I bark for Mutts

[Mutts, January 19, 2015.]

I read only a handful of comic strips. Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts is the sweetest and most endearing. Fast friends (Mooch the cat, Earl the dog) who attempt to hibernate, squirrels who bonk pedestrians with acorns, a groundhog named Lamont (get it?): there’s something for everyone. And the strip is beautifully drawn, with strong George Herriman overtones.

The main page of McDonnell’s website has an observation from the painter Robert Genn: “Drawing is still the bottom line.” Read Mutts and you’ll see why.

I read Mutts via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Musical Assumptions turns ten

Elaine’s blog Musical Assumptions turns ten today. In the blog-o-sphere (which may no longer exist), ten years is a long time, and longer. Huzzah!

Overheard

[Home alone, with the television on for “warmth.” ]

“I believe that my molecular polarity is exactly the opposite of other people’s.”

It’s like that with me sometimes too.

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

[It was Superman speaking.]

Sigh

Esta mensagem tem como intenção a divulgação de nossos informativos e novidades.

Sigh. I mean, suspiro. Or just aah. It must be the hopeless romantic in me. But I like getting spam from Brazil.

Se você disser que eu desafino, amor and all that.

Another college president plagiarizing?

Trouble to the north:

Critics of a southern Minnesota college president have published what they say is evidence that she plagiarized parts of her dissertation for her doctoral degree.

Annette Parker has led South Central College in Faribault and North Mankato since July 2013. She received a doctorate in educational leadership from Western Kentucky University in December 2012.

The evidence, assembled by a former South Central instructor, an instructor’s spouse, and anonymous contributors, appears in a blog post, and it looks pretty damning.

Plagiarism in high places in a minor theme in Orange Crate Art. The presidents of Jacksonville State University, Malone University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and Tennessee Temple University have appeared in earlier posts.

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March 2, 2015: A second Minnesota college president has been accused of plagiarism.

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April 8, 2015: The Star Tribune reports that Western Kentucky University has concluded that Annette Parker “‘did not intentionally commit plagiarism, and that a full investigation is not warranted.’” I’m reminded of what I wrote in a 2009 post: “plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer's status rises.”


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May 11, 2015: The second president, Minnesota State College-Southeast Technical’s Dorothy Duran, has been cleared, kinda sort of. A University of Texas at Austin investigation has concluded that Duran’s “behavior does not rise to scientific misconduct”: Second Minnesota college president cleared of plagiarism allegations (Minnesota Star Tribune). That quotation comes from Duran. What else the investigation had to say about her work has not been made public.

Related reading
All OCA plagiarism posts (Pinboard)

X does not mark the spot

It happened again: holding a MacBook Pro in front of me to show some photographs to students, I ended up touching the screen to close out the slideshow. Stupid screen!

Stupid indeed — or in tech terms, dumb. And how remarkable that touching a screen should become so intuitive. I wonder whether my mistake is a common one.

Thompson’s General Store

Elaine and I finally got around to visiting a store we heard about some years ago: Thompson’s General Store, in Camargo, Illinois. It’s a small store, with main staples, some household goods, beer and wine, and a meat counter. We went for the meat, having heard that it is good. It is really, really good. Jack Thompson weighed out hamburger (which he grinds himself), pork chops, a ham hock (one of us makes soup), and a few slices of liverwurst. Meat-eaters within driving distance would do well to visit Thompson’s General Store.

From 2011, here is one fortunate traveler’s photo tour of the store. And here is my photograph of a vanishing reality:


[Liverwurst, sliced to order. I cannot remember when I last got to see someone write a price on butcher paper. Bliss.]

Recently updated

Grammar brawl The brawler has been — no pun intended — sentenced.

Ceci n’est pas une caissière

Elaine and I were checking out at our local multinational retail corporation. We always skip self-checkout for the company of a fellow human being.

This fellow human being handed our string bags back to us. “It’ll be faster if you do this,” she said. Elaine and I looked at each other and started bagging. Very puzzling. I asked Elaine, “Is there some reason we’re doing this?” I thought I might have missed something while checking my phone. Elaine didn’t know what was going on either.

I had to say something: “I’m a little puzzled,” said I. “No one cashiering has ever asked us to bag our own stuff.”

“I’m not a cashier,” the cashier replied. Slightly icy. And then I noticed her badge, which read

        SUZY Q
SALES ASSOCIATE

I couldn’t tell if she had noticed that I had noticed.

“Well, you look like a cashier!” said I. I was friendly about it. No response from Ms. Q. No Have a Nice Day. No nothing.

In my college years I worked in retail as a stock clerk, and I sometimes cashiered. Punching in prices, hitting Subtotal and Total, making change: that’s cashiering. When I was cashiering, I was a cashier.

As Elaine observed, this brief encounter felt like something from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Roger Angell FTW

Roger Angell’s essay “This Old Man” has won a National Magazine Award for The New Yorker in the category of Essays and Criticism.

I read much of “This Old Man” again last night. It’s a great essay.