Today’s sponsor

I’d like to thank today’s sponsor, redd . Redd, for all your tidying needs. Sort, arrange, neaten, and reclaim valuable space with redd. Use the special promo code KLUTTA and receive a pair of white gloves with your first order, absolutely free.

[After one too many podcasts. It was Diane Schirf who mentioned redd .]

The Vinegar Flies

Old-timey. Our son Ben is on banjo.

But wait, there's more: “Snake River Reel.”

*

December 23: And still more: “The Bees” and “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.”

[To think that these two tykes grew up into the terrific adults they are.]

Saturday night dysfunction

“We’re playing the hand we were dealt. I guess Christmas Eve was booked”: Michael Briggs, a spokesman for the Bernie Sanders campaign, on the scheduling of Democratic presidential debates. There’s a debate tomorrow night, the last Saturday before Christmas and the night of a Jets–Cowboys game.

As a veteran of academic life, I am all too familiar with efforts to suppress genuine debate in the interest of pushing through what’s supposed to be a done deal. It saddens me to see the Democratic National Committee so transparently rig the game. I called the DNC contributions number this morning to say so: 877-336-7200.

[Post title with apologies to Duke Ellington.]

Got winter?

Out for a walk. And someone said, “Good morning! It got winter, didn’t it?”

It was 28 °F, so yes, it did. But I’d never heard that idiom before. Have you?

A quick search turned up a handful of examples. From northern California oral history: “it got winter and they built this lean-to or cache or whatever you might call it.” From a novel set in Kentucky: “It was like it got winter all at once.” From a Flickr photograph: “It got winter . . . a little.” Does winter here function as an adjective? Or does the idiom omit to be, as in the common-in-these-parts idiom “need + past participle”? As in The car needs washed. Or maybe, soon, The snow needs shoveled.

Robert Walser: small towns

Simon Tanner tells Rosa that he would find employment in a small town “the most beautiful thing imaginable”:


Robert Walser, The Tanners , trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2009).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)

Mayberry mash-ups

A mash-up: “Webern in Mayberry,” by Michael Monroe. Which reminds me of another: “Single Ladies (In Mayberry),” by Party Ben.

Thanks, Elaine.

Related posts
Involuntary memory in Mayberry : Mayberry and abstraction : Mayberry and kinship networks

Barton Keyes’s office

[Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944. Click any image for a larger view.]

Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the claims manager for the Pacific All Risk Insurance Company. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is an agent. Keyes is Information Central. His vest pockets are crammed with pens and papers (and cigars). His office has three telephones, a Dictaphone, extra cylinders, books, papers, a desk calendar, wall charts, and file cabinets. Oh, those file cabinets.

Related posts
At the Queen Street Police Station (From Niagara)
Keyes on desks, pencils, and papers
Raymond Chandler in Double Indemnity

“Resounding words and flowery phrases”

From Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:

The tendency to resort to polysyllabic vocabulary is not usually the fault of the user. His high school teachers may have encouraged him to indulge in resounding words and flowery phrases; perhaps because their teachers had never impressed upon them the virtue of simplicity.

Ellsworth Barnard, English for Everybody (1979).

The Usage Tip of the Day is available by e-mail only. Follow the link above, scroll down, and you’ll find the address to write to.

Related reading
All OCA Garner-centric posts (Pinboard)
Beware of the saurus
A wrong-headed “dead words” movement

“The most evil sounds in the world”

The sound recordist Tony Schwartz, in a piece from The Story , “Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later”:

“Most people think of evil as the sounds of gunfire or thunder or lightning or something. I found and believe that the most evil sounds in the world are the sounds out of mouths of people.”

Having watched a fair amount of the “debates” last night, I found this observation hitting home when I heard it today.

Robert Walser: thinking while working

Simon Tanner is describing his daily routine:


Robert Walser, The Tanners , trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2009).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)