An observation

The Manchester-born novelist Howard Jacobson, writing in The New York Times:

If we want to find some consolation, it won’t be in speeches of municipal defiance, but in the stories, now coming thick and fast, of the assistance rendered not only by the emergency services, but by Mancunians of courage and goodwill who obeyed their deepest instincts in the face of danger and did all they could to comfort the injured and distraught.

See also Fred Rogers quoting his mother Nancy: “Look for the helpers.”

“Waterloo Sunset” at the BBC

The latest episode of the BBC Radio 4 show Soul Music is devoted to the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset.” Beautiful.

William Friedkin on Proust

William Friedkin writes about visiting Illiers-Combray and Paris in search of Marcel Proust. But, Friedkin says, “the alchemy” of Proust’s work is not to be found in places:

It exists in the genius of a person who understood there was a connection between everything — that the roads we take inevitably lead to the same place, a place within ourselves.

What Proust inspires in us is to see and to appreciate every seemingly insignificant place or object or person in our lives; to realize that life itself is a gift and all the people we’ve come to know have qualities worth considering and celebrating — in time.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

“Center of the World, Ohio”

An especially good episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge: Charles Monroe-Kane visits family and friends in “Center of the World, Ohio.”

“Screwballs!”

From The Dark Past (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1948). Al Walker (William Holden), escaped killer, sneers:

“Teachers, writers — screwballs!”

Trump, child?

Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development in children, explains why Donald Trump is “utterly unlike a four-year-old.” Four-year-olds, she writes, “care deeply about the truth,” “are insatiably curious,” “pay attention,” “understand the difference between fantasy and reality,” “have ‘a theory of mind,’” “are not egocentric or self-centered,” “demonstrate both empathy and altruism,” “have a strong moral sense,” and “are sensitive to social norms and think that they and other people should obey them.” So there, David Brooks.

A real nut job

I found this defenseless creature online, combed its tail forward, did some touching up, typed a word, and added some sepia.

[Inspired by Fresca and bink’s alphabet book.]

From Jack Benny

On The Dick Cavett Show, February 21, 1973: “I’ll tell you what kind of life insurance I got: when I go, they go!”

Word of the day: nut job

The Oxford English Dictionary has it:

slang (orig. U.S.).

A mad or crazy person; (also, occas.) a violent person. Cf. NUTCASE n.

The first citation is from 1975: “He was led and followed by nut jobs, him the biggest of all for being there.” The OED also notes a dictionary of slang that records a New York University student using the term in 1972. Was it Donald Trump? No. Trump graduated from the Wharton School in 1968. Trump did not invent nut job.

This post is prompted by an extraordinary New York Times headline: “Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation.” Let’s see how that logic works out. Perhaps nut job will be the 2017 word of the year. And it won’t be applying to Comey.

[The OED spells it as two words: nut job. Merriam-Webster spells it as one. Google’s Ngram Viewer shows nut job outnumbering nutjob 2.8:1 (2008). Nut job is an open compound word; nutjob, a closed compound.]

Modern times

A book on interlibrary loan was due today, and the lending library would not allow a renewal. So I photographed the pages still to go and will read them on my phone.

That last sentence is one I couldn’t have imagined not so long ago.