“Stories from This American Life”

My daughter Rachel passes on a fine parody of This American Life: “Stories from This American Life,” by The Kasper Hauser Comedy Project.

Thanks, Rachel!

Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread cake

From a recipe in the poet’s handwriting: Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread cake (Boston Globe).

As the recipe includes only a list of ingredients, the Globe adds prosaic instructions requiring the use of a whisk, mixer, bowl, pan, and oven. I would like to imagine though that making this cake properly involves tossing the ingredients from a swiftly-moving carriage into the mouth of a well-heated volcano.

“This is the Anatomy of an Eagle”

From Life, May 28, 1956, a full-page ad marking 100 years of the Eagle Pencil Company:

[Click for a larger view.]

From the four corners of the earth we gather these rare ingredients for Eagle pencils!

Smooth, silvery graphite from Ceylon and Madagascar . . . jet black graphite from Mexico . . . slick, oily clay from Bavaria. Malayan rubber . . . straight-grained American cedar . . . pigments from nature’s secret storerooms everywhere.

Even the arctic seas yield spermaceti, the whale oil wax that helps make Eagle Mirado the smoothest-writing pencil you’ve ever used. And from the foundry’s inferno comes brass to make the gleaming tips with Eagle’s familiar Red Band trademark.

But the rarest ingredient of all is not shown in the picture. It is Eagle’s 100 years of experience . . . experience in refining, blending, assembling . . . in research, testing and quality control. That experience is the ingredient most important to you.

There is a specialized Eagle pencil for every purpose: Mirado, the world’s largest-selling writing pencil . . . Verithin, the strong-pointed colored pencil . . . Turquoise, the finest of drawing pencils . . . and hundreds of others. To find the most efficient of these for your kind of work, write for your copy of our full-color booklet, “The Pencil Selector.” It’s interesting, helpful, and free.

If you’re wondering . . . those cedar slabs are called pencil slats.

A related . . . post
Eagle Turquoise display case

Stefan Hagemann, guest writer: How to answer a professor

[My friend Stefan Hagemann offers the following advice for students. Stefan and I have known one another for more than twenty-five years. When we met, he was a brand-new college student; I was a brand-new professor. Over the years, we have had many conversations, spoken and written, about books, music, teaching, and everything else. Stefan is as astute as it gets. He teaches English at Edgewood College, in Madison, Wisconsin.]

Some time ago in the comments section, a chat over Michael’s How to e-mail a professor post and its misappropriation by others on-line led to Matthew S’s suggestion that Michael write a sequel, “How to answer a professor.” I thought this was a great idea, one that might help students improve their ability to speak up in the same way that Michael’s previous effort has helped them compose winning e-mail messages, and I said so — with enthusiasm. Maybe I should have kept my head down — I know I didn’t raise my hand — because, to my surprise, Michael asked if I’d like to write such an essay. In view of the fact that I was a shy student, one who turned red, cleared his throat endlessly and seemed always to babble more than answer, I’m no doubt the perfect pick to pen such a piece, and although I doubt I can match the wisdom and clarity that Orange Crate Art readers find here every day, I’m hopeful that I can at least start a discussion about, well, discussions. What follows is surely incomplete, a skeletal set of suggestions, and if I’m delighted by this opportunity, it is at least in part because I’m excited to hear comments and suggestions from Orange Crate Art’s smart and knowledgeable readers.

How to answer a professor

In the spirit of serious inquiry: It is usually okay to be playful, but don’t be silly when you are called on. Take a moment to think if you need to — consider any key terms in the question; make sure you understand its purpose — and if you are unsure, ask for clarification. When you are ready, speak confidently and if possible, with wit. Try to make eye contact when you answer, and try to avoid generalities (“his perspective changed,” “she wants us to think”) or obvious dodges (“it depends,” “I can see it both ways”). Instead, respond precisely and with plenty of specific detail. If the question involves a text, refer to the text to support your answer, just as you might in an essay. If others have spoken up already, consider linking your answer to theirs. This will help create an atmosphere in which the exchange of ideas is welcome, and as a bonus, it will show that you’ve been paying attention. Don’t simply agree, however, with what’s already been said. That’s the most obvious dodge of them all. Rather, try to move the discussion forward in some specific way, perhaps by offering a relevant example or an analogy that illustrates your point. If there is good reason to challenge a classmate’s comment, do it in a friendly, non-threatening way, one that suggests trying to get to the bottom of things rather than scoring points at the expense of a peer.

