Cursive Quimby

In Mrs. Whaley’s third-grade classroom, the children are practicing their cursive capitals:


Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (New York: William Morrow, 1981).

Ramona must be in the clutches of the Palmer Method, whose capital Q is a piece of work. In The Palmer Method for Business Writing (1915), A. N. Palmer admits that “capital Q is simply a large figure two” — a big floppy numeral passing for a letter. Some Method!

I can’t recall a cursive Q of any sort from childhood. I do remember G and Z , which came to me in their Palmer forms, and which I could never get quite right. Especially Z .


[Capitals Q and Z from The Palmer Method for Business Writing (1915).]

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)
Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary
Quimby economics
Ramona Quimby, stationery fan

*

April 2018: In the memoir A Girl from Yamhill (1988), Beverly Cleary writes about her first exposure to cursive, in the form of the the Wesco system of handwriting, which, like the Palmer Method, has a 2-shaped Q. It’s now obvious to me that Cleary is drawing on her Wesco childhood in her depiction of Ramona’s dissatisfaction with cursive writing.

The limits of grit

From a New York Times review of Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance :

Giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities, of course, but Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better.

The reviewer is skeptical, and continues so. But I’d flip the sentence for a greater, more appropriate degree of skepticism:

Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better, of course, but giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities.

Grit is a necessary — not sufficient — condition for learning. Duckworth knows that. But her work seems to inspire those who think it’s possible to “fix” education without addressing poverty. The “no excuses” attitude toward adversity too much resembles that of the Black Knight: “’Tis but a scratch.”

A related post
Learning, character, and failure

Happy Mother’s Day

[Photograph by James Leddy, July 21, 1957.]

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and to all mothers.

[Yes, my dad dated every photograph.]

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Sorry, guys. But if you’re going to begin each episode of a podcast about language with “Hey, Mikey” and “Hey, Bobby, how ya doin’, buddy?” you’ve lost me.

Pocket notebook sighting

[As seen through a revolving door. Click for a larger view.]

A Geschäftsführer , or hotel manager (Hans Unterkircher), is making notes. From F. W. Murnau’s 1924 film Der letzte Mann , renamed The Last Laugh for export. Our house is turning into the House of Murnau.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Esterbrook erasers

[Esterbrook erasers, 13/16" × 1".]

Ramona Quimby’s eraser is a brand-new Pink Pearl, “just right for erasing pencil lines.” Long before I bought these erasers (from a fading stationery store), they had hardened into uselessness. They’re just right for erasing nothing.

Esterbrook was a venerable name in nibs, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, and mechanical pencils. I imagine that at one point this tiny box sat behind a counter, in a drawer with other tiny boxes of erasers. No blister packaging in that world.

[This post is the seventeenth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real.]

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule

Ramona Quimby, stationery fan

It’s the first day of school for Ramona and Beezus:


Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (New York: William Morrow, 1981).

This passage makes me remember the thrill of the small, the way the most modest surprise can spark delight. (Shiny quarters from grandparents.) Ramona’s eraser, “pearly pink,” is undoubtedly a Pink Pearl.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 is part of my Sustained Silent Reading.

Related reading
All OCA eraser posts (Pinboard)
Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary
Quimby economics

Others

[A list of my own.]

Donald (Don) Adams, actor, comedian.

Donald Allen, editor and anthologist, The New American Poetry 1945–1960 .

Donald Ayler, trumpeter.

Donald (Don) Bachardy, painter.

Donald Barthelme, writer.

Donald Byrd, trumpeter.

Donald Byrne, chess player, defeated by Bobby Fischer in the “Game of the Century,” 1956.

Donald (Don) Byron, clarinetist, composer.

Donald (Don) Cheadle, actor.

Donald (Don) Cherry, trumpeter.

Donald (Don) DeLillo, writer.

Donald (Don) Draper, Mad Man.

Donald (Don) Drysdale, baseball player.

Donald Duck, toon.

Donald “Duck” Dunn, bassist.

Donald Fagen, musician, songwriter.

Donald Hall, poet.

Donald Hollinger, boyfriend, That Girl .

Donald Judd, sculptor.

Donald Knuth, computer scientist, e-mail non-user.

Dónal Lunny, musician, producer. (Close enough.)

Donald (Don) McLean, singer, songwriter.

Donald Meek, actor.

Donald (Don) Most, actor.

Donald (Don) Newcombe, baseball player.

Donald O’Connor, actor, dancer, singer.

Donald (Donny) Osmond, singer.

Donald Pleasance, actor.

Donald (Don) Quixote, knight errant.

Donald (Don) Rickles, actor, comedian.

Donald (Don) Shirley, pianist.

Donald Sobol, writer, the Encyclopedia Brown series.

Donald Sutherland, actor.

Donald Westlake, writer.

[May 5, 6: More Donalds added. Barthelme, DeLillo, and Lunny from readers’ comments. Thanks.]

John Ashbery on “it”

From an interview in The Brooklyn Rail :

I’m sort of notorious for my use of the pronoun “it” without explaining what it means, which somehow never seemed a problem to me. We all sort of feel the presence of “it” without necessarily knowing what we’re thinking about. It is an important force just for that reason, it’s there and we don’t know what it is, and that is natural. So I don’t apologize for that, though I’ve been expected to on many occasions.

I think right away of the it s in Ashbery’s “What Is Poetry”: “Now they / Will have to believe it // As we believed it.” And “It might give us — what? — some flowers soon?”

Related reading
All OCA John Asbery posts (Pinboard)

A teaching story

Anyone who teaches becomes inured to lies, or at least most lies. Some are small and best left unexamined, unquestioned. Cars do break down. Some lies are larger and seem designed to appear true because of their very implausibility. Those lies too are best left unexamined, unquestioned. You can’t come to class because the snow hasn’t been cleared from the steps of your apartment building? Your uncle is having toe surgery this Friday afternoon, and the family wants to be together? Thanks for telling me. Your inventiveness sticks in my mind long after I’ve forgotten your name.

The worst lie a student ever told me involved steroids, needles, and a boyfriend who was HIV-positive. And my student said that she was likely infected. That was the explanation for her poor work in the class. I remember tears running down my face as she told me this story. I had lost a great friend to AIDS-related illnesses not long before. There was, of course, no way my student could have known that. And there was no way I could have known that I would discover, a semester or two later, that her story was a lie.

Nearly thirty years after the fact (or lack thereof), this story stays with me.

Related reading
All OCA teaching posts (Pinboard)