Philadelphia Solari

From NPR’s All Things Considered: “Fans of an Iconic Philly Rail Sign Are Rallying to Save It from Retirement.” The sign in question is a flip board, aka a split-flap display, aka a Solari board.

Related posts
Solari board : Solari e Tufte

Notebook sightings: The Racket

[Robert Mitchum as Captain Thomas McQuigg, William Talman as Officer Bob Johnson, Virginia Huston as Lucy Johnson. From The Racket (dir. John Cromwell, 1951). Click for larger notebooks.]

Good cops use pocket notebooks. And they don’t waste time posing so some camera jockey gets a better shot of the notebook. There’s a racket to be fought.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Reading, really fast

I learned yesterday that for some English majors, it’s now a point of pride to go really fast when reading aloud, with little or no regard for phrasing or intonation. Why is going fast a point of pride? Because so many students cannot read aloud with much fluency.

These fast readers are like touch typists of reading. But reading aloud isn’t typing.

A political thought

The last thing Democrats need to do is to turn the 2020 presidential election into a battle between oldsters. Such a battle will do little to spark voter interest and much to spark parody. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren: no.

What the Democratic Party needs is a candidate who offers a sharp contrast to Donald Trump not only in policy but in affect. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke: yes.

A Mongol sighting

[Robert Bice as a police dispatcher. From The Racket (dir. John Cromwell, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

It looks like — is it? Hard to tell. Hit Pause. Look closely. Yes, it’s a Mongol pencil. The ferrule is the giveaway: dark, shiny, dark. Click for a larger view and you, too, can be sure.

I rediscovered the Eberhard Faber Mongol, the pencil of my childhood, in the early 1990s, after I stopped smoking cigarettes and became an ever more dedicated stationery fiend. I like Mongols, on my desk or in the movies. And yes, I also noticed the cigarette in the dispatcher’s hand.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

Resolution 2019

[Reposted, with the year changed, from January 1, 2018.]

I’m thinking about resolution, as a frame of mind, as “determination; firmness or steadfastness of purpose; the possession of a resolute or unyielding cast of mind.”

Not “Drink more water,” though that’s probably always a good idea. Not “Binge more,” as heard on a T-Mobile commercial yesterday morning.

I’m determined to be resolute in 2019, to not yield to cultural or political despair, to maintain a sense of humor and irreverence as appropriate, to maintain a sense of reverence as appropriate, to speak up and out when the occasion calls for it, and to do what I can in my very limited sphere of influence to make a better world. How about you?

And with regard to American democracy, I’m thinking about another kind of resolution:

the subsiding or cessation of a pathological process, disease, symptom, etc.; spec . the termination of inflammation, esp. without suppuration or permanent damage to tissue.

See? Still a sense of humor and irreverence. Happy New Year.

[Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.]

A 2019 calendar

[Peanuts, January 1, 1972.]

Here is one last pitch for a free, ultra-dowdy calendar, three months to a page, made by me, available from my Dropbox. Print, staple, and navigate a year's worth of time. In Gill Sans Bold, licorice and cayenne (black and dark red), with a few holidays and one mystery birthday marked in pleasing colors. Works on bulletin boards, refrigerators, and other solid surfaces. Visible across a crowded or sparsely populated room. While supplies last!

A Robinson New Year’s Eve

I love this description of the Robinson family’s New Year’s Eve. “She” is Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother:

On New Year’s Eve, as a matter of tradition, she’d buy a special hors d’oeuvre basket, the kind that came filled with blocks of cheese, smoked oysters in a tin, and different kinds of salami. She’d invite my dad’s sister Francesca over to play board games. We’d order a pizza for dinner and then snack our way elegantly through the rest of the evening, my mom passing around trays of pigs in a blanket, fried shrimp, and a special cheese spread baked on Ritz crackers. As midnight drew closer, we’d each have a tiny glass of champagne.

Michelle Obama, Becoming (New York: Crown, 2018).

I thought about this passage (from a book I’ve just started) after reading a Gothamist report on people spending the day and night standing and waiting in Times Square while wearing Depends — or while not wearing Depends. Good luck with that. I vote for spending the night in a warm house with those you love.

New Year’s Eve 1918

New Year’s Eve in 1916 and 1917: pretty quiet in New York City. I would have imagined that the first New Year’s Eve to follow the end of the Great War was noisy. No:


[“Just Enough Noise to Wake Baby Year: Outdoor Celebration Pales by Comparison with Times Sq. on Armistice Night.” The New York Times, January 1, 1919.]

How to clear your place

Alert facilitator that you are done with your meal: “Go.” Wait for assistance.

Once free and standing, take plate from facilitator. Grasp plate in both hands. Make sure that facilitator has taken wastebasket out from under-sink cabinet. Walk toward wastebasket.

Hold plate high. High, high, high. All the way up. That’s it. All the way up. Yay!

Tip plate to drop food into wastebasket, or onto floor. Uh-oh!

Wait for assistance. A piece of bagel on floor? Pick up! Enjoy! Facilitator will place any other floor food in basket before returning basket to cabinet.

Push cabinet door shut. Yay! Good job! Wait for applause.

Smile.

[That’s how our granddaughter Talia, fourteen months old, does it. YMMV. Thanks to Rachel for reminding me about the bagel.]