The Gateway

A six-part podcast series from Gizmodo: The Gateway, about Teal Swan, self-described “spiritual catalyst.” All episodes are now available, and they make for compelling listening, though there’s less of a narrative arc than the mysterious music and audio effects might lead you to expect. And Jennings Brown, the podcast’s creator, has an annoying habit of left dislocation that I was unable to unnotice.

I have two questions and no answers: Why is there no Wikipedia article about Teal Swan? And why does Google include in its capsule biography claims from Swan herself? This sentence, for instance, which appears in descriptions accompanying some of her YouTube videos:

Teal Swan was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a range of extrasensory abilities, including clairvoyance, clairsentience, and clairaudience.

Thanks a lot, Google.

[About left dislocation: I think of scripted podcast reportage as writing, not speech. Left dislocation sounds conspicuously informal there.]

The Fourth

[“Hungarian refugee Irene Csillag pledging allegiance to new flag on first day in American school.” Photograph by Carl Mydans. Indianapolis, Indiana. December 1956. From the Life Photo Archive. This photograph appeared in a Life story, “They Pour In . . . And Family Shows Refugees Can Fit In” (January 7, 1957). The principal at the Csillag children’s school: “They’re not the first to come here, strangers to the country and to English, and soon be at home.”]

I’ve had a Jasper Johns work, Flag on Orange, ready for months. But on this Fourth of July, I’m reposting a photograph that I posted in 2016. Let’s learn from our American past.

“The Immigrants”

A new recording from Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks: “The Immigrants.” The song is by the calypsonian David Rudder. Background at NPR. Proceeds from downloads and streaming go to the Central American Resource Center of California.

Five questions

The Washington Post asks “the five hardest questions in pop music.” I am happy to provide answers:

1. The question stacks the deck, but yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. With open ears.
5. Yes and no.

“First find out what you are capable of”

Studying at Brigham Young University, Tara Westover is trying to figure out how she “could be a woman and yet be drawn to unwomanly things” like the study of history and politics. She goes to talk to Paul Kerry, her history professor, and blurts out that she arrived at Brigham Young having never heard of the Holocaust. Her parents didn’t believe in public education. Kerry suggests that Westover stretch herself and “see what happens.” He suggests applying to a study-abroad program at Cambridge. If she’s accepted, the program may give her an idea of her ability. She thinks it over:

I walked to my apartment wondering what to make of the conversation. I’d wanted moral advice, someone to reconcile my calling as a wife and mother with the call I heard of something else. But he’d put that aside. He’d seemed to say, “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”

Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2018).

“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are”: I love that. As Westover will later write: “a life is not a thing unalterable.”

Educated is a great story about the ways in which education can open up a world beyond one’s upbringing. As Elaine suggests, the book would be excellent choice for “one book, one campus” purposes. But I doubt that many schools would dare to make Educated required reading. The book raises too many difficult questions about responsibilities to oneself and to one’s family. For Westover, there’s a price to becoming educated, and it’s not tuition and fees.

Coffee or die

In the news: “Drinking coffee is associated with a lower risk of early death — virtually regardless of how much you drink and whether or not it’s caffeinated, concludes a paper published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.”

Related reading
All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)

Backblaze

I understand the name Backblaze, I think: it’s a backup service that’s meant to be blazingly fast. Or it’s something like a backfire, a protective measure. Still, I’m not crazy about the sight of flames with an app meant to protect data. But I’m using and can recommend using Backblaze, Wirecutter’s choice for best online backup service. Wirecutter’s recommendation — not mine — is the one that should carry weight.

I’ve used Mozy forever, or at least for the past fourteen or sixteen years, so switching was a difficult decision. Did I want to back up everything from scratch? No. But I switched anyway, because of Mozy’s high cost and disappointing customer service. Mozy charges $5.99 a month for 50GB of storage, and $9.99 a month for 125GB, with a $2 a month charge for every additional 20GB. Backblaze: $50 a year for unlimited backup. $119.88 v. $50: that’s an easy choice. And here is a recent example of Mozy’s customer service. In sharp contrast: when I had a couple of questions about how Backblaze manages large files, I filed a support request and had a reply within a day.

If you’d like to try Backblaze, here’s a link that will get you and me a free month each. One suggestion: look carefully at what Backblaze is backing up. You don’t really want to back up your Dropbox folder, do you?

[What’s the deal with prices ending in “.99”? A Mozy joke, like “reticulating splines”?]

An Almodóvar Jotter

[Matador (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1986. Click for a much larger view.]

The police commissioner (Eusebio Poncela) holds a Parker T-Ball Jotter. I’ve also noticed Parker T-Ball Jotters in Homicide, Populaire, and Shattered Glass.

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is my favorite ballpoint pen. Stop me before I notice again!

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

Como dice Borges

Yes, as The New Republic says, Jorge Luis Borges hated soccer and its fan culture. But did Borges say or write these words?

El nacionalismo sólo permite afirmaciones y, toda doctrina que descarte la duda, la negación, es una forma de fanatismo y estupidez.

[Nationalism only allows for affirmations, and every doctrine that discards doubt, negation, is a form of fanaticism and stupidity.]

The New Republic piece on Borges and soccer includes the sentence in English, with a link to a source with the Spanish sentence. But TNR’s source gives no source for Borges’s words. Here’s a page that cites a 1994 issue of the periodical Tendencias. But look at what’s there:

[Google Books shows this periodical only in snippet view. But some searching and pasting makes the passage available.]

“Como dice (Jorge Luis) Borges”: as Borges says, followed by a statement not enclosed in quotation marks, and slightly different from the above: “En el nacionalismo sólo se permiten afirmaciones, y toda doctrina que descarte la duda, la negación, es una forma de fanatismo y de estupidez.” My translation: “As Borges says, in nationalism only affirmations are allowed, and any doctrine that discards doubt, negation, is a form of fanaticism and stupidity.”

And notice the guillemet (») at the end? Striking as this statement about nationalism may be, it’s a paraphrase of Borges’s attitude, not something Borges said or wrote. The more closely I look at the sentence, the more I suspect that perhaps only the first main clause is to be attributed to Borges: “As Borges says,” &c., and [let me add that] “any doctrine,” &c.

I finally found the source for this statement about nationalism by searching for “Quiero ser una persona internacional” [I want to be an international person]. The source is a 1994 interview with Mario Vargas Llosa. Here it is, in Spanish and in Google Translate’s English. The source for what Borges is said to have said is something I’d still like to discover.

More words for our times from this interview: “El nacionalismo es la negación de lo extranjero, y eso me parece una fuente de violencia.” [Nationalism is the negation of the foreign, and that seems to me a source of violence.]

Related reading
All OCA Borges posts (Pinboard)

[Nacionalismo, even in a paraphrase, seems to mean more than nationalism: in Borges: A Life (2004), Edward Williamson contrasts nacionalismo (“right-wing nationalism”) with Borges’s criollismo.]

Zippy Bumstead

[Zippy, July 1, 2018.]

Zippy as Dagwood Bumstead, Griffy as Mary Worth. Or is it Dagwood as Zippy, Mary as Griffy?

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)