Five sentences on the post office

A Google exploratory module lands on Orange Crate Art: could you write five sentences on the post office .

Yes, you could, if you would forget Google, sit down, concentrate, and do your own homework.

Other “five sentences” posts
Bleak House : The cat : Clothes : The driver : My house : Life : Life on the moon : The past (1) : The past (2) : The rabbit : The ship : Smoking : The telephone : The world

[Ever since I wrote a post on five sentences from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Google searches for five sentences (that is, for ready-made homework) have been ending up at Orange Crate Art. Could you write five sentences on the post office is one of them.]

Pantone 347

The color of the day: Pantone 347. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

[C? Pantone explains: “The letter suffix refers to the paper stock on which it is printed: a ‘C’ for coated or gloss paper, ‘U’ for uncoated paper and an ‘M’ for matte or dull paper.”]

Rip and run

A great moment in The Wire: Omar Little, testifying for the prosecution, tells State’s Attorney Ilene Nathan how he makes a living. From “All Prologue” (July 6, 2003):

“What is your occupation?”

“Occupation?”

“What exactly do do you for a living, Mr. Little?”

“I rip and run.”

“You . . . ?”

“I robs drug dealers.”

This exchange has led some viewers to conclude that rip and run and rob drug dealers are synonymous. Urban Dictionary’s top-rated definition for rip and run has the phrase meaning just that. Ripping and running can indeed suggest criminal activity: the phrase turns up in the title of a book on addiction and crime, Michael Agar’s Ripping and Running: A Formal Ethnography of Urban Heroin Addicts (1973). And “Ripping and Running: Heroin and Crime” is a chapter title in Tom Carnwath and Ian Smith’s Heroin Century (2002). But UD’s top-rated definition for ripping and running suggests a much broader meaning: “Maintaining a busy, frantic pace; hyper tasking.”

The OED and Webster’s Third are of no help with rip and run, but both offer definitions of rip that suggest this broader meaning. From the OED: “To rush along vigorously; to move at great speed” (1858). From W3: “to move unchecked : proceed without restraint : rush headlong.” We might say that one who is ripping and running is on a tear.

A sampling of references that suggest a much broader meaning:

I lets you rip and run, baby, just as long as
    you please
Lets you rip and run, baby, just as long as you
    please
You might meets another man who will set my
    heart at ease

Bob Gaddy, “Rip and Run” (1958)

*

Children play nearby and among the men. They rip and run up and down the street and occasionally stop a man, apparently unmindful of how he looks, to say, “Got a quarter, mister?”

Elijah Anderson, A Place on the Corner (1976)

*

“I’m always ripping and running and ripping and running,” she likes to say. “Here and there, to the church and back, all day, every day. But that’s what it takes to do it right.”

Susan Orlean, Saturday Night (1990)

*

Children from these generally permissive homes have a great deal of latitude and are allowed to “rip and run” up and down the streets. They often come home from school, put their books down, and go right back out the door.

Elijah Anderson, “The Social Ecology of Youth Violence” (1998)

*

Seeing the kids ripping and running through the mega Toys “R” Us was a sight for sore eyes. Jordan was terrorizing the store employees. He was pulling down everything in sight that his two-and-a-half-year-old stature could reach.

Danielle Santiago, Grindin’: A Harlem Story (2006)

*

The tempo of life increased significantly upon the return to work. The EAADM mother described the tempo of their days as “ripping,” “running,” “hurrying,” “constantly moving,” and “racing.”

Mary Podmolik King, The Lived Experience of Becoming a First-Time, Enlisted, Army, Active-Duty, Military Mother (2006)

*

Ripping and running the streets

Perrie Gibson, A Tribute to Mama (2008)

*

Ripping and running to and fro,
Not really knowing which way to go.

A. D. Lawrence, When the Lioness Roars (2009)

Gaddy’s lyric suggests painting the town red — doing, as people now say, “whatever.” Every other use suggests an unspecified movement, energetic and hectic (and with children, unsupervised). Rip and run appears in this broader sense at least twice in The Wire. In “Port in a Storm” (August 24, 2003), Detective “Herc” Hauk, who’s been relegated to surveilliance duties, says, “The job had a little more rip-and-run to it, the way I remember it.” And in “Refugees” (October 1, 2006), Lieutenant Charles Marimow says, “That’s what we do here now. We get on the street and we rip and run.”