With honesty: If you have no idea, if you’ve been caught unprepared, it’s probably best to ’fess up. Be apologetic — I’m sorry; I’m not prepared for class today — and resolve (to yourself) to be prepared next time.

From a position of power: A good way to avoid having to ’fess up is to come prepared. The cliché about how knowledge is power applies here. If you read, think, and write (in the margins, in a journal, on a blog) ahead of class, you’ll be powerful in class. Your answers will be powerful. If you want to avoid embarrassment and to answer well, do your homework, all of it. Read assignments critically, more than once and with a pen. Don’t simply highlight interesting passages; engage them. Question them. If there is an introductory note or a brief author’s biography in your textbook, read it. Jot down ideas while you prepare, and try to guess what your professor might focus on in class. Write down the sort of questions that you’d ask if you were responsible for leading the discussion, and make sure that you have good answers to them. Prepare for class the way presidents (the good ones!) prepare for press conferences. And if you want really to shine, push yourself a little bit. Find out something about the books or films or songs that your professor mentions. If she puts a title or an author on the board, she is probably hoping that you will show some initiative and do a little legwork — or at least a Google search. This is doubly true if your professor puts books or other materials on library reserve. Search out those materials and skim them at least. She has put them on reserve because she knows they will help you better understand something. Don’t make her draw you a map. (Unless, of course, you don’t actually know where the library or the reserve desk is located. If that’s the case, please stop reading this immediately and go find out.)

Be interested in a lot of things: Some questions are designed to test your command of a set of facts, and some leave little room for interpretation. Once in awhile, a question might even permit a “yes” or “no” answer. But often you’ll be dealing with open-ended questions, ones about which there is much to say and from many angles. Recognize that most open-ended questions range across academic disciplines and areas of interest, and do your best to develop a good grasp of the world around you. Good question-answerers read widely, talk to their peers and professors, attend on-campus events such as plays and concerts, and (I’m guessing here) subscribe to PBS and NPR. Good question-answerers also listen. If you know a little bit about the world around you and make an effort to experience your immediate environment, you may be surprised by your ability to add outside knowledge to your answers. Broad experience equals (or at least increases the chance for) serendipity.

Pay attention to how others do it: Like most things in life, some people are better or worse than others when it comes to speaking in class.Some (theater kids, maybe, or only children) are naturally hammy and some (speech or communication majors) may have more experience than you do. Some, it turns out, just have the knack when it comes to speaking up. Notice these folks. What makes their comments seem more insightful than yours? What is it about their answers that you admire? It may be only their confidence and command of the material, but chances are, there is some other thing — enthusiasm, curiosity, a sense of gleeful, perhaps even mischievous purpose — that sets them apart from the pack. There is good reason to doubt the old saw about how “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” if only because flattery is by definition insincere, but the truth is, we learn much in life by imitation. Anyone who uses language to think about this claim will recognize its truth — that’s how you got that language in the first place — and any kid who has imitated his baseball hero’s batting stance or her tennis hero’s overpowering serve knows something of imitation’s upside. See who makes it look easy. Pick up on who seems to be having fun. Notice the ones who get the most positive feedback during class discussion. Try to determine what it is that they do. Do it too.

With panache: In a pinch, ignore all of these suggestions, and answer with enthusiasm and the courage of your convictions. Answer in a way that trumpets your interest and broadcasts your sense of wonder. Make it clear that you are happy to answer, that you are present on this day, on this campus, in this class precisely to answer. Answer in a way that reflects your serious purpose and your desire to embrace the knotty ambiguities of life. Answer so that, joyfully, your answer poses many new questions.

[The unalterable footer — “By Michael Leddy” — does not apply to this post. The writer is Stefan Hagemann. Thanks, Stefan, for a great contribution! ]

Van Dyke Parks on arranging and words

The guy is endlessly quotable:

“As I look back on these things I see myself as someone who was truly, centrally, obsessed with folk music and just wanted to take part in fancyfying it. That's what an arrangement does. It tries to capture what’s extempo, off-the-cuff, and not confuse it or obstruct it and, yet, give it enunciation.” Parks laughs. “I’ve always said, ‘Why use a small word when a diminutive one will suffice?’”

