The word is — cough — in the air. But where does it come from? The Oxford English Dictionary has it:
ˈTarmac, n .
A kind of tar macadam consisting of iron slag impregnated with tar and creosote; also designating a surface made of tar macadam. Now freq. with lower-case initial. the tarmac (colloq.), the airfield or runway.
A proprietary name in the United Kingdom.
Proprietary, capitalized: huh. The Dictionary’s earliest citation is from 1903.
[Context: Bill Clinton’s confab with Loretta Lynch as their planes were parked on the you-know-what. I’m surprised to see that tarmac is missing from the list of trending words at Merriam-Webster.]
It’s the first day of Nancy’s summer vacation, and there’s nothing to do but lean on some rock.
Fans of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy love the strip’s frequent use of the decorative device “some rocks.” You can read Bushmiller strips six days a week at GoComics.
Rosemary MacLane has just announced to her grandmother, her mother, her sister Barbara, and Aunt Josie that she will not be choosing a silver pattern. So what will she and her husband use to eat? Stainless steel.
Beverly Cleary, Sister of the Bride (1963).
Remember: for Rosemary and Greg, the only important possessions are books and records. Rosemary goes on to explain that Greg knows a couple with a potter’s wheel who can make dishes for the newlyweds — “in warm earth tones.” And Rosemary will be making place mats out of burlap. The kids these days!
And speaking of the young, or the younger: this passage is a good example of how sixteen-year-old Barbara has begun to see her eighteen-year-old sister’s wedding as her own event to manage. Like the protagonists of Beverly Cleary’s other First Love novels, Barbara will move toward greater self-knowledge, and she’ll come to understand that the difference between eighteen and sixteen, like the difference between silver and stainless steel, is pretty vast.
The Illinois House on Thursday approved a stopgap budget that would keep state government afloat for six months, ensure schools open this fall and provide help to struggling Chicago Public Schools after Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly hoped they struck a deal amid intense political pressure with the November election looming.
The 105–4 vote follows two days of closed-door negotiations, the first meaningful round of give-and-take on the budget as the state was about to enter a second straight year without a full spending plan come Friday. The bill now heads to the Senate, where approval is expected later Thursday.
<irony>Wow, they wasted not a moment in putting together another short-term fix. Great job, everyone!</irony>
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4:07 p.m.: And now the Senate has approved it, 54–0.
No, they’re just apartments, and not especially nice ones.
The woes that the Illinois budget crisis has brought to our town are prompting property owners to take extraordinary measures. In nearly thirty-one years, I have never before seen in our town the kind of wild (and sad) claim this sign makes.
The word came to me in a dream last night, as part of a headline I cannot remember:
misflame /ˌmis-in-ˈflām/ transitive verb
: to excite to excessive or uncontrollable action or feeling by means of false or misleading information
: to make more heated or violent by means of false or misleading information
Sample sentence: The candidate misinflamed the crowd with a series of falsehoods.
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11:19 a.m.: I went for a walk and a noun showed up:
misinflammation /ˌmis-in-flə-ˈmā-shən/ noun
: false or misleading information meant to excite its recipient to excessive or uncontrollable action or feeling
: the practice of using false or misleading information to excite in its recipient excessive or uncontrollable action or feeling
: a state of excessive or uncontrollable action or feeling resulting from false or misleading information
Sample sentences: The candidate specialized in stirring up his audiences with misinflammation . On the campaign trail, he practices misinflammation . A red face and raised voice may be signs that a person is in a state of misinflammation .
Last night The Daily Show had a six-minute story about the Illinois budget crisis. Spoiler alert: there is no happy ending.
Tomorrow will mark a year without a state budget. The damage already done to social services and public higher education is vast, and the damage will continue for years. One example: lower Fall 2016 enrollments for Illinois state colleges, as students choose to study elsewhere.
The news of a play about the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Arthur Luby’s Paul Gonsalves on the Road , led me to this videotaped performance:
“Happy Reunion” was a frequent concert feature for Gonsalves in the Ellington band’s later years. This performance (July 21, 1972) is from Ellington’s weeklong residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (July 17–21).
The story behind this performance, as I can piece it together: Gonsalves, who had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse, had been in bad shape (and perhaps late) for a Madison performance or rehearsal with the full band. The usual Ellington strategy with a wayward musician on stage was to call upon him for solo after solo. Or to look the other way: there’s footage of a mid-1960s Ellington performance with Gonsalves asleep on the bandstand, holding his saxophone in playing position as Ellington pretends not to notice. In Madison, Ellington released his wrath at Gonsalves in the form of choice words. I can’t imagine that happening in a concert setting. My hunch is that it happened at an open rehearsal. Gonsalves must have felt humiliated.
This performance came the next afternoon. Gonsalves seems to show up unannounced, as Ellington is answering a question from the audience. Listen closely for the question Ellington puts to Gonsalves at the start: “Stinky, you juiced again?” And Gonsalves, before playing: “Which way is Madison?” And afterward, at Gonsalves’s request, four kisses, an Ellington specialty (one for each cheek). A happy reunion, it seems. Was all forgiven? I think so.
Paul Gonsalves was a brilliant musician, and much more than the blues-wailing hero of the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. His influence can be heard quite clearly in fellow tenor David Murray, whose big band has performed an orchestrated version of Gonsalves’s 1956 solo on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” titled — what else? — “Paul Gonsalves.”
Wisconsin, let us see all your Ellington footage.
July 2022: You can now hear “Happy Reunion” here. Ellington appears at 32:54. Gonsalves arrives, apparently unannounced, at 58:58.
[I’ve pieced together what seems to have happened from two sources: this one and this one. My favorite “Happy Reunion” is the 1971 performance from The London Concert (United Artists, 1972). The two-LP set has been reissued on CD as The Togo Brava Suite .]
“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
Don’t look for premiums or coupons, as the cost of the thoughts blended in ORANGE CRATE ART pro- hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail.
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
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Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
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Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
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Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
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Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
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I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
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I’m not afraid to get it right I turn around and I give it one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
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L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
