Alex Katz, focusing

“When I’m painting, I could be painting in Grand Central Station. I’m really focused on what I’m doing”: “Alex Katz on His Painting January 3 ” (Vogue).

A related post
Alex Katz, painter, eater (American cheese on white!)

Positive anymore

Slate recently reported on the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project. Looking at Yale’s map of American language use, I got excited about positive anymore, which is very much a part of east-central Illinois language use (and something I’ve been planning to post about for several weeks). I don’t use positive anymore, but I like hearing it, because it requires me to translate, ever so slightly, what’s being said into familiar terms:

Anymore I do my own oil changes = Now I do my own oil changes.

The kids are a priority anymore = The kids are a priority now.

I’m still a stranger in a strange land, amid the alien corn.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1989) has a good commentary on positive anymore:

This usage is dialectal. It has been discovered anew almost every year since 1931 and has been abundantly documented. The Dictionary of American Regional English reports it to be widespread in all dialect areas of the U.S. except New England. It appears to have been of Midland origin — the states where it is most common appear to be Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Oklahoma — and has spread considerably to such other states as New York, New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, California, and Oregon. It is still predominantly a spoken feature, although [ . . . ] it does appear in fiction and occasionally in journalistic sources. Both the older American Dialect Dictionary and the new DARE note that it is used by persons of all educational levels; it is not substandard, and it is not a feature of speech that is considered indicative of social standing.

Bryant 1962 conjectures that the positive anymore may have come to the U.S. with Scotch-Irish immigrants in the 18th century. There is an any more listed in the English Dialect Dictionary that occurs in both positive and negative contexts, but its meaning is different from that of the American usage. D. H. Lawrence, however, did put it into the mouth of the character named Rupert Birkin in his novel Women in Love, published in 1920:

“Quite absurd,” he said. “Suffering bores me, any more.”

And P. W. Joyce, in English As We Speak It in Ireland (1910), notes the existence of a positive use of any more in the West and Northwest of Ireland. It is also used in Canada. Modern Canadian English Usage (1974) reports 8 or 9 percent of its respondents using the positive anymore with the highest incidences found in Ontario and Newfoundland.

Although many who encounter the usage for the first time think it is new, it is not: the earliest attestation cited in the DARE is dated 1859.

Anymore I don’t need to think about anymore — just listen for it.

Reader, do you say or hear positive anymore?

Dowdy Name loves Dowdy Name

[Henry, July 1, 2015.]

Vic? Damone, Morrow, Tayback. I knew a Vic in high school, a friend’s sister’s boyfriend, a few years older than us. He owned a car and smoked Viceroys, long before they became a bargain brand. It occurs to me only now that perhaps he liked them because of the Vic.

Muriel? Rukeyser and Spark. And cigars, of course. And a Tom Waits song: “Muriel, I see you on a Saturday night, in a penny arcade with your hair tied back.” I’ve never met a Muriel.

Henry and Henrietta are pretty dowdy names too.

Related reading
All OCA “dowdy world” posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Curses and jokes in the classroom

At Louisiana State University, Teresa Buchanan, a tenured professor in early-childhood education, has been fired for creating “a ‘hostile learning environment’ that amounted to sexual harassment.” She is charged with having done so by cursing, using vulgar language, and telling an ill-considered joke. Did Buchanan show poor judgment? I’d say so. The article at the link notes that at the time of complaints, she was going through a divorce and “was a bit looser with her language.” But do her remarks call for dismissal? Hell no. LSU’s decision serves the deepen the element of self-censorship in academic life — the fear of saying something or teaching a text because someone, for some reason, might take offense.

My language in the classroom was usually, almost always, free of curse words and vulgarity, though when struggling with inadequate classroom technology, I would occasionally tell my students (for comedic effect) that various choice words were running through my head. My proudest moment of cursing in the classroom was in response to something left, unerased, on the blackboard. I would like to think that my curse helped create the exact opposite of a “hostile learning environment.”

Cabbing with Kafka

Ron Padgett, from a memoir of his friend and fellow poet Ted Berrigan:

New York, early sixties. We were leading a charmed life. One night five of us piled into a Checker cab and headed for the movies on Forty-second Street. Part way there, I noticed that the driver’s name was Kafka, something like Samuel Kafka. We literati started talking about Kafka’s work, and the driver called out, “You talkin’ about Kafka the author?”

“Yes. How do you know about him?”

“He was my cousin.” He explained the genealogy a bit. “Francis, he was an odd one. I guess you’d say he was the black sheep of the family. But he’s the only one people have ever heard of, so I guess he did something right.”

Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1993).

In a 1994 review, I called Ted “the essential Berrigan book.” I think that description still holds.

Related reading
OCA Ted Berrigan posts (Pinboard)
OCA Ron Padgett posts (Pinboard)

Welcome to Heritage Woods

[It’s at least six feet tall. Photograph and special effects by me.]

Heritage Woods is a subdivision. A three-mile walk takes Elaine and me through Heritage Woods almost daily. A median strip in one of its streets held, until recently, a decorative brick arch. One day the arch was gone, and soon this stone was in its place, “a stone with our name on it,” as a resident described it. What comes to mind when you think of a stone with your name on it? [Cue maniacal laughter and spooky organ.]

Heritage Woods is now the scariest subdivision in the world.

I couldn’t resist hamming things up by draining the photograph of blood color and adding a filter or two. [Cue maniacal laughter.]

Ouch

H. L. Mencken:

In the American colleges and high-schools there is no faculty so weak as the English faculty. It is the common catch-all for aspirants to the birch who are too lazy or too feeble in intelligence to acquire any sort of exact knowledge, and the professional incompetence of its typical ornament is matched only by his hollow cocksureness.

H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1936).

Also from The American Language
The American v. the Englishman
“There are words enough already”

Zinsser, the Pro’s Choice

[“Quality since 1849.”]

The writer William Zinsser was a great-grandson of a William Zinsser who began a shellac business in New York City in 1849. Zinsser the writer gives some of the family history in a 2011 piece, “Hold the Emotion!”

When we needed a can of primer last week, I noticed the Zinsser brand in our Ace Hardware. What else could I buy? Zinsser: the pro’s choice and the choice for prose.

Related reading
All OCA William Zinsser posts (Pinboard)

Tea cakes and lemonade

From a New York Times article about publicity for the new, not-new Harper Lee novel Go Set a Watchman:

“Everyone is curious as to whether it’s going to be anything like To Kill a Mockingbird, because that’s such a part of our culture,” said Liza Bernard, co-owner of Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, Vt., which will serve Mockingbird-inspired snacks, like tea cakes and lemonade, on July 14.

File under stuff white people do.

Here, from a defunct blog of that name, are macon d’s thoughts about Harper Lee’s other novel.

Lucky Lulu

A label for Lucky Lulu Frozen Perfume, as seen at the Chicago Cultural Center exhibit Love for Sale: The Graphic Art of Valmor Products. I photographed a poster-sized enlargement of a Valmor label. The original labels (many of which are also on display) are postage-stamp-sized. Tiny labels for tiny bottles. I’m surprised by how little is online concerning Valmor Products. Consider this post an addition to what’s available.

[Frozen perfume? Because its manufacture involves freezing? Because it gives a cooling feeling? Because it immobilizes Lulu’s prey?]