Snowboots

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. Mark Treharne (New York: Penguin, 2002).

But guess what? Mme de Parme thinks that rubbers are wonderful: “It’s so practical! What a very sensible man.” And everyone else suddenly agrees.

In the spirit of self-mortification: This passage resonated with me. In my sophomore year of high school, the biology classes went on a one- or two-night excursion to a nature preserve. The boys slept in one barracks; girls, in another. I, for some reason, was the only boy in the barracks who had brought a pair of slippers. Unending mockery. And no Mme de Parme on site. Not that she would have made much difference.

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All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, February 19, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Hi and Lois marks, to my knowledge, the second time a resonator guitar has appeared in the strip. Two were on display last November, when Chip was in a music store to — I think — get his guitar strings changed. Maybe he walked out with another guitar?

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[I know: the guitar has no frets.]

A twenty-four-hour Cruz

Ted Cruz flew to Cancun yesterday with his family as his fellow Texans struggled. He is now, the Associated Press says, “expected to return immediately.”

Every time I see Ted Cruz, I am glad that I am someone with more scruples. And a better beard.

[About the post title: I was thinking of the Gilligan’s Island theme song. But it seems that Cruz’s round-trip may take less than twenty-four hours. Ashley Parker reports that Cruz spent ten hours in Mexico and landed back in Texas “almost exactly” twenty-four hours after departing.]

The Duc and art

The Duc de Guermantes has been to The Hague. So he must have admired Vermeer’s View of Delft ? But the Duc is “less informed than arrogant”:

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. Mark Treharne (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Reminds me of Sarah Palin: “All of ’em!”

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What’s happening in Texas

Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American has a helpful explanation of what’s happening in Texas. Here’s the rejoinder to the claims that wind turbines and a Green New Deal will destroy life as we know it:

Most of Texas is on its own power grid, a decision made in the 1930s to keep it clear of federal regulation. This means both that it avoids federal regulation and that it cannot import more electricity during periods of high demand. Apparently, as temperatures began to drop, people turned up electric heaters and needed more power than engineers had been told to design for, just as the ice shut down gas-fired plants and wind turbines froze. Demand for natural gas spiked and created a shortage.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) told Sean Hannity that the disaster “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal” for the United States, but Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the organization in charge of the state’s power grid, told Bloomberg that the frozen wind turbines were the smallest factor in the crisis. They supply only about 10% of the state’s power in the winter.

Frozen instruments at gas, coal, and nuclear plants, as well as shortages of natural gas, were the major culprits. To keep electricity prices low, ERCOT had not prepared for such a crisis. El Paso, which is not part of ERCOT but is instead linked to a larger grid that includes other states and thus is regulated, did, in fact, weatherize their equipment. Its customers lost power only briefly.

With climate change expected to intensify extremes of weather, the crisis in Texas indicates that our infrastructure will need to be reinforced to meet conditions it was not designed for.

“Wall lichen and cat fur”

The Guermantes complexion, hair, wit:

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. Mark Treharne (New York: Penguin, 2002).

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H. Neil Matkin again

It’s still a good day not to be teaching at a campus that has H. Neil Matkin as its president. L.D. Burnett explains why: “What a Public-Information Act Request Revealed About My College President” (The Chronicle of Higher Education).

A related post
Meet H. Neil Matkin

[You can read Chronicle articles that aren’t behind the paywall using Reader View or the Kill Sticky Headers bookmarklet.]

William Parker in the NYT

“He’s the kind of figure it might be tempting to label a giant if such shorthand weren’t sure to strike him as distastefully hierarchical”: The New York Times has an article about the bassist and composer William Parker. His latest release is a 10-CD set, Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World.

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The William Parker Quartet : Wood Flute Songs

Milford Graves (1941–2021)

Milford Graves has died at the age of seventy-nine. Never heard of him? That’s okay. His website describes him as “percussionist, acupuncturist, herbalist, martial artist, programmer, and professor.”

NPR has an obituary. And here, from YouTube, are fifteen wild minutes with Graves and John Zorn.

*

February 22: The New York Times has an obituary.

The Beach Boys at the zoo

Look: it’s long-lost footage of the Beach Boys in 1966 at the San Diego Zoo. That’s where George Jerman shot the cover photograph for Pet Sounds.

Did the zoo really ban Messrs. Wilson, Wilson, Wilson, Jardine, Johnston, and Love for life? It’s clear at least that the Boys were not welcome to return. Here’s why.

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