Humanity in a president-elect

President-elect Joe Biden, speaking a little while ago in Wilmington, Delaware:

”My colleagues in the Senate used to always kid me for quoting Irish poets. They thought I did it because I’m Irish. I didn’t do it for that reason; I did it because they’re the best poets in the world.

“James Joyce was said to have told a friend that when it comes his time to pass, when he dies, he said, ‘Dublin [long pause], Dublin will be written on my heart.’ Well, excuse the emotion, but when I die, Delaware will be written on my heart, and the hearts of all of us, all the Bidens.”

[My transcription, from watching again at C-SPAN. One source for the Joyce quotation: Ulick O’Connor, Oliver St John Gogarty (1964).]

“Think only pleasant thoughts”

[Life, March 21, 1969. Click for larger muffins.]

In his book Class: A Guide through the American Class System (1983), Paul Fussell got it wrong:

If you merchandise tasteless little blobs of dough, you can sell billions of them by calling them “English” muffins.

Thomas’ English Muffins are not tasteless, nor are they blobs. They are a pleasant thought, though I really want to add a terminal s to Thomas’. To “keep right on going,” muffins no end, breakfast to midnight — that might be pleasant thought, though expensive.

English Muffin pizzas are, for me, a madeleine, though the ones I remember from childhood run along these lines. That’s right — ketchup and American cheese. The ketchup should go under the cheese. Madeleines come in many flavors.

I still like English Muffin pizzas, with pizza sauce, please. But hold the mozzarella. Only American cheese will do.

Knowing of

M. Bloch senior, dropper of names:

But the fact was that the only famous people whom M. Bloch knew were those he knew of, people whom, “without being acquainted with them,” he had seen in the distance at the theater or about town.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Skip James, not so much:

He was the opposite of the blues name-dropper, when asked about the fabled Mississippi bluesmen Rube Lacy and Kid Bailey (both of whom he had met), he would say “I know of  Rube Lacy,” or “I know of  Kid Bailey,” and fail to elaborate.

Stephen Calt, I’d Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues (New York: Da Capo, 1994).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard) : Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James

Pen wipers

[Nancy, June 11, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

No seamstress, she.

Webster’s Second has it as penwiper : “any device to wipe a pen.” The word is gone from the Third. Here’s a brief history of penwipers, pen-wipers, and pen wipers.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929.

[“Martin Luther King’s study, Dexter Parsonage Museum, Montgomery, Alabama.” Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. 2010. From the George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Click for a larger view.]

A note from the Library of Congress:

The Dexter Parsonage Museum, historic home to twelve pastors of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church from 1920-1992, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Martin Luther King lived in the home from 1954 to 1960.

The full-size 6432 × 4643 photograph at the Library of Congress website offers many details.

I’ll quote again words that I quoted at this time last year:

Perhaps the most determining factor in the role of the federal government is the tone set by the Chief Executive in his words and actions.

Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (1964).

[I think that my excitement in finding this photograph made it difficult for me to realize that the room must be a re-creation. A Montgomery website says that “The nine-room clapboard Parsonage, built in 1912, has been restored to its appearance when Dr. King and his family lived there. Much of the furniture presently in the the living room, dining room, bedroom and study was actually used by Dr. King.” But the books? The records?]

“Surf’s Up”

In today’s Atlantic crossword, by Peter Gordon, a nice tip of the hat: 10-D, nine letters, “Surf’s Up singers, with the.” Nice not to have to think of them as the in-name-only group sharing a stage with Vanilla Ice at Mar-a-Logo. The horror.

Surf’s Up is a 1971 album. “Surf’s Up” is a song, music by Brian Wilson, words by Van Dyke Parks, written for the ill-fated SMiLE project. It’s one of my favorite songs. Listen to the Brian-only version (1967). Then try the finished version. If you think you know what a song titled “Surf’s Up” is going to sound like — well, listen.

Help wanted

Annie Karni, writing in The New York Times: “The statement released Monday by Mrs. Trump was also rife with grammatical errors and typos.” Have you read it? Jeez.

I like this sentence from the Times article: “It was not clear who helped Mrs. Trump draft the statement.” Help!

“Hmmm, hmmm”

Robert de Saint-Loup’s handshake is stiff and distant. His uncle’s handshake is more distant still. Introducing Palamède, Baron de Charlus:

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

A Q believer

“She once spent several minutes explaining how a domino-shaped ornament on the White House Christmas tree proved that Mr. Trump was sending coded messages about QAnon, because the domino had 17 dots, and Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet”: from a New York Times portrait of a Harvard-educated QAnon “digital soldier.”

Springfield 1908

From NBC News:

Illinois‘s two senators have called on President-elect Joe Biden to make the site of a 1908 race riot in Springfield a national monument.

Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, both Democrats, wrote to Biden Thursday asking for the designation, citing the riot’s historic significance, especially its role in inspiring the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Wikipedia has an extensive article about the riot, which might be better described as racial terrorism.