Walls

On the news, a Trump surrogate, speaking to a crowd a few minutes ago: “We’re going to build a wall to protect us from everyone who means to do us harm.”

But where do we build a wall to protect us from ourselves?

The Bridge , continued

A highlight of my December stint as a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries: The Bridge , or, rather, Karen Kingsbury’s “The Bridge.” At the gooey center of this TV-movie is a cozy, pseudo-magical bookstore/café (that would be The Bridge) whose owners (the old marrieds) are always helping their loyal customers (including the book-hungry students seen below). If Thomas Kinkade had run a bookstore, it would have looked like The Bridge.

As I watched, I wondered: how will they wrap up this story with only fifteen, ten, five minutes to go? They didn’t: the movie ended with the words To Be Continued — in December 2016. My faux outrage was real. Other viewers were genuinely upset. The Hallmark Channel issued an apology. And now comes the announcement that Karen Kingsbury’s “The Bridge Part 2” will air on March 20.


[Bookstore of light. All new!]

*

March 1, 2016: “Book-hungry students”? Now I’m not sure. They buy coffee, which they drink while they study, but I’m not sure they ever buy books. They do already own books, which serve as props for studying.

Related posts
Hallmark ex machina
I am a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries

[Beware any work of the imagination whose title includes the maker’s name. Other bridges: Hart Crane’s and Sonny Rollins’s.]

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.

*

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.