Diane, Nadine

I had a question. I made a phone call. I was told to call again in the morning: “Ask for Diane.”

And then it was morning. I asked, “Diane?”

“Nadine.”

[Cheerfully.] “Oh, that’s almost the same!”

[Not cheerfully.] “Not at all.”

[More cheerfully.] “I mean the letters of your name!”

[Silence.]

And then I tried just asking my question.

[Note to self: reserve anagram thoughts for New York Times crosswords.]

The parsnip

Its flavor: light, earthy, mellow, sweet. Hail to thee, blithe parsnip!

[Elaine made a glorious vegetable stew last night that reminded how much I like the parsnip.]

Update: Parsnip fans should take a look at the comments for a soup recipe from Julia Ringma, who doesn’t believe in keeping recipes secret.

A cow on the tracks

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele offers an ill-chosen metaphor about impeding progress on health care reform: “I’m the cow on the tracks. You’re gonna have to stop that train to get this cow off the track to move forward.”

Well, no. There is the cow catcher:

A cow catcher is a device attached to the front of a train in order to clear obstacles off the track. . . . A cow catcher is typically a shallow, V-shaped wedge, designed to deflect objects from the track at a fairly high speed without disrupting the smooth movement of the train.

Related reading
All metaphor posts (via Pinboard)

Translations, mules, briars

Dwight Garner, writing in the New York Times:

The most plain, direct and noble translation of The Iliad into English, at least for that generation of college students who had it pressed into their lucky, sweaty palms, has long been Richmond Lattimore’s of 1951, though Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of 1974 and Robert Fagles’s of 1990 have their fierce adherents. Lattimore’s version, once read, doesn’t leave you: it is supple, unvarnished, morally complex and, in a word, thrilling.

It is unusual to find such words as plain, direct, and supple applied to Lattimore’s work. Here is Guy Davenport on Lattimore, in an essay I’d recommend to anyone who reads in translation. Davenport is writing about Lattimore’s Odyssey, but still, the shoe fits:

[H]e is writing in a neutralized English wholly devoid of dialect, a language concocted for the purpose of translating Homer. It uses the vocabulary of English but not its rhythm. It has its own idiom. One can say in this language such things as “slept in that place in an exhaustion of sleep” (for Homer’s “aching with fatigue and weary for lack of sleep”) and “the shining clothes are lying away uncared for” (for “your laundry is tossed in a heap waiting to be washed”).

Professor Lattimore adheres to the literal at times as stubbornly as a mule eating briars.

“Another Odyssey,” in The Geography of the Imagination (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 1997), 35.

My favorite translations of Homer: those of Robert Fitzgerald and Stanley Lombardo.

Related reading
All Homer posts (Pinboard)

Pocket notebook sighting

Policeman: What do you know about this?

Pharmacist: I never saw him before.

[Angels with Dirty Faces, dir. Michael Curtiz, 1938.]

More notebook sightings
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
Extras
Journal d’un curé de campagne
The House on 92nd Street
The Palm Beach Story
Pickpocket
Pickup on South Street
Red-Headed Woman
Rififi
The Sopranos

Thought for the day

The road to the health-food store is paved with good intentions.

Moleskine 2010 desktop calendar

The Moleskine 2010 desktop calendar is on sale at Amazon for $3.74 (list $19.95). I wonder whether anyone thought about marking down to $3.65.

(via Notebook Stories)

[6:51 PM: Boing Boing spotted this deal, and now it’s gone. The calendars are still available via Amazon from various sellers, for $19.99 and other prices. MoleskineUS is asking $20.95.]

F train

For the worst ride in New York City: take the F train.

“Why E-mail No Longer Rules”

Because of Facebook and Twitter:

Instead of sending a few e-mails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.

Yes, you can. But as I’ve written in a previous post, technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them.

Lester Bowie interview

“I’ve been a researcher — I consider the stage as my laboratory”: trumpeter Lester Bowie (1941–1999), interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, explaining why he wore a lab coat when performing.

I am fortunate to have heard Lester Bowie on six occasions — five times with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and once with the New York Hot Trumpet Repertory Company, aka Hot Trumpets. Five trumpets, that was all: Bowie (the group’s founder), Olu Dara, Stanton Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Malachi Thompson, up from New York to Boston’s Emmanuel Church for an hour of music, then back to the airport, circa 1981 or so. I remember the Dizzy Gillespie tune “Groovin’ High” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Yes, it really happened.

A related post
Some have gone and some remain

[Photograph of Lester Bowie circa 1989 by John Kelim, licensed under a Creative Commons license. Thanks, John, for sharing your work.]