The picture of troops forever headed for the Front came back to me when I read this passage in Mark Shields’s most recent column:
When some gasbag self-proclaimed patriot on a talk show or at a congressional hearing demands that we send “more troops” (or worse, “more boots”), does he not realize that we are sending — time and time again — the very same troops who were just there a few months ago?
Hans Herbert Grimm, Schlump. 1928. Trans. Jamie Bullock (New York: New York Review Books, 2016).
Also from this novel
Food fight
From a Fresh Air interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom about her book Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (New Press, 2017). Terry Gross has asked Cottom whether Trump University fits the description of a for-profit college:
No, no, no. In many ways, Trump University is even more cynical than the for-profit colleges that I talk about and write about. And this is what I mean by that: Trump University didn’t even pretend to set up an actual school. What Trump University really did was it traded on the public’s faith in the word university and used the word university as part of its brand. But there was no campus, for example; they never pursued any license to actually operate as a school. One of the best ways actually to think about Trump University is that it was a lot like a time-share sales organization than it was an actual school.[My transcription and paragraphing.]
But what I think that Trump University does tell us about this administration is sort of how cynical they are about higher education. It tells us something, I think, about their position on public higher education. I think that they have signaled pretty strongly that they are not interested in defending public higher education as important to democracy and the public good. And I think this president’s experience with sort of using the word university, trading so cynically on the public’s faith in the word university, kind of gives us an indication of how he views higher education.
Re: National Velvet (dir. Clarence Brown, 1944):
“National Velvet” is not a horse. She is a girl named Velvet Brown, played by Elizabeth Taylor. She rides a horse in the Grand National. Thus “National Velvet.”
Both members of our household had assumed, without seeing the film, that “National Velvet” is a horse. But as I have said, “National Velvet” is not a horse. She is a girl named Velvet Brown, played by Elizabeth Taylor. She rides a horse in the Grand National. Thus “National Velvet.”
We saw only the last few minutes of National Velvet. Still enough to think of Turner Classic Movies as The Learning Channel.
[The horse’s name: The Pie. The Pie.]
Today’s xkcd: “Mispronunciation.” Very meta. Don’t miss the mouseover text — which, as I just discovered, you can see on an iPhone in Safari. Just hold down on the image.
Did heirloom first denote a loom so great that it’s passed down from generation to generation? I’d been meaning to look that up for months. Seeing the word heirloom while shopping for seeds finally prompted me to find out. Is there a loom in heirloom? Yes and no.
The Oxford English Dictionary explains it all. Heirloom is made of two nouns. The second is the surprise: loom (c. 900) derives from the Middle English lome, meaning “tool, utensil.” Thus an heirloom is
a chattel that, under a will, settlement, or local custom, follows the devolution of real estate. Hence, any piece of personal property that has been in a family for several generations.And later, figuratively, “anything inherited from a line of ancestors, or handed down from generation to generation.” The OED dates heirloom to 1424. Loom as a machine for weaving fabric is earlier (1404), but the citations for heirloom make clear that the word has to do with any kind of property, not with machines for weaving.
Chiefly N. Amer. Of or designating a variety of plant or breed of animal which is distinct from the more common varieties associated with commercial agriculture, and has been cultivated or reared using the same traditional methods for a long time, typically on a small scale and often within a particular region or family.The first citation for this use of heirloom comes from the New York Times, 1949: “One of the old heirloom varieties of lettuce seems to be coming to the fore.”
Skeat suggests that the original meaning may have been “to come slowly (towards),” and compares East Frisian lômen, Swedish dialect loma to move slowly, Middle High German luomen to be weary, < luomi slack.The OED also notes the word loomy (Scots and northern dialect), meaning “misty, cloudy.”
[Donald Trump at the wheel, March 23, 2017. With apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.]
“I feel kind of princess-y sitting here.”
“Well, if the glass slipper fits . . .”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Not from Shirley May’s. It’s from a used-book store find:
[Linotype Keyboard Operation (Brooklyn: Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1930). Click for a larger view.]
[Zippy, March 24, 2017.]
I find it strangely pleasant to look up diners and other establishments that appear in Zippy. For instance. Matching the so-called real world to the strip helps strengthen my confidence in reality. And sometimes the strip depicts a reality I already know.
Shirley May’s may be found at 36065 Santiam Hwy SE, Albany, Oregon. In the unending effort to protect individual privacy, the Googlerithms have blurred this mascot’s face in Street View. But not in every shot. Yow!
[There is a T on his chest, though it’s not visible here. For Texas? For Tennessee?]
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
