Contrapuntalism

“This is a general-interest weblog, so long as you are generally interested in music, music theory, wood-cased pencils, philology, and related topics.” And, I’d add, beautiful photography. It’s by the creator of Blackwing Pages, and it’s called Contrapuntalism.

Indy serendipity

The unexpected highlight of a day in Indianapolis: talking and singing (“Mairzy Doats”) with a guide at the Indiana Historical Society. What a guy. He radiated good humor and warmth.

Only after the fact did we learn that we had met Hal Fryar, Harlow Hickenlooper of Indianapolis children’s television. Hal hosted the city’s Three Stooges Show. As a native Brooklynite, I’d put it this way: Harlow Hickenlooper : Indianapolis :: Officer Joe Bolton : New York City. Both men appeared in the 1965 Three Stooges film The Outlaws Is Coming.

Why did we visit the Indiana Historical Society? We were walking along the city’s canal, and the building was there. The best adventures are unplanned, no?

Kurt Vonnegut, Manager

I took this photograph at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis. I like the letterhead, and yes, I was happy to see the telephone exchange name.

Kurt Vonnegut managed one of the first Saab dealerships in the United States. He wrote about the Saab in a 2004 essay: Have I Got a Car for You! And here, from 2009, is an article on the dealership’s uncertain history.

But also across time

A series of events:

In 2006, I wrote a post about a piece of ephemera I found at a flea market, an invitation to a 1927 Chicago dance.

In 2012, I found online a 1925 newspaper photograph of the orchestra providing the music for that dance, A. Pellegrino and His Original Alabama Syncopators. I made a post with the photograph and a transcription of the caption, which included the names of the group’s seven musicians.

This past Friday and Saturday, I heard from trombonist Pasquale Venuso’s son Pat Jr. and Pat’s daughter Michelle. I was hoping when I transcribed that caption that someone searching for a relative’s name might find it there. Michelle did, and got in touch. Pat Jr. and I exchanged e-mails too. (He writes a beautiful e-mail.)

In 2007, when Orange Crate Art turned three, I wrote this:

The deepest and most unpredictable rewards of keeping this blog have come in the form of comments and e-mails. The responses to posts about my friend Aldo Carrasco and my professor Jim Doyle have shown me the ways in which the Internet can bring people together, not only across space but also across time.

It’s still true.

E-mail in the air

U.S. Army and UC Irvine researchers have found that not checking e-mail at work reduces stress and yields greater productivity:

E-mail “vacations” decrease stress (UC Irvine)
Taking E-Mail Vacations Can Reduce Stress (New York Times)
The Latest “Ordinary Thing That Will Probably Kill You”? E-mail (The Atlantic, via The Subliminal Mr. Dunn)

Wendy McNaughton’s flow chart may be helpful here: Should I check e-mail?

Speaking to the Times, Irvine professor of informatics Gloria Mark suggests that organizations rethink their use of e-mail, sending “once or twice a day, rather than continually,” so that employees not feel compelled to check the in-box again and again and again. I am amused by the possibility of the in-box turning into a good old-fashioned mailbox, with a regularly scheduled delivery.

*

And at The Atlantic Wire, Rebecca Greenfield calls for an end to exclamation points in e-mail. I’ll stick by what I wrote in a 2011 post: “sparing use of the exclamation point in work-related e-mail can be a good thing.”

What I noticed immediately in Greenfield’s piece: she’s using HTML-formatted e-mail. To my mind, that’s worse than a dozen exclamation points. Plain text, please. Plain text is better. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center wants you to use plain-text e-mail.

[I’ve added a hyphen to an unhyphenated e-mail in the Irvine and Atlantic headlines. The word email looks silly to me, especially when capitalized. I can’t do much about the hype in the Atlantic headline though.]

Eponym of the day: satyr

The Greeks have nearly swept A.Word.A.Day’s week of eponyms, with mentor, nestor, hector, and now satyr. And from Latin, tartar, whose Latin source derives from Greek.

[Yes, Hector was a Trojan, but his name comes from a Greek word.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, May 4, 2012.]

Reading Hi and Lois sometimes reminds me of reading the work of a student who makes the same dang mistakes, essay after essay. But it’s my job. And I love it.

The wrong-way-window-writing glitch has come up before. Maybe it’s an in-joke, like a left-handed five-string cello. Maybe.

Here’s how you write in a window:

Not that difficult!

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

Arkhonia on the Beach Boys

Arkhonia cares about the Beach Boys’ musical legacy and writes about that legacy at length. There’s life beyond “Kokomo.”

[It’s hard out here for a Beach Boys fan. You’re always having to explain yourself to people. The “reunion” doesn’t make that any easier.]

Time-saving formulas

Several semesters ago I made the switch from the tedious work of calculating grades by hand to the semi-tedious work of using a spreadsheet. As for online grading systems, I just wasn’t made for these times: I often assign very short pieces of writing as seems appropriate (playing it by ear, as my dad would say) and thus cannot devise a grading system in which every piece of work fits into some pre-established scheme of percentages. So I have no answer the eternal question “How many points is this worth?” Every piece of writing counts toward the percentage of the semester grade that goes to writing, with longer work and the best work counting for more.

The formula above will save me perhaps an hour of calculating grades for one class. D1 is the average of several very short pieces of in-class writing. E1, F1, G1, and H1 are three-page essays. I1 is the best of those three-page grades, counted as an extra page, as it were. These grades, added together, get divided by the total number of pages: /14. Multiply the result by six, add participation times two, the final exam times two, divide by ten, and there’s the semester grade.

Humanists: if you’re still doing grades by hand, you might want to look into creating a spreadsheet. It’s always good to learn new skills, and the savings in time can be considerable. The one caution I’d offer: proofread car fully! A single mistyped cell name = disaster.

May 4: In the comments, a much easier way to create a formula to do the work of the one above, courtesy of The Arthurian.

A related post, sort of
“MONEY MAKING FORMULAS”

[Yes, proofread car fully.]

Eponym of the day: hector

“Hector is a brave and dutiful character, but unfortunately his name is now sullied in the language.” His name is the eponym of the day, from A.Word.A.Day.