Nick Walusko (1960–2019)

Nick Walusko, aka Nicky Wonder, cofounder of the Wondermints and longtime guitarist with Brian Wilson, has died at the age of fifty-nine. Too soon. Too soon. Rolling Stone has a brief obituary.

I was fortunate to see Nicky Wonder with Brian Wilson in 1999 (the Pet Sounds tour) and 2004 (the Smile tour). The music of the spheres, or at least some of it. Here’s Wonder doing the guitar solo on “Pet Sounds.” And it’s Wonder, by the way, who, on “Heroes and Villains,” shouts “You’re under arrest!”

New Proust

Some Marcel Proust news in The Guardian:

Nine lost stories by Marcel Proust, which the revered French author is believed to have kept private because of their “audacity,” are due to be published for the first time this autumn.

Touching on themes of homosexuality, the stories were written by Proust during the 1890s, when he was in his 20s and putting together the collection of poems and short stories that would become Plaisirs et les jours [Pleasures and Days]. He decided not to include them.

The title of the forthcoming volume: Le Mystérieux Correspondant. A translation, I trust, will arrive.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[“Audacity” is a characterization offered by the volume’s editor.]

e-Salinger

Some J.D. Salinger news in The New York Times:

This week, in the first step of a broader revival that could reshape the world’s understanding of Salinger and his writing, Little, Brown is publishing digital editions of his four books, making him perhaps the last 20th-century literary icon to surrender to the digital revolution.

Related reading
All OCA Salinger posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: flea-bane

Elaine and I went on a walk not long ago, following the paths through a ten-acre wildflower-covered prairie (“Savanna,” someone corrected) on the property of friends who live out in the country. Way out in the country. Our guide would pause every so often to point to and talk about a plant or tree or some change in the natural world. Many of the people on this walk are as knowledgeable as our guide is: they know the Latin and common names of countless species. I know a small number of flowers, mostly from literature — gentians, daffodils, sunflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed Susans. I didn’t see any daffodils on our walk. I did see lots of Queen Anne’s lace. It occurred to me at one point that I must resemble a person for whom most of the paintings in a museum register only as “art” and “more art”: I saw mostly “flowers,” and “more flowers.” But I still found this walk through nature a beautiful, restorative experience. And because I asked about one tiny flower I’ve seen many times in town, I brought back a word: flea-bane. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as

a name given to various plants: esp.

a. A book-name for the genus Inula (or Pulicaria), esp. Inula dysenterica and I. Pulicaria.

b. A book-name for the genus Erigeron, esp. E. acre (called also blue fleabane).

c. Applied to Plantago Psyllium (from the appearance of the seed).

The dictionary’s first citation for flea-bane is from William Turner’s Names of Herbes (1548): “Coniza maye be called in englishe Flebayne.” Yes, Conyza is yet another (Latin) name for flea-bane. And yes, Inula dysenterica was used to treat dysentery.

Out on the prairie, I was already wondering if flea-bane is trouble for fleas. And indeed, the dictionary’s second citation confirms it. From Thomas Hill’s Arte Gardening (1593): “The Gnats also be . . . chased away with the decoction of the herbe named Flebane, sprinckled on the beds.” And here’s a page of botanical lore that describes flea-bane being burned to repel fleas and other insects. Flea-bane, bane of fleas!

Back in the OED, the word flea has since 700 signified “a small wingless insect (or genus of insects, Pulex, the common flea being P. irritans), well known for its biting propensities and its agility in leaping; it feeds on the blood of man and of some other animals.” From Geoffrey Chaucer, The Manciple’s Prologue (c. 1386): “Hast thou had fleen al night or artow dronke?”

And sometime before 800, bane signified “a slayer or murderer; one who causes the death or destruction of another.” By 1398 the word meant “poison” and was joined to other words to name poisonous plants or substances. For instance, wolf’s bane or wolfbane. (As in vampire movies, right?)

I did not get a photograph of the prairie’s flea-bane: I was too busy seeing. But here’s a particularly good photograph of some other flea-bane, via Wikipedia.

And here, to provide a stately ending to this post, is an observation Elaine and I just encountered in a little anthology of writing about walking. From Richard Jeffries, Nature Near London (1905): “It is not only what you actually see along the path, but what you remember to have seen, that gives it its beauty.” I remember flea-bane.

See also Verlyn Klinkenborg’s account of “deep taxonomic yearning.” And thanks to Stefan Hagemann for reminding me of the Klinkenborg passage.

Further reading
Savanna vs. prairie

Imaginary Bedminster

It’s been many hours without a presidential tweet. I shall imagine the scene at Bedminster after yesterday’s NYT-North Korea-Maher-China-Clinton-Epstein-conspiracy-Biden-Mooch frenzy. A doctor (straight from central casting) turns to the First Lady:

“I’ve given him something that will help him sleep.”

The doctor picks up the presidential phone, walks to the far end of the bedroom, removes a decorative book or two from a shelf, places the phone in the gap, and returns the books to their places.

“He’ll never find it there.”

Klean Kanteens and denture tablets

We stood in the store looking at our phones, trying to figure out how to get the coffee stains out of our Klean Kanteens. Elaine had tried the official vinegar-and-baking-soda with no luck. I thought of denture tablets.

We bought three-minute store-brand tablets. Two tablets per Kanteen, warm water, an hour-long soak, and the stains were gone.

There is, of course, a body of lore concerning household uses for denture tablets. This use is the one I thought of and the one I can vouch for.

Today’s Nancy

The pareidolic face in today’s Nancy is thoroughly in the Bushmiller tradition. Nancy remains in good hands with Olivia Jaimes.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Andrew Bell Lewis, was, for me, an adventure in scanning the grid, over and over, for something, anything, that might yield an answer, It was a very difficult puzzle, forty minutes of difficulty. It was the Jillian Michaels workout of Saturday Stumpers.

I began with 1-A, nine letters, “Flash stash.” But no. I-D, four letters, “Britannic forebear,” meant that my clever answer couldn’t be right. Apt clues: 34-A, three letters, “Evince antsiness.” Yes. 39-D, “End up off.” Yes. I did.

Three clue and answer pairs I especially liked: 8-D, five letters, “Verbal slip cover.” 12-D, ten letters, “Exceed what’s deemed to be possible.” And 13-D, ten letters, “Unrealistic.” 12-D and 13-D are worth the price of admission.

A clue that taught me something: 61-A, nine letters, “Traffic flow facilitator.” Does everybody but me know that already?

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Bob Wilber (1928–2019)

Bob Wilber, clarinetist and saxophonist — soprano saxophonist par excellence — has died at the age of ninety-one. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here are just two samples of Wilber’s art: “Nagasaki” (Harry Warren–Mort Dixon) and “Some of These Days” (Shelton Brooks), both recorded in 1976 with Soprano Summit: Bob Wilber and Kenny Davern, soprano saxes; Marty Grosz, guitar; George Duvivier, bass; Fred Stoll, drums. I just looked at my LP, thinking that the liner notes might tell me who’s doing what, but no dice. Fair to say though that the more Bechet-like horn is Wilber’s. If “Bechet-like” means nothing to you, no matter: just listen for instant joy.

“It was an intelligent country”

Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

The country is “Kakania,” a name of Musil’s devising. From the novel: “On paper it was called the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but in conversation it was called Austria.” “Everything and every person in it . . . bore the label of kaiserlich-königlich (Imperial-Royal) or kaiserlich und königlich (Imperial and Royal), abbreviated as “k.k.” or “k.&k.” Yes, suggesting kaka.

Related reading
All OCA Musil posts (Pinboard)