Solari e Tufte

I had an e-mail message from Edward Tufte yesterday. He read my post on New Haven’s soon-to-be-gone Solari board, and it prompted him to propose repurposing that board as art. He’s been thinking about such a project for a while. Read more:

New Haven Solari train board: what should be done? (Ask E.T.)

The Internet is amazing. Stay tuned for further developments.

Domestic comedy

“They have the same faux naturel color.”

[“They”: “Vintage Package Edition” Grape-Nuts box, Wheat Thins Flatbread box.]

Related posts
All “domestic comedy” posts
Cereals in the hands of an angry blog
Everything I always wanted to ask about Grape-Nuts

Welcome to Macintosh

Tonight, at 9:30 Eastern Time, CNBC airs the documentary Welcome to Macintosh (dir. Robert Baca and Josh Rizzo, 2008).

Welcome to Macintosh trailer (YouTube)

Solari board

A bright new LED display will soon replace the schedule board at New Haven’s Union Train Station. The board to be replaced clicks clicks clicks as its letters and numbers flip. Did you know that this kind of board has a name, or several? It’s called a flip board, split-flap display, or Solari board, after its Italian maker, Solari di Udine.

NPR reports that New Haven’s LED display will have a simulated click click click.

Related listening, looking, reading
Solari board photographs (Flickr)
Solari board videos (YouTube)
Train Station Board’s Demise Is Sign of the Times (NPR)
Tune Changed on Solari (New Haven Independent)

2010 calendars

Not 2009, not 2011. For right now:

Compact Calendar 2010 (David Seah)
Micro-Mini Calendar 2010 (Claude Pavur)
PDFCalendar.com (Found via Prairie Bluestem)
Thumb calendar (Adam Sporka)
UNIX calendar command (hawkexpress)

If you teach, PDFCalendar is great for planning a semester on one page. The UNIX command is handy for making a three- or four-month calendar to keep in a pocket notebook.

I’ve made a few Field Notes-inspired wall calendars for 2010 ($14.95 x 3 or 4 began to look a bit unjustifiable). Here’s January:

It’s much easier to make than you might think: just two tables in a word-processing document. I used Apple’s Pages and Gill Sans Bold.

Hi and Lois time

[Hi and Lois, January 1, 2010.]

Cartoon characters have fewer fingers than we do; their months, fewer weeks; their weeks, fewer days.

And their trashcans, fewer lids.

A related post
Economies of time (Hi and Lois)

New Year’s Resolution Generator

Looking for some resolutions? Try Monina Velarde’s New Year’s Resolution Generator.

Also: Happy New Year!

(Found via swissmiss)

2009, last sentences

My second post in 2009 followed a meme that I found at Robert Gable’s aworks: go through your 2008 blog entries and and collect the first sentence from each month. To end the year, I’ve collected the last sentence from each month of 2009. Doing so involves figuring out an answer to an odd question: what to do about December?

The first sentence below comes from a New York Times obituary for George Schneeman. The second, from David Frauenfelder at Breakfast with Pandora. The third, from a poster about the “r-word.” The others are mine.

He was known in an intimate New York circle for his long, fruitful collaborations with a flock of well-known poets, among them Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin and Ted Berrigan. Though no one’s job is perfectly safe, if we all decide we must have two years’ of savings in the bank before we spend again, eventually no one will have a job except the security guard at the bank. Spread the word to end the word.

The group is called Canvas. Et cetera. As they say, “Developing.”

I’m happy to be part of a family in which everybody cooks. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Tickets are free. From the Life Photo Archive.

But how could he have left out “I’m Bugged at My Old Man”? But how could he have left out “I’m Bugged at My Old Man”?

Bagatelle, bag of shells

A few minutes in Google Books this morning let me know that the comic confusion of “bagatelle” and “bag of shells” long predates The Honeymooners. One example:

Matthew M. Colton, Frank Armstrong at College (New York: Hurst & Company, 1914).

Another:

James Madison, Madison’s Budget (Washington, D.C.: Department of Dramatic Activities Among the Soldiers, 1918).

Yes, Madison’s Budget is a minstrel show, and my guess is that this play on words has its origins in minstrelsy. Perhaps it went on to a later life in vaudeville. Perhaps Jackie Gleason heard it in childhood, or as a young man in show business.

Would a mid-1950s Honeymooners audience have recognized Ralph Kramden’s “a mere bag of shells” as an old, old joke on “bagatelle”? Or were the shells just shells by then?

A mere bag of poloponies

Tuesday's New York Times crossword taught me something. The clue for 15-Across: “A ____ bagatelle!” I had the answer, MERE, but the words together made no sense to me. And I was puzzled: isn’t the expression “a mere bag of shells”? I’ve known that expression forever, from the television series The Honeymooners. It’s one of Ralph Kramden’s favorites, along with “Baby, you’re the greatest” and “Bang, zoom.”

The Times Crossword Blog helps out:

Bagatelle is a great word (French from Italian) that can mean a trifle, a billiardslike game or a short, light piece of music. In 1827, Alessandro Manzoni used the phrase “una piccola bagattella,” translated to “a mere bagatelle,” in his widely read novel, The Betrothed.

Aha. Ralph’s catchphrase, like Ed Norton’s poloponies for polo ponies, is a mistake, meant, I assume, to be recognized as such. It’s Ralph trying to appear blasé and looking instead slightly ridiculous. Still, I like “a mere bag of shells.” Suggesting brown paper and peanuts and street vendors, it fits the Kramden world well.

Why, you may ask, was Norton talking about polo ponies? He was reading a script while rehearsing a play for the Raccoon Lodge: “I don’t possess a mansion, a villa in France, a yacht, or a string of poloponies.”

A related post
More on “bagatelle,” “bag of shells” (An old, old joke)