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Words of the year Now with they.

Joyce in LA

In Los Angeles, Charlene Matthews, bookbinder, has written out the text of James Joyce’s Ulysses on thirty-eight ship dowels.

Thanks, Sean.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

Proust in SF

“I am into this kind of thing”: Nathalie Vanderlinden is reading Proust aloud, in French, in San Francisco BART stations.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Brother Thelonious

“With all the interest in Belgian ales and in the monasteries that brew them, it’s time to remind the world that here in the U.S. we have a Monk of our own”: Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale is licensed under an agreement with the Thelonious Monk Estate.

When I saw this ale in our beverage mart, I did a doubletake. When I saw the ABV — 9.4% — I did another.

Related reading
All OCA Monk posts (Pinboard)

A 2019 Nativity scene

The nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist church.
HT Rev. Karen Clark Ristine. pic.twitter.com/YRIl8me63y

— Matt Rindge (@mattrindge) December 8, 2019

Here is a statement from Rev. Ristine of Claremont United Methodist Church, Claremont, California. And a Newsweek story.

A 2020 calendar

[Mutts, September 24, 2019.]

Thank you, Bip and Bop. You may now return to your nest, where I have installed a small calendar.

Here, via Dropbox, is a calendar for 2020, three months per page. All Gill Sans, in Licorice and Cayenne (Apple’s names for black and dark red), with minimal markings: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Highly readable, even across a crowded room, on evenings enchanted or otherwise.

I’ve been making and sharing yearly calendars since 2010, when I realized that I could get something like the look of a Field Notes calendar for the cost of my own (unpaid) labor.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with voice.

Lock her up

Elaine watched a little last night, just to see what it is that people tune in to. That is a straitjacket, isn’t it? It’s fancy, but still a straitjacket, or at least it should be.

Stanley Fish and “partisan politics”

From a Chronicle of Higher Education interview with Stanley Fish, “The Unbearable Virtue-Mongering of Academics”:

Let’s talk about your views on academe and social justice. One of the topics you address [in a new book] is university disinvestment in fossil fuels, a step that you object to.

My position has become a minority one; perhaps it was always a minority one. Both students and some faculty feel more and more that colleges and universities should stand for values and policies that are thought to be progressive, rather than sitting on the political sideline. That’s a prevailing sentiment, and it’s one I don’t share. Once you go in that direction, for example by declining to invest in fossil-fuel stock, you’ve transformed yourself from an educational institution into a political institution. Once you do that, there’s, in effect, no place to stop — the university becomes an extension of partisan politics, just another place where partisan politics occurs.

But to invest in fossil fuels is not to remain neutral, to sit “on the political sideline”; to invest is to take a position, however longheld or unexamined that position might be. And notice how Fish stacks the deck with his reference to “partisan politics”: to divest might better be described not as a gesture toward “partisan politics” but as a moral choice that can serve the cause of education. But while I’m taking apart Fish’s argument, I’ll add that a university is always already a political institution: who gets in, who’s kept out, what gets taught, and how. Those who seek to reduce public universities to centers for vocational training know that well.

The interviewer for The Chronicle calls Fish “one of the besieged humanities’ most prominent voices.” But see also Russell Jacoby: “With friends like him, the humanities needs no enemies.”

If you’re wondering about the interview’s title: the conversation devolves into a consideration of cars, with Fish throwing shade on Prius and Subaru owners and extolling his own recent vehicles of choice, a Mercedes and a Thunderbird.

Related posts
A review of How to Write a Sentence : Fish on Strunk and White : Russell Jacoby on Stanley Fish

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is quite stumperrific. A very difficult puzzle. I started out down the right side with some help from L. Frank Baum: 13-D, six letters, “Auntie Em, for instance.” And then some help from Thomas Hardy: 44-D, six letters, “Ruler from a tree.” The right half of the puzzle went pretty quickly. The left, much less so. And the bottom left corner probably took me as long as the rest of the puzzle.

I know: “Who cares?” I mean, I know who cares. That’s 35-D, three letters, “Who cares?” — one of several very clever clues.

My favorites:

25-D, eight letters, “Stop being square.”

37-A, eleven letters, “Online header of a sort.”

37-D, eight letters, “Booster unit.”

38-D, seven letters, “Occasional catcher.”

45-A, three letters, “Main menu openers.” Really, I hate this kind of clue, but I respect it.

59-A, four letters, “Release a crew.” Uncle!

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.