Harry Truman with pencil

[“Harry S. Truman sitting at desk with pencil in hand.” Photograph by Marie Hansen. United States, 1945. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

At Contrapuntalism, Sean has been posting about the Mongol pencil (my favorite pencil), which prompted me to post, finally, this photograph. I think that’s a Mongol in Truman’s hand. Brand Name Pencils has photographs of two WWII-era Mongols that make me fairly confident about naming Truman’s pencil.

Related reading
All Mongol posts (Pinboard)

[I like photographs of people writing with plain old pencils while their desk sets go unused.]

Espresso machine on board

“They travel in two buses, with an espresso machine on board to supply Cuban coffee as they drive to engagements in Kansas City, Buffalo and Ames, Iowa”: from a report on the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, now on its first American tour. Elaine and I heard them last month. If they come your way: go.

[Thanks, Elaine.]

To the next!

The cryptic CAPTCHAs that Google provides for Blogger frustrate a good number of readers who would like to leave comments on posts. CAPTCHAs sometimes frustrate me too when I want to leave a comment on someone else’s Blogger blog. I’ve gone back and forth about CAPTCHAs here at Orange Crate Art, turning them off and getting inundated with junk (despite comment-moderation, which prevents that junk from getting online), then giving up and turning them back on. CAPTCHAs are off now, and I’m deleting dozens of junk comments a day. I can deal.

The only pleasant thing about wading through the junk is noticing the great variety of aberrant efforts to feign cheery gratitude for the content of posts. A recent favorite, from an alleged person who liked How to e-mail a professor and thinks that I “need to write more about this subject”:

To the next! Many thanks!!

I guess this post is “the next.” You’re welcome.

*

November 11, 2012: Deleting spam comments has become not impossible but deeply dispiriting — dozens and dozens and dozens of comments a day. So I’ve made a compromise: the CAPTCHAs are still off, but I’ve removed the option for anonymous comments. If you would like to comment and lack an account (Google or another) with which to do so, feel free to e-mail me.

I am happy to see that StatCounter registers no visits from spammers, who mask their IP addresses. I would hate to think that spammers were being counted as genuine readers.

Related reading
All “canned precooked meat product” posts (Pinboard)

Note-taking at Harvard

From Harvard University’s museums and libraries, a virtual exhibition about note-taking. My favorites: pages from George Lyman Kittredge’s commonplace book (such handwriting) and two readers’ annotations of a page from Rollo May.

Seeing the name Harvard and the word note-taking reminds me that my professor Jim Doyle once told a story of discovering in Widener Library a volume of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough with handwritten notes by T. S. Eliot. Ever dutiful, Jim sought out a librarian, who took the book away at once. End of story.

A related post
From the Doyle edition (a page of T. S. Eliot, with notes)

[Found via Notebook Stories.]

About those canned goods

They’re not helpful.

Brach’s Halloween Candies

[Life, October 17, 1960.]

In the 2012 edition of David Ng and Ben Cohen’s Candy Hierarchy, the bottom tier includes “anything from Brach’s,” right between black licorice and hard candy.

The American Red Cross

From the American Red Cross website:

The American Red Cross is continuing a major relief operation throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast to shelter and assist people affected by Superstorm Sandy. Millions awoke this morning to power outages, fallen trees, scattered debris, and flooded neighborhoods and the Red Cross is working hard to get help where it is needed.

You can click on the image to make a donation.

To vote, or not to vote

After watching Errol Morris’s short film 11 Excellent Reasons Not to Vote? , take a few more minutes to read Robert Reich: If You Succumb to Cynicism, the Regressives Win It All. I found Reich’s post via the always excellent Daughter Number Three.

A related post
David Foster Wallace on voting

Change we cannot ignore

“Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque”: Elizabeth Kolbert, Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change (New Yorker).

Movies, free, good ones

From the Pratt Chat Blog at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library: thirty-two films to watch online for free. If you’ve never seen it, I’d suggest starting with Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey, 1962). It’s unforgettable. Trust me, if you can.