The New York Times on Christmas

If you look back at the photos of Christmas 50 years ago — not that long a time, really — you can see what a simple place it once was. What you wanted for Christmas was a very short list of possibilities, and what you got was usually the single most possible thing on the list, plus a few of the articles your mother thought you needed. The intent was the same as it is now, more or less, but the means were so much fewer.

From an editorial on Christmas then and now (or then and then again):

When Christmas Comes (New York Times)

A Louis Armstrong Christmas

Here's Louis Armstrong reading Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"), at home in Corona, Queens, New York, February 26, 1971. It's Armstrong's last recording:

"The Night Before Christmas" (YouTube)

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

[Discographical information from The Louis Armstrong Discography.]

A third Jane Austen character speaks

Fanny Price, what think you of this shrubbery?

"This is pretty — very pretty," said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day: "Every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing; and now it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps in another three years we may be forgetting — almost forgetting what it was before. How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!" And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: "If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient — at others, so bewildered and so weak — and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul! — We are to be sure a miracle every way — but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out."

From Mansfield Park (1814)

Fanny's slight revision — "we may be forgetting — almost forgetting" — carries great poignance. Her past life with her immediate family is something she would never want to forget. Her inferior status among the members of her extended family is something she is never allowed to forget.

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A second Jane Austen character speaks

A second Jane Austen character speaks

Do, please, Mr Rushworth, continue:

"If I must say what I think," continued Mr Rushworth, "in my opinion it is very disagreeable to be always rehearsing. It is having too much of a good thing. I am not so fond of acting as I was at first. I think we are a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves, and doing nothing."

From Mansfield Park (1814)

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A Jane Austen character speaks

Woolworths to close

Woolworths is closing its 807 stores in Great Britain. From the New York Times:

The simple act of walking inside the soon-to-be-gone Woolworths on Portobello Road in West London had a madeleine-like effect on a number of shoppers the other day, releasing a string of long-ago memories.

Woolworths, 27-year-old Nick Clinch said, was the treat he looked forward to more than anything on Saturday mornings as a child, clutching the precious 50 pence his parents gave him when they visited him at boarding school. Woolworths was where Tracy McManus's daughter, now a grown-up singer, bought her first hit single, "Into the Groove" by Madonna, having been introduced to it on the television show "Top of the Pops" that very day.

And it was where the young Lena Smith took her pennies and spent them on the luridly colored candy known as Pic 'n' Mix, feeling independent and flush with consumer power.

"All we had was Woolworths," said Ms. Smith, now 50 and carting around a basket stuffed with items, including a dozen polka-dot mugs and a horse-themed 2009 calendar. "It was the first big shopping place for us. It was our shopping experience."

The Doors Shut on an Emporium Offering a Hodgepodge of Essentials (New York Times)

The company website and the Woolworths Virtual Museum are both down, at least for now.

Thanks to my friend Stefan Hagemann for pointing me to this article. Thanks, Stefan!

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"WOOLCO"

A Jane Austen character speaks

Lady Bertram? We are ready for you. Go ahead, please:

"Mr Rushworth," said Lady Bertram, "if I were you, I would have a very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine weather."

From Mansfield Park (1814)

Domestic comedy

"Is that what it's called, or did you just make that up?"

"Both."

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Cliché gone wrong

Driving, listening to the oldies station, now a "holiday music" station, I heard the anonymous voice of a syndicated newsreader: ". . . winter storm cutting a wide swipe across much of the country."

The word the reader was needing is swath. Merriam-Webster OnLine explains:

Middle English, from Old English swæth footstep, trace; akin to Middle High German swade swath
Date: 14th century

1 a: a row of cut grain or grass left by a scythe or mowing machine b: the sweep of a scythe or a machine in mowing or the path cut in one course
2: a long broad strip or belt
3: a stroke of or as if of a scythe
4: a space devastated as if by a scythe

Winter of course might take (not cut) a swipe at us, but that would suggest a brief bit of bad weather, not unrelenting movement. "Wide Swipe" turns out to be the name of a spell in World of Warcraft, which might explain this cliché gone wrong.

In other clichéd news, "embattled" Governor Rod Blagojevich has vowed not to talk about his situation in thirty-second sound bites. Says Blagojevich, "I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong."

Let go my Hugo

A 19th-century novel and a 21st-century legal fight:

Victor Hugo's family loses battle to ban sequels (Telegraph)

How to make friends by Telephone

Teeming with expert advice: "Shouting distorts your voice and is not pleasant."

How to make friends by Telephone (via Good Experience)