Flip-flop

Aaron Blake, writing in The Washington Post about an impending executive order to end the practice of separating parents and children at the U.S.–Mexico border:

Rarely has the White House so tacitly and unmistakably admitted to overplaying its hand. And rarely has it so blatantly copped to its own dishonesty about its actions. [Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen, in particular, has a lot of explaining to do. But this whole thing is an extremely ugly chapter. And it makes clear that, from Day One, this was a political gambit to force an immigration bill through. It didn't work.

“The guts wobble and lurch”

Franz Biberkopf at lunch: “he slices and squashes and bolts and snuffles and gulps and swallows.” And then the stomach gets to work:


Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. 1929. Trans. Michael Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).

Compare the “Lestrygonians” episode of Ulysses. As Mary Roach observes (without reference to Döblin or Joyce), “you too are an organism, a chewing, digesting sack of guts.”

Related reading
All OCA Döblin posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

A “government handout video" John Shimkus, now with a position, or an evasion, really.

History in P.S. 131

“It began with the discovery of a trove of historic documents long forgotten in the back recesses of an art cupboard”: Susan De Vries writes about how students at P.S. 131 in Brooklyn have been exploring their school’s past (Brownstoner). Represent!

It’s startling to see a class photograph from 1909: my P.S. 131 first- and third-grade class photographs are eerily similar. The desks are not the same ones (different metalwork), but they still share in that now-dated Platonic form of “desk.”

Here’s more on what was in the cupboard: Borough Park’s P.S. 131, a trove of school history (Brooklyn Public Library). But for residents and ex-residents, it’s usually Boro.

Related posts
P.S. 131, 44th Street, Brooklyn (With photos of the school)
P.S. 131 on TV (With a trip back to the school)
Some have gone and some remain (With a photo of the fence)

P.S. 131 class photographs
1962–1963 1963–1964 1964–1965 1965–1966 1966–1967

[If a Platonic form becomes dated, was it ever really a Platonic form?]

Recently updated

A “government handout video" John Shimkus, still missing in action.

A WWII pilot’s pencil

On the original Antiques Roadshow, an RAF pilot’s pencil, hiding a map and compass. Derwent makes a replica.

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All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

“They burnt me, man”

Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. 1929. Trans. Michael Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).

Related reading
All OCA Döblin posts (Pinboard)

A “government handout video”

David Begnaud is a CBS News correspondent:

BREAKING: Border Patrol @CBP just gave us this video of the detention facility we toured yesterday in McAllen, Texas. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, or interview anyone. To be clear: this is government handout video. pic.twitter.com/Zjy80qIZFZ

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 18, 2018

These images make my heart break. What kind of country are we living in?

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), is missing in action on this matter. When I called his Washington office on Saturday, an aide told me that he’s not aware of Shimkus having any position on the separation of parents and children at the U.S.–Mexico border. To remain silent is to be complicit.

*

9:00 a.m.: I called again. No, the aide hasn’t talked to him about this issue, no position that she knows of, he’s not in the office today.

*

3:57 p.m.: I called again. Answering machine. “Mailbox full.”

*

June 19, 10:16 a.m.: No, the aide still hasn’t spoken to him about this issue. But you must be getting a lot of calls? Yes, that’s why it will take time to get back to people. Truth and logic, defenestrated.

*

3:14 p.m.: Finally a position, or an evasion, really: the separation of parents and children is an “unfortunate result” of a “broken immigration system.” An aide read a short statement over the telephone. I jotted down those phrases. Legislation is pending for later this week in the House. Would Representative Shimkus vote for a narrowly focused bill that prohibits this practice without attaching other provisions? Legislation is pending for later this week in the House.

Calling a policy an “unfortunate consequence,” supporting what I presume will be a bill that puts billions of dollars toward a wall in exchange for ending this practice: you’re a real profile in courage, John Shimkus.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

Fifty blog-description lines

I’ll quote from a 2014 post:

The first words of Van Dyke Parks’s song “Orange Crate Art” — “Orange crate art was a place to start” — long appeared on this blog as what Blogger calls a blog description line. In May 2010, I found myself unexpectedly caffeine-free and made a new line, keeping the quotation marks that had surrounded Van Dyke’s words. At some point I returned to being caffeinated, mildly so. And I kept changing the line (and saving to a text file), always choosing some word or words or element of punctuation from a post then on the front page. These lines now look like bits of found language, detached from contexts, amusing, banal, evocative, opaque. I like that.

Here are the latest fifty lines, still mildly caffeinated:

“My, that coffee smells good”
“Now is the time”
“I’ll take the Buick”
“We must be better than this”
“Unrestored”
“All by osmosis”
“It’s still Mueller Time”
“Proofread carfully”
“Early-twenty-first-century”
“We’re excited you’re here!”
“Don’t argue”
“Dig the goners”
“Loaded high and to the brim”
“A stranger to all the passers-by”
“Standard equipment”
“Fluke life”
“Where’s the pen and ink and good paper”
“‘Telegram!’”
“‘I flossed!’”
“Quilted steel”
“Evidence-based”
“Earl Grey, or Irish Breakfast?”
“‘Buddy, the wind is blowing’”
“Candy and snacks”
“A cheerful companion”
“Digitized”
“Enough to build a house”
“Mark the music”
“Many a tame sentence”
“‘Till spring?’”
“That was . . . that”
“Didn’t clap”
“Art, check. Sardines, check.”
“Ib”
“Does your person have facial hair OR glasses?”
“Hints, balloons, a line, the other shoe”
“Sound of thinking”
“Small rooms with doors”
“Start your sharpeners”
“Say, why not write this down”
“‘The inexorable sadness of pencils’? Phooey.”
“Unreasonable to me”
“Not employed in formal writing”
“I suspicioned you weren’t.”
“ICYMI”
“Notions and Sundries”
“Tangy”
“Every letter of every page”
“Always wonder”
“Green type”

Collect them all!
Two hundred blog-description lines : Fifty more : And fifty more : And yet another fifty

[Yes, I think there should be a hyphen in blog description line.]

NPR, sheesh

From a story about wildfires in the American southwest: “visitors tip well to hear old-timey Western tunes like ‘The Entertainer.’”

I suspect that the reporter confused Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). Butch Cassidy was the western. Marvin Hamlisch adapted Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” for The Sting. But even if Joplin’s composition had been part of Butch Cassidy, that wouldn’t make it a “Western” tune. No more than Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” is a “Western” tune. Category mistake.

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All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)