A September 11 mural

The Braves of 9/11, a mural by Eduardo Kobra.

Found via Ephemeral New York.

Robert Frank (1924–2019)

The photographer Robert Frank has died at the age of ninety-four. The New York Times has an obituary.

I think of Frank’s The Americans (1959) as the photographic analogue of William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All (1923). “The pure products of America / go crazy — / mountain folk from Kentucky // or the ribbed north end of / Jersey.”

Bob and Ray’s House of Toast

[From A Night of Two Stars (1984).]

I remember the House of Toast from episodes of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. The Backstayges, Calvin Hoogavin, and Pop Beloved were operating a House of Toast. Toast, buttered on the far side or the near side, and shakes. What flavors? Just one. You’ll have to listen to find out.

Also from Bob and Ray
Mary Backstayge marigold seeds : “Puissance without hauteur”

A toast tip

From the manual accompanying our new toaster: “Do not place buttered breads in the toaster, as this could create a fire hazard.”

I daresay that’s not the only reason not to place buttered breads in the toaster.

Also from this manual
“Multiple shade options” : “Two equal halves”

A toast tip

The manual for our new toaster advises: “For your safety and continued enjoyment of this product, always read the instruction book carefully before using.” One tip from its pages: “Before toasting bagels, slice each bagel into two equal halves.”

Not three halves. So that’s how you get the bagel to fit.

Also from this manual
“Multiple shade options”

Wilbur Ross at work

This afternoon The New York Times reports that Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce,

threatened to fire top employees at NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk.

The Dorian–Alabama story captures so much of what’s wrong with this administration: contempt for truth, contempt for science, contempt for expertise, sycophancy at every level, the use of broad-point Sharpies as writing instruments, and a belief that the autocratic leader must always be proved right. The weather itself must bend to the will of Donald Trump.

Excuse me while I pause to clap fiercely for the leader. You clap too.

Hotel-room interviews

Inside Higher Ed reports that an academic tradition is fading.

I can imagine few other lines of work for which one interviews while sitting on the edge of a hotel-room bed.

Domestic comedy

“We should eat some lunch.”

“Yes, and.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[We had been talking about the rules of improv.]

No deal

One small sign of the degradation of political discourse these days: the media’s unquestioning adoption of the word “deal.” Granted, the word was in use before the current occupant of the White House moved in. I remember the Iran nuclear deal. And well before my time there was a New Deal.

But now all manner of things take on the identity of a “deal.” I am thinking of course of the prospect of a “deal” with the Taliban. Imagine — just try to imagine — talk of a “deal” with an Axis power all those years ago. Such language feels obscene.

Donald Trump’s fixation on making deals, great deals, betrays a mindset that has no room for the deep truth of what it means to be human. Because to be human is, finally, to lose. Every hand is a losing hand; every life, a losing proposition. I side with Ralph Ellison in these matters. In the words of the unnamed narrator of Invisible Man (1952):

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.

No deal to get around that.

A related post
“The fact of death, which is the only fact we have”

“Multiple shade options”

Our new toaster (Cuisinart) has “multiple shade options.” Or as plain-speaking people might say, it toasts light and dark. Like every other working toaster.