“Close enough”

Verlyn Klinkenborg on helping his father build a house:


“June,” The Rural Life (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Verlyn Klinkenborg posts (Pinboard)

Separated at birth

 
[The actors Michael Gough and Benedict Cumberbatch.]

Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Michael A. Monahan and William H. Macy

Handwriting in the news

News that’s still news: “Why Handwriting Is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age” (The New York Times ).

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

The Greeks

Tonight on PBS, The Greeks , ancient ones.

Greece is the word.

A couple pints

I was surprised to read this sentence in The New York Times:

On a Saturday night in Youngstown, Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan and Mrs. Clinton made a surprise visit to O’Donold’s Irish Pub and Grill for a couple pints of Guinness.

A couple pints? “The New York Times” Manual of Style and Usage (2015) requires of :

Used colloquially to mean a handful or a few, couple should always be followed by of (a couple of pomegranates , never a couple pomegranates ).

Bryan Garner’s (extensive) discussions of couple of and couple are helpful here. From Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009):

As a noun, [couple ] requires the preposition of to link it to another noun <a couple of dollars>. Using couple as an adjective directly before the noun is unidiomatic and awkward.

But Garner’s Modern English Usage (2016) acknowledges a change:

As a noun, [couple ] requires the preposition of to link it to another noun <a couple of dollars>. Using couple as an adjective directly before the noun has been very much on the rise since the late 20th century <a couple dollars>. This innovation strikes many readers as unidiomatic and awkward — or perhaps downright wrong. But the change will doubtless continue.

Garner calls the use of couple without of a “low casualism,” pointing out that the traditional phrasing a couple of is eight times more common in print: “idiom has not yet accepted this casual expression as standard.”

A Times reporter, or any other writer, could avoid these problems by using a fine Illinoism:

On a Saturday night in Youngstown, Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan and Mrs. Clinton made a surprise visit to O’Donold’s Irish Pub and Grill for a couple three pints of Guinness.

A related post
How many in a couple?

Cohn, Lewandowski

 
[Roy Cohn and Corey Lewandowski.]

Not exactly separated-at-birth, but it seems to me that there’s more than a passing resemblance between Donald Trump’s one-time lawyer and his just-fired campaign manager.

Recently updated

Where are the 2017 Moleskine planners? Now with a reply from the company.

“Ordinary, thrown-away things”

“There are intrinsic beauties in ordinary, thrown-away things”: the photographer Joel Meyerowitz on photographing objects in the painter Giorgio Morandi’s studio. The New York Times has a short film.

The Getty Research Portal leads the way to a 1981 exhibition catalogue of Morandi’s work.

[So much does depend upon a red wheelbarrow.]

A joke in the traditional manner

Why do newspaper editors avoid crossing their legs?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the mustard-fetching dogs? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What kind of dogs do scientists like? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the produce clerk, the mustard-fetching dogs, the scientists’ dogs, the amoebas, the toy, the squirrel-doctor, Marie Kondo, and Santa Claus. He was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.” I am now the custodian of his pocket notebook of jokes, from which I’ve chosen this one.]

Happy Father’s Day

[Photograph by Louise Leddy. March 3, 1957.]

On a Sunday in Brooklyn, my dad Jim and me. I love him and miss him.

Happy Father’s Day to all.