Looking at schools

The xkcd comic University Website captures in Venn and ink “things on the front page of a university website” and “things people go to the front page looking for.”

A good sense of a school cannot really be had from its website, which might present a Potemkin village of excellence and good cheer. Nor can magazine rankings or a tool such as College Scorecard help all that much. My idiosyncratic suggestion: read the student newspaper, which will almost certainly be available online. Are the articles, columns, and editorials the work of students who are capable writers? Does their work suggest a good grasp of current events, culture, and history? Do articles focus on campus problems not mentioned in official sources?

Often assembled with little or no oversight from full-fledged grown-ups (faculty advisors), a student newspaper may offer an unfiltered (or just lightly filtered) picture of a school and its community. Prospective students and their families would do well to spend time reading.

Contrapuntalism in Japan

Sean at Contrapuntalism visits Tokyo stationery stores, one, and another one. Winning!

AP-Chicago feud

In the “news”: “At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English.”

Thanks to George Bodmer for this story.

Garlic, wild-style

Elaine writes about wild garlic.

Domestic comedy

“You can’t objectify me. You’re too subjectified!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Irving’s Toy & Card Shop

Watching the news last night: Brookline! Specifically, a story about Irving’s Toy & Card Shop. Ethel Weiss’s store (founded with her husband) has been in business on Harvard Street since 1939. Our fambly was in there some years ago. Now I want to go again. Watch: Candy shop owner going strong at 101 (CBS Evening News).

Irving’s has a YouTube presence: a report made for a college class by Steve Burns, and a mini-documentary by Brookline Interactive Group.

The World Book Encyclopedia

This Atlantic item makes me miss the World Book Encyclopedia of my childhood. The World Book was great for school reports, and perfect for the reading room, so-called.

“Here’s a post that might make you think of candy cigarettes”

Vinyl for the young: from Light in the Attic and (Jack White’s) Third Man Records, an LP titled This Record Belongs To          and a Children’s Turntable (33, 45, 78!). The LP includes, among others, Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, Nina Simone, and Miss Abrams & The Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class.

[Post title in the manner of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd , revised twice for a stronger resemblance.]

September 11

[Thornton Dial, The Morning of the End of the World. 2001. Wood, clothing, carpet, enamel, and spray paint. 82 x 58 x 46 inches. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio. From the collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.]

Thornton Dial’s art also appears in September 11 posts from 2011 and 2013.

A Nabokov schoolroom

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

This post is for my friend Sara, who was just dreaming of an oval mirror.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

[The “schoolroom” is of course a room of Nabokov’s family’s own, with a private tutor.]