Another Henry

[Henry, September 29, 2017.

The Henry world seems to know only one modern sculptor: Henry. Moore, that is. See also this panel.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

“Technocracy Debunked”

[Everyday Science and Mechanics, February 1933. Found here. Click for a larger view.]

I became curious about Everyday Science and Mechanics after looking into the Depression-era trick of sharpening a razor blade on a drinking glass. “Technocracy Debunked”: I’d like to see page 214 and find out what that article had to say.

“Henry Ford?”

Juliet is talking about belief with a minister. Millions of people believe in Buddha, Juliet says. The minister says that Christ is alive and Buddha isn’t. Juliet says that she sees no proof that either is alive.


Alice Munro, “Soon,” in Runaway (New York: Vintage, 2005).

Also from this book
One Munro sentence : “That is what happens”

The Lettermate

The Lettermate is the perfect tool for those who have difficulty addressing an envelope in straight lines. Yes, you could just put a piece of lined paper in the envelope to use as a guide, but why would you, when you can use a nifty tool instead?

My daughter Rachel gave me the Original Lettermate several years ago. I now have the 2nd Edition Lettermate as well. Highly recommended accessories for analog communication.

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“The ‘nailing’ of crates”

Marcel Proust to Madame Williams, July or August 1915:


From Letters to His Neighbor, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: New Directions, 2017).

Letters to His Neighbor collects twenty-six letters that Proust wrote to his upstairs neighbors at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, Charles D. and Marie Williams. Charles (“the Doctor”) was a dentist, whose third-floor office was directly above Proust’s apartment. The Williamses lived above the office on the fourth floor. All but three of the letters are written to Marie Williams (always addressed as “Madame”), and they suggest a light friendship between shut-ins. Proust offers compliments (celebrating Madame’s “Youth, Beauty and Talent”), sends gifts (books, flowers, pheasants), laments the war, and, again and again, draws attention to noise. Cork-lined walls were evidently no real defense. This beautifully produced book gives us something fairly unusual: a portrait of the artist as a neighbor.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Helping Puerto Rico

The PBS NewsHour lists ways to help hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.

And here is food for thought from Dana Milbank, writing in The Washington Post about the Trump administration’s responses to hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria:

No question the logistics are harder in Puerto Rico. But the 3.4 million U.S. citizens there have long endured second-class status: no voting members of Congress, no presidential vote, unequal benefits and high poverty. The Trump administration’s failure to help Americans in Puerto Rico with the same urgency it gave those in Texas and Florida furthers a sad suspicion that the disparate treatment has less to do with logistics than language and skin color.

No number of individual contributions can offset a lethargic government response. But that’s just more reason to contribute.

a l l Gon e

How much does Amazon Digital Services care about the music it sells in CD-R form?

I just bought a CD-R copy of one of my favorite LPs, Earl Hines and Paul Gonsalves’s It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing! (Black Lion BL-306). What’s missing:

~ The LP’s original title. The CD is titled Paul Gonsalves Meets Earl Hines.

~ The details of the recording sessions: December 15, 1970, at National Studios; November 29, 1972, at Hank O’Neal Studio, New York City. Stanley Dance and Michael James, producers.

~ The names of the composers of the six tunes therein: “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)” (Duke Ellington-Irving Mills), “Over the Rainbow” (Harold Arlen-E.Y. Harburg), “What Am I Here For?” (Ellington), “Moten Swing” (Benny Moten), “Blue Sands” (Hines), “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” (Ellington-Paul Francis Webster).

~ The names of the other musicians on hand: Al Hall, bass; Jo Jones, drums.

~ The wealth of detail in Alun Morgan’s liner notes. Morgan mentions, for instance, the sequence in which the five quartet performances were recorded. “Blue Sands,” a solo piano performance from almost two years later, was recorded on the same day as pieces on another Hines album.

Each of these omissions is unfortunate. I grant that reproducing liner notes may not be feasible for a CD-R, but the first four omissions are particularly glaring. The fourth is disgraceful: it’s impossible for me to imagine anyone with an interest in this recording who would not want to know the names of the bassist and drummer. Four musicians, and only two are named?

Most of the information missing from this CD-R is available, at least for now, at a website devoted to Paul Gonsalves. And I have it all on the back cover of my LP. But there is no good reason for this information not to be included with the recording. The transformation of music into files ought not to mean the erasure of that music’s history.

See also Donald Norman’s observation: “What a technology makes easy to do will get done; what it hides, or makes difficult, may very well not get done.”

[The post title reduces the names of Earl Hines and Paul Gonsalves to  a l          l Gon    e.]

“This Cather stuff”

“Even in Red Cloud, some locals still think there’s something off about Cather and the people she attracts. If you stop by the lunch counter at Olson’s gas station, you might hear a farmer grunting at his paper, ‘I don’t like this Cather stuff’”: Alex Ross visits Willa Cather’s Nebraska.

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All OCA Willa Cather posts (Pinboard)

“That is what happens”

Juliet has been trying to recall a word that describes Briseis and Chryseis in the Iliad — kallipareos, of the lovely cheeks. Juliet hasn’t been teaching Greek, and she realizes that it’s as if her knowledge of the language has been ”put in a closet for nearly six months now”:


Alice Munro, “Chance,” in Runaway (New York: Vintage, 2005).

Juliet goes on to consider that even if you make your living from your knowledge of a language, the language is not necessarily your treasure: “Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.”

A related post
One Munro sentence

On the shelf

[Zippy, September 26, 2017.]

Griffy’s and Zippy’s brains are on the top shelf, taking a break. That’s some other brain below.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)