Rachel and Elaine shining

Holy Toledo: our daughter Rachel, via Elaine’s tweeting, now rules a portion of the Internets. Rachel solved a mystery, and Elaine tweeted the solution. Read all about it: “Adults Everywhere Are Scratching Their Heads at This Confusing Kindergarten Worksheet” (Distractify).

K teacher FTW!

[Like Nissa Ren Cannon, whose tweet started it all, I couldn’t figure out the worksheet either.]

“Big sales”

I hadn’t realized that the the subject of a post I made yesterday morning would be the subject of the next passage from Robertson Davies that I had planned to post. Here Dunstan Ramsay, the author of purported autobiography Phantasmata: the Life and Adventures of Magnus Eisengrim, comments on the book’s success:


Robertson Davies, World of Wonders (1975).

World of Wonders is the third novel of The Deptford Trilogy. It’s an insanely great reading experience, and I don’t use that kind of fancy lit-crit terminology lightly.

Other Robertson Davies posts
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments” : “Like a duck to water” : “A designer and a manufacturer” : “The intrepid Orph” : “The socks-shorts moment” : Wealth, illusion, corruption : “A fantod when it foamed” : “But still — a travelling showman”

“The Zone”

In today’s Zippy, Dinburgers enter “The Zone” — by filling a fountain pen, riding a train, saying “Parcheesi,” and smelling a kneaded eraser. Small joys.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“Believe in the pencil”

“In the orchestra world, pencils are sacrosanct relics”: the Tampa Bay Times reports on the importance of the pencil in orchestral music. “BELIEVE in the pencil,” says a note on one orchestral part.

Elaine made a post last year with choice-quality annotations from parts in the online archive of the New York Philharmonic. For instance: Symphony Nos4atu. The gray is my attempt at a pencil.

“Opening up”

Donald Trump* just acknowledged that medical experts do not agree with his idea of “opening up” the country just weeks from now.

The mind blanks at the glare, as Philip Larkin wrote.

“But still — a travelling showman”

David Staunton is a guest at Sorgenfrei, home of the master magician Magnus Eisengrim. Eisengrim asks him, “Have you read the book about me?”


Robertson Davies, The Manticore (1972).

Other Robertson Davies posts
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments” : “Like a duck to water” : “A designer and a manufacturer” : “The intrepid Orph” : “The socks-shorts moment” : Wealth, illusion, corruption : “A fantod when it foamed”

Teaching in a pandemic

Elaine and I were leaving Chicago after visiting our friends Danny and June. As we neared our car, we saw a copy of The New Yorker that we’d forgotten to pack, sitting in a hammock-like depression in the trunk lid. The magazine had been waiting there all that time.

Then it was time for class. “As you know, there’s a pandemic,” I said. One student raised his hand: he wanted to show everyone a photograph of an ornately designed violin, with lines carved or burned into the wood. He handed me his phone, and I in turn handed it to Elaine, sitting next to me in the subway car. We were having class in a subway car.

Then we were in a classroom. A student in the front row began to speak in a preacherly voice about Adam: how Adam was the first president, and how his orders were disobeyed.

This is the nineteenth teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. All the others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

Swabs, stocks, and stupidity

Three observations from Donald Trump*’s afternoon propaganda show:

Every time Trump* talks about how difficult and unfun the coronavirus test is, some idiot, somwhere, thinks, If I’m not gonna get a colonscopy, I sure don’t want a coronavirus test.

A revealing slip: Trump* said that although he’s a Republican, he doesn’t believe that bailout money should be used to buy back stock.

Another slip, explaining why the federal government can’t be the clearinghouse for medical supplies: “We don’t know who to call for masks.” But the companies call Peter Navarro or Trump*, so yay.

More on getting books

From New York Review Books: how to buy books in isolation (and support your local indie bookstore).

From The Washington Post: tips on bookstores, library resources, e-books, audiobooks, and online events.

And from Archipelago Books: free e-books. (Robert Musil!)

And speaking of books, if anyone wants to write their own “By the Book,” I’d be happy to post a link. Only two takers so far, one an OCA reader, one a reader of that reader.

A related post
Support your local or not-so-local independent bookstore

Live-streaming music

From NPR: a list of live-streaming performances to watch at home.

I’ll be tuning in today to the pianist Fred Hersch, who plans to perform every day at 1:00 Eastern, here.

[Tuning in? On a computer?]