Handwriting, again

“Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how”: What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades (The New York Times).

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Tovolo Perfect Cube, uncool tool

Last December I somehow found my way to a Cool Tools post about Tovolo ice-cube trays. I bought a set of Perfect Cube trays and soon began to wonder why ice water was tasting awful. How awful? Like a cross between freezer and rubber. Was our water really that bad? No. These trays stink, and they impart a stink to the ice cubes they hold. It’s most noticeable if I’m drinking ice water, less noticeable with bourbon or iced tea.

I called Tovolo this morning and was told what a Cool Tools commenter was told two years ago — that silicone absorbs odors at low temperatures. Which would seem to make it a poor choice for ice-cube trays, right? Not according to Tovolo. In the event of stink (my word not theirs), the company recommends washing the trays with two parts vinegar and one part water, every two months or so. Another suggestion: don’t store ice cubes in the trays themselves. I couldn’t help laughing about that one. You can see where this is going: the Tovolo tray becomes a complication, an object in need of maintenance. Not a cool tool at all. Very uncool, if you ask me. I would never have purchased these trays had I known that they would require scheduled maintenance and off-site storage.

The person I spoke with said that the company sells thousands of trays and that very few have these problems. Yet a prominent eBay seller who sells Tovolo has a page of directions for getting rid of the stink. In other words, it’s a Known Issue. And one- and two-star reviews on Amazon suggest that the stink is there to stay. To his credit, the person I spoke with said that Tovolo will replace trays when necessary. But I’m saving my vinegar and time and replacing the Tovolos with Rubbermaid trays. Elaine is using our Tovolos to store spools of thread. (Can thread stink?)

Had I read the comments at Cool Tools or even a smattering of Amazon reviews, I’d have balked at buying Tovolo trays. Note to self: read the comments next time, self. Don’t fall for shiny red objects before doing more reading.

[Yes, everything is less noticeable with bourbon.]

A collaborative poem

My friend Sara McWhorter and I traded lines to write this collaborative poem. It has the cheerful lunacy such things are meant (at least to my mind) to have. How to know when it’s done? When it’s done. Enjoy.

PBS wants me to flip my phone open

The television was on for “warmth,” tuned to PBS. I was startled to hear someone encourage viewers to “flip the phone open” and make a pledge. Yes, it’s pledge week on my PBS station. Tonight’s offering, Ed Sullivan’s Rock and Roll Classics, first aired in 2009. The pledge breaks are from 2009 as well. Thus the flip phone.

There’s something unseemly about a PBS station seeking to pull in viewers (and money) by running decades-old clips from a commercial variety show — and running those clips again and again. What would move me to give more money to PBS? Oh, say, a reprise of one or more Frontline episodes. Or an hour or two of the wonderful operas from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Or an episode or two of the great forgotten series Soul! — especially this one with Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

But as Kirk put it in his Soul! appearance, “People don’t even want us on television.” And now, not even on PBS. Gotta make more room for the Dave Clark Five and Yanni. They’re coming later this week too, again.

[I have no idea what airing an old PBS show might require in the way of permissions. But I doubt that such material is missing from pledge week because of such complications. By the way, the breaks on many PBS pledge-week programs now come from some mothership, not from the local station. And, yes, many people happily use flip phones in 2014. But the exhortation to “flip the phone open” now sounds rather dated.]

Illinois gets a star

[The Flag of Equal Marriage, now with nineteen stars.]

From MakeItEqual.org: “The Flag of Equal Marriage is an evolving protest flag for equal marriage rights in the US. It includes one star for each state which recognizes and performs same-sex marriages.”

The bill that Governor Patrick Quinn signed into law on November 20, 2013, goes into effect today.

“A formal, considered form of correspondence”

Shaun Usher of Letters of Note, interviewed by Marco Werman:

What we’re losing when we tweet people and e-mail people and send Facebook messages rather than write letters is a formal, considered form of correspondence. When you sit down to write a letter, you’re in a completely different frame of mind than you are when you write an e-mail or a tweet, and you really kind of dig deep rather than just, you know, having ten tabs open at once and flicking backwards and forwards and never properly focusing on the job at hand. So I think we’re losing something really quite deep.

