in the class had to read a "boys' book" too — it was all an experiment).

Mozy offer

Mozy, the wonderful online backup service, is offering users twice the usual bonus space with every referral.

If you'd like to try Mozy, with a free 2GB account or a larger paying account, e-mail me (my address is in the sidebar, under the photograph), and I'll send you my referral code, which will give each of us another 512MB for free. After November 30, the bonus reverts to 256MB.

My only connection to Mozy is as a happy user. I'm deeply impressed by the company's tech support, and I like its sense of humor.

Palin, Africa, Sudan, Darfur

I've added an update to my post on Sarah Palin and Africa. Palin's latest defense against the "Africa is a country" story contradicts a claim that she made during the vice-presidential debate about divestment and Sudan (a claim that was itself contradicted by reality). And Palin now refers to Darfur as a country ("investment in Darfur," not Sudan).

The mess messens.