Cachou Lajaunie

[Diameter: 1 13/16″.]

I bought this tiny tin of tiny candies years ago at a World Market. For the design, of course. The flavor of Cachou Lajaunie, as I discovered, is a combination of licorice and mint. Kinda ghastly — and I say that as a fan of that now-defunct old favorite Sen-Sen. But these cachous, created by Léon Lajaunie, a pharmacist, have a following. And a famously short television commercial.

Related reading
Cachou Lajaunie (Wikipedia, in French)
Cachou Lajaunie (In English, via Google Translate)

Balzac: courtesans and grammar

Célestin Crevel pays tribute to the courtesan Valérie Marneffe:


Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette, trans. Kathleen Raine (New York: Modern Library, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Balzac posts (Pinboard)

How to register to vote

The New York Times covers it, state by state.

In Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas, today is the last day to register to vote in November elections. In Nevada, today is the last day to register by mail. In Missouri, tomorrow is the last day to register, period.

As the ACLU says, vote like your rights depend on it.

[There are complications and exceptions with registration procedures that I’m skipping here.]

Last Seen

A podcast series from WBUR and The Boston Globe: Last Seen, an examination of the still-unsolved theft of thirteen works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

I visited the Gardner Museum many times when I lived in Boston and have visited at least once since the 1990 theft. Visiting post-theft felt immensely sad and unsettling — almost like stepping into a murder scene. The empty frames where paintings once hung are reminders that a terrible crime against culture took place in this museum.

Hard-boiled Balzac

For a moment, I could have been reading Raymond Chandler:


Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette, trans. Kathleen Raine (New York: Modern Library, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Balzac posts (Pinboard)

Balzac: books and flowers

Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette, trans. Kathleen Raine (New York: Modern Library, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Balzac posts (Pinboard)

Ellington on the air, 1932

From Newark’s WBGO-FM: an eight-minute fragment from a 1932 live radio broadcast of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. It’s the earliest known recording of the Ellington band on the air, with surprisingly good sound and several musical surprises. (Via Mosaic Records.)

Hamiet Bluiett (1940–2018)

The baritone saxophonist and clarinetist and composer Hamiet Bluiett has died at the age of seventy-eight. The New York Times has an obituary. NPR has a sampler of his music.

I’ve listened to Bluiett on LPs and CDs for many years. And I was fortunate to hear him, just once, in person, in 2008, playing with Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio. I am glad that I had the chance to tell him how much his music meant to me. Still does.

*

8:01 p.m.: Still on YouTube: a 1989 performance by the World Saxophone Quartet (Julius Hemphill, David Murray, Oliver Lake, Bluiett) from Night Music, hosted by David Sanborn (who once studied with Hemphill). Also still there, a later WSQ lineup (James Carter, Greg Osby, Oliver Lake, Bluiett) blowing down a gymnasium full of schoolkids in Lovejoy, Illinois: 1, 2, 3, 4.

How to improve writing (no. 77)

A Washington Post headline, now online:

Kavanaugh arrives wounded, as is the Supreme Court’s image

The verb that should follow is is does, not is: Kavanaugh arrives, as does, &c. But the Supreme Court isn’t arriving. A sentence that might make the problem clearer: The guitarist Otis Rush played left-handed, as was Albert King.

If the Post isn’t revising, I am. Possible improvements:

Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court, both now wounded

A wounded justice joins a wounded Supreme Court

A wounded justice — and a wounded Court

I think it goes without saying that the wounds are metaphorical: there’s no need to make reference to the Supreme Court’s “image.” Another possible revision — oh, forget it, there’s no way to make this news better.

11:00 p.m.: The Post headline has changed: “Bitter partisan battle wounded Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court he’s joined.”

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 77 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

“The repeated refrains of nature”

I came across this passage by chance. From Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder (1965):

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

“Never alone or weary of life”: someone with, say, severe depression might want to disagree. But nature as a source of renewal? I’m with Carson. Making a garden or taking the same walk every day are two ways to develop a greater awareness of “the repeated refrains of nature.”