“Demagogues and charlatans”

Rob Riemen:

The institutions that should protect us exist only by grace of the trust that people have in them. Put demagogues and charlatans in charge, use the mass media to cultivate the belief that this leader, the antipolitical politician, is the only person who can save the country — and the constitutional, democratic institutions will disappear just as quickly as the authorities become impotent because no one believes in them anymore.

“The Eternal Return of Fascism,” in To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).

The essay in which this passage appears was first published in Dutch in 2010.

You can watch and listen to a short conversation with Riemen at Salon. I’ll have something to say about this book soon.

Strunk and White and Comey

James Comey, in a New York Times interview about reading:

What books over the years have most influenced your thinking?

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man had a huge impact on me, as did Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which was one of 12 books in my college course “Significant Books in Western Religion.”

But Comey explains: “The professor believed that all ideas are wasted that can’t be clearly expressed.” The Elements of Style must have been supplemental reading.

Related reading
All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)

The uni-ball Roller

I don’t know what made me want to buy and write with a uni-ball Roller. I hadn’t used one in many years, not since my grad school years. Back then I bought these pens one or two at a time from a stationery store. Now I could find them only by the dozen in an office-supply store. Back then these pens were state of the art. Now they’re relatively cheap, about a dollar apiece, and their packaging touts eco-friendliness: “Plastic components made from 80% post-consumer waste (majority from recycled electronics).” Back then I would have written Uni-Ball. Now I’m using the company’s lowercase, though uni-ball Roller looks more than slightly odd.

What’s strange and wonderful: uni-ball Rollers (0.7 and 0.5mm) look and feel virtually the same as they did when I was a grad student. The clips have lost their “EF” (for Eberhard Faber) and now sport a tiny “eco” on a leaf, and the 0.5 clip no longer says “Micro.” But everything else looks the same: the same slightly flexible black plastic, the same notches at the top of the cap (three for 0.7, five for 0.5). And the pens feel the same on paper: slippery, with far less control than a fountain pen affords. I used a 0.7 to make some notes yesterday, and my handwriting turned into the same fast scrawl I fell into more than thirty years ago, when I’d write on a legal pad before typing a first draft. I don’t like what the uni-ball Roller does to my handwriting, but I like seeing it happen.

You can see the Roller on this page of uni-ball products. Select roller and capped, and there it is.

A related post
Five pens (My life in pens)

Word of the day: aegis

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day is the noun aegis:

1 : a shield or breastplate emblematic of majesty that was associated with Zeus and Athena

2 a : protection
2 b : controlling or conditioning influence

3 a : auspices, sponsorship
3 b : control or guidance especially by an individual, group, or system

The dictionary explains:

We borrowed aegis from Latin, but the word ultimately derives from the Greek noun aigis, which means "goatskin." In ancient Greek mythology, an aegis was something that offered physical protection, and it has been depicted in various ways, including as a magical protective cloak made from the skin of the goat that suckled Zeus as an infant and as a shield fashioned by Hephaestus that bore the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa. The word first entered English in the 15th century as a noun referring to the shield or protective garment associated with Zeus or Athena. It later took on a more general sense of "protection" and, by the late-19th century, it had acquired the extended senses of "auspices" and "sponsorship."

The modern meanings of aegis always throw me for a moment, because when I see the word I think of Athena, whose aegis scares the bejeezus out of people, as when she shows it to the suitors in Odyssey 22: “At this moment that unmanning storm cloud, / the aegis, Athena’s shield, / took form aloft in the great hall.”

And the suitors, “mad with fear,” stampede.

[From Robert Fitzgerald’s 1961 translation.]

Some SuihoEn rocks

[As seen in SuihoEn, Van Nuys, California.]

SuihoEn, “garden of water and fragrance,” also known as the Japanese Garden, is a beautiful landscape created next to a water reclamation plant. From the SuihoEn website: “The garden’s purpose was to demonstrate a positive use of reclaimed water in what is generally agreed to be a delicate environment.” The fish seem to like reclaimed water just fine.

Alas, I was unable to photograph the garden’s Tortoise Island in a way that clearly suggested “some rocks.” But I did spot this group of three elsewhere in the garden, and I didn’t need to stray from the walking path to get a photograph. “Some rocks” is a minor Orange Crate Art preoccupation.

Anti-Establishment

[From a menu for Lums, a restaurant chain of the past. As seen at the Museum of the San Fernando Valley.]

My guess is that this menu dates from the 1970s, early enough for the idea of being anti-Establishment to seem timely, late enough for it to have become the stuff of a mild joke. How long has it been since I enjoyed an old-fashioned milkshake? Less than twenty-four hours. But it’s a rare thing. We are here to eat ice cream only occasionally.

The Museum of the San Fernando Valley, a small all-volunteer museum housed in an office suite, was a wonderful part of our trip to Los Angeles. Hats off to docent Jackie, who told us great stories of her life and of life in the Valley.

[The Oxford English Dictionary dates the Establishment to 1923, with the term taking on clear meaning in 1955: “By the ‘Establishment’ I do not mean only the centres of official power — though they are certainly part of it — but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.” Anti-Establishment dates to 1958.]

T-Ball Jotter sighting

[“Young voice.” From Shattered Glass (dir. Billy Ray, 2003). Click for larger handwriting.]

A journalist should be making notes during a telephone conversation, no? Document everything.

I’ve also noticed Parker T-Ball Jotters in Homicide and Populaire. I can’t help it.

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
A 1963 ad : Another 1963 ad : A 1964 ad : A 1971 ad : My life in five pens : Thomas Merton, T-Ball Jotter user

“What are we here for?”

Sonny Rollins:

“We got a short life, and what are we here for? To eat ice cream and have fun with girls? No, I think we’re here to try and improve ourselves, become better people, nicer people, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Related posts
“I’m one of the last guys left, as I’m constantly being told” : Rollins on golf : Rollins on music : Rollins on paying the rent : Rollins, J.D. Salinger, Robert Taylor : Sonny Rollins in Illinois

[Ice cream and girls: I wonder if Rollins had a certain president in mind.]

“The ſhrill Trumpe”

[Othello, act 3, scene 3.]

As seen in the Bodleian First Folio. When Elaine and I watched Orson Welles’s Othello last night, these words jumped out.

Judging books by their covers

The New York Times reports on people who, well, fetishize New York Review Books Classics. Yes, the covers do look great, they really do.

Orange Crate Art is a NYRB-friendly zone. The first NYRB Classic I read: William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley.