“Life apart”

One last post from Villette. Lucy Snowe insists on her selfhood.

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

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78s

I was in a hotel suite, having just bought a rare 78, and I was disguising my find, switching its sleeve, which bore a sticker with a high price, with a sleeve from a 78 whose sticker showed a much lower price. And a voice said, “Michael, stop.”

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[Sources, I think: travel thoughts, an online presentation of rare Duke Ellington recordings, and Party Girl (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1958), in which Robert Taylor and Sam McDaniel look at 78s to determine the proper music for Taylor’s impending assignation with Cyd Charisse. In waking life I own no 78s, rare or common.]

Robert Hollander (1933-2021)

Dante scholar, and translator, with Jean Hollander, of The Divine Comedy. From an introductory note on translation in Inferno (New York: Anchor Books, 2002):

We could go on improving this effort as long as we live. We hope that as much as we have accomplished will find an understanding ear and heart among those who know the real thing. Every translation begins and ends in failure. To the degree that we have been able to preserve some of the beauty and power of the original, we have failed the less.

The New York Times has an obituary.

[I tried four Dantes in my teaching. The Hollanders’ was my favorite.]

Rewards

Beer. Donuts. Guns. Any teacher of teachers who needs to illustrate the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards now has unbeatable examples courtesy of the efforts to persuade United States residents to get vaccinated.

[Whatever it takes, says I. But the shadow of Homer Simpson looms large, at least over the beer and the donuts.]

Kittens ’n’ fish

The BBC brings us news from the English market town of Waltham Abbey:

The enticing smell of tinned sardines proved key to luring two tiny four-week-old kittens from a labyrinth of drains where they had been trapped for two days.

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What’s an inflection point?

Because they seem to be everywhere.

Inflect, a transitive verb, is from the Latin inflectere, to bend. The Oxford English Dictionary gives its earliest meaning (early 1400s): “to bend inwards; to bend into a curve or angle; hence, simply, to bend, to curve.” By the late 1500s, the word had taken on figurative senses: “to bend, incline, dispose.” By the late 1600s, the word had acquired a meaning in grammar: “to vary the termination (of a word) in order to express different grammatical relations.” By the early 1700s, the word had found a place in optics: “to bend in or deflect (rays of light) in passing the edge of an opaque body or through a narrow aperture; to diffract.” By the early 1800s, the word was used with reference to the voice and to music: “to modulate (the voice); spec. in Music, to flatten or sharpen (a note) by a chromatic semitone.”

All of which (thanks, OED ) is getting us closer to inflection point. For that we need the noun inflection, which, like inflect, takes on figurative, grammatical, optical, and musical meanings. But since the early 1700s, inflection has also meant something in geometry:

Change of curvature from convex to concave at a particular point on a curve; the point at which this takes place is called a point of inflection (or shortly an inflection).

That’s as much of the OED definition as is relevant here. A more readable definition, from Merriam-Webster: “a point on a curve that separates an arc concave upward from one concave downward and vice versa.”

The OED entry for inflection — apparently in need of updating — doesn’t account for the non-mathematical meaning of inflection point. For that we need M-W: “a moment when significant change occurs or may occur : turning point.”

So that’s an inflection point. I like the way a turning in space has turned into a turning in time. A curious difference between mathematical and non-mathematical inflection points: the one marks a fact; the other marks a fact or a possibility.

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows a marked rise in the use of inflection point beginning in 1948. A symptom of Cold War tension? In American English, the Ngram Viewer shows 1963 as the term’s peak year. In British English, it’s 1989. Perhaps Vietnam and Margaret Thatcher had something to do with that.

Is inflection point overused? I think that in many instances, crossroads or moment of decision might better apply. When I read this sort of nonsense — “There has been a strategic inflection point that we’ve all gone through as society” — I begin to think that the term has lost a clear meaning. We may be approaching an inflection point in the use of inflection point. We may even be at a crossroads. But I doubt it.

Hand and seal

Handwriting and a wax seal as indices of character:

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

Remember when girls really flipped for guys with great handwriting? And great seals? Me neither.

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Illinois-15, COVID-Central

Here, from Geographic Insights, is a map of Illinois showing vaccination rates by congressional district as of June 6:

[COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Across U.S. Congressional Districts. From the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Center for Geographic Analysis.]

The ungainly pale-green area to the east is Illinois-15, the congressional district represented by Mary Miller. Geographic Insights shows us having the lowest rate of vaccination in the state: 40.62% initiated, 29.65% completed.

When I step into my friendly neighborhood multinational retailer, where more and more people now do without a mask, and where many people have never worn a mask, I remind myself that I live in a place where I can pretty much assume that seven of every ten people I see are unvaccinated. Which, yes, is pathetic.

Who would want to move to Illinois-15? I know: COVID. We’re great hosts!

[Thanks to Elaine for finding the site.]

“A stilly pause”

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

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From the dowdy world

A pangram from the dowdy world, in today’s New York Times Spelling Bee.

A handful of pay phone posts
A Blue Dahlia pay phone : A Henry pay phone : A Naked City pay phone : A subway pay phone, 1932 : Chicago pay phones : “If your coin was not returned”

[Pay phone is dowdier than payphone.]