Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, September 11, 2014. Click for a larger view.]

Rotten kids, eh? Rotten arithmetic too. The problem with Dot and Ditto’s calculations: an eight-year-old will have lived through one or two leap years:

Let x = 365

4x + 1 = 1461

2(4x + 1) = 2922

Or if one was born after February 29 in a leap year:

4x + (4x +1) = 2921

Or if one was born before February 29 and leap year falls in the fourth year of one’s life:

(4x + 1) + 4x = 2921

I can think of three possible reasons for “2920”:

1. No Child Left Behind and the Common Core.

2. A cartoonist’s carelessness.

3. The absence of leap years from the Flagston world.

Which explanation do you think is most probable? Or have I missed one?

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[I do like the falling leaves in today’s strip. Hi and Lois digs fall. I hope I got the arithmetic right.]

From a file folder: aglio e olio

[From The Village Voice. Date unknown.]

It’s a recipe from Vladimir Estragon himself.

Aglio e olio, most often with zucchini and minus anchovies, has been a staple in our household for years. Garlic, parsley, and red-pepper flakes are the original power trio.

From this same file folder
The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Boston
Coppola/“Godfather” sauce
Jim Doyle on education
A Meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tile-pilfering questionnaire

From a file folder: Coppola/“Godfather” sauce

[From The Village Voice. Date unknown.]

I clipped the recipe many years ago and forgot all about it. This sauce is ridiculously easy to make and tastes plenty good, though it’s not nearly as varied in its flavors as a more elaborate sauce I’ve been making for the last four years.

After figuring out what a no. 303 can is — and deciding it would be much too small, I went with a twenty-eight-ounce can of Cento tomato puree. That turned out to be perfect for a box of pasta. I used most of a head of garlic and a lot of basil. (The unchopped leaves loosely filled an eight-ounce container.)

Elaine thought this sauce was better the first time around. I liked it equally well across two meals. But the basil did lose some of its zing over time. Maybe things would have been different earlier in the season: our basil plant is on the wane.

The IMDb lists a Bill Poplar who worked on Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). I think it likely that this letter is his.

From this same file folder
The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Boston
Jim Doyle on education
A Meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tile-pilfering questionnaire

[As “Vladimir Estragon,” Geoffrey Stokes wrote a column on food for The Voice, “Waiting for Dessert.” Was pasta ever a “thing,” a craze? Must have been.]

No e-mails, ever, almost

Spring-Serenity Duvall, who teaches at Winston-Salem’s Salem College:

For years, student emails have been an assault on professors, sometimes with inappropriate informality, sometimes just simply not understanding that professors should not have to respond immediately. In a fit of self-preservation, I decided: no more. This is where I make my stand!

As quoted in Don’t Email Me (Inside Higher Ed).

The only e-mails Duvall will countenance are those requesting face-to-face meetings outside of office hours. She reports wonderful results. But I wonder: the rhetoric of “assault” and “self-preservation” feels a tad melodramatic. And, yes, “inappropriate informality” abounds, online and off-. But person-to-person e-mail is an inherently informal form of communication. Better that students should learn to use it with appropriate measures of informality and patience than not use it at all.

What surprises me is that Duvall encourages telephone calls during office hours (when of course she might be talking with students who have come in to ask questions). Calls would seem to me like much greater interruptions.

For guidance on how to e-mail professors who are willing to read e-mails, see How to e-mail a professor. Its numbers are nearing the half-million mark. More recent and less widely read: How to e-mail a student.

[I would like to link to Duvall’s blog post, but it’s no longer online.]

Who owns Vivian Maier?

“A court case in Chicago seeking to name a previously unknown heir is threatening to tie her legacy in knots and could prevent her work from being seen again for years”: A Legal Battle Over Vivian Maier’s Work (The New York Times).

A related post
Darger and Maier

[I’ve always been puzzled that the discovery of Henry Darger’s work didn’t prompt similar legal action.]

Nancy revised

[Nancy and Sluggo and “some rocks.”]


[Nancy and Sluggo and kur.]

Mesopotamia: Bushmiller Country

[Photograph by Sluggo Smith. As seen at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.]

We drove up to Chicago to see our friends Jim and Luanne Koper and make a visit to the Oriental Institute. Luanne was the first to spot this sign, on a placard showing the evolution of cuneiform. It’s the proto-cuneiform of kur, mountain. I took a picture. Some rocks!

If you have any doubt that ancient Mesopotamia was Bushmiller Country, I give you this excerpt from a chart:


[“The origin and development of selected cunieform signs from c. 3000 to 600 BC.” Steven Roger Fischer, The History of Writing (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). Click for a larger view. And here’s the full chart. See? It’s real.]

The later stylized kur maintains the logic of ”some”: not two (a pair), not four (one more than “some”). Ernie Bushmiller would be pleased. “Bushmiller Country” is cartoonist Bill Griffith’s name for the Nancy-and-Sluggo world, which is a region of Griffith’s own Dingburg — but which now also includes Mesopotamia.

Here is an explanation of “some rocks,” along with the search for same.

Related reading
“Some rocks” in a 1556 woodcut (Lexikaliker) : “Some rocks” in paintings by Carlo Crivelli and Romare Bearden (l’astronave) : Zippy and rocks : More rocks : Still more rocks : Yet another post with “some rocks” : What? More rocks? : Lassie and Zippy and some rocks : Conversational rocks

Colleges and bakeries

A college that offers more online classes to remedy its financial woes? That’s like a bakery opting to sell Twinkies and Wonder Bread. Each move gives the public less reason to believe in the value of the real thing. Each move endangers long-term well-being for the sake of short-term gain.

[I tried to get the right comparison: fine luggage and cheap knockoffs? No. Elaine thought of a bakery and Wonder Bread. The Twinkies are on me.]

The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Boston

[The Art Ensemble of Chicago. Front: Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman. Back: Famoudou Don Moye (behind a cymbal), Malachi Favors Maghostut. Lulu White’s, Boston. Probably 1981. Photographer unknown. Click for a larger view.]

I found this newspaper clipping in a file folder that I rediscovered earlier this week. If you look carefully, you can see the tape that held this clipping to an apartment wall long long ago. The photograph most likely appeared in Boston’s Real Paper, an alternative newspaper. Remember alternative newspapers?

I was fortunate to see the Art Ensemble five times between 1980 and 1985: at a midnight concert at New York’s Town Hall, at Lulu White’s in the South End (twice), at Jonathan Swift’s off Harvard Square, and at the Berklee School of Music. Every performance but the last was staggeringly great, some of the most exciting and inspiring music I’ve ever heard. And talk about intimacy: at the club dates an early bird could end up sitting less than ten — or five? — feet from the bandstand.

I remember being admitted to the band’s dressing room in Town Hall and noticing the mix of cigar smoke and pot. I remember standing in the street at three o’clock in the morning talking with Malachi Favors as instruments went onto a truck. Other moments of conversation too, before a show at Lulu White’s, after a show at Jonathan Swift’s. As I said: fortunate.

To the best of my knowledge, this photograph is unavailable elsewhere online.

Related reading
Lulu White, the woman (Wikipedia)
Lulu White, the club (On Troy Street)
Some have gone and some remain (on revisiting Jonathan Swift’s)

Also from this file folder
Jim Doyle on education
A Meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tile-pilfering questionnaire

[Lester Bowie died in 1999; Malachi Favors in 2004. The Art Ensemble has continued to perform, at least intermittently, as a trio, as a quartet, and as a quintet with trumpeter Corey Wilkes and bassist Jaribu Shahid. For an introduction to the group, I’d recommend Nice Guys (ECM, 1978) or Full Force (ECM, 1980). If you have a little patience, People in Sorrow (Nessa, 1969). There are hours of filmed performances at YouTube. Here’s a good sample.]

What parents need to know about college faculty

Instructor to campus-tour guide:

“I’m not mad at you; I’m just curious: Your class knows I’m a graduate student, not a full-time professor with tenure. I don’t even have my doctorate yet. Why did you tell that parent all university faculty were full time?”

The guide’s reply:

“That’s what the university wants us to say to parents.”

Ex-adjunct Joseph Fruscione offers some guidance of his own: What parents need to know about college faculty (PBS NewsHour).