Weather in the air

“I remember a flat, tinny male voice, most likely not a ‘voice talent’”: Diane Schirf writes about weather radios. Follow the links and you’ll meet up with Mark Trail and the four voices of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Weather Radio: Donna, Javier, Paul, and Tom.

[Diane Schirf has written about a number of “relics”: clotheslines and push mowers, for instance.]

Two Guys

An unexpected benefit of decluttering our laundry room: I was reunited with a bottle of Revere Ware Copper Cleaner bearing a Two Guys price sticker. Two Guys was a discount department-store chain; I worked in a Two Guys housewares department through two or three years of college. I must have brought the copper cleaner with me (along with some familial Revere Ware) when I left New Jersey for Boston in 1980. This bottle traveled around with me, with Elaine and me, with Elaine and Rachel and Ben and me, for thirty-six years.

I have thrown the bottle away, but I had to save the (slightly damaged) sticker. It now stands in a frame with another piece of found ephemera.

I remember well the men and women I worked with at Two Guys. John, who showed me how to use the shrink-wrap machine, treating every step as if it were a matter of life and death. (I understood only later: he was a vet.) Doug, refugee from the Bronx (“I’m bookin’”). Another Doug, who would reprice Farberware boxes for family and friends. Michael, who was surprised that my family had potatoes with dinner, just as I was surprised that his family had rice. Dave, who had lost his dry-cleaning business and couldn’t see well enough to manage the numbers on the pricing gun (everyone helped him out). Vickie, who spent several hours curled up in a garbage can one day. It was a clean can — merchandise, back in the can aisle. (God knows what might have happened had a customer lifted the lid.) Eric, assistant department manager, who would head back to the stockroom for an occasional dose of Southern Comfort. (He was quite open about it.) Don, department manager, with a child on the way, and the company beginning to sink. Elaine, our other department manager, whose chipped front tooth only made her more attractive. All the guys dug Elaine. Yes, she knew it.

Here is a strange, depressing Two Guys commercial. Here is some Two Guys background from Pleasant Family Shopping. And here is an Orange Crate Art post about “going on break.”

[“Elaine and me”: my wife and me, not my manager and me.]

Lobby doors

From a New York Times article about money and the Democratic elite:

Occasionally, as bellhops leapt to open the lobby doors for another guest, the chants of protesters outside could be dimly heard.

“Lobby doors” — get it? I think that the pun is intended.

[Every time I talk myself into thinking that I have to vote for Hillary Clinton, I read or see something that makes me say no . Hamlet, anyone?]

Recently updated

Waste in education With more from Caroline Pratt.

Zippy Brooklyn

[Zippy , July 28, 2016.]

Only the zippy know Brooklyn. And only those who Zoom In (or keep a magnifying glass by their newspaper) can appreciate the detail in Zippy’s Brooklyn. In today’s Zippy , Zippy narrates, as a Brooklyn pharmacist sets off “on a quest to find stationery supplies & some pickled herring.“

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Only the zippy know Brooklyn? See here.]

“Everything is new”

Joseph Joubert:

Everything is new. And we are living among events so singular that old people have no more knowledge of them, are no more habituated to them, and have no more experience of them than young people.

We are all novices, because everything is new.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection  , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Also from Joseph Joubert
Another world : Brevity : Form and content : Irrelevancies and solid objects : Justified enthusiasm : Lives and writings : New books, old books : ’Nuff said (1) : ’Nuff said (2) : Politeness : Resignation and courage : Ruins v. reconstructions : Self-love and truth : Thinking and writing : Wine

Domestic comedy

[The bride wanted to time her entrance for a particular point in the Pachelbel Canon. A very difficult thing for the musicians to work out .]

“Just loop it.”

“The whole piece is a loop.”

“Loop the loop.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

A joke in the traditional manner

Why did Fred Astaire never drink bottled water?

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 do newspaper editors avoid crossing their legs? : 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. Today would have been his eighty-eighth birthday. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the mustard-fetching dogs, the produce clerk, the amoebas. the scientists’ dogs, 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.]

Justified enthusiasm

Joseph Joubert:

Nothing is better than a justified enthusiasm.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection  , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Also from Joseph Joubert
Another world : Brevity : Form and content : Irrelevancies and solid objects : Lives and writings : New books, old books : ’Nuff said (1) : ’Nuff said (2) : Politeness : Resignation and courage : Ruins v. reconstructions : Self-love and truth : Thinking and writing : Wine

Waste in education

Caroline Pratt (1867–1954) founded Manhattan’s City and Country School in 1914. She was a teacher at odds with established practices:

I once asked a cooking teacher why she did not let the children experiment with the flour and yeast, to see whether they could make bread. She said in a shocked voice, “But that would be so wasteful!”

She was no more shocked by my question than I by her answer. That materials used in education should be considered wasted! Ours must be a strange educational system, I thought. And, of course, the more I studied it, the more convinced I became that it was very strange indeed. It was saving of materials, ah yes — but how wasteful of children!

Caroline Pratt, I Learn from Children: An Adventure in Progressive Education . 1948. (New York: Grove, 2014).

*

8:15 p.m.: And now I remember that City and Country figures in the documentary Nursery University (dir. Marc H. Simon and Matthew Makar, 2008). Yearly tuition at the school ranges from $24,200 to $43,500. What would Caroline Pratt say?

*

July 28: I didn’t have to read many more pages to get an idea of what Caroline Pratt might think about those numbers. As a young teacher in New York City, she worked three jobs, one in a private school, two in settlement houses. Here is what she says about that work:

The work with [children of privilege] was easier — but it never seemed quite so important as with the others. There was no satisfaction in the private school which compared with the harder accomplishment of offering new opportunities to children who needed them so desperately, and who used them with such intelligence and joy.

I should acknowledge that City and Country does offer need-based financial aid: “A significant portion of our operating budget is dedicated to tuition assistance.”