“One puny blog post”

[Nancy, December 26, 2019.]

I’ll take a guess: Because, Nancy, you care about your writing, and you want to make that “one puny blog post” as good as you can. It doesn’t matter that you’re not getting paid to do so. It doesn’t matter that no one else might notice, or have any idea how much effort you’ve put in. You will notice, and as the poet almost says, that will make all the difference.

Nancy’s friend Esther has a better guess: “Because you’re using every chance you get as an excuse to be distracted.”

And Nancy: “No, no, that can’t be it . . . but it’s interesting that you feel that way, and we should spend the next half-hour exploring why.”

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[“As the poet says”? “As the poet said”? The Google Ngram Viewer helps out. The poet, of course, is Robert Frost.]

Some Christmas

[“He’s Checking It Thrice.” Zippy , December 25, 2019.]

Today’s Zippy is devoted to list-making. With a guest star.

“Some rocks” are an abiding preoccupation of these pages.

Venn reading
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Christmas 1919

[“Snow Quickly Removed. Three Thousand Street Cleaners Did a Speedy Christmas Job.” The New York Times, December 26, 1919.]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.

Dalton Baldwin (1931–2019)

The pianist Dalton Baldwin has died at the age of eighty-seven. A New York Times obituary calls him “an eminence among accompanists.”

Elaine and I heard Dalton Baldwin accompany Elly Ameling, long ago, in the year something-something B.C. (Before Children). It was a blissful night. I’ve since heard Baldwin on recordings for many years. He is the sole pianist on Mélodies, the 4-CD EMI set of Francis Poulenc’s songs, accompanying Ameling, Nicolaï Gedda, William Parker, Michel Sénéchal, and Gérard Souzay, Baldwin’s partner in life and music.

Here is a BBC recording of Souzay and Baldwin, performing works by Schubert, Debussy, Françaix, Poulenc, and Roussel.

Italy’s Sardines

“They call themselves the ‘Sardines’ — because they want to quietly pack Italy’s main public squares like fish in a can. Organizers say their goal is to stop a far-right, anti-immigrant wave rising in Italian society and politics”: Sylvia Poggioli reports on the Sardine movement (NPR).

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Helicopter campuses

“The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed”: thus a new trend in surveillance, the use of Bluetooth to track college students’ class attendance and campus habits via their phones (The Washington Post ).

For me, the most dispiriting bit in this article is a comment from a professor about surveillance and attendance: “‘They want those points,’ he said. ‘They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.’” Yep. Behaviorally.

[The surveillance company SpotterEDU would not permit the Post to publish a photograph of its Bluetooth devices, saying that “‘currently students do not know what they look like.’” A curious student might find an image search for iBeacon a useful workaround.]

Domestic comedy

“I can’t believe you walked past that multi-tool display.”

“Where?! WHERE?!”

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[Not really multi-tools, after all. Knives and flashlights. With this one, it’s probably easy to figure out who said what.]

Today’s Ticonderoga

[“Nervig Endings.” Zippy , December 24, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, cartoonist Conrad Nervig seeks a new career. Stand by for the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2.

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Scribbles & Ink

For kids and those who think like kids: Scribbles & Ink, an online game (or drawing environment, I’d call it) to go with the PBS Kids series of the same name.

If you like Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, you will probably like Scribbles & Ink. Be your own Harold!

Roz Chast, profiled

By Adam Gopnik, in — where else? — The New Yorker. An excerpt:

“Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to be a grownup. Being a child was just not working for me. I didn’t understand little kids. ‘Let’s play! Let’s hit each other!’ Why do you want to do that ? Don’t you want to stay indoors where it’s safe, and read and draw?”

Our household is a Chast-friendly zone.

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