[“If we all do one random act of kindness daily we just might set the world in the right direction.” Martin Kornfeld.]
This sign stands outside 254 W. 12th Street in Manhattan. Google Maps confirms that the sign, or a similar one, has been standing outside this brownstone for many years. “If we all”: wishful thinking, surely. But who wouldn’t stand behind that wish? And the hope is guarded: “we just might.”
I’m surprised that this sign has never made the pages of The New Yorker or The New York Times. You’d think that someone might have noticed. But here is an account from a passerby who had the good fortune to meet Martin Kornfeld on W. 12th.
See also the wise words that Barnaby Capel-Dunn discovered on Fulham Road.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Wise words on W. 12th
Overheard
[From the dowdy world: a voice speaks.]
“Quiet, fellas — it’s long distance.”
Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Saving Western civ
Charles McNamara, a lexicographer for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, writing in The Washington Post:
[M]y job may not exist much longer if the Trump administration succeeds in eliminating the National Endowment for the Humanities, the agency that funds the single American position at the TLL. In an academic parallel to the United States’ retreat from climate agreements and military alliances, defunding the NEH threatens to pull the nation out of the world’s collective effort to define — literally — Western history.Work on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae began in 1894. Scheduled date of completion: circa 2050. Last year, NPR ran a delightful story about this dictionary.
Things I learned on
my summer vacation
Asphalt “paves the way.”
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At the age of four, Marilyn Horne of Bradford, Pennsylvania, was paid one lime soda for singing.
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“There’s a trend for headless beds right now.”
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Looking at a display of handbags in a department store: ugly is the new beauty.
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“HENRY LIVES HERE”: an enormous banner on a New York apartment building. But surely it’s not that Henry.
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The New York City AIDS Memorial stands at the intersection of Twelfth Street, Greenwich Avenue, and Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village. A slatted canopy shades the space, and a fountain screens out noise. To step into the space is like stepping away from the city. Words by Walt Whitman, inscribed in a spiral and ending in a small corner.
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Wireless transmission of electricity works well across short distances only, because the energy required to send electricity through the air must increase by the square of the distance. Or something like that.
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The word canoodle is a good word to look up.
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Cynthia Ann’s Cookies are delicious.
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Under the eye of their teacher, schoolkids riding the subway on a field trip will give up their seats for grown-up types. A boy stood and offered me his seat. Me: “I’m not old enough!” But I sat and said, “Thank you, sir.”
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Stevdan Pen & Stationers has a bathroom for customers. The nearby Starbucks (6th and Waverly), no. The Dunkin’ Donuts a little further up 6th: you don’t want to know.
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The Cafe Cluny is a lovely Greenwich Village restaurant. Julianne Moore is a regular there, as Twitter will confirm. We pretended not to notice.
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The Emily Dickinson exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum is a disappointment. Mostly manuscripts, which should be a thrill, but they’re often beyond deciphering, and the museum cards do not provide transcriptions. (Is copyright the issue?) A docent giving a tour: “Emily . . . , Emily. . . .” I wanted to yell: “Dickinson!”
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A Toynbee tile sits close to the curb at the northwest corner of 32nd and Madison. This website lists it as authentic.
[The northwest corner. “Toynbee Idea / Movie 2001 / Resurrect Dead / Planet Jupiter.” And so on.]
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It’s possible to be friends with people for so long that it seems there was never a time when you weren’t already friends.
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“Happiness is the answer.”
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A tire thumper is a bat-like tool used to check the air pressure in truck tires.
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The Great Race begins in Jacksonville, Florida, and ends in Traverse City, Michigan. It’s a road race for pre-1973 vehicles, with detailed rules. Analog wristwatches only.
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“Biscuits are spoons you can eat.”
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The Pennsylvania Welcome Center (two miles in on I-90) is an excellent rest stop with a semi-surreal view of Lake Erie. There are very few excellent rest stops.
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Julie’s Diner in North Syracuse is a great choice for breakfast or lunch. You know the kind of place where you’re treated well even if it’s obvious that you’re only passing through? This diner is that kind of place.
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“Wahtter.” “Cahfee.”
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The structure that sits above turnpike lanes tracking cars for tolls is called a gantry. Elaine thinks it should called an Elmer.
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Rush Limbaugh seems to have shrunk: he now sounds like a peevish little old man. Has he metamorphosed into Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace? His sponsors, during the few minutes of airtime to which we exposed ourselves: discount tires, pest control, a video-transfer service.
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A commencement address that we heard last year is now the stuff of a book: James Ryan’s Wait, What? But the book is not the commencement address, one sentence per page; it’s a book.
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At least two well-known independent bookstores shelve Sir Thomas Browne under Literary Criticism. (Wait, what?)
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The Harvard Art Museums are a wonderful experience, three small museums in one. The exhibition The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766–1820 was our first stop.
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[Stephen Sewall, Copy of Inscription on Dighton Rock (detail), 1768. Black ink on paper. Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University. On view in The Philosophy Chamber. From the Harvard Art Museums website.]
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128, 129, 144, 168, 269, 276.
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Lolly’s Bakery is an excellent bakery in East Boston. Chilean cake: a layer of pineapple inside.
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Seth is a mensch. (But I knew that already.)
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Rachel and Seth’s baby is full of kicks.
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I am not an incredible dancer. (But I knew that already.) But I also know that nobody is judging.
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Julie’s Diner is just as good when approaching from the other direction.
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Do localites really pronounce the name of the Ohio city Mentor as “menner”? Yes. Learn by listening, not by asking.
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Mile markers on the road to oblivion can be pretty sweet.
More things I learned on my summer vacation
2016 : 2015 : 2014 : 2013 : 2012 : 2011 : 2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006
An “over and over”
[Henry, July 11, 2017.]
I feel a Zippy-like “over and over” coming on: Brick and mortar! Brick and mortar! Brick and mortar!
Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)
Monday, July 10, 2017
Another shoe
[The New York Times, July 10, 2017.]
“Part of a Russian government effort”: got that, Junior? Part of. A Russian government effort.
[Another shoe, not the other. Who knows how many shoes need to drop?]
Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust
Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.
How happy I should be if you would discover a title for me! But I should like something quite simple, quite grey. The general title, you know, is In Search of Vanished Time. For the first book, which will be published in two volumes (if Grasset allows a box for two volumes), would you have any objection to Charles Swann? If I do a single volume of 500 pages, I am not in favor of this title because the final portrait of Swann will not be included in it, so my book wouldn’t carry out the implications of the title. Would you like, Before the Day Has Started? (I shouldn't.) I had to give up The Heart’s intermissions (original title), The Wounded Doves, The Past Suspended, Perpetual Adoration, Seventh Heaven, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom, titles which, however, will be chapter headings in the third volume. I have told you, haven’t I, that Swann’s Way comes from the two ways of going to Combray? In the country, you know, people say, “Are you going M. Rostand’s Way?” But I don’t want this book to appear with a title that is offensive to the only friend whom, in spite of my effort to emerge from my “phenomenal me,” I have been unable to put out of my mind while writing it. So I shall take another title. I should take Charles Swann if I could explain that these are only the early portraits of Charles Swann.Related reading
Yours with all my heart,
Marcel Proust
P.S. Would you like as a title for the first volume, Gardens in a Cup of Tea, or The Age of Names. For the second, The Age of Words. For the third, The Age of Things? The one I prefer is Charles Swann, if I could make clear that is not all of Swann; First Sketches of Charles Swann.
Marcel Proust, in a letter to Louis de Robert, Summer (?) 1913. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)
OED Word of the Day: madeleine
Sunday, July 9, 2017
The Post New York Post
A parody from 1984: the Post New York Post, a post-nuclear-war edition of the New York Post. It’s very much of a time and place. My favorite bit so far, from a photo caption:
Writhing nuke victims look on gratefully as newly appointed city fallout shelter chief Leona Helmsley makes her rounds. She had beds turned down and mints placed on each patient’s fluffed pillow.Here, from The New York Times, is some background.
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Times as Post
Lena Dunham says she had to give up her dog Lamby because of behavioral issues, but an employee at the shelter where the writer got him disputes her claim.That’s the front-page sidebar summary of a Friday New York Times article. Kinda like a Times version of the New York Post.
How might the Post do it? My best shot: Dunham Dumps Doggy — Shelter Bites Back!
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11:30 a.m.: The real Post headline, which I just discovered: “Shelter says Lena Dunham’s dog tale doesn’t add up.” The headline in the Post URL: “Lena Dunham’s adoption story goes to the dogs.”
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