At a local business today, the owner attempted to put us at ease: “You don’t have to wear your mask. This isn’t Wal-Mart!”
Elaine decided to mess with him: “We may have been exposed.” Which might after all be true. But we have no reason to think we have been. She was messing with him.
I couldn’t top Elaine’s response, but I did mention the alarming number of cases from yesterday’s tests at a nearby hospital. After which the store owner began to explain that the reason we have so many cases is that we have so much testing.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Illinois Public Health Director, speaking today on NPR’s Morning Edition : “The desire by people to believe in things which are comforting but not true is incredibly strong right now.”
If I ever hear “You don’t have to wear your mask” again, I will be tempted to reply thusly: “Well, just between you and me — heh, heh — I’m not even supposed to be back out of the house yet.”
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
“This isn’t Wal-Mart!”
What’s with the Strand?
Three accounts of current events at the Strand Bookstore: this one, from The Baffler, appeared in September; this one, from The New York Times, and this one, from The Washington Post, appeared two days ago.
Somehow I find it difficult to trust a bookstore owner who asks customers to #savethestrand but invests in Amazon, buying “at least $115,000 of stock” according to the Post, “between $220,010 and $600,000” according to The Baffler. The Times mentions an investment in Amazon but with no dollar amount.
Neither the Times nor the Post mentions the larger picture: according to The Baffler, Nancy Bass Wyden, the Strand’s owner, bought “between $3 million and almost $7.9 million” of assorted stocks between April and September. Meanwhile, employees (those who hadn’t been laid off) went without adequate PPE and cleaning supplies.
Mar-a-Lago
That house with the signs and the pool and the lawn furniture all over the place: it would be really immature and small-minded to make fun by calling it Mar-a-Lago, don’t you think?
But also fun.
Buying “shoes”
I was in a shoe store. My total at the register: $501.94. Now there’s a mixture of the mundane and the bizarre, the two poles of my COVID-era dream life.
I think I can point to the source of this dream: some thinking about the difference between buying “a pair of shoes” and buying “shoes.” In this dream I must have been buying “shoes.”
Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
“Nice, heavy notebooks”
Donald Trump*’s surrogate’s recent presentation to Lesley Stahl of a big bound book allegedly containing a healthcare plan reminded me of Walter Galt’s explanation of the notebook system at his high school. It’s the same mentality, really:
Daniel Pinkwater, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death (1982).
“We” means Walter Galt and his friend Winston Bongo. If you’ve never read Daniel Pinkwater’s books, you’re missing out.
A related post
“Pineapples don’t have sleeves” (A Pinkwater story and a standardized test)
Overheard
“This is a three-quarter-length child.”
Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
[Switching the television back to cable without looking at the screen can make for strangeness. “This” was a painting, on Antiques Roadshow.]
Monday, October 26, 2020
Alvin & Company
Gunther at Lexikaliker shared the sad news that Alvin & Company has closed after seventy years in business. You usually saw Alvin products in the art and drafting aisles of office supply stores, always with unglamorous but distinctive blue and white packaging. The company also distributed a wide variety of products from other manufacturers.
I have Alvin products stashed here and there — eraser shields, pencil extenders, a beautiful cork-backed stainless-steel ruler. I’m especially fond of my two Alvin Draf/Tec-Retrac mechanical pencils, 0.5 and 0.7mm.
As a lifelong resident in the world of “supplies,” I’ll miss Alvin & Company.
Deevie and diskey
It’s 1903. Mary-Jacobine McRory, a young Canadian, is abroad enjoying “the London Season.” From Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), the second volume of The Cornish Trilogy :
But no diskey in the OED .
Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1970) glosses deevie/deevy/dev(e)y as a perversion (!) of divvy and gives the meanings “delightful, charming.” Partridge notes 1900–c. 1907 as the time of the word’s vogue.
But no diskey in Partridge.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang has deevie, “wonderful, excellent.” But here, too, no diskey.
You’ve probably already guessed what the adjective diskie must mean. But is it authentic slang, or something Robertson Davies made up? Because he does at times invent. Google Books has the answer. Here’s a small catalogue of slang words from the smart set:
[Sydney Brooks, “The Smart Set in England.” Harper’s Weekly, February 27, 1904.]I wish the scan were more readable. I will note that nightie, pals, and undies are still with us. And diskie, yes, means “disgusting.” And yes, twe-est is “dearest,” and my twee meant “my dear.” The mnystery here is cassies. Or is it cossies ?
One more source, pairing the words as Davies does:
[Clement Scott, “The Smart Set and the Stage.” The Smart Set, April 1900.]I don’t know how Davies came by his knowledge of deevie and diskey (maybe by reading The Smart Set ?), but I’d like to think he would admire a reader’s effort to track down both words.
Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Something Kamala Harris said
I wrote it down as soon as I heard it: “Our democracy is as strong as our willingness to fight for it.” That was Kamala Harris, speaking this afternoon in Troy, Michigan.
Bye, Odwalla
I saw the news that Coca-Cola is discontinuing Odwalla, among other brands.
Did you know that the juice company took its name from the work of the Art Ensemble of Chicago? Odwalla, teacher to “the people of the sun,” is a character in a “myth poem” by Joseph Jarman, recited in the Malachi Favors composition “Illistrum,” on the Art Ensemble album Fanfare for the Warriors (Atlantic, 1973). Wikipedia has the story, with inaccuracies.
More famously, Roscoe Mitchell’s composition “Odwalla” was long the Art Ensemble’s closing theme in performance. Here are four versions, from 1972, 1981, 1991, and 1998. For a good idea of the Art Ensemble in performance, choose 1991. For the best sound, choose the 1998 studio recording (minus Jarman, who had left the group in 1993).
Some AEC posts
The AEC in Boston : The AEC in Cambridge : Joseph Jarman (1937–2019) : Joseph Jarman again : Lester Bowie on Fresh Air
[The Wikipedia inaccuracies have already been pointed out on a Talk page. I have the LP right here as I’m typing, but it hardly qualifies as a Wikipedia source.]
