Something's coming

With a click, with a shock,
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock,
Open the latch!

It's difficult to see how a midterm resignation creates a good foundation for a presidential campaign. And if resignation is meant to create that foundation, why announce it on the Friday before a national holiday? Politicians wait for Fridays to announce what they would prefer be ignored.

I suspect that something's coming, some deep complication, personal or political. Perhaps not in the form of a phone call at 6:00 a.m., as with my ex-governor, the inimitable Rod Blagojevich. But somehow, some day, somewhere in Alaska.

{With apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.]

Update, July 7, 2009: Elaine thinks that the ex-governor-to-be wants to chair the Republican National Committee.

QuoteURLText

QuoteURLText is a handy Firefox extension by Jay Palat that copies online text to the clipboard with page title, URL, and date. The extension's formatting options allow the user to arrange any or all of these elements to taste.

I find QuoteURLText's formatting options helpful in working with online material that I want to quote. I have QuoteURLText configured like so:

Let's say that I wanted to quote Jonathan Rauch's recent observation about blogging and introversion. Here's what QuoteURLText would yield:

There's still some cleaning up to do to get the title right, but using QuoteURLText is much simpler than copying and pasting the quotation, copying and pasting the URL, and copying and pasting the page title in three separate steps. (Or is it six?)

Three — no, six cheers for QuoteURLText. I hope that it will soon be working with Firefox 3.5.

Firefox 3.5 : (

I just installed and removed Firefox 3.5 from my Mac — ten minutes or so with this new version had me in a sea of troubles. When starting up, no home page appeared. Not even the familiar "Congratulations! You have updated to . . ." appeared. Trying to customize the toolbar caused the browser to freeze up. The master password I use to manage passwords would no long work. I could not install a theme (GrApple Luscious) from a non-Mozilla site. And several crucial extensions were incompatible. (One of which I was just planning to write about.) Granted, non-working extensions aren't Mozilla's fault, but over weeks or months, the absence of those extensions would compromise 3.5's usefulness to me. It's extensions that keep me using Firefox and not Safari.

Going back to 3.0.11 on a Mac was easy: I found a Mozilla page with older versions of Firefox for download. I moved 3.5 from Applications to the Trash and installed 3.0.11. My bookmarks and extensions (all parts of my Profile) stayed safe and sound in a Library folder. I did though back up the bookmarks and inventory the extensions before uninstalling.

I'm just one user speaking, but my advice would be to wait a while before trying Firefox 3.5. Then again, you might be having a great time with 3.5 already. Wish I were there.

A related post
Firefox 3.5.1 : )

Dave Brubeck, on the road

"I don't think the average person would want to do what I've been doing."

Despite serious medical problems, pianist Dave Brubeck, eighty-eight, is back on the road.

More from The Book of Tea

On art appreciation:

Our very individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of the past. It is true that with cultivation our sense of art appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many hitherto unrecognized expressions of beauty. But, after all, we see only our own image in the universe — our particular idiosyncrasies dictate the mode of our perceptions. The tea masters collected only objects which fell strictly within the measure of their individual appreciation.

One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu. Enshiu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his collection. Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand." Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikiu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority. Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea masters."

Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea. 1906. (Boston: Shambala, 2001), 68–69.

A related post
From The Book of Tea

Brain food!

When my daughter Rachel pointed out the new old-time Cracker Jack box, I had to buy a three-pack. I wouldn't have guessed that one box would contain a piece of popcorn resembling a human brain.

As Elaine says, "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts, and a brain, that's what you get in Cracker Jack!"

According to Jack himself, July 5 is Cracker Jack Day.

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

Behold: The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies.

The most Proustian item for me is the ruling pen — my dad had one when I was a kid. Touring the MoFAS has inspired me to add an exhibit next week to my own modest Museum of Supplies.

(via Boing Boing and BrownStudies)

Karl Malden (1912-2009)

[Karl Malden (Father Barry) and Marlon Brando (Terry Malloy) in On the Waterfront, dir. Elia Kazan, 1954.]

Karl Malden, Actor Who Played the Uncommon Everyman, Dies at 97 (New York Times)

"Old-world skillz"

Mike Brown at BrownStudies likes Mark Patinkin's piece on outdated skills and has written a fine post collecting several more. Go read it: Old-world skillz.

Some skills that have come to my mind (from my student and stock-clerk days):

Calculating how many lines to leave for a footnote (yes, with a manual typewriter).

Operating a mechanical cash register.

Operating an "imprinter," the gadget once used to process credit-card charges (it involved a bar pulled across a carbon-paper form).

From The Book of Tea

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.

*

Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a color to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally — such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful.

Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea. 1906. (Boston: Shambala, 2001), 3, 26–27.

"This impossible thing we know as life," "the utmost beatitude of the mundane": pretty Proustian to my ears. The Book of Tea, a book of aesthetics and philosophy, is available in many print and digital editions.