Signatures in unexpected places

Elvis, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger: signatures found on due-date slips and in library books (CBC).

I’ve found on my library’s shelves books signed by Willa Cather and H.L. Mencken and Louis Zukofksy, all there for borrowing. Each time I headed straight to the circulation desk. “This should not be on the shelves,” said I, earnestly.

My favorite professor, Jim Doyle, once found in Harvard’s Widener Library a volume of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough with handwritten notes by T.S. Eliot. Yes, that T.S. Eliot. Jim took the book to a librarian, who promptly took it away.

Sardines forever

Owen Burke likes sardines:

So long as I have a roof over my head and a kitchen cabinet, I will forever have a case of sardines in there through my very dying breath.

He makes the case for a case of Wild Planet sardines, $27 for twelve cans.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Block that metaphor

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall wonders if the defeated former president’s grip is loosening:

There are at least some cracks — seeming cracks? — in Trump’s hold and they center for now on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

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All OCA metaphor posts (Pinboard)

“Going after children”

The defeated former president’s characterization of the January 6 committee’s request that Ivanka Trump sit for an interview: “They’re going after children.”

Well, everyone is someone’s child. Ivanka Trump is a forty-year-old child. The defeated former president is a seventy-five-year-old child.

What I realized only today: “They’re going after children” is a statement that must have been meant to resonate mightily with QAnon people.

Onomastics

A toddler of my acquaintance calls them “The Get Back Guys.”

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National Handwriting Day

National Handwriting Day is real. And good handwriting opens doors.

Here’s (fictional) proof, from Kiss of Death (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1947). As Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) waits to ask the prison warden for permission to write a letter beyond the three-a-month allotment, the warden questions a guard:

[The warden reads.] “‘Nick Bianco — Urgent Business.’ Did he write this himself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good handwriting.”

“He’s not a bad guy.”

“Bring him in.”

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All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Going to a conference

I was heading off to a conference to present a paper — one of my least favorite things to do. Elaine and I were standing at the baggage carousel of a bus station, trying to figure out how to get to the airport. It was six o’clock at night. My plane was leaving at seven thirty.

I was still packing for the trip, packing very lightly. I had a cheap briefcase of the kind once sold in discount department stores, with a black papery covering over masonite or plywood. The briefcase held the paper I was presenting, a Lands’ End squall jacket, and Stanley Lombardo’s translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. No meds, no extra clothes, no umbrella, no pens or pencils. I noticed a cup of pencils atop an upright piano and took a couple to bring with me.

We spotted a scientist entering the terminal, a tall man with red hair. He wore a college sweatshirt over his lab coat. We asked him how to get to the airport, and he pointed us to a bus-company employee in uniform. And we began to consider which route would be best to get to the airport on time.

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[Three possible sources, from yesterday: reading Jerry Craft’s graphic novel New Kid (with a two-bus commute to a posh day school), learning about Steinway’s Victory Vertical pianos, recommending Alan Alda’s Science Clear + Vivid to a friend. I think the dream is about impostor syndrome. Elaine thinks it’s about aging. I think she’s right.]

Asking, not asking

From The Washington Post: “A single word sparks a crossfire between the Supreme Court, NPR and its star reporter Nina Totenberg.”

At issue: whether Chief Justice John Roberts, “in some form, asked the other justices to mask up” in the courtroom, as Nina Totenberg had reported for NPR. Roberts denied making that request, and NPR’s public editor, Kelly McBride, deemed the word asked “inaccurate” and “misleading,” and called for a clarification, which has yet to appear.

The part of the Post report that interests me:

On Friday, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara reiterated the organization’s support for Totenberg. She said McBride “is independent and doesn’t speak on behalf of NPR.”

Lara added, “Someone can ask without explicitly asking. Someone can say, ‘This person doesn’t feel comfortable being around people who aren’t masked’ or some other permutation of that and the listeners get the message.”

Exactly. That’s basic pragmatics.

In the polite, restrained setting of the Supreme Court, the indirect approach — “I think it better that we all wear masks in court,” or words along those lines — seems apt. To say such words is still to make a request. In claiming not to have made a request, Roberts might be parsing his words a bit too literally, without regard for pragmatics.

All this parsing might have been avoided if Justice Gorsuch had just worn a damn mask.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowksi, whose last Stumper appeared in December 2020. I’m happy to see her back. The name of her crosswords-and-trivia website explains why: Tough As Nails. This puzzle was challenging (but doable) and filled with reasons for delight.

Some of them:

2-D, ten letters, “Highly selective.” PERSNICK — no, won’t fit.

16-A, ten letters, “Question at a Q&A.” Heh.

20-A, five letters, “L.A. museum benefactor.” Whatever one might think of the benefactor, it’s a great museum.

21-A, five letters, “Protection from winding.” I first thought of my horribly coiled headphone cord.

36-A, fifteen letters, “Still very much with us.” Just a fun phrase.

43-D, six letters, “Puts together, as pattern pieces.” I have to look into this word, which has an unusual array of meanings.

48-D, five letters, “What many gloves are made of.” The first letter might lead you in the wrong direction.

58-D, three letters, “Only 50-state TV network.” Really? Huh.

61-A, ten letters, “Refuses to stand for it.” Literalizing.

My favorite clues in this puzzle:

23-D, five letters, “Ignore a Simpsons suggestion.” D’oh!

58-A, four letters, “Designations requiring defenses.” I thought “Football positions?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022)

The New York Times has an obituary.

I like this passage from The Miracle of Mindfulness (1999):

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.