In one eyelet, in the other eyelet

You know the mysterious extra eyelets on sneakers? A YouTube clip explains that they’re for making a heel lock, or lace lock. Best watched with sneaker in hand or foot in sneaker. Gosh, does this way of lacing make a difference. Highly recommended.

[Posted after a long walk.]

In one door, out the other

In front of the Hotel Occidental one finds “an unbroken line of cars.” But a pedestrian can get to the street, at least a pedestrian who is not Karl Rossmann:


Franz Kafka, Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared), trans. from the German by Michael Hoffman (New York: New Directions, 2002).

Also from Amerika
An American writing desk : A highway : A bridge : Companions : Under-porters and errand-boys

“Cost of Trans Troops vs Flaccid Military Members”

[Click for a larger view.]

A chart is worth a thousand words, or 216.6 million dollars. From Danne Woo’s Chart a Day project. This chart appeared on July 26, 2017.

“The latest!”

[Henry, August 3, 2017.]

“The narrow-brimmed straw," aka the stingy brim. Everything old is new again.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

Eleanor Roosevelt on attention

No multitasker, she:

You can finish any task much quicker if you concentrate on it for fifteen minutes than if you give it divided attention for thirty.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).

Also from this book
Doing what you think you cannot do
Honoring the human race

Under-porters and errand-boys

In the Hotel Occidental, two under-porters stand behind sliding windows dispensing information to guests. There are never fewer than ten guests waiting. Each under-porter is assisted by an errand-boy, who retrieves materials from a bookshelf and from “various files.” The work is exhausting, with frequent changes in personnel:

Franz Kafka, Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared), trans. from the German by Michael Hoffman (New York: New Directions, 2002).

Also from Amerika
An American writing desk : A highway : A bridge : Companions

[Hierarchy, hierarchy, everywhere in this novel.]

Writing instruction

From a New York Times article about different approaches to teaching writing:

Three-quarters of both 12th and 8th graders lack proficiency in writing, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. And 40 percent of those who took the ACT writing exam in the high school class of 2016 lacked the reading and writing skills necessary to successfully complete a college-level English composition class, according to the company’s data.

One of the approaches described in this article, Judith Hochman’s, was the subject of a 2012 Atlantic article.

I used to ask students in writing classes: What does it mean to go through twelve or more years of schooling and not be able to recognize a sentence in your language — or a noun, or a verb? More than a little crazy. You can guess where my sympathies lie.

Two related posts
On “On the New Literacy”
W(h)ither grammar?

Fashion-forward

A new Lands’ End catalogue has tips:

These days, a buttondown isn’t just “that thing you wear under a suit.” It’s a whole lot more — a versatile staple you can dress up AND down.

Three tips follow:

Skip the jacket.

Roll ’em up.

Change your collar.

It must be said that the third tip, to wear something other than a buttondown shirt, makes no sense as a way to dress a buttondown up OR down. That’d be like trying to dress up a pair of cargo shorts by wearing gabardine slacks instead. But the first two tips: I’ve been doing those for years. Fashion-forward, always.

A related post
Lands’ End: The White Album

[“’Em”: shirtsleeves, not joints.]

Words from Eleanor Roosevelt

I honor the human race. When it faces life head-on, it can almost remake itself.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).

Recently reissued in paperback.

Hortatory pavement

[“Let’s Be Better Humans.”]

Yes, it’s the hortatory subjunctive: let us whatever. Being a better human might mean not spray-painting the pavement, but in this case, I think that the painter was making an improvement.

A related post
Hortatory subjunctive FTW