A Minneapolis man is sculpting a giant no. 2 pencil from a dead tree. Sixteen feet tall, to be sharpened away, one foot a year.
Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
A pencil sculpture
By Michael Leddy at 8:40 AM comments: 4
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
A BFD, I hope
In The New York Times this afternoon:
The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for transcripts of interviews it is conducting, which have included discussions with associates of former President Donald J. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
The move, coming as Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appears to be ramping up the pace of his painstaking investigation into the Capitol riot, is the clearest sign yet of a wide-ranging inquiry at the Justice Department.
By Michael Leddy at 4:07 PM comments: 0
Garfield minus Garfield
I somehow got to thinking about Garfield minus Garfield, a self-explanatory strategy for greater reading enjoyment. Does it still work?
[Garfield, May 9, 2022. Click for a larger view.]
[Garfield, May 14, 2022. Click for a larger view.]
I think so.
Previous examples
Thoughtless : “Look at me” : Odie with sunglasses
By Michael Leddy at 2:42 PM comments: 0
Mystery actors
[Click for a larger view.]
The fellow on the far left is a real mystery. I have no idea who he is. But the other two should be familiar to anyone who’s spent a healthy (?) amount of time in front of a warm TV.
Thank goodness I can still screenshot movies on a Mac.
Leave your best guesses in the comments. I’ll add hints if they’re needed.
*
The name of the boy in the middle is now in the comments. A hint for the man on the right: he’s probably best known for a long-running role as a minister.
*
The name of the man on the right is now in the comments.
More mystery actors
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?
By Michael Leddy at 8:25 AM comments: 12
Monday, May 16, 2022
FSRC: annual report
The Four Seasons Reading Club, our household’s two-person adventure in reading, has finished its seventh year. The club began after I retired from teaching, so the year runs from May to May. In our seventh year we read novels, novellas, short-story collections, graphic novels, non-fiction, a Socratic dialogue, a children’s story, and a poem. In alphabetical order:
Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen, trans. unknown
W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Honoré de Balzac, The Memoirs of Two Young Wives, trans. Jordan Stump
Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
Emmanuel Bove, My Friends, trans. Janet Louth
Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Jerry Craft, Class Act, New Kid
Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book, trans. Thomas Teal
Robert Musil, Intimate Ties: Two Novellas, trans. Peter Wortsman; Young Törless, trans. Mike Mitchell
Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Gary Paulsen, Hatchet
Jed Perl, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts
Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton and Chris Emlyn-Jones
Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Anna Seghers, The Dead Girls’ Class Trip, trans. Margot Bettauer Dembo
Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of Starlight
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Treasure Island
Adalbert Stifter, The Bachelors, trans. David Bryer; Motley Stones, trans. Isabel Fargo Cole
Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Address Unknown
Eudora Welty, Thirteen Stories
Now it’s on to Nella Larsen, Passing.
Here are the reports for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.By Michael Leddy at 8:45 AM comments: 2
Streaming screenshots
If you use a Mac, you may have noticed that it’s no longer possible to take a screenshot with commercial streaming services. With Safari it's been impossible for some time. And now it’s the same with the Brave browser — there’s just a black rectangle where a screenshot should be.
I cannot find a Safari extension that will bring screenshots back. But there is a fix with Brave: add the Chrome extension Screenshot Tool.
I would guess that this extension works with Chrome itself, but I don’t (won’t) use Chrome. If anyone can verify that Screenshot Tool works there, please do. And if anyone has a fix for Safari, please share.
I’ve found little discussion of this problem — and no solutions — online, so I hope this post is helpful to some movie fanatic somewhere.
By Michael Leddy at 8:40 AM comments: 6
Sunday, May 15, 2022
“America is minorities”
A soapbox speaker addresses a small crowd, presenting himself an “American American,” or what Tucker Carlson would call a “legacy American.” The speaker rails against “Negroes,” Catholics, Masons, and “alien foreigners.” A Hungarian-born professor listens with dismay: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.” When the speaker is done, the professor talks at length to another spectator who thought the speaker made “pretty good sense” — at least until he mentioned the Masons. From the 1945 Department of Defense film Don’t Be a Sucker :
“We must never let ourselves be divided by race, or color, or religion, because in this country we all belong to minority groups. I was born in Hungary; you are a Mason: these are minorities. And then you belong to other minority groups too. You are a farmer; you have blue eyes; you go to the Methodist church. Your right to belong to these minorities is a precious thing. You have a right to be what you are and say what you think, because here we have personal freedom. We have liberty.[The orator: Richard Lane. The professor: Paul Lukas. Both uncredited. A 1945 audience would have immediately recognized both.]
“And these are not just fancy words. This is a practical and priceless way of living. But we must work at it. We must guard everyone's liberty, or we can lose our own. If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution, or by prejudice, we are threatening our own freedom. And this is not simply an idea: this is good hard common sense.
“You see, here in America it is not a question of whether we tolerate minorites. America is minorities. And that means you and me. So let’s not be suckers. We must not allow the freedom or dignity of any man to be threatened by any act or word. Let’s be selfish about it. Let’s forget about we and they. Let’s think about us.”
By Michael Leddy at 3:48 PM comments: 2
Gnome Bakers
[316 E. 59th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]
I’ll let this New York Times article (1990) tell the story of Gnome Bakers. The Times mentions a papier-mâché gnome that once sat atop the roof, leaning against the chimney (“Unusual Breads & Rolls”). The word “Energy” is spelled out vertically above the small window between the dancing gnomes. Now there’s a sentence I could never have imagined writing.
Here, from 2015, when 316 E. 59th was for rent ($14,000 a month), are photographs of the building’s exterior and interior, with a nice glimpse of the rooftop gnome as seen from the entrance ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. Slow down, you move too fast. You got to see the gnome at last.
Nowadays 316 houses a chiropractor’s office.
Thanks, Brian.
Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives
By Michael Leddy at 8:26 AM comments: 6
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Buffalo
From The New York Times:
His writings were also riddled with racist, anti-immigrant views arguing that white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color, a common trope on the far-right known as the “great replacement” theory.I can already guess what Tucker Carlson might say about it, if he dares to say anything about it: What this young man did was wrong, &c. And I never encouraged anyone to, &c. I condemn in the strongest possible terms, &c. But what happened in Buffalo should not make us close our eyes to, &c.
I fear that’s how it will go.
[The Times reports that the killer learned about “replacement theory” from 4chan.]
By Michael Leddy at 8:27 PM comments: 0