Radiolab, “Things”

I’m not much for Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich’s Radiolab : the show’s penchant for quick editing and multi-voiced repetition —

JA: Repetition?

RK: Yes, repetition, the act of repeating things.

Unidentified child: Repeating things!

— well, it leaves me cold.

But speaking of things: Elaine said that I had to listen to the Radiolab episode of that name. Our daughter Rachel, too, said that I had to listen. So I did. What hit me most was the first story, about a candy egg, a tree, and a box. Unforgettable. If you missed it in May, now might be the time.

Here’s a thing that sits on my desk as a token of friendship. I too take things seriously.

[The dialogue is from a Radiolab episode that aired only in my head.]

Bel Kaufman (1911–2014)

[From Up the Down Staircase (1965).]

From the New York Times obituary:

Over the years, Ms. Kaufman was often asked whether the memorandums in Up the Down Staircase were real. Though they were inane enough to look real, she explained, in fact, she had invented most of them. (Ms. Kaufman did include a few actual New York City Board of Education memos, but had to tone them down to make them credible.)

The best indication of Ms. Kaufman’s skill at dead-on bureaucratic mimicry came from one of her former schools. After Up the Down Staircase was published, she wrote, an assistant principal there began annotating his official directives with a stern red-penciled admonition.

It read: “DO NOT SHOW THIS TO BEL KAUFMAN.”

I love Up the Down Staircase. The memorandum above comes from my copy of the 1965 hardcover (a library book-sale find). As Sylvia Barrett’s older colleague Bea Schachter explains, Administrative Assistant McHabe is “in charge of Discipline and Supplies.” How Foucauldian.

Up the Down Staircase captures like no other novel the inanities of educational institutions — “the gobbledygook, the pedagese, and the paper miles of words,” as Miss Barrett calls them in a letter — and the always present possibility, despite all the nonsense, of genuine teaching and learning. This novel offers strong reassurance to any exasperated teacher: you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.

Here’s a 2011 Times article about Bel Kaufman.

From Robert Walser

To people sitting in a blustering automobile I always present an austere face. Then they believe that I am a sharp-eyed, malevolent spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials to spy on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them to the proper authorities. I always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants, whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle, for I never shall understand, how it can be called a pleasure to hurtle past all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone mad and had to accelerate for fear of despair.

Robert Walser, The Walk, trans. Christopher Middleton with Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2012).

The Walk (Der Spaziergang) was published in 1917 and again, revised, in 1920. Susan Bernofsky has revised Christopher Middleton’s translation to incorporate Walser’s revisions.

Other Robert Walser posts
Microscripts : “The most unimportant things” : On reading : On stationery stores : On staying small : On youth

[I suspect that Daughter Number Three and l’astronave will enjoy this post.]

Shoeshine boy

[Henry, July 25, 2014.]

Every boy has a shoeshine kit in his room, right? Not right? Not anymore? Oh.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[While we’re — or is it I’m? — thinking about shoeshining, here’s a great Count Basie recording.]

Richard Hendrickson, weather observer

The CBS Evening News had a lovely feature this evening about Richard Hendrickson, a 101-year-old weather observer. He has been observing since 1930. The highlights of this piece for me:

Mr. Hendrickson’s checked button-down shirt and solid tie. He looks pretty spiffy — and rightly so. He’s on the news.

Mr. Hendrickson’s desk, complete with rotary-dial telephone (Henry Dreyfuss’s model 500).

Mr. Hendrickson’s ’30s weather notebook. It looks like a five-year diary, a few lines for the same date year by year.



[I struggled to avoid titling this post Weather 101.]

An introvert call to action

If Elaine hadn’t shown it to me, she might have been the last person online to see this poster.

Related reading
Jonathan Rauch, Caring for Your Introvert (The Atlantic)

Pen, not dead yet

The New York Times has given Nick Bilton the space in its Fashion & Style section to announce that the pen is dead. Yes, linkbait.

This is the same Nick Bilton who doesn’t like e-mails that say thanks, who thinks you should use Google Maps to get to someone’s house rather than ask for directions, who communicates with his mother “mostly through Twitter,” and who taught his father not leave voice mails for his son.