So, yes, Omar robs drug dealers, but rip and run has a much broader meaning. It’s even possible to hear his “rip and run” as a vague response that doesn't mean rob drug dealers: I‘m on the streets, I get around, I’m doing one thing or another. Certainly Omar would understand the theatrical value in following up a deliberately vague response with the blunt “I robs drug dealers.”

My acquaintance with rip and run goes back to my days doing literacy tutoring. I’d pick up my student to go to the library and ask, “How’s it goin’, [name redacted ]?

And his reply, often: “Rippin’ and runnin’, tryin’ to get things done.”

He was caring for his wife and, often, for their granddaughter. He was not out robbing drug dealers.

A joke in the traditional manner

Here is the punchline: The Autobahn.

No spoilers. The setup is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
A Golden Retriever
How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect?
How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling?
What did the plumber do when embarrassed?
Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money?
Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels?
Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies?
Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He must take credit for all but the doctor and Santa Claus.]

A is for Artichoke

Sally Rightor Parks’s A is for Artichoke (Pasadena: Water Works, 2014) is a book of fifty-two paintings, two for each letter of the alphabet, one painting showing the letter in its upper- and lower-case forms, the other depicting a flower or fruit or vegetable whose name begins with that letter. A border of leaves or flowers (good for counting!) runs around each page. (One exception: for the mushroom, it’s caps and slices.) The paintings are rustic watercolors: delicately curled beet leaves, a luminous eggplant with its floppy hat, a forest of fennel, a brightly spotted zucchini. A quiet, witty touch: the red, white, and green of the pages for the jalapeño.

A is for Artichoke is a large and sturdy, 10″ x 12½″, perfect for use with a child or grandchild in one’s lap. The book is available from Vroman’s Bookstore in sunny Pasadena. And boy, is that bookstore fast.

Q: Can you guess what edible goes with the letter h ?

Sardine moose

[Field & Stream, November 1976. Click for a larger view.]

I could do without the hunting. But I like the idea of carrying around four or five cans of sardines. Is that For Hunters Only?

Related posts
Alex Katz, painter, eater Sardines for lunch, every day
City for Conquest (and sardines)
End of the U.S. sardine industry
Go fish
New directions in sardines
Satan’s seafood
Teenagers with moose

[The lunch hour approaches.]

If Homer’s poems were television channels

Iliad: History.

Odyssey: Food Network.

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard)
Football : baseball :: Iliad : Odyssey

[Yes, The History Channel is now History.]

Zippy at the Summit Diner

[Zippy, March 13, 2015.]

I am thrilled to see Zippy visiting the Summit Diner in Somerset, Pennsylvania. In years past, our family stopped for dinner there many times when schlepping eastward on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Now, no Turnpike, no diner.

The Summit Diner had — and perhaps still has — postcards. It also had jukeboxes. And a phone booth outside.


[Click for a larger view.]

On the other side of the postcard:

The Summit Diner, located at 791 N. Center Ave., Somerset, PA, 15501, just off Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 10. Phone 814–445–7154. Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Summit now closes at 10:00 p.m.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, March 13, 2013.]

Those socks. Those feet. Or are they cloven hooves?

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Jack DeJohnette on Muhal Richard Abrams

Jack DeJohnette on Muhal Richard Abrams:

“He was always telling us, ‘Go to the library.’ Practicing every day wasn’t enough; he wanted us to be serious. ‘Go get books — you don’t need a lot of money,’ he told us. He’d already taught himself orchestration and how to play clarinet; he had studied all the piano players. And yet he still has the child-like attitude toward things — he was full of wonder. Around the piano, even today, you get the sense that he’s still a kid.”

Quoted in the liner notes for the ECM disc Made in Chicago, the recording of an August 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival concert by DeJohnette’s Special Legends Edition Chicago: Muhal Richard Abrams, Larry Gray, Roscoe Mitchell, and Henry Threadgill. I wrote about the concert in 2013. The recording was released this week, and it’s a killer.

Here, from ECM, is a short film about Made in Chicago.

[“Still a kid”: In August 2013, Muhal Richard Abrams was almost eighty-three.]