[“Thanksgiving Cheer Provided for All: Vaudeville Entertainments with Turkey Feasts Lighten the Day for the City’s Charges. The Boy Scouts Parade. Light Fall of Snow in the Morning Gives New York the First ‘White’ Thanksgiving in Years.” New York Times, November 29, 1912.]
Happy Thanksgiving.
Related reading
Doing time at the Ludlow Street Jail (Ephemeral New York)
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thanksgiving 1912
By Michael Leddy at 8:55 AM comments: 2
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Overheard
“So I looked around and saw what was left of my social network . . .”
Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 9:01 AM comments: 0
An interview with a semicolon
“ I feel angry; I feel hurt; I feel betrayed”: from an interview with a semicolon.
Related posts
How to punctuate a sentence
How to punctuate more sentences
Paul Collins on the semicolon
By Michael Leddy at 8:59 AM comments: 0
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Knowing and not knowing
“What I know is rivaled only by what I do not know”: Elaine Fine writes about knowledge and humility. It’s a great post.
Elaine’s post makes me want to revise what I wrote in an earlier post about information and knowledge: competent people not only know stuff; they also know how much they don’t know.
By Michael Leddy at 10:32 AM comments: 4
On the Bowery
[Click for a larger view.]
On the Bowery (dir. Lionel Rogosin, 1956) is a grim and gripping film whose players are not professional actors but men and women of the Bowery. Elaine Fine has written about its musical score, the work of Charles Mills. You can watch a trailer and learn more at the film’s website.
By Michael Leddy at 10:27 AM comments: 0
Monday, November 19, 2012
Swingline “Tot 50”
[Life, September 17, 1956. Click for a larger view.]
I think that some of the claims for this stapler defy plausibility. Though for all I know, reader, you too make your own sandwich bags, carry extra staples anywhere you go, and consider the “Tot 50” “the ideal gift.” You may even sport a Swingline beanie.
For me the most evocative trace of the past in this ad is neither the book cover nor the book bag but the reference to variety stores. The store I remember is Cheap Charlie’s (Thirteenth Avenue, Brooklyn). I can still see in my mind’s eye the shelf that held the Elmer’s Glue-All and LePage’s Mucilage. No staplers though.
For students: this post explains why you should staple pages (unless, that is, your professor asks for paper clips).
[The quotation marks surrounding Tot 50 appeared on the “stapler itself.” Weird.]
By Michael Leddy at 9:13 AM comments: 1
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Avoiding and averting
Can one avert a fiscal cliff? No, just as one cannot avert a mountain or a banana peel. Cliffs, like mountains and peels, are just there. One can avoid — “keep away from” — them, by paying attention and steering clear, or by putting on the brakes.
One can avert — “see coming and ward off” — an event, say, a disaster, such as the disaster of going over a cliff, literal or figurative. But the cliff itself? No.
[Definitions from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Written after listening to too much NPR.]
By Michael Leddy at 2:28 PM comments: 2
Landscape with some rocks
[Zippy, November 17, 2012.]
Bill Griffith is one of Ernie Bushmiller’s not-so-secret admirers. Today’s visit to “Bushmillerland” includes another landscape with the mystical formation known as “some rocks.”
Other Nancy and Zippy posts
“Bushmiller Country”
Hommage à Ernie Bushmiller
Nancy + Sluggo = Perfection
By Michael Leddy at 6:44 AM comments: 0
Friday, November 16, 2012
Overheard
“Did you know, Mother, that the sun shines practically every day in Los Angeles?”
Related reading
All “overheard” posts
[The television was on in the background, for “warmth.” And it worked.]
By Michael Leddy at 8:19 AM comments: 0
College and the trades
A philosopher and mechanic on college and the trades:
Any high school principal who doesn’t claim as his goal “one hundred percent college attendance” is likely to be accused of harboring “low expectations” and run out of town by indignant parents. This indignation is hard to stand against, since it carries all the moral weight of egalitarianism. Yet it is also snobbish, since it evidently regards the trades as something “low.” The best sort of democratic education is neither snobbish nor egalitarian. Rather, it accords a place of honor in our common life to whatever is best.Other Matthew Crawford posts
Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin, 2009).
On higher education
On making judgments
On problems
By Michael Leddy at 8:19 AM comments: 0