Also from Robert Walser

Reading is as productive as it is enjoyable. When I read, I am a harmless, nice and quiet person and I don’t do anything stupid. Ardent readers are a breed of people with great inner peace as it were. The reader has his noble, deep, and long-lasting pleasure without being in anyone else’s way or bothering anyone. Is that not glorious? I should think so!

Robert Walser, “Reading,” in A Schoolboy’s Diary, trans. Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

Other Walser posts
From “The Essay”
Robert Walser, Microscripts
Staying small

[I type Wasler for Walser, again and again. Is that not dumb? I should think so! Thanks, Chris.]

From Robert Walser

It’s much prettier, and thus much quicker, and thus much more sensitive and pleasing to write on clean, smooth paper, so always make sure you have good writing paper ready. Why else are there so many stationery stores?

Robert Walser, “The Essay,” in A Schoolboy’s Diary, trans. Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

“The Essay” appears in Walser’s first book, Fritz Kocher’s Essays (1904), the collected schoolroom compositions of an imaginary boy.

The more I read of Robert Walser, the more I want to read. His work is uncompromised by any accommodation to reality.

Other Walser posts
Robert Walser, Microscripts
Staying small

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.