Fifty blog-description lines

For many years the first words of Van Dyke Parks’s song “Orange Crate Art” — “Orange crate art was a place to start” — served as what Blogger calls a blog description line. In May 2010, I began to vary the line, always choosing some word or words or element of punctuation from a post then on the front page, and always keeping the quotation marks that enclosed Van Dyke’s words. The result is an array of odd slogan-like bits of language.

Here are the latest fifty. Some are immediately familiar to me; others are now mysteries. “Improvisational jazz”? A farcical phrase from Jonathan Turley’s testimony in Donald Trump**’s first impeachment. “Not making cowsheds, I’ll bet”? Ya got me. See if you can spot the salty line:

“The one I thought of”
“A slightly belated Happy National #2 Pencil Day to all”
“Nowheresville my eye”
“What’s an ethos?”
“Applying for a learner’s permit tomorrow”
“I would like you to do us a favor though“
“My great and unmatched wisdom”
“At the kitchen table”
“I’m in. You?”
“I take notes”
“Patience and Fortitude”
“I keep notes”
“Improvisational jazz”
“Online header of a sort”
“And you are?”
“I was just leading a workshop on ornament making”
“Typing 2020”
“Ploks”
“If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost”
“Whale, oil, beef, hooked”
“Wait a minute, that’s me!”
“Not making cowsheds, I’ll bet”
“For practical purposes”
“Stay home if you can”
“Stay home if your life and work allow it”
“In a parallel universe”
“The day of small things”
“SITEEMO”
“One-way aisles”
“Me travel?”
“Aiieee!”
“Door stop, essentially”
“You’ve reverted to the Blogger legacy Interface”
“TRUMP = DEATH”
“Vote as if your life depends on it”
“We are waiting for Brünnhilde”
“Hurry, January”
“Georgia Blue”
“More energy, better sleep, fewer typos, less despair”
“Then, voyager”
“Weeks of inward winter”
“Research outfit”
“A single window”
“Dishes of fruit from remembered suppers”
“Somebody was here”
“Still on its display card”
“Spaghetti and coffee at midnight”
“Not one real character concealed under a false name”
“Scroll!”
“The desk fills the screen”

It does.

More blog-description lines
Two hundred blog-description lines : Fifty more : And fifty more : But wait — there’s more : Another fifty : Is there no end to this folly?

Bob Koester (1932–2021)

He was the proprietor of Chicago’s Jazz Record Mart and the founder of Delmark Records, a home to blues and jazz musicians of all stripes. The New York Times has an obituary. As does the Chicago Tribune.

Out of practice

Elaine and I went out to visit friends last night, our first nighttime social effort in well over a year. And we didn’t remember to turn on the outside light when going out. We’re out of practice.

But we did remember how to talk to other people in person. Once again, it didn’t feel odd at all.

Today’s Newsday Saturday

I woke up thinking I’d better write a post about the Newsday  Saturday crossword. And then I realized that I hadn’t done the puzzle last night. Why? Because we were visiting friends to watch a movie, for the first time in well over a year. The times are changing.

Today’s puzzle is by the Newsday puzzle editor, Stan Newman. It’s a fine puzzle, with room for lowlifes and rowdies and royalty:

5-D, four letters, “Wild bunch.”

28-D, five letters, and 49-A, three letters, “Quite a boor.”

34-A, fifteen letters, “2017 QEII celebration.”

For me this was one of those puzzles in which clue after clue leads nowhere — for instance, 17-A, seven letters, “Paper aide,” or 30-D, five letters, “More than kind.” And then when the puzzle is done, nearly every answer seems inevitable.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

3-D, six letters, “Bread flavoring.” Yes.

8-D, fifteen letters, “Erie Canal Museum city.” We’ve stayed there a few times on road trips — in the city, not the museum.

20-A, seven letters, “They’re in a book of Liszt’s.” Where they’d be Liszted in the index, I suppose.

30-A, five letters, “Evacuation order.” A nice clash of diction between clue and answer.

35-D, eight letters, “Signature collectors’ banes.” Who thinks about these things? Signature collectors, I guess.

38-A, six letters, “Deny or sustain, say.” Not as obvious an answer as you might think.

