Beeps in the night

At 2:15 this morning, our upstairs smoke alarm began to beep the intermittent beep that means “low battery.” A low battery seemed unlikely, as we had just changed our batteries when we (or rather the nation) switched to Standard Time.

I got up, got up on a chair, and looked at the alarm. I’m not sure what I expected to see. But the alarm stopped beeping. I took a look around the house, had a drink of water, and went back to bed. It was then that the beep recommenced. I got up, got up on a chair, pulled out the battery, and went back to bed. The alarm beeped one more time. I have a corroborating witness.

This morning, we found the almost certain cause of the beeps: a ladybug, walking in circles around a ceiling light fixture a few inches from the smoke alarm. Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. My house is not on fire.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009)

What makes a steel ax superior to a stone ax is not that the first one is better made than the second. They are equally well made, but steel is quite different from stone. In the same way we may be able to show that the same logical processes operate in myth as in science, and that man has always been thinking equally well; the improvement lies, not in an alleged progress of man’s mind, but in the discovery of new areas to which it may apply its unchanged and unchanging powers.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955)

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Father of Modern Anthropology, Dies (New York Times)

Van Dyke Parks in the Cool Hall of Fame

He’s #179, right behind Sean Connery.

My dad in 1942

[James Leddy. Union City, New Jersey, 1942.]

My dad at the age of thirteen or fourteen, from a scan of a photocopy of a 1942 photograph. The photograph recently came into his hands via an old chum. Reproduced here with permission. (Thanks, Dad!)

Worcestershire secrets revealed

“From the recipe of a nobleman in the county”: handwritten notes from the mid-1800s, some in code, contain what appears to be the secret formula for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Read all about it:

Recipes for secret sauce emerge (BBC News)

That nobleman, his county, and the design of the Lea & Perrins bottle fascinated me in kidhood. Worcestershire Sauce seemed like the most sophisticated stuff imaginable.

PUSH

I keep this metal sign on a bulletin board in my office. I find “PUSH” a useful reminder when it comes to teaching and reading and writing: not to give up, not to settle, not to quit. PUSH, to be interesting, to be better, to do more.

I bought this sign in the 1980s at Benedict’s Well-Worth, a variety store that was going out of business. The price was 88¢. The lethal corners, dowdy lettering, and ancient-looking price sticker on the back suggest that this sign was already many years old when I found it. Also in my collection, from the same source: “NO Admittance” and “ROOMS FOR RENT.”

For anyone who doesn’t remember variety stores: they were wonderful places, literally. One could find all sorts of notions and sundries there. As a kid in Brooklyn, I bought my first Silly Putty at a variety store — Woolworth’s (the name that Benedict’s was aping). I remember buying Christmas presents for my grandparents at Woolworth’s: handkerchiefs, combs, pocket mirrors. I remember the colorful thread display and candy counter. I must have been six or seven.

I wish I had the “PULL” that once must have been for sale alongside “PUSH.” PULL too would be a good reminder for teaching and reading and writing: to draw all one can from the available material.

“Trailing-edge technology”

“We’re interested in trailing-edge technology,” says photographer Karl Kessler, who collaborated with Sunshine Chen to document the work of men and women in vanishing trades: felting, typewriter repair, watchmaking, and so on.

“Hands On: Matters of Uncommon Knowledge” opens November 3 in Kitchener, Ontario. Read all about it:

Exhibit honours disappearing jobs and traditions (TheRecord.com)

A related post
“Old-world skillz”

Happy Halloween

[A view of a child playing in his Halloween costume. Photograph by George Silk, 1960. From the Life Photo Archive.]

“Julia A. Moore” on “Lord Byron”

“Lord Byron” was an Englishman
    A poet I believe,
His first works in old England
    Was poorly received.
Perhaps it was “Lord Byron’s” fault
    And perhaps it was not.
His life was full of misfortunes,
    Ah, strange was his lot.

“Julia A. Moore’s” “Sketch of Lord Byron’s Life” is a wonderfully bad poem. Read it all, if you dare. “Moore,” “The Sweet Singer of Michigan,” was the model for “Emmeline Grangerford,” the teenaged death-poet of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Further reading
“Julia A. Moore” (Wikipedia)

Byron disses “Turdsworth”

A collection of Byron’s letters in which he describes a stormy affair with a servant girl, attacks Christianity and dismisses his rival poet as William “Turdsworth” were sold yesterday for more than £250,000. The price is a world record for a series of letters or a manuscript by a British romantic poet, Sotheby’s said.

Read all about it:

Byron’s vitriolic letters on rivals and religion set auction record (Times Online)