Read more:

Enigmatic Parks prepares for Moogfest (Knoxville News Sentinel)

Recently updated

Elections and misspellings (The misspelling of Illinois Green Party candidate Rich Whitney’s name as “Whitey” will be corrected.)

Sans approval

Alan Jacobs:

Almost everything I’ve done in my intellectual life that I now value I did because I was unconcerned about the approval of any officially designated authorities.

(Found via Submitted for Your Perusal)

An extra charge for Touch-Tone calling

[From my latest bill.]

Recent news about Verizon’s $1.99 key and various cellphone companies’ payment charges reminded me to be amused and annoyed that my land-line company charges a dollar a month for Touch Tone (or Touch-Tone) service. I have called on two occasions to inquire and have been told that the charge is a nationwide practice and that it’s Illinois-only. I have also been told that some people prefer to use pulse dialing and that there’s a little switch underneath the phone, &c. True, there is a switch. My response, sane as can be, is that in 2010, Touch-Tone is really the only way anyone dials a land-line telephone.¹ No, I am told; there is also pulse.

For a telephone company to charge for Touch-Tone in 2010 is, to my mind, comparable to a cable-television company’s charging for color. But absurdity can be profitable: with, say, 10,000 customers, this little charge would bring in $120,000 a year.

Reader, if you still use a land-line, do you pay extra for the privilege of Touch-Tone service?

¹ Unless perhaps one patronizes thrift stores or has wonderful children who do so.

Elections and misspellings

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

Given the presence on the ballot of Green Party Senate candidate LeAlan Jones (whose overall numbers are low but who has significant support among African-American voters), and given the very close race for Senate between Alexi Giannoulias (D) and Mark Kirk (R), one must wonder whether this misspelling is accidentally-on-purpose, a way to steer African-American voters toward the Democratic slate.

Oh, and given that it’s Illinois.

October 16, 2010: The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the misspelling will be corrected. Says Election Board Chairman Langdon Neal,

“No one at the Chicago Board of Elections or a vendor would ever do anything to in any way negatively effect the integrity of the election, the integrity of this office or in any way influence any one candidate’s success.”

Movie recommendation: Ace in the Hole

[Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling) confronts Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas): “I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you — you’re twenty minutes.”]

Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole was a commercial flop when released as The Big Carnival in 1951. It’s easy to understand why: the film presents a world almost wholly corrupted by the desire for power, prestige, and spectacle. Kirk Douglas plays Charles Tatum, a once-prominent newspaper reporter now working in the “Siberia,” as he calls it, of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (released one year earlier), Tatum longs to return to the world in which he was a star. He finds the means to do so in the story of Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), who gets trapped in a cave while searching for Native American pottery. Tatum ventures into the cave and finds in the trapped man his ace in the hole, a story to be managed day by day, sold to the wire services, and parlayed into a return to big-city papers.

Wilder’s plotting is inspired: Minosa’s plight is a spectacle that offers very little to the eye. As in Greek tragedy, the horror happens in imagination, here with the assistance of Tatum’s reportage and his photographs of the trapped man. As Minosa languishes day after day and news of the rescue effort spreads, people begin to gather and a carnival spirit takes over, with campgrounds and entertainment and Ferris wheels. Sightseers drop from special trains and run to this theater of cruelty. No wonder that the trucks pulling in bear the name of The Great S & M Amusement Corp. While drawing upon a past newspaper exploit — the story of caver Floyd Collins (who’s mentioned in the film), Wilder has anticipated the more lurid spectacles of our media-saturated world. But reporters don’t make events happen: they just report them, or so Charles Tatum tells himself.

As good as Douglas is in this film, Jan Sterling is even better. Her character is reminiscent of Cora Smith (Lana Turner) in The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946): Lorraine Minosa too is a frustrated wife stuck in a diner. Her cynicism and self-interest make her more than a match for Tatum, who is both attracted and repulsed by what he sees in her. Will anything develop between these two while Leo is stuck in the cave? You’ll have to watch to find out.

Ace in the Hole is available from the Criterion Collection, beautifully restored. I watched and wrote about this film in late July, before the Copiapó mining accident. I decided that I would post this review only if that story came to a happy ending, which it now has. Coverage of the miners’ ordeal, at least what I saw, seemed respectful and restrained — no Charles Tatums on the scene.

A los mineros: bienvenidos de nuevo, señores.