“Effeminate”?

“He was a skinny high school student who had asthma, a high-pitched voice and effeminate mannerisms”: it’s a good story, in The New York Times.

But isn’t characterizing someone’s way of being as “effeminate” part of the problem to begin with?

“A blue-grey bracelet of jetsam”

West London, the early 1960s. A boy who will grow up to write a book about sardines has a first encounter with the small oily fish:

For a six–year-old, tinned sardines in oil squashed onto two slices of toasted white bread were a complete meal. In contrast to any other canned food we ate, they were savoury, not sweet. By the time they arrived on the plate they had been crushed almost beyond recognition. Nevertheless, I was still curious enough to conduct a post-mortem, teasing out the grey flesh and seeking to discover with the patches of varying colour and texture might be in the living fish. The piece I usually extracted was the backbone. The other bones would melt away to the bite, but the backbone would stubbornly maintain its gritty texture. I'd heft it to the side of the plate — a blue-grey bracelet of jetsam on the plate’s shoreline.

Trevor Day, Sardine (London: Reaktion, 2018).

“A blue-grey bracelet of jetsam on the plate’s shoreline”: in its elegance and strangeness, that metaphor is downright Proustian.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard) : “Sardines are opportunistic” (Also from this book)

Life and arts

Charles Swann is dying. He speaks to the narrator in a private moment at (yet another) soirée.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2005).

A hundred-odd pages into this volume, filled with social jabs and slights, I find Swann’s plainspoken emotion deeply moving. O unnamed narrator, likely named Marcel, you are learning a lot.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Where have all the Chessmen gone?

On a lighter note this grey morning: I’ve written to Pepperidge Farm about the disappearance of chess imagery from its Chessmen cookies. No, it’s not so-called cancel culture; the name still ends in -men. But there’s not a chess piece in the package. Here’s what I’ve written:

I’m a big fan of Pepperidge Farm products and have been for years. I remember PF cookies back when the packaging featured old-timey engravings on the side. My question: why do Chessmen cookies now have no chess pieces depicted? I see a sun, a house, a plant, and a watering can. The cookies taste just fine, but where did the chess pieces go? And how can the cookies still be Chessmen?

These questions are idle, but they’re also genuine. Thanks for your reply.

I hope to share a reply. But if they just send coupons, I’ll keep them for myself.

Later today: I noticed the words “Seasonal Prints” in the bottom right corner of the package. “Would you call that fine print?” I asked Elaine. “No.”

Related reading
A handful of Pepperidge Farm posts

Recently updated

#Sedition3PTruck Now with links to articles from USA Today and The Washington Post.

H. Neil Matkin again, again

At Collin College, H. Neil Matkin, president, brooks no opposition. He has fired one of his strongest critics, Lora D. Burnett, a professor of history whom he had publicly criticized for her negative tweets about Mike Pence. He has fired two other professors, Audra Heaslip, a professor of humanities, and Suzanne Jones, a professor of education, both of whom have criticized the school’s COVID-19 policies. Matkin’s stated attitude toward COVID: “I have chosen to never live my life in fear.”

Heaslip and Jones just happen to be two of the three leaders of the school’s chapter of the Texas Faculty Association, a union-like organization. Talk about heads on pikes.

Related posts
Meet H. Neil Matkin : H. Neil Matkin again

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword is by the redoubtable Lars G. Doubleday, aka Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber. It’s a good one. What’s the old saying? A Saturday Stumper by any other name, &c.? This puzzle felt quite Stumpish. A good old good one, as Louis Armstrong might have said. Which makes me think of a possible Armstrong-themed crossword clue: ten letters, “Explosive preparation.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, five letters, “Half of a sitcom psychiatrist pair.” I hope that when the one returns, the other will too.

3-D, seven letters, “Research outfit.” Makes me think of a certain musician.

6-D, seven letters, “Sonny of jazz sax fame.” There are at least two possible answers. For most solvers, just one.

7-D, eight letters, “Make sour.” I like the way the clue blurs the line between different kinds of sourness.

11-D, seven letters, “Three-sided wall adornment.” Common in comics, movies, and television shows. Has anyone ever seen one in real life?

17-A, nine letters, “Ancient ‘white,’ ‘venerable’ city near Rome.” Yep, that’s the one.

21-A, three letters, “Easter precursor.” LEN? Simple but deceptive.

39-A, six letters, “Magnet collector.” I like the idea of something attracting magnets.

56-D, three letters, “Thing in some packs.” Not PEZ.

My favorite pairs in this puzzle:

30-A, eight letters, “Duke’s fall, e.g.” Very clever. I had a fleeting thought that the answer must be a French word. That’s what can happen from reading Proust.

50-A, seven letters. “Throw back quickly.” Yes, now that the puzzle’s done, shall we?

One quarrel: 37-D, seven letters, “Victorian syntax.” The clue is a pun, really, and the answer is delightful, but it’s a matter of semantics not syntax.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Recently updated

#Sedition3PTruck With new developments. I’ll continue to add to the post as appropriate.

Small pleasures

When I saw this oatmeal cookie, I thought dog. But it’s pretty clearly a bear.

[No. 4 in a series.]

At Smith College and elsewhere

The New York Times tells the story of an encounter in a Smith College dorm lounge, the campus history that preceded the encounter, and the aftermath:

This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates. The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.

This story reminded me of two incidents from my teaching career. For many years, I went into my office on Sunday mornings to get work done. The building was always locked, and empty aside from another faculty member here or there. One morning I noticed two young men rounding the corner at the far end of the hallway. They were wearing black trench coats. Whenever this happened, I know that it was post-Columbine — that’s why I noticed the trench coats.

I closed my office door as quietly as I could and listened as they came down the hallway. They weren’t talking, just walking. Several minutes later, they were back. They seemed to be making a circuit of the third floor (a large square). I called the campus police and explained, as quietly as I could, what was happening. Someone came to check it out, and as I later learned, the walkers were part of a gamer group that was meeting in the building. Yes, on a Sunday morning. Maybe they were walking to burn off nervous energy — who knows?

On another Sunday morning, I cut through a study lounge on my way to the men’s room. The lounge lights came on automatically, and I saw a young woman asleep on a sofa. I let her sleep and went about my business, baffled as to how someone might be sleeping on a Sunday morning in a locked-all-weekend classroom building. I did though send an e-mail to campus police about the need for outside doors that really locked.

There are indeed many circumstances in which students and faculty of color are made to feel that a college campus isn’t really their place. I remember telling one young woman of color, unhappy about a grade on an essay, “Don’t you think I know that you’re a good student?” No, she had no reason to assume that I knew that. She had learned to feel that teachers always already assumed that her abilities were marginal. But she worked on her writing and saw her grade soar. Yes, an A.

The Smith College scenario seems to admit of no such pleasant ending.

If you’ve been wondering, the walkers, presumably students, were white, which did nothing to make them appear, to my eyes, anyway, less “out of place.” The sleeper was a woman of color. Like any other student in a presumably locked classroom building on a Sunday morning, she too appeared to be “out of place.” Not because of color — just because the building was supposed to be locked.