Henry Clay was born today, in 1777, as I just learned by chance. His birth was a matter of chance too, I suppose. Clay’s name sticks in my mind not because of “history” but because of this haunting poem by Jack Spicer:
I think that I first saw “For Kids” in the journal o•blék , many years back.
[“Kids”: the poet Joanne Kyger.]
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
A poem by Jack Spicer
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Caption fail
[Cartoon by Michael Crawford. Caption by me.]
I have entered the New Yorker cartoon contest just three times, when a caption has immediately suggested itself to me. And three times, I have failed to make the cut. I prefer my caption for this cartoon to each of the three finalists: an ex-wife joke, a food joke, and a lawyer joke. (“Duck,” by the way, makes no sense if a cinderblock is falling toward someone’s head.)
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Captioning New Yorker cartoons : Phooey , a caption
Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary
[Jane Purdy, Stan Crandall, and the miracle of telephony. And a delivery truck. The cover of Fifteen (1956).]
Beverly Cleary celebrates her hundredth birthday today.
Our fambly grew up with Ramona and Beezus. I read Fifteen just recently, after Elaine borrowed it from the library, and I loved it. There are more Cleary books in my future.
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In search of found time
Let x = the time the alarm clock is set for. Let (x − 1 hour) = the time you wake up, check the alarm clock, and go back to sleep. You have just gained an hour of sleep.
Monday, April 11, 2016
From a Van Gogh letter
Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, November 16, 1883:
The ride into the village was beautiful. Enormous mossy roofs of houses, stables, covered sheepfolds, barns. The very broad-fronted houses here are set among oaktrees of a superb bronze. Tones in the moss of gold-green, in the ground of reddish or bluish or yellowish dark lilac-greys, tones of inexpressible purity in the green of the little cornfields, tones of black in the wet tree trunks, standing out against the golden rain of swirling, teeming autumn leaves, which hang in loose clumps — as if they had been blown there, loose and with the light filtering through them — from the poplars, the birches, the limes and the apple trees.Also from Van Gogh’s letters
The sky smooth and bright, shining, not white but a barely detectable lilac, white vibrant with red, blue and yellow, reflecting everything and felt everywhere above one, hazy and merging with the thin mist below, fusing everything in a gamut of delicate greys.
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).
“Admire as much as you can”
“It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk”
“Lately, during the dark days before Christmas”
“So you must picture me sitting at my attic window”
“At the moment, I can see a splendid effect”
Is a phone a “mythical device”?
In the documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (dir. Alex GIbney, 2015), the New York Times writer Joe Nocera attempts to demystify Apple and its iPhone:
“The real magic of it is that these myths are surrounding a company that makes phones. A phone is not a mythical device. And it sort of makes you wonder less about Apple than about us.”Once when we move beyond shields and swords, I’m not sure that anything can rightly be called a “mythical device.” But what about “magical”? Marcel Proust thought there was something extraordinary about the telephone (as did modernists more generally). The unnamed narrator of In Search of Lost Time calls the telephone a “miracle” and a “supernatural instrument.” Beverly Cleary’s character Jane Purdy backs him up: in Fifteen , she thinks of the telephone as “a miracle, a real miracle.” Jane, now Jane Crandall, seventy-five, does FaceTime with her grandchildren these days. And Stan Crandall, seventy-six, is finally using an iPhone. Another miracle, says Jane.
[Joe Nocera has some history with Apple and Steve Jobs. Beverly Cleary celebrates her hundredth birthday tomorrow.]
Sunday, April 10, 2016
The Illinois higher-ed crisis makes it into The New York Times
The article begins:
The lack of a state budget in Illinois has been dismissed by many here as politics as usual, another protracted ego contest between the Republican governor and the Democrats who rule the Legislature.It is good to see the Times paying attention. But the opening sentence is, as far as I can see, wrong: I don’t know of anyone in Illinois who sees the current budget crisis as a matter of “politics as usual.” The state has been without a budget for more than nine months. Such a situation is, to my knowledge, without precedent.
The Times article focuses on Chicago State University, noting that while other state schools are in difficulty, none are in “the dire predicament of Chicago State.” That’s true. But several downstate schools are not far behind. And in small downstate cities, public universities serve as major employers, crucial players in local economies. As a school goes, so goes a city. In my city, For Sale signs are everywhere.
I’m not writing this post as a downstate resident who feels slighted: I’m only pointing out that Illinois’s higher-ed crisis is even more dire than the Times article suggests.
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All OCA Illinois higher-ed crisis posts (Pinboard)
[I’ve already e-mailed the Times reporter to say more or less what I’ve said here.]
MSNBC, sheesh
An anchor on MSNBC earlier this afternoon:
“Between he and former president Bill Clinton . . .”
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NPR, sheesh
[Attention, W. W. Norton: send that newsroom a copy of Mary Norris’s Between You & Me .]
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