Thank you, Senator Kirk

Mark Kirk, Republican senator from Illinois, supports equal marriage:

When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others.

Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this Earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.

I’d say that the times, they are a-, &c., but I think that the times have already changed, and people are now catching up.

Two related posts
The flag of equal marriage
Logic and marriage

[Notice: “to who you love,” not whom. Another way in which the times have already changed.]

TextWrangler v. pencil

“The pencil has been consigned to the dustbin of history”: ouch. That’s from the release notes for TextWrangler 4.5. I know: it’s an icon, as seen here, not the pencil. But still, ouch.

I like pencils. I like TextWrangler too.

Salinger letter for sale

For sale at eBay, a 1966 J. D. Salinger letter from Bermuda. A sample:

The beginning of the week I got back from a three weeks progress to: Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Chicago, and New York. I made a lot of friends for the Company.

Related reading
All Salinger posts (Pinboard)

[The seller describes the letter as “re Politics & Vietnam.” Salinger mentions those topics in passing, yes, and that in itself is noteworthy, but they are hardly what the letter is “about.”]

Higher Education PSA

[Read from left to right, and click on any image for a larger view. Notice “N.Y. 36”: the world before ZIP codes.]

I don’t know how often such PSAs aired. I do know that the beautifully executed PSA that provides these images aired on December 12, 1962, after the Naked City episode “King Stanislaus and the Knights of the Round Stable.”

The exhortation to “Give to the college of your choice” has been superseded, I’d say, by the bumper-sticker proclamation “My daughter/son and my money go to                 .” I’ve never understood what tone of voice goes with that sticker: rueful? snarky? proud?

And while I’m asking questions: Can someone tell me what’s happening in the fourth image?

[Yes, Stable. ]

Tasty signature

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Tastykake Cupkakes in Illinois? I had to buy a box. And thus I saw the similarity between the kake’s scrawl/scroll and the much derided signature of United States Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. And then, having taken some photographs and schemed a post, I discovered that back in January, the Internets had noticed the similarity between a Hostess product and Lew’s signature.

Richard Posner, in The Little Book of Plagiarism (2007):

[O]ld ideas are constantly being rediscovered by people unaware that the ideas had been discovered already. . . . A rediscoverer or independent discoverer is not a copier, hence not a plagiarist.

One could even argue that it is the earlier discovery of the similarity that counts as plagiarism — an instance of what Winston Churchill called anticipatory plagiarism.


[Jack Lew’s signature.]

Related reading
All plagiarism posts (Pinboard)
Fauxstess cupcakes

Richard Griffiths (1947–2013)

From the New York Times :

Richard Griffiths, the rotund British actor whose stage career reached a pinnacle with his Tony-winning performance as an idealistic but tormented pedagogue in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys and who achieved popular fame in the movies as Harry Potter’s mean-spirited Uncle Vernon Dursley, died on Thursday in Coventry, England.

Griffiths played Mr. Hector in both the play and the film. The scene in which Hector talks about Thomas Hardy’s poem “Drummer Hodge” is still the best moment of poetry-in-film I know.

Trap streets

“A secret symbol of an analog past”: Trap streets: The crafty trick mapmakers use to fight plagiarism (The Week).

The Shoemaker

The Shoemaker is a short film by Dustin Cohen about ninety-year-old Frank Catalfumo and F & C Shoe Rebuilding (2810 Harway Avenue, Brooklyn, New York). Notice the several cameos by Bernhard’s cat and the brief exchange about shoe booths. There’s also a photo gallery.

Related reading
Shoe repairmen are the new typewriter repairmen

[The shoe-repair shop of my Brooklyn childhood, at 4602 New Utrecht Avenue, has been replaced by a delicatessen.]

Stepping away from the phone

Barbara L. Fredrickson argues for greater face-to-face communication: “Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.”

[A sad and common sight: fifteen or twenty students waiting to enter a college classroom, no one talking, each student looking down at a screen.]

Paul Williams (1948–2013)

The music critic Paul Williams has died. He founded Crawdaddy!, the first magazine of rock music criticism, and wrote frequently about the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. A sample, about “Fun, Fun, Fun”:

Notice that the rebellious, fun-loving, fast-driving hero of the song is female. Notice that in every verse, every line except the last ends in “now,” and it works! (One of the jobs of poetry is to capture not the actual words but the subjective impact of everyday speech.) Notice the understated, very specific, rhythmic sound of the words “fun, fun, fun” in the chorus, and the contrasting open-endedness of “away.” Notice the easy, natural, wildly complex interplay between the voices and combinations of voices. Notice the neat double meaning in the second verse, “A lot of guys try to catch her,” referring both to her elusive sexuality (“you look like an ace now”) and her automotive ability (“you drive like an ace now”). Notice how Dad’s futile attempt at discipline only serves to throw her (potentially) into “my” realm and bigger and better trouble. And I know you can't fail to notice one of the sweetest fade-outs ever, the brilliant ordinariness of the song totally transcended in two brief moments of soaring falsetto. Fun, indeed.

Paul Williams, from Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys: How Deep Is the Ocean?: Essays and Conversations (1997).

Related reading
Paul Williams website
Crawdaddy! archive (Wolfgang’s Vault)
Billboard obituary
Los Angeles Times obituary