44-D, six letters, “Milwaukee TV tribute statue in a two-thumbs-up pose.” Not SISKELANDEBERT.

62-A, eight letters, “Subject of an early Tom Wolfe book (1968).” Easy to be misled by the opening letters of the answer, at least if you’re me.

One pairing that doesn’t persuade me: 12-D, eight letters, “Ecclesiastical antonym.” I may be missing something, but I don’t see a contrast. Ecclesiastical matters can be just as 12-D in their focus as anything else.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“Adoration” again

[“Adoration,” by Florence Price, arranged by Elaine Fine. Randall Goosby, violin. Zhu Wang, piano.]

Here’s “Adoration” again, this time with audio and video. And this time the text under the video at YouTube credits Elaine as the arranger.

I get pitches

Only occasionally. They suggest “collaboration,” and they’re inevitably from someone with no idea what my blog is about. This morning, there’s a pitch from a website:

Hello! Great to MEAT you!

It’s all about meat and health and positive emotions. Meat: that must be why this pitch was in the SPAM folder! Maybe I should send them one of my WURST efforts! Or should it be WELL-DONE? I’ll hurry and try not to take too LOIN! Now I’m out of exclamation points.

Related reading
All OCA liverwurst posts (Pinboard)

[What is my blog about? Many things.]

E-mail, or email ?

From Bryan Garner’s LawProse Lesson #364:

From the inception of email in the late 1970s, the word was predominantly hyphenated. (Same with e-business, e-commerce, etc.) In print sources, the turning point came in 2012: that's the year in which, in books at least, the solid form overtook the hyphenated form in frequency of use. Today the solid form predominates by a 2:1 ratio in books. The ratio is much higher in other types of writing. The Chicago Manual of Style acknowledged the shift in its 17th edition of 2017. If you've been a stalwart hyphenator and intend to continue, just know that your communications will strike people as ever more quaint.

I like the consistency of e-noun, no matter the noun, and have no plans to remove hyphens from my 2005 post How to e-mail a professor. I’m content to have my communications strike people as ever more quaint. Just look at some of the meanings of quaint : “clever, ingenious; wise, knowing; skilled” (OED). Granted, those meanings are obsolete.

If you like to subscribe to Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day & LawProse Lessons, you can sign up for the free e-mails or emails here.

Spencer Silver (1941–2021)

He inadvertently created the adhesive that found a use in “repositionable pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet material” — aka the Post-it Note. The New York Times has an obituary.

OCA is big on Post-it Notes. I see eight partial pads on my desk as I’m typing.

Some Post-it Note posts
Disses, digital and analog : Jim Lehrer’s Post-it Notes : Post-it Note bird : Post-it Note history : Thelonious Monk : Twenty uses for a Post-it Note

A Fine Price

[“Adoration,” by Florence Price, arranged by Elaine Fine. Randall Goosby, violin. Zhu Wang, piano.]

Elaine just learned that her arrangement of Florence Price’s “Adoration” for violin and piano will appear on violinist Randall Goosby’s first album, Roots (Decca), to be released on June 25. HIs performance, with pianist Zhu Wang, has been released on YouTube as a calling card for the album.

This performance of “Adoration” is the first recording of Elaine’s arrangement. But “Adoration” seems to be everywhere in this grief-stricken time. Last July a string orchestra in Chicago played “Adoration” (Elaine’s arrangement) as part of a musical vigil for Elijah McClain, the violinist killed by police in Aurora, Colorado.

[Price wrote “Adoration” for organ. How was Elaine able to make an arrangement? The piece is in the public domain in the United States. Elaine’s arrangements of “Adoration” for duos and for string orchestra are available in the IMSLP under a Creative Commons license.]

M-W, NFT, WTF

Merriam-Webster is selling an NFT of its definition of “NFT.” The pitch begins: “Many people don’t really know what “NFT” means. But you do. So does Merriam-Webster, America’s most trusted dictionary.”

The current high bid: Ξ 7 ($26,344.89).

Yes, it’s for a good cause, with the proceeds going to Teach for All. But I dunno. My post title is meant to suggest my amused disbelief. You’d never catch The American Heritage Dictionary engaging in this kind of postmodern stunt, harumph. (My harumph is in jest.)