Strunk and Kondo

[Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019). Click for a larger, messier view.]

Look: it’s a copy of the paperback third edition of The Elements of Style, front and nearly center. I swear, even at a distance that book is as instantly recognizable as, say, T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems and Plays, or a pack of Luckies.

This fleeting image is from the brief introduction to the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Kondo is tapping the books to wake them up. No, really. I haven’t seen the episode with these books yet, but I will already guess that many of them did not survive long past the exterminating angel’s wakeup call.

Elaine and I have watched just two episodes of this series, which I would describe as Amélie meets Hoarders. In truth, the problems with stuff in the episodes we’ve seen are milder than the problems of hoarders. But the problems are still severe enough to make me think that our household is pretty well organized by comparison. (Phew.) Then again, we have been folding for some time now, under the Kondo spell.

Related posts
“Hands off my piles” : Marie Kondo and poker : Salzberg’s Theory of Pizza : Tidy? : The unmysterious Art of Discarding : All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)

“A North-west passage to the intellectual world”

Walter Shandy has been at work on the Tristrapædia, a system for the education of his son. He explains to Parson Yorick:



Auxiliary verbs? Really? Yes, indeed. They “set the soul a going by herself upon the materials as they are brought to her,” “to open new tracks of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions”:


Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 5 (1762).

And so on.

James Aiken Work’s notes for the 1940 Odyssey Press edition of the novel point out that Sterne is parodying Matteo Pellgrini (d. 1652), who developed a system of predication that enabled its student to write page after page on any subject.

Also from Sterne
Letters for all occasions : Yorick, distracted : Yorick, translating : Yorick, soulful : Digressions : Uncle Toby and the fly : Heat and knowledge

Harvest Refill Leads

[5″ × 3¼″. Found in December at an antiques mall. Click for a larger view.]

There’s so much to like about this display card. First, that it is a display card — in other words, that pencil leads were deemed important enough to be given this treatment. (My guess is that the cards stood upright in a holder on a store shelf.) I like the contrast between the sharp serifs and the italic script. I like the repetition: 5H, 5H, and the five appearances of leads. (The fifth leads, hidden from view, is on the cardboard tube.) I like 5H, which suggests that any store that sold these leads sold a great range of replacement leads. (“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re all out of 6H right now. I can offer you something in a 5H, if that would be satisfactory.”) And I like the lines above and below Harvest, four above, four below.

I’d never heard of Harvest Refill Leads, a product of the venerable Musgrave Pencil Company. (The manufacturer’s name appears on the tube.) The Internets return nothing for harvest leads, with or without the word refill. But Musgrave still manufactures a Harvest pencil (wood-cased, not mechanical). From the company’s website: “It’s rumored that our great-grandmother named this premium line ‘Harvest’ after the yellow harvest moon.” Shine on, Harvest pencil!

*

January 29: Henry Hulan, whose grandfather started the Musgrave Pencil Company in 1916, tells me that Musgrave sold refill leads in the 1930s and ’40s. But the company has never made mechanical pencils, only wood-cased ones. I am following Henry’s lead (no pun intended) in using the word wood-cased instead of wood.

This post is the twentieth in a very occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real.

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
C. & E.I. pencil : Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Esterbrook erasers : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : A mystery supply : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule

Ink, nibs, and Zip-a-Tone

[Zippy, January 28, 2019.]

In the first panel, Griffy explains: “A chunk of vintage Zip-a-Tone just landed in my hands from 1974!!” He then laments: “One by one, all th’ art supplies of my youth are disappearing!” As Dante Gabriel Rossetti, translating François Villon, asked, “Where are th’ art supplies of yester-year?”

Zip-a-Tone was a brand of screentone, used, Wikipedia explains, “as an alternative to hatching.” Here’s a Zip-a-Tone swatch book. And here’s a blog post with some examples of Zip-a-Tone in comics.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Zip-a-Tone? Zip-A-Tone? It’s a lowercase a on the swatch book.]

Good timing

Out shopping — back home — flip on the news — and the first words I hear, broadcast live from Oakland, California, are “I’m running.” Good timing, Senator Kamala Harris!

