Jean Jarrett, letter writer

Jean Jarrett is headed over to her best friend Elaine Mundy’s house to write letters:


Beverly Cleary, Jean and Johnny (1959).

“Their correspondence was on a higher level”: I love that free indirect discourse.

Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)
Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Ramona Quimby and cursive
Ramona Quimby, stationery fan

“Oey,” oy

[From today’s Peanuts .]

Today’s strip first ran on June 3, 1969. Linus is not old enough for cursive: he’s proud of his “lettering.” Or was.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Of Men and War

Tonight on PBS, Of Men and War , a documentary about American veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq living with PTSD.

HGSE music

At the Harvard Graduate School of Education diploma ceremony last week, Aditi Chakravarty, Ben Leddy, and Danielle Williams performed Stephen Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen,”. You could see at least one professor tearing up. Many non-Harvard eyes teared up too. (Trust me.)

Ben was playing a guitar that belonged to our great friend Rob Zseleczky.

Alas, the video posted of the ceremony has long since disappeared from YouTube.

Summers then

Verlyn Klinkenborg, “May,” The Rural Life (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2002).

See also Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill.”

Related reading
All OCA Verlyn Klinkenborg posts (Pinboard)

Words for Memorial Day

Spoken by a twelve-year old Bosnian girl in a refugee camp:

I want that this is the last war in my life.

Spoken by a four-tour Vietnam veteran:

No more fucking wars!

These sentences are the epigraphs to the concluding chapter of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Touchstone, 1994). Shay writes in this chapter:

In the face of intractable horrors like the dismemberment of Bosnia, an actual permanent end to wars seems like an impossible dream that only a fool would spend any time or money on. War has always been with us, after all. Perhaps it is intrinsic to human nature. I often despair that the array of cultural, economic, and social forces in support of warfare simply are impossible to overcome, ever. However, as William of Occam pointed out in the fourteenth century: What is, is possible.

That is, not necessary. No more war.

Woe is Illinois

Illinois’s budget crisis (a manufactured crisis, as bears repeating) continues to attract mild national interest. The crisis was the subject of a handful of sentences during NPR’s hourly news bulletins this morning. Among the choice details: there may soon be no funds with which to buy food for the state’s prison population.

In related news, Illinois now has the highest unemployment rate in the United States. Our “pro-business” governor seems incapable of understanding that shutting down social-service agencies, decimating public higher education, and failing to pay the state’s bills do little to foster economic growth or human well-being.

This coming Tuesday will mark eleven months without a budget. After Tuesday, passing any budget legislation in the Illinois General Assembly will require three-fifths majority in each chamber. Woe is us.

Related reading
All OCA Illinois higher-ed crisis posts (Pinboard)

I see Mark Trail’s face before me

[Mark Trail , May 28, 2016.]

It’s atilt and wetter, but it’s the same face. Or at least the same nose and mouth.


[Mark Trail, revised, May 10, 2014. Mark Trail, May 14, 2015; April 28, 2016. Click any image for a larger view.]
Mark Trail, Gabe, and Carina (“Carina!?”) have been stuck in a cave since, oh, February. But in real time, it would seem that several hours, at most, have passed. The technical term for this comic-strip imbalance: the sheer-boredom effect . “Mary Worth!?”

More about the face in this post.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Post title with apologies to Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz.]

Speed v. accuracy

[Photograph and revision by me.]

From The Song of the Lark

Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915).

Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard)