Relationship advice

My son Ben, my newly married son Ben, mentioned a bit of advice that I gave him some time ago: “The wooing phase is never over.”

I have no memory of saying it, but I think it’s good advice for anyone in a loving relationship, and so I pass it on here, with Ben’s permission:

The wooing phase is never over.

Some seventeenth-century prose

Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus (1658) reads the natural world as a network of fives, quincuxes, and decussations, or crossings. I began to think of a companion work:

That Bushmiller hath declared the figure three as equall to somme is not without probability of conjecture.

Sir Thomas Browne, The Garden of Nancye, or Some Rocks, naturally, artificially, mystically considered (n.d.).

A related post
Some rocks

DQ Breeze

It was the subject of debate, not heated, in our household: was there ever a Dairy Queen product called the Breeze? Yes:

The Dairy Queen Breeze was conceived as a healthier version of the popular Blizzard ice cream treat, made with frozen yogurt instead of ice cream. It plodded along for about a decade before DQ pulled the plug; the chain claimed that demand for the product was so low that the frozen yogurt often went bad before it could be sold.

The Breeze is no. 5 in a list of ten fast foods that have disappeared (The Christian Science Monitor).

For the syntax-minded

[Mutts, July 13, 2017.]

Mutts is almost always delightful. Bill Griffith calls it one of “a few lively, well-crafted dailies bobbing bravely in a sea of blandness.”

Trump[,] Jr.

Andrew Boynton of The New Yorker writes about “The Correct Punctuation of Donald Trump, Jr.,’s Name” — by which he means The New Yorker’s punctuation of that name.

But it’s too simple to say that Trump, Jr., with a comma, is “the“ correct punctuation. It’s correct for The New Yorker, whose use of a comma to set off Jr. as parenthetical leads to the period-comma-apostrophe pileup of Jr.,’s.

So: comma, or no comma? Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern English Usage (2016) says that both choices are correct. “Journalistic style-books,” he observes, prefer commaless Jr., “probably because newspapers generally disfavor optional commas.” But Garner adds that “the commaless Jr. has logic on its side.” He cites E.B. White’s explanation of the switch to commaless Jr. in the third edition of The Elements of Style:

Although Junior, with its abbreviation Jr., has commonly been regarded as parenthetic, logic suggests that it is, in fact, restrictive and therefore not in need of a comma.

Garner’s conclusion:

Besides logic, the commaless form probably has the future on its side; for one thing, it makes possessives possible (John Jones Jr.’s book). The with-comma form has recent (not ancient) tradition on its side. Posterity will be eager to discover, no doubt, how this earth-shattering dilemma is resolved in the decades ahead. One consideration that militates in favor of the commaless form is that, in a sentence, one comma begets another: “John Jones, Jr. was elected” seems to be telling Jones that Jr. was elected. With a comma before Jr., another is needed after: “John Jones, Jr., was elected.”

A writer can of course make a possessive form with a comma, as The New Yorker has: Jr.,’s. I think though that a style choice that eliminates any possibilty of .,’ is the better choice.

Related reading
All OCA punctuation posts (Pinboard)

[In earlier editions of The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. was William Strunk, Jr. What form does Garner’s Modern English Usage use? No comma.]

Wise words on W. 12th

[“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.

Overheard

[From the dowdy world: a voice speaks.]

“Quiet, fellas — it’s long distance.”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

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)