LEMONADE FIFTY ¢ ICE COLD

Elaine and I went to the store by bicycle, and we took the mysterious route home, avoiding the major streets, such as they are. And so we saw three children in their front yard, two boys and a girl, sitting at a little table under a patio umbrella. Their combined age might have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight. They were in business, and they had a sign: LEMONADE FIFTY ¢ ICE COLD. We stopped to buy and drink. For a moment, it might have been 1965. And then the younger boy’s phone beeped.

[Yes, fifty cents would have been steep for 1965. Suspend disbelief, at least until the phone beeps.]

There’s something about Rupert

There’s something about Rupert. He reminds me of someone. Who could it be? I just can’t imagine. I’ll just have to knock on Mister Noggin. Could it be . . . could it be . . . Satan?

Elaine noticed it, but she didn’t want Satan Murdoch on her blog, so I’m posting here. The devil made me do it.

6:53 p.m.: Oh gosh, people everywhere have noticed it. There is nothing new under the sun. Or there was something new under the sun, and people everywhere noticed it, and once again there is nothing new under the sun.

A related post
Murdoch’s issues

[With apologies to Dana Carvey, the Church Lady, Geraldine, and Flip Wilson.]

Henry mystery

[Henry, July 19, 2011.]

What Henry is doing is no mystery: he’s painting on a black eye to match the one a bully just gave him. (Ta-da: sunglasses.) But what is he using as a mirror?

My guess is that it’s a gum machine, the kind that once could be found attached to posts in New York City subway stations. Here are three (machines, not stations). I suppose that in the right light the glass could serve as a mirror (especially if it were, say, 1947 or so).

Sometimes I wonder who in their right mind reads Henry.

Related posts
Betty Boop with Henry
Henry’s repeated gesture

[Here’s a photograph of a gum machine in its native habitat. There’s a better suggestion from Pete in the comments: a comb dispenser.]

“I changed the Will to Shall”

Pete Seeger, on the development of “We Shall Overcome”:

“Long-meter style is the way Zilphia Horton learned it — why didn’t her parents just call her Sylvia, I wonder — and she taught it to me, but I didn’t know how to play it right. I just gave it a banjo accompaniment, and I didn’t even sing it very much. Eventually I changed the Will to Shall. Toshi jokes that it’s my college education, but I’ve always used shall in the first person. Are you going to town tomorrow? Yes, I shall. Anyway, shall opens up the mouth better; the short ‘I’ is not as dramatic a sound as the ‘aah.’ I taught the song to Frank Hamilton, who taught it to a young boy named Guy Carawan, and they put it in this twelve-eight meter, but slow, and that gave it that great, pulsating rhythm. I am not sure where Dr. King heard it, but there was a woman, what was her name, she died only last year, and she remembered driving Dr. King to a speech in Kentucky and him in the backseat saying, ‘“We Shall Overcome,” that song really sticks with you, doesn’t it.’”

Alec Wilkinson, The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

[Toshi: Pete’s wife Toshi Seeger.]

Related reading
“We Shall Overcome” (Wikipedia)

Borders to close

From the New York Times:

The Borders Group, the bankrupt 40-year-old bookseller, said on Monday that it will move to liquidate after no last-minute savior emerged for the company. . . . Borders will begin closing its remaining stores as soon as Friday, and the liquidation is expected to run through September.

For months now, the online welcome message from my nearby Borders has seemed tinged with pathos:

Learning your way around our store, or having trouble finding that title? Our knowledgeable booksellers can be found near the Area-E desk, and throughout the store, to answer questions, locate titles, and help you order something if it’s not on the shelf. If you’re in need of a pastry or a pick-me-up, visit our Seattle’s Best Coffee cafe, where our excellent team members will help you find what’s just right for you. We look forward to your visit.

I wish you well, Borders employees. I will miss what was for many years an excellent bookstore.

A related post
Goodbye, Pages for All Ages (The end of an independent bookstore)

Domestic comedy

[Grimacing.] “This tastes too much like root beer.”

“What is it?”

“Root beer.”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts (via Pinboard)

Were and was

From my blog stats:

This sort of thing amuses me, unduly so.

If I were, if I was has become one of the most popular posts on Orange Crate Art. I just made a substantial addition to the post, with some further commentary on the trickiest sample sentence therein. So pretend you’re a congressional staffer — or even a member of Congress, if you dare — and read all about it. I would, if I were you.

A secret location on the Upper East Side

A three-minute film by Andrew David Watson about a used-book store in a Manhattan apartment: There’s No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books (via Andrew Sullivan).

Pencil fans, note the Mongol at 2:45.

Elaine, we gotta get there.

[[The Firefox extension Flashblock will prevent this film from playing. Add player.vimeo.com and vimeo.com to your whitelist. Post title inspired by a library exhibit and book.]

The news from Boro Park

I saw the first grim news — a child missing — on Tuesday night, via a Google Alert for boro park. The story began at Twelfth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, at the school where Leiby Kletzky was attending summer camp. I passed that building hundreds of times as a kid, back when it was an apartment house. I lived on Forty-fourth Street, less than a block away.

The story began with what many parents have experienced, at least briefly — the terrifying feeling of not knowing where a child is. What followed was a horror beyond imagining, born of psychopathy and the haphazard cruelty of circumstance. My heart breaks for the Kletzky family.

Murdoch’s issues

Did you notice this sentence in Rupert Murdoch’s letter of contrition?

In the coming days, as we take further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused, you will hear more from us.

The passive voice would be the more usual way to skirt responsibility in such a context:

In the coming days, as we take further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage that has been done, you will hear more from us.

Murdoch’s phrasing — “resolve these issues,” “make amends for the damage they have caused” — is a more subtle (though still transparent) way to avoid acknowledging responsibility. Murdoch’s phrasing places blame not on individual agents but on difficulties and problems that were somehow in the air. It’s like a driver blaming issues with alcohol for the damage to his car. But it’s not issues that drive drunk — or hack phones. A more forthright version of Murdoch’s sentence might read as follows:

In the coming days, as we take further concrete steps to set things right and make amends for the damage we have done, you will hear more from us.

I still wouldn’t believe him though.