Listen to it all: Here’s what we lost when we stopped writing letters (PRI).

In New York last week, I made it a point to buy some Clairefontaine paper and envelopes. I am going to write more letters. If anyone would like a letter from me, let me know. I will oblige.

Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)

[Friends, take warning.]

C. O. Bigelow

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

C. O. Bigelow Apothecaries, 414 Sixth Avenue, New York, established 1838, the oldest apothecary in the United States.

Neon in daylight is indeed “a great pleasure.”

More neon
Minetta Tavern
Saratoga Bar and Cafe

On “trigger warnings”

A recent New York Times article describes a new trend in academic life:

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

Among these schools: the University of California, Santa Barbara, where student government has called for trigger warnings. The dateline for the Times article — Santa Barbara itself — now serves as a cruel reminder that reality itself most often comes without warnings.

For several semesters I’ve put this statement on my syllabi when appropriate: “The works we’re reading contain material that some readers may find offensive or disturbing (language, sex, violence). In such cases, please consider taking another course.” No one has ever asked what was coming. I think a general warning like this one is appropriate, with further conversation as needed. But I’m against labeling individual works of the imagination in a way that reduces their content to a set of potentially dangerous elements. Imagine Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man accompanied by a “Contains racism” warning. Or “Contains racism, a corrupt college administrator, rural and urban poverty, a tall tale of incest, uninvited touching, an uninvited sexual proposition, a rape fantasy, an eviction, a police shooting, rioting, looting, and arson.” There is no end to what might upset a reader.

I wonder: what do students who favor trigger warnings expect to find in literature? As Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, “Art hurts.” Pity and terror are sometimes what we’re meant to feel. And we can feel these things not only because of what has happened to us: we can feel them because of our shared humanity.

Things I learned on my summer vacation

Q. Why did the arsonist refuse to answer any questions?

A. He didn’t want to incinerate himself.

*

“Are you rolling your eyes?”

“I’m rolling everything.”

*

In some ways, I am no longer part of NPR’s target audience.

*

Phil Schaap is still Phil Schaap, or even more so. “An immeasurable increase that’s vast.” Sigh. “This plethora, if you will, meaning ‘large.’” No, I will not. From Garner’s Modern American Usage :

According to the OED and most other dictionaries, this word refers (and has always referred) to an overabundance, an overfullness, or an excess. The phrase a plethora of is essentially a highfalutin equivalent of too many.

*

Arnold Stang was the voice of Chunky.

*

My parents’ first car was a Plymouth Savoy, blue, with fins. I remember the car but never knew its name.

*

Working in construction, my dad once saw a fellow tileman ridiculed by his peers for using the word threshold to refer to, yes, a threshold.

*

My mom’s mother referred to Special K cereral as Ks. She had her Ks for breakfast.

*

Ilities: bizspeak for the section of a document that covers liability and related matters. Used without irony.

*

There is a Theda Bara Way in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

*

Bibby’s Mediterranean Café in Fort Lee is gone. The owner may be acquiring a food truck.

*

The white clam pizza from Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven is a glorious thing. Clams, grated cheese, olive oil, garlic, oregano. Period. Every houseguest should be so fortunate as to have their hosts travel back from Boston with some Frank Pepe pizza. (Thank you, Luanne and Jim.)

*

Strip-mall restaurants really do rule. Three in New Jersey: Citrus serves Indian and Thai dishes. Koi serves Chinese dishes and sushi. Tony’s Touch of Italy needs no more than its name as explanation. Especially good: lamb vindaloo, moo shu pork, mussels marinara.

*

The difference between chicken tikka masala and buttered chicken: the one is made with cream; the other, with butter.

*

In Hoboken, New Jersey, Cucharamama (“mother spoon”) rules. (Our friends Jim and Luanne are friends of the restaurant’s chef, Maricel Presilla.) Such flavors. And such hospitality. My suggestion: order everything to share, just a couple of main dishes and as many appetizers as you dare. Variety is all.

