Small things

Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849).

I stepped away from Shirley, but I had to save this lovely sentence.

Small things today: walking, reading, take-out because it’s Friday. I take none of these small things for granted.

*

I just discovered the source, Zechariah 4:10: “For who has despised the day of small things?” (KJV).

Also from Charlotte Brontë
A word : Three words : Jane Eyre, descriptivist : Bumps on the head : “In all quarters of the sky”

Mail, real mail

The New York Times reports on snail mail in the time of the coronavirus. One takeaway:

A Postal Service survey whose results were published in May found that one in six consumers had sent more mail to family and friends during the pandemic.

The survey shows that those who are more likely to want to send letters and postcards are younger, have higher incomes, and have children at home. Which leaves me out, but that’s okay, as I’m sending anyway.

Something is rotten in Iowa

The headline of an editorial by Lyz Lenz, from The Gazette (Cedar Rapids): “The University of Iowa fires instructors and tells the rest to get back to the classroom.” A few choice details, my paraphrasing:

~ Bruce Harreld, the school’s president, promised in May to protect the well-being of students, staff, and faculty. But the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has fired fifteen instructors and is planning for in-person classes in the fall. And Steve Goddard, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has encouraged a woman of color with an autoimmune condition to seek counseling and return to the classroom, because she’s a “role model.”

~ Harreld’s yearly salary: $590,000. Goddard’s yearly salary: $372,000. The average yearly salary of the instructors who have been fired: $45,000.

~ Meanwhile, UI is hiring another dean. Lenz gives the starting salary as $350,000. But in the university’s job listings, the salary has jumped to $375,000.

This one small story captures much of what’s wrong with higher education: enormous administrative salaries, administrative bloat, and contempt for those who do the work of teaching, worsened here by a refusal to take a medical condition seriously when it affects a woman of color. As Lenz wrote on Twitter, “die for your job” seems to be the University of Iowa’s message to instructors. The university seems to be sending a similar message to its students.

Thanks to Daughter Number Three for pointing me to Lenz’s commentary.

A related post
College, anyone? (My 2¢ on reopening in the fall)

[I’ve added a link to a video chat with the dean’s advice. It’s worth watching.]

“In all quarters of the sky”

Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (1857).

This passage is for my friend Diane Schirf, who likes the night sky sans light pollution.

Also from Charlotte Brontë
A word : Three words : Jane Eyre, descriptivist : Bumps on the head

[X—— is a mill town.]

Orange Crate Art redux

The Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson album Orange Crate Art, recorded in 1995, has now been reissued in 2-CD and 2-LP editions by Omnivore Recordings. I got my copy of the 2-CD set yesterday and listened all the way through over two days. The original twelve tracks, remastered, are newly vivid, like paintings after restoration. The standout among the three bonus tracks is “What a Wonderful World” — you can hear Brian giving his all, and the result is deeply affecting. The instrumental versions of the original tracks reveal countless details; I’d point to “Summer in Monterey” and “My Jeanine” as particularly great examples of Van Dyke’s art as composer and arranger. Oh, and “Orange Crate Art.”

Van Dyke is a friend, and I’m hardly an objective pair of ears. But I think the Omnivore description — “sounds like nothing before or since” — is objectively accurate. Orange Crate Art is music of no time and for all time.

Related reading
All OCA BW and VDP posts (Pinboard)

Music then and again

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (dir. Aram Avakian and Bert Stern, 1960) is an impressionistic documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. I caught some of it on TCM Monday night. This great and joyous performance by Anita O’Day, which I’ve seen dozens of times, moved me to tears when I thought about how we’ve lost the happiness of listening to music together. But not forever.

What will it feel like to attend a concert again? I want to know.

Related posts
Anita O’Day (1919–2006) : Musician v. singer

[When the YouTube link fails, as it eventually will, just look for anita o'day sweet georgia brown tea for two.]

A dark thought, but I’ll air it

I can almost imagine Donald Trump*, several months from now:

“And we must never forget our great warrior seniors — and that’s what they are, you know that. They are warriors, giving their lives in the fight to save our way of life from the terrible plague. We love you. We will never forget you. We will always treasure the memory of your great sacrifice, so very great. And we must never forget our great young people,” &c.

The Trump* cult — No mask? No test? No problem! — really is a death cult.

Bumps

Like the Brontës, William Crimsworth’s new acquaintance Hunsden Yorke Hunsdsen appears to ascribe to physiognomy and phrenology:


Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (1857).

The Professor, published posthumously, is an odd duck. Of greatest interest: its principal characters (both teachers), its depiction of marriage, and, in the person of Mr. Hunsden, its barely coded presentation of a gay man.

Also from Charlotte Brontë
A word : Three words : Jane Eyre, descriptivist

[X—— is a mill town.]

The Lincoln Project

I’ve been impressed by their ads for a while now. But it’s this latest, snark-free one that made me decide to give some money to The Lincoln Project.

As Donald Trump* would say, these people are vicious. I wish that Democrats knew how to make ads this effective.

Jane Eyre, descriptivist

”There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things,” sighs Jane Eyre. In contrast, Jane herself, as she sets off from Thornfield Hall to mail a letter:


Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847).

And we can already figure out from the way novels work that something important is about to happen on this walk.

Descriptions of landscapes are what I like best in Jane Eyre.

Related posts
A word from Charlotte Brontë
Three words from Charlotte Brontë