Michel Legrand (1932–2019)

[“You Must Believe in Spring.” Music by Michel Legrand, written for The Young Girls of Rochefort (dir. Jacques Demy, 1967). Frank Morgan, alto. Hank Jones, piano. From Morgan’s album You Must Believe in Spring (Antilles, 1992).]

The pianist and composer Michel Legrand has died at the age of eighty-six. His music, especially his scores for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, has brought much joy to our household.

What better place to be

Driving home from a concert on a rural route partly covered in ice and snow, what better place to be than behind a snow plow? We toodled along behind one for about fifteen miles, going well under thirty, and watched the salt spray out and the blade come down when needed. Sparks everywhere, and safety.

When the plow turned off, I flashed the headlights twice to say thank you. I hope that means thank you.

And then, not far ahead, a second plow. We followed that one for about six miles until it pulled over to make a U-turn. This time I waved.

Elaine just reminded me about the second plow. I’m too tired to remember more than one plow per post.

[About the concert: Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite FTW!]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I just remembered that Brad Wilber co-constructed the puzzle that soured me on The New York Times crossword. But I like his puzzles, and I liked today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper. Not especially tricky, but challenging enough to be a challenge.

Three clues that I especially liked: 20-Across, six letters, “Refuge for daytime sleepers.” 64-Across, four letters, “Smooth finish.” 9-Down, five letters, “Number lines.” And one clue that had me hung up for a long time in the puzzle’s center: 36-Across, nine letters, “Deadlocked situation.” STALEMATE? No.

And no spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

NPR, sheesh

On All Things Considered tonight: “So did we learn anything today, in your view, that tightens the web around the president himself?”

No, nooses tighten. Webs ensnare. Plots thicken. Clichés sometimes trip up those who rely upon them.

Related reading
All OCA metaphor and sheesh posts (Pinboard)

How to improve writing (no. 79)

Fresca has posted photographs of signs, some of which she thinks need rewriting. And she mentioned my posts about how to improve writing. So here goes:

A sign in a YMCA:

We serve relentlessly with our community until all can thrive in each stage of life.

That’s an ugly sentence, the kind of sentence that likely results from the work of a committee. I can imagine the suggestions, one by one: “Work? How about We serve relentlessly ?” But relentlessly is a tad aggressive, and community makes an awkward rhyme. And does one serve with a community, or does one serve a community? Thrive makes me think of plants, or infants in distress. And if all can thrive, do they thrive? And if they can or do, would the work of the Y stop? Is there an end to this relentless service? Last night I flinched at “each stage of life,” which makes me think of a Y that offers hospice care. And I cringed some more this morning when I heard Sarah Huckabee Sanders tell CNN that our president cares about Americans at all stages of life. Yes, really.

A possible revision:

We work hard to help everyone in our community live a better life.

Why does the revision sound better? Not because it is markedly shorter: the revised sentence is just two words shorter than the original. But look: there are fewer prepositional phrases in the revision. Eight of the fifteen words in the original sentence form prepositional phrases. That’s why the sentence sounds so ponderous. If my revised sentence sounds trite, it may be because so many goods and services promise to improve our lives. But I think a Y should be able to make that promise.

A second piece of signage, from a bathroom stall in an art museum:

Please be considerate

If you administer medication by syringe, please remove the syringe from our premises in a protective container. When placed in bathroom garbage, used syringes can cause puncture wounds.

Thank you.

Fresca wonders if this sign is an attempt at gentility. I think so: medication and syringe point in that direction, and from our premises is, for me, the clincher. I’ll mention that I’ve seen this sort of sign just once, in a bookstore whose customers were wont to shoot up in the bathroom. At least that was according to an employee, who may have been putting me on. (But if so, why the sign?)

A possible revision:

Be safe

Used needles are dangerous. If you use a needle here, take it with you in a protective container and dispose of it safely.

Thank you.

Used needles can cause puncture wounds wherever they might be left, and they can cause far worse than puncture wounds. No need to be genteel in asking people to take their needles with them. Safe is a much wiser word than considerate here.

In a New York (City) state of mind, I’d suggest

Don’t even THINK of leaving your needles here.

*

2:35 p.m.: “Eight of the fifteen words in the original sentence form prepositional phrases”: and eight of the twelve words in this sentence form prepositional phrases. Why doesn’t this sentence sound clunky?

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

[This post is no. 79 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]