I guess Nick Bilton doesn’t believe in thank-you notes either. Or love letters.

I found my way to the Times piece by way of MK’s Taking Note Now. I like what MK says about Bilton and paper and pens:

Obviously, he himself has no need for such things. But why should unfashionable people follow his shallow approach to writing and living?

Related reading
All OCA paper and pen posts (Pinboard)

Hollow Triumph, solid noir

Frederick Muller (Eduard Franz) recalls the youthful criminality of his brother John (Paul Henreid) and John’s now-dead crony Marcy:

“I remember Marcy, the way the two of you went running around. I remember his big cars, his fancy suits, his haberdashery.”

“His haberdashery”: they don’t write them like that anymore. How could they? I find it telling that the first-page results of a Google search for haberdashery returns only one establishment selling men’s clothes, Heimie’s Haberdashery in Minneapolis. The rest is definitions. What’s a haberdashery? And where have all the haberdasheries gone, and the haberdashers with them?

The dialogue above comes from the film Hollow Triumph, aka The Scar (dir. Steve Sekely, 1948). The film’s noir premise, which I won’t reveal here, requires that one suspend disbelief — and leave it there, dangling from a frayed cable above a pit of famished crocodiles. But the effort is worth making. As in many B-ish films, the rewards are the bits of local color: John Quale as a goofy dentist (a cross between Barney Fife and Wally of My Dinner with André), George Chandler and Sid Tomack as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a camera shop (are they supposed to be life partners? brothers?). There’s also a brief scene on the Angels Flight Railway and a poignant moment with an aspiring dancer. Joan Bennett’s Evelyn Hahn, a slightly used secretary, gets the best lines, in an exchange with Henreid’s Dr. Bartok:

“I'll tell you something: in all my life I think I’ve only had one beau I was really willing to trust.”

“You should’ve held on to him, married him.”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t. He was twelve years old, and I was nine.”

They don’t write them like that anymore either.

The real star of this film is John Alton’s cinematography, which makes for beauty and mystery and dramatic contrasts of light and dark in scene after scene. Film noir et blanc, really.

Hollow Triumph is unavailable from Netflix but is available at YouTube and as a cheap DVD transfer. I’ve already suggested the film to the Criterion Collection.

[If the name George Chandler rings a distant bell: he played Uncle Petrie on Lassie. The aspiring dancer, I suspect, owes something to Sam (Tom D’Andrea) in Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947), the cabbie who wants to buy a pair of goldfish for his room: “It adds class to the joint.” As for haberdasher: “Middle English: probably based on Anglo-Norman French hapertas, perhaps the name of a fabric, of unknown origin. In early use the term denoted a dealer in a variety of household goods, later also specifically a hatter. Current senses date from the early 17th cent” (New Oxford American Dictionary).]

Spam follies

With word verification turned off, the spam comments are rolling in. If you’re in the market for luggage, tramadol (yes, uncapitalized on the Internets), or tooth-whitening equipment, I’m your guy.

I’d rather delete these comments — about thirty so far — than have Orange Crate Art advertise Android apps. No thanks, Google.

[If you’re wondering, I’ve encoded the name of the drug so that search engines won’t find it. I used this handy service to do so. Highly recommended if you put an e-mail address online, as I do in the sidebar.]

Some Conrad Nervig rocks

[Zippy, July 23, 2014.]

In the Zippy world of Dingburg, Conrad Nervig is the creator of the comic strip Tanya and Fletcher, whose text consists of dialogue from old advertisements. Tanya and Fletcher strips sometimes substitute for Zippy. Now Nervig has created a new substitute strip, No Zombies, whose text appears to be drawn from adventure and sci-fi sources.

Nervig, like Bill Griffith, respects Nancy: notice the “some rocks” formation to the right.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy and Zippy posts (Pinboard)
An explanation of “some rocks” (With sightings)
A 1556 woodcut of “some rocks” (Lexikaliker)

[Nervig shares his name with someone not of Dingburg. I read Zippy online via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.]