Roger Angell, “This Old Man”

Roger Angell, writing in The New Yorker about old age:

People my age and younger friends as well seem able to recall entire tapestries of childhood, and swatches from their children’s early lives as well: conversations, exact meals, birthday parties, illnesses, picnics, vacation B. and B.s, trips to the ballet, the time when . . . I can’t do this and it eats at me, but then, without announcement or connection, something turns up. I am walking on Ludlow Lane, in Snedens, with my two young daughters, years ago on a summer morning. I’m in my late thirties; they’re about nine and six, and I’m complaining about the steep little stretch of road between us and our house, just up the hill. Maybe I’m getting old, I offer. Then I say that one day I’ll be really old and they’ll have to hold me up. I imitate an old man mumbling nonsense and start to walk with wobbly legs. Callie and Alice scream with laughter and hold me up, one on each side. When I stop, they ask for more, and we do this over and over.

Roger Angell is ninety-three.

[“This Old Man” shifts in tone again and again, so any excerpt is unrepresentative of the whole. Read the whole.]

More on hyphenating phrasal adjectives

More from Bryan Garner on hyphenating phrasal adjectives. The first installment appeared last week. Helpful, helpful, helpful.

Phrasal adjectives are why I browse in used-book stores.

Domestic comedy

“I wonder if there’s a word for soupmaking, other than soupmaking.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Ballad of the spam mail

I taught Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord,” walked back to my office, checked my mail. In the spam folder: two eviction notices. That’s a new low in spam.

Why is it the ballad of the landlord, when twenty of the poem’s thirty-three lines are spoken by a tenant? Because it’s the landlord’s story that the poem tells. It’s the landlord’s world, so to speak: we just live in it, or get evicted from it. The poem's primary speaker ends up in a newspaper headline as a “Negro” serving ninety days in jail. No headline about the dilapidated condition of the landlord’s property.

And by the way, landlord is such a strange word for use in a democratic society, isn’t it?

“Ballad of the Landlord” has a famous place in the history of American teaching: in 1965 the writer Jonathan Kozol was fired from his job as a Boston substitute-teacher after teaching the poem to fourth-graders. According to Kozol’s principal, the poem “could be interpreted as advocating defiance of authority.” The principal also deemed Kozol lacking in “the personal discipline to abide by rules and regulations, as we all must in our civilized society.” That’s the language of the Boston Public Schools in quotation marks. Kozol tells the story in his first book, Death at an Early Age (1967).

Adam and Libby (Naked City)

[“Portrait of a Painter,” Naked City, January 10, 1962. Click for a larger view.]

As Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) gets the latest info on a murder investigation, his girlfriend Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) is — is doing what, exactly?

The phone call runs for two minutes and forty seconds, the scene shifting between Libby’s apartment and headquarters. The call is interrupted three times, when Detective Frank Arcaro looks for an eraser (!) and talks with Lieutenant Mike Parker, and when Mike takes another call. Finally, Adam asks, “Honey, I don’t mean to be nosy, but what are you doing?” And Libby explains:

“I was a seed. And I grew up through the earth into a beautiful flower. And I lived through the summer, and I let the sun soak through me. And I let the rains wash my face. And then autumn came, and I grew cold, and then winter came, and I went back into the earth again to become a new seed and to wait for another spring.”

That’s one mystery solved, utterly unrelated to the plot, utterly wonderful. There’s nothing else like Naked City.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Naked City mystery guest

He plays a painter, Roger Barmer, in the Naked City episode “Portrait of a Painter” (January 10, 1962). Can you identify him?

I don’t want to make things too difficult. One more:


[Click either image for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

“Greenwich Village Today” (Naked City)

[“Portrait of a Painter,” Naked City, January 10, 1962. Click for a larger, artier view.]

I’m unable to make a positive i.d., but I’m confident that the man in the white shirt is the show’s producer, Herbert B. Leonard, in beatnik drag. None of the people in this opening shot are credited on the episode’s IMDb page.

I love the screen title. And notice the painting of the thumb. Someone was having fun here.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Ambassadors are us

The news that President Obama has nominated major (and majorly unqualified) donors for ambassadorships is disillusioning. It seems to be business as usual, or worse than usual. You can read more about it in this PBS NewsHour report.

Fair is fair: if the Obama administration is rewarding major donors in this way, it should be willing to recognize donors of modest means as well. (I write as one of them.) Time-share ambassadorships, a week per year per donor, are the obvious answer. Each share-holder would bring a fresh perspective to the work and learn in the best of all possible ways — on the job.

To anyone at whitehouse.gov: Se habla español, despacio. And I’ve never been to Argentina.

Thank you, local news

On the television just now: the local news informs me that salt will work to melt ice but only on treated roads. In other words, if there’s no salt applied, the salt won’t work. Thank you, local news.

Also from the local news
Anglers, getting eaten : People, getting older : The sun, setting

Orange soda-label art

Howdy was the brainchild of Charles Leiper Grigg, who went on to create 7 Up. Yes, before there was a Seven-Up Company, there was a Howdy Corporation.

I found this label (dented, discolored, slightly torn) in an antiques “mall.” This label spoke to me. It said “Certified Artificial Color.” And then it said “Howdy.” Or “ ‘Howdy.’ ”

Howdy, reader.

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

[Or is it orange-soda label art? Your choice.]