Elaine and I have finished watching Gilmore Girls, all of it, the seven seasons and the four new episodes. I am pleased with myself for having predicted, long before the end of Season 7, how things would go (not resolve) for Lorelai and Rory. I got everything right: Lorelai’s love life, Rory’s love life, and Rory’s post-Yale career. I wasn’t as successful with the new episodes. I again called Lorelai’s love life, Rory’s love life, and (more or less) Rory’s career, but I missed a plot twist that I doubt anyone could have anticipated — though when I think back, I see the hints. I hope there’s more Gilmore to come. But not yet. It’s nice to have more time not to watch TV.
I know that I’m not the only male-type person who likes — okay, loves — Gilmore Girls. There are two guys who are making something of a career of it, with podcasts, merch, and a tour. A story of male Gilmore fandom that I like much better: that of a Marine unit watching the show in Iraq, as told to This American Life by Luke Huisenga.
Related reading
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
My (male) female intuition
Monday, February 27, 2017
“An enemy of the people”
The New York Times traces the history of the phrase “an enemy of the people.” Long story short: the French Revolution, an Ibsen play, Lenin, Stalin, and sometimes Mao. Roy Peter Clark recently wrote at greater length about Ibsen, Trump’s rhetoric, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
And let us not forget Richard Nixon’s remark that “The press is the enemy.” “Write that on a blackboard one hundred times,” he told Henry Kissinger.
I’ll repeat what I wrote in a post about the slogan “America first”: Words have history. History has history.
The S.S. Lurk
Elaine’s idea that Gilmore Girls is Gilligan’s Island looks more and more plausible. From the episode “Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore?” (February 27, 2007). Kirk is telling Lorelai that he has bought a boat:
“Yeah, the S.S. Lurk. It’s a combination of my name and Luke’s, since it used to be his boat.”Related reading
“Oh, you bought Luke’s boat.”
“Yeah, she needs a little more work before she’s seaworthy, but as soon as she is, I’ll take you out. You can be Ginger to Lulu’s Mary Ann. Let’s lock down dates now. When are you free?”
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts (Pinboard)
[My transcription.]
Civility at work
A short interview from To the Best of Our Knowledge: Christine Porath talks about civility in the workplace. And there’s an online questionnaire.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Best Picture
Moonlight. Moonlight. Moonlight.
A related post
Movies, twelve of them (Including Moonlight)
Words of the day: post, posthaste
Whence the post in post office?
The term comes from positus, Latin for “position" or “station,” and a postal system carries information from one place to another, preferably with dispatch. (“Posthaste” first appeared as an instruction on the cover, or outside, of a letter but soon became a synonym for “hurry up!“)A blog post is a post of a different kind. The first Oxford English Dictionary citation for this kind of posting (“a message displayed on a mailing list, newsgroup, or other online forum to which it has been sent”) dates from 1981. The shorter post dates from 1982. The OED sees the influence of old-fashioned posting (“the dispatching of letters, etc., by a messenger riding post“) in these newer uses. In my mind, a different sense of posting has always been behind the online term: “the action of putting up a notice on a post, wall, etc., or of making anything public by this or similar means.” See also the Facebook metaphor of writing on someone’s wall.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America: A History (New York: Penguin, 2016).
I hope that this post makes someone curious enough to look up mail (as I just did).
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Grey day with squirrel
[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]
No filter — the day was just grey. This squirrel sat watch for several minutes, not moving. I thought of lines from William Carlos Williams: “The descent beckons / as the ascent beckoned.” This squirrel was taking its time about heeding the beck. Which at last it did.
A related post
KNUT Winter Schedule
Friday, February 24, 2017
Waiting for Godot Shimkus
Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to CNN yesterday: “If you don’t have the guts to face your constituents, then you shouldn’t be in the United States Congress.”
Our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), doesn’t believe in facing his constituents in town-hall meetings:
Rep. John Shimkus told fellow lawmakers he‘d never held a town-hall meeting during his two decades in Congress, and offered advice on how to handle constituent relations, according to two sources in the room. A Shimkus spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the private conference, but did confirm that Shimkus has never held an in-person town hall, saying he prefers telephone town halls and one-on-one constituent meetings.The spokesperson added that Trump won the Illinois district with 70 percent of the vote, and his constituents were “pleased the president is delivering on his promises.”Well, not every constituent. Eight of us went to one of Rep. Shimkus’s local offices today. All efforts to arrange a meeting with him had failed, so we just showed up. (It’s a forty-five-minute drive.) For a little more than an hour, we spoke to a district aide, who took notes and promised to pass on our concerns, which included “alternative facts,” Cabinet appointees, climate change, the executive order on travel, funding for the arts and PBS, health care, LGBTQ rights, mass deportations, Planned Parenthood, our president’s lack of plain decency, a promised wall, Russian influence in the 2016 election, and, above all, fear about the future of our democracy. It was a respectful meeting, with an aide who was admittedly out of his wheelhouse. That wheelhouse would be what’s usually called “constituent services” — helping people with IRS and Social Security problems and such.
We eight constituents thought our time was well spent. I don’t know if we’ll we ever get to meet with Rep. Shimkus. But as someone once said, “If you don’t have the guts to face your constituents, then you shouldn’t be in the United States Congress.”
[The Fifteenth District has a population of 710,000. As a member of our group pointed out, one-on-one meetings leave an overwhelming majority of voters without access to their representative. In 2016 Shimkus ran unopposed; he won reëlection with all of the vote.]
“Monkey, monkey, underpants”
From the Gilmore Girls episode “Santa’s Secret Stuff” (January 23, 2007). Lorelai explains her difficulty in writing a letter of reference for a friend. Her brain, she explains, is “a wild jungle full of scary gibberish.” This monologue might be my favorite moment from the series:
“I’m writing a letter, I can’t write a letter, why can’t I write a letter? I’m wearing a green dress, I wish I was wearing my blue dress, my blue dress is at the cleaners. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue, Casablanca. Casablanca is such a good movie. Casablanca, the White House, Bush. Why don’t I drive a hybrid car? I should really drive a hybrid car. I should really take my bicycle to work. Bicycle, unicycle, unitard. Hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants.”Related reading
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts (Pinboard)
[My transcription. The final three words sound like something from a children’s game, but I think they belong to Lorelai.]
No melodrama
From the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Lost Last Act” (March 21, 1959). A theater producer speaks:
“Thank you, Mr. Mason. You saved me from becoming a cheap and melodramatic anti-climax.”Related reading
All OCA Perry Mason posts (Pinboard)
