Van or van

I finally noticed: our Penguin paperback The Letters of Vincent van Gogh switches between Vincent van Gogh and Van Gogh . The Chicago Manual of Style explains. Section 8.10 in the sixteenth edition (2010):



Note: “usually capitalized.” One can find both Van Gogh and van Gogh in recent books about the artist. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Van Gogh’s Bedrooms follows the Chicago Manual ’s recommendation: Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's rec room

From George Bodmer: Van Gogh’s rec room.

[Context: an Art Institute of Chicago exhibition.]

Recently updated

Sanders at Chicago State The school has sent layoff notices to its 900 employees.

Henry Book

[Henry , February 26, 2016.]

Department stores used to have a section called Book. Even more exotic: Stamp and Coin.

My first store-bought (not school Book Fair) books came from a department store. Abraham and Straus? Macy’s? I don’t know. But I still have the books: Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and A Tale of Two Cities (45¢ each).

A reader could even find Shakespearean criticism in a department store: this receipt at least strongly suggests that was the case.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Sanders at Chicago State

Bernie Sanders, speaking at Chicago State University last night: “Why is anybody in the world talking about shutting down colleges?” And: “Where are our priorities?”

Illinois has been without a budget for nearly eight months. The state’s higher-ed crisis is beginning to attract national attention: the Chronicle of Higher Education , CNN Money , NBC Nightly News , and The Washington Post have taken notice. And now a presidential candidate has said something.

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12:48 p.m.: From the Chicago Tribune :

Chicago State University sent layoff notices to all of its 900 employees Friday, yet another sign of the escalating budget crisis for the Far South Side public institution that stems from the state’s own budget impasse.

The university, with about 4,500 students, declared a financial emergency this month to make it easier to fire tenured faculty, eliminate academic programs and take other extreme measures.

The Clearview exit

Henry Petroski laments the coming disappearance of the typeface Clearview, used on United States highway signs since 2004: “Easy-Reading Road Signs Head to the Offramp” (The New York Times ).

Henry Petroski is the author of The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) and other (also excellent) books. I corresponded with him c. 1990 and still have his letters, written in — yes, pencil.

[The Times can do what it wants, but offramp ? No hyphen?]

Wonders of Netflix

I pay only occasional attention to our Netflix queue, which leads to surprises, both pleasant and un-. In today’s mail, Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Hawks, 1941). The Netflix description:

Gary Cooper plays a serious but lovable English professor working with his colleagues on a dictionary of American slang. When a red-hot nightclub singer on the run from the mob takes refuge in their house, she also finds a place in their hearts.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the singer. And S. Z. Sakall plays one of Cooper’s colleagues. For a couple of hours tonight, all will be well. O wonders of Netflix!

Battery life

I hope everything therein is accurate: “Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Life” (The New York Times ). The one I need to think on is “battery-saving myth” no. 1, about closing unused apps. I swipe apps away, again and again, daily. It’s the same thinking that had me cleaning the registry and removing junk files in Windows days. But an iPhone is not Windows.

From a Van Gogh letter

The religious fervor and sermonizing of Van Gogh’s early letters is occasionally interrupted by a passage of perfect description. Or better: composition. From a letter to brother Theo, October 31, 1876:

It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk from here to Richmond along the Thames, in which were mirrored the tall chestnut trees with their burden of yellow leaves and the bright blue sky, and through the tops of those trees the part of Richmond that lies on the hill, the houses with their red roofs and uncurtained windows and green gardens and the grey spire above them, and below, the great grey bridge, with the tall poplars on either side, over which the people could be seen going by as small black figures.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).

In 1876, Van Gogh had not yet begun to paint.

Also from a Van Gogh letter
“Admire as much as you can”

School closures closings

On the radio today, phrasing that got my attention: someone read a long list of “school closures.” I’m not sure I’d ever heard the word closures in relation to weather-related closings.

I looked at several sources to find something relevant. “The New York Times” Manual of Style and Usage (2015) had it:

In references to shutdowns (of airports, businesses, streets, etc.), use closing(s) rather than the stilted closure(s).

That sounds right to me. A school closing might be for a day or two. Closure carries a stronger sense of finality: people are always looking for it. They want to be done .

This short post has now achieved closure.