Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, June 19, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

The Bailey genes are strong. Lois is Beetle Bailey’s sister.

But look at that phone number. Yes, it’s that number, thirty-eight years later.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

“Is it still celebrated?” Yes.

From a conversation between the Reverend Alonzo Hickman and Adam Sunraider, a race-baiting United States senator. As a boy, Sunraider was known as Bliss. Hickman raised him. The two are speaking of old times:


Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Vintage, 2000).

The Washington Post reported on the discovery — just yesterday — of the original Juneteenth order, dated June 19, 1865.

Related reading
All OCA Ralph Ellison posts (Pinboard)

Tommy’s tickets

Tommy the cop ran a sleep store. Customers would come in to sleep. They brought Tommy free tickets for all manner of events — concerts, games, movies. The store teemed with tickets. Said one customer, “I see where you get your tickets, Tommy.”

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Police, corruption, and death all lurk in this tiny dream. Elaine made the Tulsa connection. Tommy = Donny?]

Three words from Charlotte Brontë

From Jane Eyre (1847), ing, holm, and beck :

How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow! — when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down “ing” and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck!

Ing is the most recent of these words. The Oxford English Dictionary has a first citation from 1483 and gives this definition:

a common name in the north of England, and in some other parts, for a meadow; esp. one by the side of a river and more or less swampy or subject to inundation.

The word derives from the Old Norse eng, meaning “meadow, meadow-land.”

Holm goes back to Beowulf, where it means “the sea, the wave.” But the meaning in Brontë’s sentence comes much later:

a piece of flat low-lying ground by a river or stream, submerged or surrounded in time of flood.

This sense of the word derives from Old Norse holmr, “islet in a bay, creek, lake, or river, meadow on the shore.” The earliest citation is undated but predates 1440. The dictionary adds that holm is still

in living use in the south of Scotland (howm) and north of England, and extending far south in place-names; “a flat pasture in Romney Marsh (Kent) is yet called the Holmes” (Way).

“Living use” in that sentence means in 1899, but holm does appear to still be used in place names. And there’s still a Holmes Way.

And now for beck:

a brook or stream: the ordinary name in those parts of England from Lincolnshire to Cumbria which were occupied by the Danes and Norwegians; hence, often used spec. in literature to connote a brook with stony bed, or rugged course, such as are those of the north country.

Beck dates to before 1400 and comes from the Old Norse bekk-r, “brook, rivulet.”

“Such as are those of the north country”: that’s beautiful, no?

A related post
A word from Charlotte Brontë: beck

A word from Charlotte Brontë

It’s Barmecide, from Jane Eyre (1847):

That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings.

It’s a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary gives this defintion: “One who offers imaginary food or illusory benefits. Often attributive.” The etymology is the good part:

the patronymic of a family of princes ruling at Bagdad just before Haroun-al-Raschid, concerning one of whom the story is told in the Arabian Nights, that he put a succession of empty dishes before a beggar, pretending that they contained a sumptuous repast — a fiction which the beggar humorously accepted.

Pass the potatoes.

A related post
Three words from Charlotte Brontë: ing, holm, beck

Sarah Cooper tonight

The great Sarah Cooper is streaming a Q&A tonight at 8:00 Eastern. Access costs $10, with part of the proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Here’s the latest bit of channeling. There are three takes. I like this first one best:

How to Lincoln pic.twitter.com/zerw0PVs9x

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) June 14, 2020

Goodbye to Uncle Ben

Like Aunt Jemima, he is stepping away.

I wrote earlier today in a comment that I can imagine a short story (not for me to write) with Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus (yes, that’s the name attached to the Cream of Wheat chef) all finally retired and talking among themselves: “I tried to tell ’em — for years I tried.” The Land O’Lakes “butter maiden” should also have a part in the conversation.

Mystery actor

Do you recognize him? Leave your answer in the comments. I’ll be mowing the grass for a while but will check back later and drop a hint if needed.

*

11:39 a.m.: It’s a big lawn. The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Goodbye to Aunt Jemima

From NBC News:

The Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix will get a new name and image, Quaker Oats announced Wednesday, saying the company recognizes that “Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype.”

How did they ever figure it out?

One of the oddest things I can say about myself: I’m distantly related to another (non-Quaker) Aunt Jemima: Tess Gardella, an Italian-American singer who performed in blackface as “Aunt Jemima.” She originated the role of Queenie in Show Boat.

College, anyone?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that two-thirds of American colleges and universities have announced plans to resume on-campus classes with the Fall 2020 semester. In my little university town, landlords are advertising off-campus student rentals. Schedule a tour today! Or not.

I’ve wondered, often, what college will look like in the fall. My town has suffered and will suffer mightily without a student population. I have friends and colleagues who will want to be teaching in classrooms, doing the work of what I like to call real-presence education. But I cannot imagine college-as-usual, or anything close to as-usual, in the fall.

As I’ve kicked around the idea of writing about the next academic year, I’ve found two people who have already done so to my satisfaction. Stan Yoshinobu, a professor of mathematics at California Polytechnic State University, has a piece behind the Chronicle paywall, “The Case Against Reopening,” and an earlier version on his blog, with twenty-three points against reopening. Yoshinobu does the awkward and necessary work of asking about practical contingencies: Do we ban parties? What do we do when a student coughs or sneezes in class? Will students be permitted to go home on weekends? For Thanksgiving? And I’ll add: Who’s supposed to keep track? And to what purpose?

As Yoshinobu says, he doesn’t like “virtual college.” But he sees it as the only reasonable and ethical choice for the next academic year.

As does Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University. In The New York Times he offers a perspective shaped by decades of teaching and researching young people: “Expecting Students to Play It Safe if Colleges Reopen Is a Fantasy.” Steinberg begins by highlighting suggestions in a recent Times symposium on plans for college in the fall: masks, sanitizer, social distancing, and students placed in family-sized groups within dorms. (One contributor to that symposium imagines each small group taking classes together.) Steinberg’s blunt conclusion:

These plans are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff.

Steinberg too looks forward to returning to teaching in a classroom. But not yet.

If I were still teaching, I’d want to insist on a virtual fall, and perhaps a virtual spring. I’d think of my virtual teaching as a difficult, memorable experiment. If I were a first-year student, I’d want to wait for my real-presence education and take a gap year if at all possible. If I were a sophomore, junior, or senior, I’d hope that my school would have the good sense not to bring everyone back to campus. There too I would think of a virtual semester or two as a difficult, memorable experiment. When we’re on the other side of this pandemic, there’ll be thousands of faculty and students, sick of screens, looking forward to the possibilities that a real-presence community of learning can once again offer.

My fear is that those who already want to make college a virtual experience for all but a small elite will take the pandemic as an occasion to further their scheming. But right now there’s already enough to worry about. Besides, when we’re on the other side of this pandemic, there’ll be thousands of faculty and students, sick of screens, looking forward to the possibilities that a real-presence community of learning can once again offer.

[The repetition is deliberate.]