Hive mind

My iPhone (iOS 14.5.1) is a hive of activity: the Safari Favorites icons for The New York Times and the Times Spelling Bee change at will. The blackletter T  for the Times sometimes changes to the bee of the newspaper’s Spelling Bee, as seen here. And the bee for the Bee sometimes changes to the T of the Times. (Please trust me on that.) I’ve tried deleting bookmarks and saving again, and the icons still appear to have a mind of their own — a hive mind, I guess.

Cobbler’s bench or mulberry bush?

The things we debate in our fambly. Everyone else knows “Pop Goes the Weasel” as beginning with “All around the cobbler’s bench.” I, like the cheese, stand alone: I’ve always know the song as beginning with “All around the mulberry bush.” Both versions are fine, of course. That’s the folk process. But which is more common, the bench or the bush?

The bush, I suspect. Google’s Ngram Viewer has no results for “All around the cobbler’s bench” in American English or British English, 1900–2000. The Viewer does have results for “round the cobbler’s bench” in American English, which makes me think that “Round and round the cobbler’s bench,” not “All around,” is the more usual phrasing. (Why the shortened search? Because the Viewer won’t search for more than a five-word string.)

The Straight Dope says that in North America, the bush is more common that the bench, and that in the United Kingdom, “All around the cobbler’s bench” is the usual phrasing. Which, I’d say, makes its absence from Ngram results for British English puzzling. But not more puzzling than “Pop Goes the Weasel” itself, whose words I refuse to reduce to meaningful paraphrase.

As for Google itself:

“round and round the cobbler’s bench” weasel : 1,140 results

“all around the cobbler’s bench” weasel : 2,040 results

“all around the mulberry bush” weasel : 225,000 results

I added the word weasel to the searches to rule out results concerning gardening or shoemaking. And now I am off to wind, wind, wind the bobbin.

Another thought about vaccination

What I learned yesterday about the lack of interest in vaccination in my deep-red part of Illinois helps me to understand a conversation I had a week or so ago. We were talking about vaccines. Someone’s sister had a fever of 102° after getting the second Moderna shot. Oh, said I, the second shot really wiped me out for a day. “Yes, but it’s better than getting COVID.” And I said, “Of course!” And I thought to myself, Why would anyone need to say it’s better? Obviously it is.

And now I realize, people here do need to say it’s better to put up with side effects for a day or two or three than to contract COVID. That’s not already obvious to everyone.

The George Floyd Bunt Staff

Fresca posted a photograph of a man playing a Bundt pan instrument in George Floyd Square. “That’s Douglas Ewart!” I said.

Douglas was playing a “sonic sculpture” of his creation, the George Floyd Bunt Staff, which he describes as “an idiophone comprising tin and cast-aluminum Bundt baking pans whose sonic potential and possibilities are incalculable.” The staff honors Floyd as “the Everyday Hero,” known to and loved by many. As Douglas says,

George Floyd Bunted with his life to open the eyes, and awaken hearts, portals, conscience, intelligence, ire, reprimands, demands, and commands.

Here is Douglas Ewart’s website. Here is his commentary on the instrument and the events that gave rise to it. And here is a short video, with Douglas, Ananya Chatterjea, and Julia Gay playing staffs. Videography and editing by Stephanie Watt.

How do I know Douglas Ewart’s music? From LPs and CDs of course. But also from three performances at the University of Illinois, with Stephen Goldstein, Wadada Leo Smith, and Quasar.

Recently updated

Charge! Now with photocharger news from the Brooklyn Eagle, 1952.

Vaccine, anyone?

When I got my first Moderna shot in March, I was hugely hopeful about vaccination in deep-red Illinois. At that time, the local hospital was vaccinating up to 800 people a day. Now I see the percentage of the population that’s been vaccinated rising at an alarmingly slow pace: 25.92%, 25.97%. My hopes for widespread vaccine acceptance here were ill-founded.

I called the local health department this morning to suggest adding information on vaccination to the daily Facebook post that gives the number of new cases. Before today, those posts suggested just three ways to avoid COVID: hand-washing, masks, and distance. I suggested adding vaccination, with contact info. Yes, good idea, and that info appeared in the new post this afternoon.

What I didn’t know before this morning is that vaccine supply in our area far exceeds demand. It appears that people who want a vaccine have, for the most part, already been vaccinated. As for everyone else — ? You can imagine what it must feel like to be working in the cause of public health when so many people are unwilling to do what’s needed to get us out of this mess.

Also this morning: Elaine heard from a family that will not be participating in an annual summer orchestra for all ages. The members of the family do not feel “comfortable” wearing masks.

This is where we live.

*

The recent This American Life episode “The Herd” is relevant here. It includes a profile of a public-health official and an account of Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s effort to figure out what might persuade Trump** voters to get vaccinated.

Related posts
SPA day : “This isn’t Wal-Mart” : Here’s where I live

✓

Amitava Kumar writes about writing and the power of the check mark: “The Oldest Productivity Trick Around” (The New York Times).

Jerry Seinfeld did the same thing with a big X.

[That X is a link.]

Writing and dressmaking

As Marcel thinks about the work of writing he’s about to begin, he tries out various metaphors. He imagines working alongside his servant Françoise: the writer as another dressmaker.

Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again, trans. Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).

And here’s another writer, Godfrey St. Peter, professor, historian, who shares his attic study with a dressmaker, Augusta, who comes to sew for his family, three weeks every spring, three weeks every fall. St. Peter and his wife Lillian are moving to a new and far grander house, but he insists on continuing to rent the old house so that he can work in the attic. And he insists on keeping Augusta’s dress forms there. But he’s willing to let her dress patterns go.

Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (New York: Knopf, 1925).

Cather will later write that it is in the attic that St. Peter’s notes and ideas are ”woven into their proper place in his history.”

Cather called Proust “the greatest French writer of his time,” but there’s no possibility of influence here. The Professor’s House appeared three years after Proust’s death and two years before Le Temps retrouvé. I take these passages as a remarkable instance of synchronicity.

A related post
Proust and Cather

[Supplementary pages? A glance will give you an idea.]

Nancy reflections

It’s hot, and Nancy has been wondering if the heat can melt bubble gum.

[Nancy, September 8, 1955. Click for a larger bubble.]

I like the reflections on the glass, especially the way they cut through the gumballs.

Yesterday’s Nancy is also today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Merriam-Webster still has the noun as an open compound: bubble gum. Some compound words refuse to be closed.]

When in doubt, scroll

I opened Dropbox on a new iPad for the first time and — uh-oh.


Oh shoot. What’s a cheapskate to do? Scroll! And look closely:


So I removed three devices, two of which were already wiped clean and given away.

Do you think the absence of “Or remove some devices” from the first screen is a matter of accident, or a matter of design?

I still like Dropbox. If you’d like to try it, here’s the obligatory referral code that gives us each an extra 500 MB of free storage.