Apartments

Marška’s sister Joška has been snooping around, trying to find the money Marška’s employers have left with her.


Johannes Urzidil, “The Last Bell.” In The Last Bell. Translated from the German by David Burnett. (London: Pushkin Press, 2017.)

From the jacket flap:

Johannes Urzidil (1896–1970) was a German-Czech writer, poet, historian and journalist. Born in Prague, he was a member of the Prague Circle and a friend of Franz Kafka and Max Brod. He fled to England after the German occupation in 1939, and eventually settled in the United States. Best known during his lifetime for the collections The Lost Beloved and Prague Triptych, he won numerous awards for his writing, and even had an asteroid named after him.

I knew nothing about Johannes Urzidil before seeing this book on a table at Three Lives & Company. What swayed me: a page-ninety test and the name of the publisher. Pushkin Press has brought out Stefan Zweig’s novellas and short stories in English translation. Aside from this volume, Urzidil’s fiction is unavailable in English. I hope that more will appear.

Domestic comedy

“Where’d I put it?”

“What’re you looking for?”

“My mind — I think I’ve lost it.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

“No matches were found”

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave it to Mr. Barr to make the redacted report available as non-searchable PDF. But someone’s already made a searchable version. Browsing in a cursory way, I found pages 1–2, 8, 156–158, and 182 in Volume II of special interest, along with this scene of On the Waterfront pathos, as recorded by a witness, Volume II, page 63:

“This is terrible Jeff. It’s all because you recused. AG is supposed to be most important appointment. Kennedy appointed his brother. Obama appointed Holder. I appointed you and you recused yourself. You left me on an island. I can’t do anything.”

I believe the word the president was looking for is marooned.

I wonder what accounts for that little artifact in the bottom right corner of my screenshot. It’ll be in your copy of the report too. None genuine without this mark?

[On the Waterfront: “You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit.”]

Wipr

[Nothing to do with redactions.]

Wipr, by Giorgio Calderolla, is a macOS and iOS app that blocks ads in Safari:

Wipr blocks all ads, trackers, cryptocurrency miners, EU cookie and GDPR notices, and other annoyances, so you can focus on the content that matters to you. It works in Safari and all apps that use Safari to display web pages.

I’ve been happily using Wipr on my Mac and iPhone for several days. On my Mac, Wipr replaces the old reliable Safari extension uBlock Origin, which is no longer especially reliable. (Two problems: uBlock Origin doesn’t keep whitelisted pages whitelisted, and it doesn’t come back on after being temporarily disabled). Wipr works perfectly and unobtrusively, remembering settings for websites, and blocking even the video ads on the Washington Post crossword page. One shortcoming of Wipr in iOS: while it’s possible to reload a site without without content blockers, there’s no whitelisting. But Wipr’s extensive blocklist makes for a reasonable tradeoff. $1.99 for macOS or iOS.

Barr code

“For now the four hues are as closely guarded as the report’s contents” (Los Angeles Times, April 15).



[The proper color for the press conference: white, as in whitewash.]

Source sans attribution, attribution sans source

Our household has been hit with an improbable double whammy.

The first whammy: some years ago, my university’s student newspaper published a column about how to e-mail professors. The column was the work of a former student and borrowed without attribution from my post How to e-mail a professor. The column began with links to my post and to a couple of other items online. The column went on to present what purported to be the writer’s own considered advice, with three passages following, very closely, the phrasing of three passages in my post, with no indication of a source. The student writer thought I’d be happy to see his effort. Yikes.

I explained to the student and to the newspaper’s advisors in the journalism department why this column was a problem. I cited the responses of colleagues and friends who had read the student’s column. I quoted statements about plagiarism and paraphrase and attribution from the websites of prestigious college-journalism programs. As Schlitzie would say, “Y’see? Y’see?” I was told in response that one can’t copyright ideas. There’s no arguing with Messrs. Dunning and Kruger.

The second whammy: last week, the university’s student newspaper has published a review of Elaine’s recent recital. One problem: the writer included comments from imaginary audience members. A second problem: the writer included comments purported to be from Elaine (identified as a former English professor), about the difficulty of being a woman in “the music industry.” (The music industry! Lordy.) A third problem: the writer did not attend the recital. Why try to build a résumé with such inane fabulation? It’s beyond me.

To its credit, the paper has removed the review from its website. The paper gets just one or two points partial credit for issuing (in print only) an oddly worded correction. The correction does not acknowledge that the audience members were imaginary, that Elaine never spoke to the writer, and that the writer did not attend the recital. The correction says instead that the names of the audience members quoted cannot be verified and that Elaine says that she did not say the words attributed to her. Thus the paper leaves the truth of the article in the eye of the beholder.

The first whammy was a matter of source sans attribution. The second, attribution sans source. Each absurd. Together, absurder.

Nancy interstice

[Nancy, April 17, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Snooty nameless girl from the magnet school has reappeared: “Well, well — what a coincidence. Fancy running into Esther’s friend here.”

Olivia Jaimes is rocking the interstice.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[I owe my acquaintance with interstice to the poetry of Ted Berrigan. “Interstices” is a one-word poem in In the Early Morning Rain (1970) and the title of a poem in A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988). I’ve had occasion to use interstice only in relation to comic strips.]

Brilliant Mac corners

From The Sweet Setup, a guide to using Hot Corners in macOS. I remember being vaguely aware of Hot Corners when I began using a Mac in 2007. I’d long forgotten about them. Very useful for accessing the desktop or finding one window beneath another. Many other uses too.

[Post title with apologies to Thelonious Monk.]

“Whatever people did then”

At the Home for Mentally Handicapped Adults, once known as “the Misses Weir’s house”:


Alice Munro, “Circle of Prayer.” In The Progress of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

Also from Alice Munro
“Rusted seams” : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling” : “A radiance behind it” : Opinions : At the Manor : “Noisy and shiny” : “The evening lunch” : “Mr. X and Mr. B” : “Emptiness, rumor, and absurdity”

Notre-Dame

[Almon C. Whiting (1878-1962). Notre Dame, Paris. “Photograph of a painting signed ‘Whiting, Paris, ’97.’” Between 1897 and 1912. From the Library of Congress.]

I found many images more beautiful — lithographs and photographs — but this image, a photographic negative of a painting, seemed more solemn and appropriate. The cornerstone of Notre-Dame de Paris was laid in 1163.