It is weather

The storms that passed through Illinois and other states yesterday left my environs almost untouched. We had a brief interval of heavy rain and strong wind in the early afternoon. And then the sun came out, though the wind continued for several hours. Other cities and towns were not nearly as fortunate.

When I think about weather, I think of lines from Philip Larkin’s poem “Talking in Bed”:

Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us.

The weather is not destructive or unforgiving or violent. It doesn’t care about us. It just is.

William Weaver (1923–2013)

He was a translator and an FOFOH (friend of Frank O’Hara). The New York Times has an obituary. More about Weaver and FOH in a Paris Review interview, The Art of Translation.

A related post
791 Broadway (Weaver remembering FOH)

New directions in multitasking

All together now: smoking, texting, skateboarding.

The Polaroid Swinger

Cooper-Hewitt’s Object of the Day: the Polaroid Swinger, designed by Henry Dreyfuss. YouTube has two of the teenage-pastoral commercials. Yes, that’s Ali MacGraw.

High-school student Ethan Young on the Common Core

Ethan Young, a senior at Farragut High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, speaks to his local school board about the Common Core. An excerpt:

The task of learning is never quantifiable. If everything I learned in high school is a measurable objective, I haven’t learned anything. I’d like to repeat that. If everything I learned in high school is a measurable objective, I have not learned anything. Creativity, appreciation, inquisitiveness: these are impossible to scale. But they’re the purpose of education, why our teachers teach, why I choose to learn.

That Young is now the toast of the right-wing Internets is of no concern to me: his perspective here is one that I agree with. I find the Obama adminstration’s efforts in education a great disappointment.

Related posts
Arne Duncan on Colbert
”Warnings from the Trenches”

Telephone exchange names on screen: SUsquehannah

[From the Naked City episode “SUsquehanna 4-7568,” December 16, 1958. Click for a larger view.]

SUsquehannah does not appear on Bell Telephone’s 1955 list of recommended exchange names. But the Telephone EXchange Name Project lists it as a Manhattan exchange, serving the Upper West Side. Ephemeral New York has a photograph of a sign with an SU number.

“SUsquehanna 4-7568” is a fine early Naked City episode, a variation on the “Sorry, Wrong Number” theme. Among its characters is the scariest sanitation worker you’ll ever meet.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

Domestic comedy

[Two voices, in unison, honest.]

“That sounds a little like ‘Moonlight in Vermont.’”

What sounds a little like “Moonlight in Vermont” is the theme music from the earliest episodes of the television series Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin). The complete run of Naked City, 138 episodes, is now available on DVD. Amazon has the 29-disc set for $121.16 (list $179.98). The pre-order price ended up dropping — who knows why? — from $99 to $25.48. Our household is delirious.

The biggest surprise about the early half-hour episodes of the series: the lead characters are those of the film Naked City, Lieutenant Detective Dan Muldoon and Detective Jimmy Halloran, here played by John McIntire (with artifical flavoring — that is, a brogue) and James Franciscus.

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts
All Naked City posts

Recently updated

Hi and Lois, repurposed Now with greener spinach, and more of it.

Borges on reading

Jorge Luis Borges, against “lectura obligatoria,” obligatory reading:

Reading should be a form of happiness, so I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament — which I do not plan to write — I would advise them to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers’ reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read.

From Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature, ed. Martín Arias and Martín Hadis, trans. Katherine Silver (NY: New Directions, 2013).

And the original passage, from the documentary film Borges para millones (dir. Ricardo Wullicher, 1978):

La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad, de modo que yo aconsejaría a esos posibles lectores de mi testamento — que no pienso escribir — que leyeran mucho, que no se dejaran asustar por la reputación de los autores, que sigan buscando una felicidad personal, un goce personal. Es el único modo de leer.

[Borges para millones is available at the usual place.]

Hi and Lois, repurposed

The more I looked at today’s Hi and Lois, the less I could resist:


[Hi and Lois revised, November 13, 2013.]

After the famous Carl Rose New Yorker cartoon, caption by E. B. White.

November 14: Never satisfied. I’ve replaced the cereal in Ditto’s bowl and made everything greener.

Related reading
Other Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)