Making a Murderer

Steven Avery, tried for one crime and then for another:

“Poor people lose. Poor people lose all the time.”

Dean Strang, one of Steven Avery’s attorneys:

“In some ways to be accused is to lose — every time. What you can hope to get is your liberty back, eventually. That’s all you can ever hope to get.”

The Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (dir. Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, 2015) is compelling viewing. Especially now. If you haven’t followed the Steven Avery story in the news, don’t start now. Watch the series first.

Thanks, Rachel, for persuading me (finally) to watch.

Cheap shoes

Elaine and I bought two pairs of these shoes at our friendly neighborhood multinational retailer. They’re cheap plastic — $6.99 a pair — so cheap that I can’t find a single photograph online, from any retailer.

We keep our shoes by the back door. Until the weather turns, they’re perfect when taking out the trash or watering the crops (herbs) — easy on, easy off. The shoes have excellent traction and would serve well in any setting that tends toward the messy: with an old pair of socks they’d be a good choice for household painting.

Neither the shoe nor its price tag identifies a manufacturer. The sole says that the shoe is made in the United States “with over 75% U.S. parts.” I hope so.

[Garner’s Modern American Usage : “The preferred plural of pair is pairs .” Click the shoe for a larger size. Correction: I first wrote that the sole says the shoe is made from “75% recycled materials.” Then I looked at the sole again.]

Word of the day: snag

Go out walking in nature preserve. Spot new specimen: snag . The Oxford English Dictionary explains:

snag: N Amer. A standing dead tree.

Webster’s New International Dictionary , second edition, is more expansive:

Forestry. A tree from which the top has been broken. A rampike, esp. one tall enough to be an extra fire hazard.

And Webster’s Third:

A standing dead tree from which parts or all of the top have fallen; esp.: one that is more than 20 feet tall.

The Third directs the reader to stub :

the part of a tree or plant that remains fixed in the earth when the stem is cut down or broken off.

So a snag is taller than a stub.

Following the history of snag in the OED , it’s easy to see how a word having to do with trees came to signify an unexpected complication. The earliest meaning of snag (1577–87):

A short stump standing out from the trunk, or from a stout branch, of a tree or shrub, esp. one which has been left after cutting or pruning; also, a fruiting spur.

Later (1807):

A trunk or large branch of a tree imbedded in the bottom of a river, lake, etc., with one end directed upwards (and consequently forming an impediment or danger to navigation). orig. U.S.

And shortly thereafter (1830):

fig. An impediment or obstacle. Also, a disadvantage, a hitch; a defect.

Followed in 1904 by “N Amer. A standing dead tree.”

The nature preserve in which I went walking had a sign on a trail with vocabulary. A dead tree on the ground: log . A dead tree still standing: snag .

As for rampike, Webster’s Second says:

A dead tree; a pointed stump or partly-burned tree; a tree broken off by the wind leaving a splintered end to the trunk.

I know that visitors are not supposed to take anything with them from a nature preserve. But I think that taking the word snag is okay.

Henry , gum, hair, Lacan

[Henry, August 17, 2016. Click for a larger view.]

Yet another gum machine. But this time with long hair. Today’s strip, like April’s “New Math” strip, is strong evidence that our Henry re-runs, however anachronistic they may otherwise appear (BOY WANTED signs, icemen, etc.), date from the 1960s.

I like Henry’s response to the experience of the mirror stage. So you’re bald? Just whistle.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

And more gum machines
Henry : Henry : Henry : Perry Mason : Henry : Henry : Henry : Henry : Henry : Henry : Henry

Audrey Hepburn and sardines

[Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina Fairchild in Sabrina (dir. Billy Wilder, 1954). Click for a larger view.]

Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) has been looking through the cabinets in the company offices. There must be something to eat. Tomato juice, puffed rice, sardines, tomato juice, tomato juice. Sabrina appears lost in meditation as she holds a can of sardines.

Related reading
All OCA sardines posts (Pinboard)

Newhart sardines

Dinnertime. No one has shopped. The only thing Bob and Emily Hartley have in the house is a can of sardines. Bob is not a fan:

“I thought we were saving them for a special occasion — like a famine.”

From The Bob Newhart Show episode “The Separation Story,” October 5, 1974. Written by Tom Patchet and Jay Tarses, the latter of whom created The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd . We always like seeing Jay Tarses’s name on our television.

Related reading
All OCA sardines posts (Pinboard)

Sam Ervin, Mongol user

Watching Dick Cavett’s Watergate on PBS tonight, I was startled to see Senator Sam Ervin (D, North Carolina) holding a Mongol. I went looking online.


[“Watergate.” Photograph by Gjon Mili. Washington, D.C. August 1973. From Google Arts & Culture. Click for a larger view.]


[“Watergate Hearings.” Photograph by Gjon Mili. Washington, D.C. June 1973. From Google Arts & Culture. Click for a larger view.]


[My caption: “Speak folksily and carry a sharp Mongol.” From U.S. News & World Report. No identification, but clearly from the Watergate hearings. That’s Samuel Dash to Ervin’s left. Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Clara Cannucciari’s Depression cooking

A YouTube series with the late Clara Cannucciari: Great Depression Cooking. Heard in the episode The Poorman’s Meal: “You know, I had to quit high school, ’cause I didn’t have stockings to wear. And that’s a fact.”

See also the website Great Depression Cooking with Clara.

Depression cuisine

Jane Ziegelman:

“Freshness was not necessarily a virtue in the 1930s. This sort of infatuation that we have with food that’s fresh, just off the farm and crisp and sweet — that didn’t really hold much water for Depression-era cooks, who were more entranced with modern, frozen foods. That was the miracle food.”

From an interview (my transcription) with Jane Ziegelman and Andy Coe, who have written A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression. Listen: “Creamed, Canned and Frozen: How the Great Depression Revamped U.S. Diets” (NPR).

Thanks, Rachel, for pointing your ma and pa to this interview.

[Note to self: must read.]

Bobby Hutcherson (1941–2016)

The vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson has died. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here are three Hutcherson performances of his “Little B’s Poem”: 1, 2, 3. I first heard this tune as recorded by Tete Montoliu and have loved it ever since.