Fighting distraction

Diana Senechal:

To fight distraction is to defend something that matters, something that requires devotion of the mind. This is part of the meaning of study: to honor things through thought and longing. Many dismiss such yearning as impractical; we have enough on our hands, they say, with the daily scramble and the demands of the age. But yearning can pull us out of the scramble; it can calm the scramble itself. The teacher who longs to read about Chinese history will set aside time for it in the evenings. The boy who longs to see a falling star will stay up late, looking up at the sky for hours. in Moby-Dick, it is the Rachel, returning from a vain search for the captain’s lost sons, that ultimately rescues Ishmael from the water near the sunken Pequod and makes the story possible. If we abandon such yearning and seeking, if we defer to the petty demon of “getting it now,” then nothing will be left but our vicissitudes, and we will have no will or thought but to follow them.

Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012).

Also from Republic of Noise
“A little out of date”

Overheard

In a nearby restaurant, the owner’s son, a young boy with iPad in hands, earbuds in ears, came out from the back to tell his mom the news:

“It’s a blizzard starting! I’m not kidding!”

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

[A blizzard is what we were promised, but the snowfall here is still pretty calm. It is a snowfall from a Pierre Reverdy poem, so far, so to speak.]

“A little out of date”

Diana Senechal:

There is nothing quite so dangerous as trying to be always up to date, for one simple reason: just moments after one becomes current, one falls behind. To keep from falling behind, one must stay alert to every update. To step back, to spend time on something not immediately relevant, is to risk “missing out,” losing touch with the lickety-split relay of the latest, or so it seems. . . .

The pressure to keep up with the times not only distracts and dizzies us; it upsets and distorts our values. Once we subscribe to the “cutting edge,” we lose the ability to judge it. We grab it, grab some opinions about it, and grab some more. What others are saying about the latest gadget or fashionable concept becomes more important than what we ourselves think. We are told that if we just get it now, or embrace it now, we will be at an advantage. Thus to think in any sort of depth, to judge things on our own, we must risk falling a little out of date, a little out of authority.

Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012).

Christmas 1912

[“Christmas Traffic in a Foot of Snow; It Holds Up the Last-Minute Shoppers and Worries the Store Deliverymen.” New York Times, December 25, 1912.]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.

Last-minute shopping

Says the advertisement, “Just five minutes at a Parker Jotter counter can take a surprising amount of guesswork and expense and time out of your Christmas shopping.”

“Parker Jotter counter”: noun phrase of a lost world.


[Life, December 24, 1964. Click for a larger view.]

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is an especially good value if you have a working time-machine. The pen that sold for $1.98 in 1964 sells for $6 or $7 or so today. Today’s prices are good ones too: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator turns 1964’s $1.98 into 2012’s $14.70.

Related posts
Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963
Ten best “dowdy world” gifts

[The typeface in the headline? Goudy Old Style. Notice the diamond-shaped tittle on the lowercase i.]

Live-blogging Magoo

My wife Elaine has put me up to it: I will be live-blogging Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Starting soon.

7:01: The frame story — Magoo returning to Broadway to play Scrooge — has been removed. More time for commercials! Curse you, NBC.

7:02: “Ringle, Ringle”: Scrooge sings a celebration of wealth. Bob Cratchit: he’s the 99%. Poor Bob’s a-cold.

7:05: Purple pavement? The colors have been brightened, sweetened, enhanced. (I think that the DVD will bear me out.)

7:07: Scrooge’s rooms resemble Matisse’s The Red Studio, only redder.

7:15: The Ghost of Christmas Present is a vision in pink.

7:16: I never knew that it was Gerald McBoing-Boing playing Tiny Tim. I never knew that it was Jack Cassidy speaking and singing Bob Cratchit’s words.

7:19: Nor did I ever understand just what was wrong with Tiny Tim.

7:19: All shots of the theater in which the performance is taking place seem to have been chopped for this airing. I still remember the strange hair whorl on the back of one theatergoer’s head. Anyone who remembers this show will miss these details. (Is the idea to make people want to buy the DVD?)

7:25: Elaine is playing the DVD on her Mac as I watch the television. She points out that small bits of dialogue and song have been cut here and there. Shameful.

7:26: “Alone in the World”: such a sad and beautiful song. Yet it’s missing the image of young Ebenezer tracing his hand on the schoolroom blackboard.

7:32: Yes, the colors have been altered, horribly so. But at least Fezziwig’s warehouse still has non-red walls.

7:36: The delicate landscapes that accompany “Winter Was Warm” have been altered beyond recognition here. A snowy field is now red. There must have been a sale on red.

7:37: Even the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a bright red.

7:38: Nothing though can alter the solid goodness of the songs, even in truncated form. Such an inspired choice to have Jule Styne and Bob Merrill writing music for a cartoon. I’m reminded of Johnny Costa’s contributions to Mister Rogers’ Neighborood: children too deserve real music.

7:43: The frequent commercial interruptions and the cutting of the theater scenes take away the three-act feel of the original.

7:45: The thieves’ song has been shortened.

7:46: “No, not Tiny Tim!”

7:47: The visit to the graveyard spooked me as a kid. I closed my eyes and peeked now and then. It’s less spooky in Technicolor.

7:49: The last ten seconds or so of the “Alone in the World” reprise have been cut. And it’s straight to commercials.

7:50: Elaine reports that the DVD now shows eleven minutes to go. So what more will be cut? Oh, of course: the return to the frame story of Magoo back on Broadway. Will the cast even get to take its final bow?

7:53: “Today? Why, Christmas Day!”

7:56: The winking doorknocker has been cut.

7:57: “The Founder of the Feast indeed.”

7:58: “And therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

7:59: The reprise of “The Lord’s Bright Blessing” has been cut. And of course the cast’s bows.

No razzleberry dressing for you, NBC. No razzleberry dressing ever.

[Thanks, Elaine, for your help.]

Magoo on NBC

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, fifty this year, airs on NBC tonight, 7:00 Central Time. A very big deal. Thanks to Daughter Number Three for spreading the news.

*

Later that night: I live-blogged the broadcast.

Related reading
Ghost of Christmas Past: Magoo at 50 (CNN)

A visit to Faber-Castell

At Contrapuntalism, Sean begins to tell the story of his journey to Die Bleistiftstadt:

About a month ago, I received an extraordinary invitation: Faber-Castell wanted to know if I would like to come visit their headquarters in Stein for a few days, to have a tour of the castle and production facilities, and to meet with Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell.

Holy graphite! Here is part one.

[Die Bleistiftstadt: the pencil city.]

A 2013 calendar, mine

In late 2009, I decided to make a plain and dowdy wall calendar. My inspiration was the Field Notes Calendar: beautiful, but could I justify buying two? I couldn’t. So I sat down, opened a blank document, and started in. And so the hours passed.

I just finished making a calendar for 2013 (in a fraction of the time): three months per page in beautiful Gill Sans Bold, readable from a good distance — from at least ten feet, I’d say. If you’d like a PDF, send me an e-mail. (If you’re seeing this post in a reader, click through: my address is in the sidebar.) And if you’d like to design a calendar of your own, I have one word for you: tables.

[This calendar is mine, not Mayan. But if the world ends today, I may not be able to reply to your e-mail.]

Red cabbage

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Red cabbage: the psychedelia of the vegetable kingdom.

A related post
Psychedelic book cover