*

Our friend Jim’s work lies behind — or in — the gyroscopes that direct the REMUS 6000 (used in the search for Air France Flight AF447) and the Bluefin-21 (used in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370). Jim is a modest guy: this information came up entirely in passing.

*

In East Harlem, New York, El Paso Restaurante rules. We were there during the championship football match between Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid. The crowd watching at the bar seemed of one mind, though I couldn’t tell you which side they were cheering. Knowing how the match went, I would now say that they must have been cheering Real Madrid.

*

My mom reminded me that when I was a college student, waiting one morning for the Frick Museum to open, a guard told me not to sit on the steps. Now people sit on the steps with impunity. I did remember being chastened in the museum because I was bending to better see the details in a painting. This time I not only bent: I squatted, to better see the titles on the spines of the books in the library.

*

At the Frick: Joseph Chinard’s Portrait of Louis-Étienne Vincent-Marniola is incontrovertible proof that Elvis Aron Presley was a time-traveler.

*

At the Frick: figures in Rembrandt’s Nicolaes Ruts and Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid look like they’re holding PocketMods. But we know that PocketMods cannot time-travel.

*

My feeling about the Frick hasn’t changed in thirty-odd years: gratitude for the chance to see the art, and a sick feeling about the exploitation and injustice that underwrote its acquisition. Seeing a painting of Saint Francis in this setting makes my irony meter go haywire. I doubt I’ll go back.

*

There was more to the photographer Vivian Maier than didn’t meet the eye. In other words, there are some dark elements in this invisible woman’s story. Finding Vivian Maier (dir. John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, 2014) does a fine job of presenting Maier’s life and work. We liked this film so much that we ended up seeing it twice.

*

Stevdan Pen & Stationers has a great selection of supplies and great service. When I asked about 2015 Moleskine datebooks, the proprietor called his other location and had someone walk over a Moleskine for me. But only after checking every detail: Large, pocket, or mini? (Pocket.) Hardcover, or softcover? (Hardcover.) Color? (Black.)

*

C. O. Bigelow is the oldest apothecary in the United States.

*

Duane Reade is a subsidiary of the Walgreen Company. Duane Reade is like Walgreens for New York City, though there are also Walgreens stores in the city.

*

Colin Huggins is a pianist who plays a baby grand in Washington Square Park. On the night we saw him, he was set up not far from the location of an earlier performance: Detective Adam Flint’s recitation of an Emily Dickinson poem.

*

Century: 100 Years of Type in Design is a wonderful exhibit at AIGA. I didn’t learn about the exhibit on vacation: it was already on our to-do list. Nor did I learn about this short film on vacation: I found out about it back here on the prairie. What I did learn on vacation: Monotype’s Dan Rhatigan is a terrific tour guide.

*

W. A. Dwiggins coined the term “graphic designer.”

*

The Museum of the City of New York is a gem of a museum. (How had we never been there?) It has five exhibits right now: Activist New York (social activism through the decades), City as Canvas (graffiti art), Gilded New York ($$), In a World of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs by Aaron Rose, and Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile. This last exhibit is spectacular. Also: Timescapes, a short film tracking the city’s growth. Also: stairwells covered in pithy observations about New York. I’ve never paused so often when ascending or descending a staircase. Bad staircase habits!

*

It is especially easy to miss my friend Rob Zseleczky when in New Jersey.

*

“There are no shortcuts”: Crete Carrier.

More things I learned on my summer vacation
2013 : 2012 : 2011 : 2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006

CBS homophone mishap

On the CBS Evening News tonight, a topic box next to anchor Norah O’Donnell referred to “AMERICA’S ROLL” in world affairs. Please, not a Kaiser roll.

The mistake has been fixed for the online version of the news. But there it was, on the TV. And here it is, still, as preserved via Twitter.

A related post
Family Circus homophone catastrophe

[Topic box: “A visual inserted in a window — a box — on the screen, generally to the right of a newscaster, to identify the subject of a news report; also called a box , frame squeeze , or theme identifier .” I knew there had to be a name for it. Definition found hear, or here.]