National Handwriting Day

It’s National Handwriting Day (aka John Hancock’s birthday). Above, a recent sample of handwriting, created with a portable ink-delivery apparatus called a “Model T.” Yes, handwriting recalls the good old days, like the day last week when I wrote a review of Alvin Levin’s Love Is Like Park Avenue (New Directions, 2009) for World Literature Today. Handwriting is not dead yet.

Related posts
Five pens
“Necessary and beloved tools of thought”
On handwriting and typing
Writing by hand
Writing, technology, and teenagers

Firefox 3.6

Firefox 3.6 is now available. It feels very fast, much faster than 3.5. Scientific testing confirms: fast!

The big new feature of 3.6: Personas (Personae?). I’m happy with the GrApple Delicious theme for Mac. No Personae for me.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Ezra Pound, B.P.E.

Reading Joan Acocella’s piece “All England,” on renderings of The Canterbury Tales in “translation” (that is, in modernized English), made me remember this observation, which as an undergrad I wrote in pencil on the inside front cover of my Chaucer:

Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.

Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (New York: New Directions, 1960), 99.

I remember that I used a large paper clip to hold together the thirty or forty pages preceding the glossary, which was, yes, small. The clip made it easier to flip to the glossary and not be shut out from the reading of good books forever. It was life B.P.E. (Before the Post-it Note Era). The nationwide sale of Post-it Notes began in 1980.

Acocella’s piece appears in the December 21, 2009 issue of The New Yorker (online for subscribers only).

How to improve writing (no. 26)

I always enjoy reading Nancy Franklin’s New Yorker pieces about television. But this sentence, from a smart and funny review of Jersey Shore, needs work:

Promos showing a group of young men and women of Italian heritage making entertainingly ridiculous statements about themselves and whooping it up on the boardwalk at night — dancing, throwing punches, that kind of thing — advertised “Jersey Shore” as set in a “house like you’ve never seen, full of the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos,” and Italian-American groups, and eventually New Jersey tourism officials, protested and some of them called for MTV to cancel the series.

One problem: the number of participles separating subject and verb: Promos [showing, making, whooping, dancing, throwing] advertised. A second problem: the number of ands as the sentence ends: “and Italian-American groups,” “and eventually New Jersey tourism officials,” “and some of them.” A third problem: the missing comma before the and that begins the sentence’s final clause. One more: “some of them” seems ambigious: some of the officials who eventually protested? Or some of the groups and officials?

Things look much better when the matter of this sentence is divided among several sentences:

MTV advertised “Jersey Shore” as set in a “house like you’ve never seen, full of the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos.” Promos showed a group of young men and women of Italian heritage making entertainingly ridiculous statements about themselves and whooping it up on the boardwalk at night — dancing, throwing punches, that kind of thing. Italian-American groups and New Jersey tourism officials protested, some of them calling for MTV to cancel the series.

The ambiguity of some remains. I’ve let the word apply to both the groups and the officials. And if you’re wondering: I’ve seen enough of Jersey Shore to have seen enough of Jersey Shore.

[This post is no. 26 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (via Pinboard)

Seven hours, thirty-eight minutes a day

In the news:

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day, survey says. Read more:

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online (New York Times)
Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Kaiser Family Foundation)

White Heat and High Sierra

Arthur “Cody” Jarrett (James Cagney) has a question:

“Supposin’, supposin’ you wanted to push in a place like Fort Knox and, ah, grab yourself a couple of tons of gold. What’s the toughest thing about a job like that?”

“Gettin’ inside the joint,” one crony suggests.

“A silver dollar for the gentleman in the balcony. Right on the button, gettin’ in. Which brings me to a story Ma used to tell me when I was a kid, a story about a horse. Way back, there was a whole army tryin’ to knock over a place called Troy, and gettin’ nowhere fast. Couldn’t even put a dent in the walls. And one morning, one morning the people of Troy wake up, look over the walls, and the attacking army disappeared. Men, boats, the works. Takin’ a powder. But they left one thing after them — a great big wooden horse. And according to Ma —”

And there the scene ends. Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) is Cody’s ultimate authority, his ultimate consolation, his muse. “And according to Ma”: the fall of Troy is her story.

This bit of dialogue is from White Heat (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1949), the best Cagney film I’ve seen. White Heat makes fascinating the sheer drudgery of crime: planning routes, designating drivers, packing, unpacking, checking the time. It’s a film with something for everyone: a great train robbery, a morgue scene, snappy police work (teletype machines, car phones, radio transmitters, wall maps), spooky facial bandages, a car chase, vast prison interiors, an explosive ending. Best of all are the film’s breathtakingly twisted relationships. Only ten minutes into the film, Jarrett seeks his mother’s lap to be comforted. His relationship with his snoring, spitting wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) is a mess of physical and emotional tyranny: there is room for only one true romance in his life. His moments of sudden violence, toward Verna and others, take us into the realm of pathology.

White Heat pairs well with other Cagney films: The Public Enemy (dir. William A. Wellman, 1931) and Angels with Dirty Faces (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1938) are the obvious choices. To my mind though, the ideal partner for White Heat is not a Cagney film but Walsh’s High Sierra (1941). If White Heat gives us the gangster as psychotic killer, Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of bank-robber Roy Earle gives us the gangster as damaged saint. Earle heals the lame (or at least covers the bill) and inspires devoted followers, one of whom unwittingly betrays him, one of whom weeps for him. The two films together are a fine introduction to the fascinating and repellent figure of the criminal in American screen culture.

Appetizing

Appetizing: adjective, or noun? Discuss.

Sunny intervals

That’s BBC weather.

American weatherpersons often speak of “intervals of sun.” “Sunny intervals” sounds brighter and more cheerful. I’d like sunny intervals, soon.

MLK

[Photograph by Paul Schutzerby, May 17, 1957, Washington, D.C. From the Life photo archive.]

On 17 May 1957, nearly 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, featuring three hours of spirituals, songs, and speeches that urged the federal government to fulfill the three-year-old Brown v. Board of Education decision. The last speech of the day was reserved for Martin Luther King’s “Give Us the Ballot” oration, which captured public attention and placed him in the national spotlight as a major leader of the civil rights movement.

Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (King Institute)

Blogger spacing problem solved

If you dislike Blogger’s odd spacing before and after block quotations, here’s a fix.

Look in your Blogger template for “.post {”:

.post {
  margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
  border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
  padding-bottom:1.5em;
  line-height:1.6em;
  }

Note the line-height. Now look for “.post blockquote {”:

.post blockquote {
  margin:1.6em 20px;
  }

Change the em number to match the line-height you found above, as I’ve done here. That’s it.

[Usual disclaimers apply: tinker at your own risk.]