The Grapes of Wrath, 2011

BBC economics editor Paul Mason rented a car and retraced the Joad family’s journey. He tells the story in words and a short film.

Pi Recordings

Nate Chinen on the story of Pi Recordings:

Avant-garde jazz is notoriously marginalized music, and the afflictions now plaguing the recording industry are well known. But through a selective release schedule, a careful eye on the budget, a thoughtful approach to promotion and, crucially, a sense of cultivation and commitment to its artists, Pi has not only survived but has also managed to thrive.

Despite the Odds, a Jazz Label Finds a Way to Thrive (New York Times)

I have a half-dozen Pi albums, every one terrific. Small labels are the only future for almost all the music I care about.

A related post
Abrams, Lewis, Mitchell: The Trio (Pi recording artists)

Dream jobs

It’s a truism of blogging that no one cares what you had for lunch. I agree: that’s why the photograph is so small. I took the photograph as a reminder that in another lifetime, I might have been a capable short-order cook. (Just look at that small plate.) Other dream jobs: soda jerk, stationer, traffic cop. Elaine is skeptical about soda jerk, though she does concede that I’d make a good sous-jerk.

[Lunch was a tuna-salad sandwich, fries, and lettuce and tomato. Fries made in the oven, with a small amount of oil. Margaret Mason wrote No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog (2006).]

“RAISE GIANT FROGS”

[“BIG DEMAND! Good prices year round. Nation-wide markets waiting for all you can ship. WE BUY! Sell to us also. Breeder lays 20,000 eggs yearly. Get ready now for next spawn. Start with small pond, creek, lowland. Free book shows sketch. Men & Women starting in every state and Canada. See what others are doing with our methods. Send no money! Just your name and address on postcard brings special offer to beginners. Write. AMERICAN FROG CANNING CO. (Dept. 133–A) New Orleans, La.” Popular Mechanics, January 1938.]

“Get ready now for next spawn” somehow sounds to my ears like horrorshow, not easy work-at-home business. And if you’re wondering: yes, you’ll have to kill and dress those giant frogs before dropping what’s left of them in the mailbox. Aiiieee.

The American Frog Canning Company’s booklet on raising frogs is available in fascimile. In addition to raising, it covers catching, grading, killing, dressing, and shipping. Aiiieee.

Also from Popular Mechanics
Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer
“HOT PIANO”
“MONEY MAKING FORMULAS”
A mystery EXchange name
“Radios, it is”

[Yes, I’ve eaten frog legs. They tasted, of course, like chicken.]

Robert Duncan on language

Robert Duncan, speaking at a memorial for fellow poet Louis Zukofsky, December 1978:

“I in no way believe that there is such a thing as ‘just language,’ any more than there is ‘just footprints.’ I mean, it is human life that prints itself everywhere in it and that’s what we read when we’re really reading.”

Quoted in Mark Scroggins, The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky (Berkeley: Shoemaker Hoard, 2007).

How to e-mail a student

[Advice for professors.]

As the writer of How to e-mail a professor, I want to offer some suggestions to professors about how to reply to e-mails from their students. I’m prompted to do so by what I hear from reliable sources about profs whose replies to student e-mails are cryptic, rude, or non-existent. Here are three suggestions:

Make your e-mail policy clear to students. If you don’t read and respond to e-mail from students, let your students know that, and don’t share your e-mail address with them. If you have a schedule for checking e-mail, let your students know how long they should expect to wait for an answer.

Reply promptly. I am not suggesting that you check your account constantly. I am suggesting that when you check e-mail and see something from a student, you reply. David Allen’s two-minute rule is relevant here: if it takes less than two minutes to do, do it now. The point of checking e-mail should be to deal with e-mail, not to postpone that work indefinitely.

Some professors make a point of delaying so as not to encourage students to expect instant replies. A better strategy would be to note in your reply that the sender has just happened to catch you online.

Don’t be brusque. (Don’t be this guy.) I like brevity in e-mail — keeping it to two, three, four, or five sentences can be just right — but even a brief e-mail can be made more human in three simple ways:

Address the writer by name.

Reply as if you’re speaking, not as if you’re writing a telegram.

Sign off. See you in class or See you next week can help make a professor sound less like the Delphic oracle and more like an everyday human.

Compare and contrast: which replies would you rather receive?

Yes.

Maggie, yes, that’s a good idea. See you in class.

*

No.

I don’t think that would work, Bart. Let’s talk about it after class.

*

This is a question for office hours.

Lisa, it would be easier to talk about this question during office hours. Come by tomorrow.

For every clueless student e-mailer, there’s another who has thought carefully about making a decent impression in pixels. Professors should do likewise. The longer sample responses I’ve suggested would take mere seconds to type. But if you’d prefer to sound like the Delphic oracle, well, that’s your business — and Apollo’s.

See you tomorrow,

ML

[The two-minute rule, from David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (New York: Penguin, 2002): “If the Next Action can be done in 2 minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up. Even if that item is not a ‘high priority’ one, do it now if you’re ever going to do it at all.“]

“Where’s that son?”

André Gregory, in My Dinner with André (dir. Louis Malle, 1981):

“You know, people hold on to these images — father, mother, husband, wife, again, for the same reason, ’cause they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean — ‘a wife,’ ‘a husband,’ ‘a son’? A baby holds your hands, and then suddenly, there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?”

He’s in Boston. Do great, Ben!

Shadow of a Doubt, on location

[“Actors Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, and Henry Travers rehearsing a scene on location while director Alfred Hitchcock (seated) looks on.” Photograph by J. R. Eyerman. Santa Rosa, California, 1943. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is one of my favorite films. I first watched it on my dad’s recommendation. (Thanks, Dad.) The film has long seemed to me Nabokovian: Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten), the stranger in a placid American town, reminds me of both Humbert Humbert (Lolita) and Charles Kinbote (Pale Fire). Uncle Charlie’s relationship with his niece Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) is hardly the stuff of Lolita (not even close), but it’s deeply disturbing on its own terms. (You’ll just have to watch the film.)

Shadow of a Doubt is widely reported to be Hitchcock’s favorite among his films. But when François Truffaut raised the question, Hitchcock demurred:

I wouldn’t say that Shadow of a Doubt is my favorite picture; if I’ve given that impression, it’s probably because I feel that here is something that our friends, the plausibles and logicians, cannot complain about.

François Truffaut, Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).

Don’t miss the full-size view of the photograph (still, alas, a little blurred).

Related reading
Shadow of Doubt film locations (Worldwide Guide to Film Locations)

A clean, well-sharpened place

“When I have a house of my own, it's gonna be full of all sharpened pencils”: Young Ann Newton (played by Edna May Wonacott), in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

[Whatever became of Edna May Wonacott? Answers here and here.]

Bananastan and I

My imaginary liner notes for Van Dyke Parks’s new 45s now appear on the Bananastan Records website, on the front page and on a page about the first two releases. I’m honored to have my writing be part of the project.

Related reading
All Van Dyke Parks posts (via Pinboard)