“English professors have many wiles”

In January 1936, Willa Cather wrote to Carlton F. Wells, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, thanking him for a letter in which he commented on Cather’s use of a Mendelssohn oratorio in the novel Lucy Gayheart . “You are one in about seventy-five thousand,” she told Wells, the only reader who had noticed how and why Cather had made a slight change in the oratorio’s text. Wells wrote back, asking if Cather’s letter could be printed in William Lyon Phelps’s syndicated newspaper column. Cather replied on January 23:

Dear Mr. Wells:

I am sorry not to be able to oblige you, but I never allow quotations from personal letters to be printed. When, among a great number of the rather flat and dreary letters I receive, I come upon that is alive and intelligent, I am rather prone to answer it in a somewhat intimate and unembarrassed tone. I take for granted that a person who writes a discriminating and intelligent letter is the sort of person who would not use any portion of my letter for publicity of any kind.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

I should like to oblige Mr. Phelps, but I shall do that at some other time, and in some other way. I did not even know that I was writing to your English class, Mr. Wells. English professors have many wiles, but I honestly thought you were interested in the question you asked me. O tempora, O mores! (The second “O” looks like a zero, certainly!) Enough: I become more cautious every day.

W. S. C.

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather , ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout (New York: Knopf, 2013).

Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard)

Rauner sues Rauner

Diana Rauner, wife of Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, leads a child-advocacy group suing the governor and various state agencies for breach of contract. The Ounce of Prevention Fund is one of eighty-two social-service agencies awaiting payments from the state.

Illinois has been without a budget for eleven months, nine days, seventeen hours, eighteen minutes, and thirty-nine seconds. It is not clear how long the governor will continue sleeping on the couch.

From Ellen Tebbits

Beverly Cleary, Ellen Tebbits (1951).

I like the way this paragraph sketches a season in so few words: days shorter, leaves deeper, nights chillier. I like, too, the reference to “downtown,” the semi-mysterious place where stores are, or were. And I like the way the passage presents time as both cyclical and linear, seasons coming around again, clothes outgrown.

Ellen Tebbits is our daughter Rachel’s favorite Beverly Cleary book. Having now I read it, I can understand why.

Related reading
Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Jean Jarrett, dictionary user
Jean Jarrett, letter writer
Ramona Quimby and cursive
Ramona Quimby, stationery fan

The Incredible Sardine

[Graphic by Rosie Ettenheim. Text by Allison Guy. Click for a much larger view.]

This infographic, made for yesterday’s World Oceans Day, may be found at Oceana (in six parts) and at Rosie Ettenheim’s Behance page. Oceana is campaigning to promote responsible fishing and protect forage fish as a food source for fish, marine life, and people.

Related reading
All OCA sardines posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

About last night Casting a write-in vote in Illinois may be a waste of one’s vote.

Spelling in the news

In Louisiana, a man has been arrested for attempting to cash forged checks. What gave him away: misspelling fifty as fiffty . The double f can be tricky: in 2015, three men posing as police officers misspelled sheriff as sherif on their costumes.

Trivia: what film character has a last name that begins with two lowercase f s?

Related reading
All OCA spelling posts (Pinboard)

About last night

I’m deeply saddened by the results of yesterday’s Democratic primaries. I have been a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, for reasons summed up by Hillary Clinton, then Rodham, in her 1969 Wellesley commencement speech. (I’m not kidding.) But I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton. I think that the Obama campaign got it right in a 2007 memo:

HRC is driven by politics, not conviction. From the war, to NAFTA, to Social Security, to her choice of baseball teams, Clinton is constantly shifting, dodging and changing positions to satisfy the politics of the moment. Her penchant for secrecy and non-disclosure reflect an underlying disdain for the “invisible” people for whom she claims to speak.

I was thinking about possible choices in this presidential election when I posted, last October, an observation from Peter Drucker about integrity in leadership:

No one should ever be appointed to a senior position unless top management is willing to have his or her character serve as the model for subordinates.

I went on to write,

With necessary changes in terminology, one might apply Drucker’s thinking to elections, with integrity of character as a primary consideration for a voter. I for one would find it impossible to vote for a candidate who did not evince some core element of integrity, however consonant with my views that candidate’s views might be.

So I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton. I will write in Bernie Sanders’s name or vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, whichever choice looks like the better way to send a message to the Democratic Party.

*

5:20 p.m.: Casting a valid write-in vote in Illinois is no easy matter. From the Cook County Clerk’s website:

Prospective write-in candidates in Illinois must file paperwork with the county clerk, or election authority, in each jurisdiction where their name will appear on the ballot.

Otherwise, a write-in vote is for naught. More on other states here.

*

August 1: It’s good to know your own mind, but it’s good, too, to know that you can change it. I’ve decided to vote Hillary Clinton. This allegorical paragraph explains why.

[“Her penchant for secrecy and non-disclosure reflect”: should be reflects .]

If and whether

Sir Ernest Gowers:

Care is also needed in the use of if in the sense of whether , for this too may cause ambiguity.

Please inform me if there is any change in your circumstances.

Does this mean “Please inform me now whether there is any change” or “If any change should occur please inform me then”? The reader cannot tell. If whether and if become interchangeable, unintentional offence may be given by the lover who sings:

What do I care,
If you are there?

The Complete Plain Words , rev. Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut (Boston: David R. Godine, 1988).

Also from The Complete Plain Words
Buzz-phrase generator : The etymological fallacy : “Falling into incongruity” : Thinking and writing

Stamps for Plutocrats

Our household is well supplied with stamps: first-class, second-ounce, two-ounce, postcard. When I went to the post office today to mail a package, I was almost able to resist the usual “Need stamps?” The clerk showed me a page of Views of Our Planets , but I declined. No Pluto! (As I have written in these pages, I am a total third-grader on the subject of Pluto.) But then the clerk showed me a little (heh) block of four stamps.

 
[The block has two of each stamp.]

It’s Pluto — Explored! The brave little orb may no longer count as one of “our” planets (or their planets). But the United States Postal Service has shown Pluto some significant respect. Plutocrats, get to your post office at once.

Related reading
All OCA Pluto posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine gave me “Plutocrats.” Thank you, Elaine.]

Elections of the future

Breaking: Hillary Clinton wins re-election in 2020! I know it must be true because the establishment told me so! #APRetract

— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) June 7, 2016

The Associated Press’s announcement of a Democratic nominee, an announcement made on the eve of major primaries and seven weeks before the party’s convention, is to my mind a low point in journalism. AP, report the news. Don’t manufacture it. And don’t suppress the vote.