As such, as such

As such seems to be a favorite phrase of ponderous writers: “Recent developments have blah blah blah . . . . As such, I am writing to inform you,” and so on. The Chicago Manual of Style ’s online Q & A and Bryan Garner’s LawProse blog both caution against the misuse of the phrase, which doesn’t mean so or therefore or thus. As such, as such is often best avoided.

[Garner’s Modern American Usage covers it too. Orange Crate Art is a Chicago- and Garner-friendly zone.]

Letter-writing: on the wane?

A question from 1909:

Is letter writing, in the artistic sense, a lost accomplishment? There are plenty of people who would not linger long over a reply. It is often asserted that Rowland Hill and the penny post killed the old-fashioned style of letter. That is not true, however, for it survived in old-fashioned hands into the mid-Victorian era, when it received its coup de grâce by the invention of what our fathers, when in a superior mood, called that “modern abomination,” the ubiquitous post-card. Correspondence has since its advent grown pithy, brisk, prosaic. The majority of men have not the time in this cast-iron, express-paced age, with its telegraphs and telephones, and constant business and social demands, for the old elaborate letter of genial gossip and kindly compliment. Sentiment, some would even say, is at a discount, and whatever may be the cause, imagination and fancy, to say nothing of wit and humor, have grown curiously rare under a penny stamp. The world is too much with us now. Our interests are too many, our work too insistent, our mental indolence perhaps too great, for that expansive style of correspondence which has vanished for the most part with quill pens and sealing wax.

Stuart J. Reid, in the Introduction to Horace Walpole’s Letters (London: Cassell, 1909).

Damned post-cards! Nevertheless, Reid says, “letter-writing is not a lost art.”

This tiny volume of Walpole’s letters is one of the books I have from Jim Doyle. I took it off the shelf the other day, after not looking at it for many years.

Related reading
Other letter-related posts (Pinboard)
Rowland Hill (By weight, not distance)
William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much with Us”

[Mac Dictation for “pithy, brisk, prosaic”: “pissy, brisk, Prozac.”]

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.]