Fambly

In correspondence amongst ourselves (okay, e-mail), my family has come to rely upon the word fambly, drawn from the speech of the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Believe me, there’s nothing condescending or funny about our use of the word. Fambly reminds me of humbly. Fambly has no associations of ancestral glory. The word serves, at least in my imagination, as a reminder that a family is a small and fragile thing, making its way through life’s hazards.

Elaine and I were happy all the time to have our fambly together last week. What can one say about a daughter who knows how to use the word redux in a sentence and a son who can trade fours on “On the Sunny Side of the Street”? Simply that they’re wonderful people, in so many ways. As the Joads would say, I’m proud to know them.

Van Dyke Parks and Clare and the Reasons, on the radio again

Van Dyke Parks and Clare and the Reasons visit the World Café (NPR). The broadcast includes socko performances of “Ooh You Hurt Me So,” “He Needs Me,” “Heroes And Villains,” and “The All Golden.”

Related posts
Van Dyke Parks and Clare and the Reasons, on the radio
Van Dyke Parks in Brooklyn
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (1)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (2)

A thought for Black Friday

There is something slap-happily incongrous here: a day of thanksgiving followed by a day devoted to buying more stuff. True, the stuff is for other people, who themselves might be out buying stuff for other people — people like (let us hope) us.

“Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving”

This card is postmarked 1917 and addressed to Miss Lena Schroeder of Lincoln, Illinois:

Dear Cousin. How are you. I am all o.k. Grandpa is about the same yet. We are going to get done shucking corn today. Your cousin Fred M.

Reader, I hope that you and yours are all o.k. today. Happy Thanksgiving.

How to improve writing (no. 31)

President Obama, on the television earlier this morning, pardoning turkeys Apple and Cider: “As president of the United States, you are hereby pardoned.”

I love the guy. But that sentence begins with a dangling modifier. Corrected: “As president of the United States, I hereby pardon you.”

[This post is no. 31 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)

Domestic comedy

[In mock-protest, laughing.] “Stop ganging up on me!”

[In unison, sincerely.] “We’re not ganging up on you!”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

Eagle Verithin display case

[Click and click again for a larger view.]

A 1953 New Yorker “Talk of the Town” item recounts a visit to Abraham H. Berwald, director of marketing for the Eagle Pencil Company, in the course of which Berwald begins to slam colored leads “all over the place,” demonstrating their flexibility and resistance to breakage. He must have been very proud. The leads must have been Verithins.

None of that went through my mind when I bought this Eagle Verithin display case, the larger and more colorful sibling of an Eagle Turquoise case also housed in the Museum of Supplies. This Verithin case, like its sibling, sat in an office-supply store that slowly gave up the ghost. I wish this case had been better cared for: the scrapes on its rainbowed corners appear to have resulted from price-stickers (for pencils, not the case) being removed and replaced. I removed seven or eight price stickers from this case — two from those corners, two from the sliding glass front, and a three- or four-layer mess from the plastic top (I added not a mark to the damage). If you’re wondering where the glass went: I removed it to eliminate reflections and make the pencil display more visible.

I left one sticker in place, a beautifully designed one at the back, from the case’s manufacturer:



The Red Circle Display Case Co. remains a mystery. The lettering seems to say “1950s.” Some of the loose pencils in this case might go back that far; others are more recent production (Berol Prismacolors, from the company that superseded Eagle).

Dig the array of colors, identified on a printed strip inside the case. This strip features a spelling error (“Tetta Cotta”), a handwritten strikeout and revision (“True Green”), an enigma (“Green” v. “True Green”?), and a reminder that pencils, like crayons, may carry traces of a culture’s unexamined assumptions (“Flesh”):

734	White
734 ½	Light Grey
735	Canary Yellow
735½	Lemon Yellow
736	Yellow Ochre
736½	Orange Ochre
737	Orange
737½	Sea Green
738	Grass Green
738½	Light Green
739	Green
739½	Olive Green
740	Ultramarine
740½	Sky Blue
741	Indigo Blue
741½	Azure Blue
742	Violet
742½	Lavender
743	Pink
743½	Rose
744	Scarlet Red
745	Carmine Red
745½	Tetta Cotta [sic]
746	Sienna Brown
746½	Tuscan Red
747	Black
747½	Dark Grey
748	Red & Blue
750	Vermilion
751	Emerald True Green
752	Purple
753	Silver
754	Gold
755	Golden Brown
756	Dark Brown
757	Flesh

There’s little in the case that is of practical use, unless one is looking for a lifetime supply of yellow. I’m happy to see three orange pencils in this jumbled, holey spectrum.



[This post is the tenth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photographs by Michael Leddy.]

Related posts
A visit to the Eagle Pencil Company (1953)
Eagle Turquoise display case
“This is the Anatomy of an Eagle”

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Stanley carpenter’s rule

Edward Tufte auction

Edward Tufte is selling nearly 200 rare books at auction. The proceeds will go into ET Modern (his museum and gallery) and into land for display of his landscape sculpture.

Beautiful Evidence: The Library of Edward Tufte (Christie’s eCatalogue)

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, August 14, 2010.]

[Hi and Lois, November 20, 2010.]

Progress, sort of: a car seat at last, even if its occupant still rides inches from the rear windshield.

Related posts
All Hi and Lois posts
Baby’s in back
Vacationing with Hi and Lois

The New York accent

“A New York accent makes you sound ignorant”: so says a speech therapist quoted in Friday’s New York Times.

“Aah, shuddup,” says I.

A link at the Times takes you to a brief guide to New Yorkese from Almanac for New Yorkers: 1938, a 1937 publication of the Federal Writers’ Project. Better still, one can download the Almanac as a PDF. Thanks, Times.