Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all species.

[Photograph by James Kimberlin (valart2008), via Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons License.]

Montblanc "Yes We Can" pen

A press release announces Montblanc's "Yes We Can" Meisterstück 149 fountain pen. Ugh:

The finest brushstroke of a fountain pen has led to the foundation of our great nation, legacies of great leaders, and has ultimately led to many new chapters in our country's great history. Having been present when historical signatures were needed by royalty and heads of state, Montblanc's Meisterstuck [sic] 149 fountain pen has played a role in this historic journey.

Well, maybe kinda sorta. The fountain pen is a 19th-century invention. The Declaration of Independence was written with a quill. American presidents have traditionally used American-made pens, and I know of no evidence of an American president using a Meisterstück 149. Note that the press release implies such use without claiming it: what "heads of state" are we speaking of? Montblanc's marketing ploy is a bit too much like Moleskine's effort to associate its notebooks with Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso.

Presidential pens have been the stuff of some dedicated sleuthing. Barack Obama has been signing with Cross Townsends, as anyone who's been watching the news (and who knows pens) has seen.

Elaine posted yesterday on another effort to cash in: 'Tis the Gift to Be for Sale?

Abraham Lincoln, getting things done

Browsing last night, I found this passage, in a piece that may date from 1850. Good advice for anyone, lawyer or not, wanting to avoid procrastination and get things done:

Leave nothing for to-morrow, which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.

From "Notes on the Practice of Law," in The Portable Abraham Lincoln, edited by Andrew Delbanco (New York: Penguin, 2009), 33

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.

Charles Darwin has a posse

Born February 12, 1809.

[Image created by Colin Purrington, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Swarthmore College.]

OTIS, SI⟘O

Anthropologists of the future will perhaps inquire into the austere chambers consecrated to OTIS and SI⟘O, twin gods of the upper and lower realms.

[Photographs by Michael Leddy. Thank you, Elaine, for holding the door.]

Buy peanut butter

A recent New York Times article notes that sales of peanut butter are down nearly 25%. Peanut-related articles from Google News show that pattern holding. The fragility of the American economy makes such obviously bad news even worse.

A simple suggestion that might do some good: buy a jar of peanut butter. The American Peanut Council (I never thought I'd type that name) has a list of brands not affected by the FDA recall. In our house, we like Smucker's Natural. We bought a new jar yesterday.

As for Stewart Parnell, owner of the Peanut Corportation of America, who took the Fifth Amendment when asked today if he'd eat his company's (bacteria-laden) products, Dante could devise a suitable punishment.

BRODAWAY

A tile sign in an IND Crosstown Line station in Brooklyn spells BROADWAY as BRODAWAY. According to Forgotten NY, the misspelling has stood since the line began in 1933.

This typo (or tile-o) seems to me to have earned its place on the wall (and in NYC lore). Wikipedia's entry on the IND Broadway station notes the venerable error. Please, city elders, stet.

MTA spellers way off-off Broadway in Brooklyn (The Daily News)

Five sentences from Bleak House

A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her, that influence even crowded places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky, with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield, wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some rest. Its steeples and towers, and its one great dome, grow more ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness, in the pale effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. In these fields of Mr Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

Just five sentences:

"A very quiet night." Stage-setting. No verb, à la the first sentences of Bleak House.

"When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her, that influence even crowded places full of life." Repetition joins the sentences: "very quiet," "very brilliantly." Parallelism: "solitude," "crowded places"; "stillness," "full of life." Personification with a single brushstroke: "her."

And now the third sentence, a grand display of parallelism. Part of what makes the "Not only" sentence remarkable is that despite its heavy reliance on prepositional phrases — twenty-eight of them — it moves so easily from start to finish. Note the six in a row early on: "into a fringe of trees against the sky, with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them." How does Dickens keep those sentence elements from turning into inert clutter? Partly by means of sound: the quick iambs of "a fringe of trees against the sky," the alliteration and partial rhyme of "grey ghost" and "bloom upon them." But also by means of magic.

Note too the way the elements of the third sentence — the "not onlys" and "wheres" — lengthen and diminish before coming to "rest." There's nothing absolutely predictable about that movement: the first four "where" clauses lengthen before the series ends with "the ever-heaving sea," but the first "not only" clause is longer than the second. This sort of loose progression organizes the paragraph too, with the fifth sentence a bit longer than the fourth.

In the fourth sentence, a smaller display of parallelism. Its final element — "the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away" — seems almost biblical in its balanced phrasing.

The language in these four sentences surprises again and again with its variety: "pleasant islands," "cluster thick," "black and awful," "like skeletons washed ashore," "rich in cornfield, wind-mill and steeple," "this stranger's wilderness of London," "smoky housetops," "pale effulgence."

And in the fifth sentence, an extended metaphor bringing us into the world of law, with the siren song of the Court of Chancery, and legal shepherds fleecing their sheep. Dickens though lifts the passage up at its end into a loftier music and a more exalted sort of metaphor, turning the sounds of the city into "a distant ringing hum" and the city itself into "a vast glass, vibrating" — beautiful abstractions worthy of Wallace Stevens or John Ashbery.

Okay, I'm done. Go back up and enjoy the sentences again.

[The "one great dome" is that of St Paul's Cathedral. The Court of Chancery, devoted to wills and trusts, is where such lawyers as Tulkinghorn shear their sheep "exceedingly close."]

Today's Hi and Lois

Scary eyeball? The mothership? Today's Hi and Lois seems to suggest a trend involving unrecognizable objects on walls. What's especially poignant here is that there's no need for a thermostat in the strip (yes, it's a thermostat) — Lois' brisk "BRR . . IT'S COLD IN HERE" sets the scene nicely. (Husband-tip to Hi Flagston: when your wife and kids shiver, do not stop to check the price of oil.)

The Honeywell thermostat, the work of Henry Dreyfuss and a masterpiece of industrial design, is the distant (very distant) ancestor of the Flagstons' thermostat. I saved a Honeywell thermostat when we had our furnace replaced several years ago. What was a Honeywell thermostat is now a Honeywell paperweight.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts

Hot water and the Great Depression

It was widely reported today that the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston, Maine, has begun publishing a daily money-saving tip on its front page. The paper promises a refund to any subscriber who doesn't save at least twice the cost of a subscription.

Reading this news item made me recall reading (somewhere) about the Depression-era practice of placing a bowl of water over a stove-top pilot light at night. In the morning: hot water for shaving.

Reader, do you know of other Depression-era practices that will still work in the 21st century?