Buddy Glass says that his brother Seymour loved horseplay from younger siblings. And:
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction (1963).
Related reading
All OCA Salinger posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, December 5, 2019
“So nice and yellow! ”
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Johnson on bribery
In today’s impeachment hearing, Jonathan Turley cited definitions of high, crime, and misdemeanor from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. Pamela S. Karlan then added the definition of the word Turley left out — bribery, which appears in the 1792 edition of the Dictionary. No, she doesn’t carry that dictionary around with her, though it would be pretty cool if she did: she said that she was using an online edition. Perhaps this one?
The word bribery does not appear in the 1755 edition of the Dictionary. The definition from the 1785 edition: “A reward given to pervert the judgment, or corrupt the conduct.”
There may have been more dictionary action in today’s hearing — I don’t know, because I’ve stopped watching.
“He was a chiropodist”
I’ll set the stage, or the cab. It’s June 4, 1942. Seymour Glass has failed to show for his wedding to Muriel Fedder. In the aftermath, Seymour’s brother Buddy (the only Glass in attendance) finds himself in a cab with the Matron of Honor and her husband, Helen Silsburn (a Fedder family friend), and Muriel’s father’s uncle. The Matron of Honor is furious: “I’d like to get my hands on him for about two minutes. Just two minutes, that’s all.” Buddy has not let these people know that Seymour is his brother. “We were boys together,” he has explained. What, the Matron of Honor wants to know, did Seymour do before the war?
J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1963).
Related reading
All OCA Salinger posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
“Artistically appointed restrooms”
George Baxter’s client has built ten new department stores in his home state in the last ten years. From the Hazel episode “What’s Bugging Hazel?” (February 25, 1965):
“I’ve spent a fortune, George, a fortune, giving my customers every conceivable convenience. Spacious parking lots, gracious restaurants and coffeeshops, baby-minding services, and artistically appointed restrooms!”“Artistically appointed restrooms!” But it’s not a laughline. Or at least the laugh track doesn’t respond.
[Stuck in the house, getting over a sinus infection, I sometimes get stuck in a TV vortex. This episode is also online.]
Reading in the news
From The New York Times
The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, according to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long effort to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe. . . .
The disappointing results from the exam, the Program for International Student Assessment, were announced on Tuesday and follow those from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an American test that recently showed that two-thirds of children were not proficient readers.
Nancy, blogger
[Nancy, December 4, 2019.]
“It’s obvious”: oh, Nancy.
By the way: if you scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the sidebar, you’ll see Nancy speaking the “word” blog in 1950.
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Monday, December 2, 2019
The Apostrophe Protection Society
“The ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won!” The Apostrophe Protection Society throw’s in the towel.
Related reading
All OCA punctuation posts (Pinboard)
[I know: its really spelling, not punctuation. But as the man says, the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won! The APS website, from which I quoted above, is now dormant. Here is the Internet Archive’s most recent version of the APS front page. And here is an article from The Guardian on the demise of the APS.]
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