“Better than the one that I’m in”

Donald Evans, talking to the Paris Review about his postage-stamp art (creating stamps from imaginary countries):

“It was vicarious travelling for me to a made-up world that I liked better than the one I was in. I’m doing that now too. No catastrophes occur. There are no generals or battles or warplanes on my stamps. The countries are innocent, peaceful, composed. Sometimes I get so concentrated in these worlds 1 get confused . . . it’s hard to get out.”

The blurred scans accompanying the text are a disappointment. You can browse the full-color pages of Willy Eisenhart’s The World of Donald Evans, which approximately quotes this passage, at the Internet Archive. Or visit (even if only online) the current Tibor de Nagy exhibit of Evans’s work.

And here is an extended introduction to postage-stamp art: What Is Faux Postage? (Read, Seen Heard).

[Re: catastrophes: Donald Evans (1945–1977) died in an apartment-building fire.]

College enrollment down

“While elite colleges and universities have continued to attract an overflow of applicants, the pandemic has been devastating for many public universities, particularly community colleges, which serve many low- and moderate-income students”: “College Enrollment Drops, Even as the Pandemic’s Effects Ebb” (The New York Times).

What would I do if I were a high-school kid thinking about college? I’d go, for sure. I think I’d want to study user-interface design. My son thinks I’d be good at that.

Inara G. and Van Dyke P.

I recommended the Inara George–Van Dyke Parks album An Invitation to a friend last night. And then I found this 2015 performance, which I hadn’t seen before.



[Left to right: Van Dyke Parks, Inara George, David Piltch.]

The songs: “Opportunity for Two” and “Come Along” (Parks), “Dirty White” and “Family Tree” (George).

And here are a handful of songs from a performance last week.

Music is my respite and refuge.

“Ten hours to Chicago”

Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928).

I discovered only this morning that the 1928 Knopf edition of Quicksand is available from Google Books as a free PDF or e-book. Marginal notes here and there — dynamics of authority, paradox — but they disappear not long into the novel.

HCR on “the right to bear arms”

“Today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a broad right to own guns comes from two places”: Heather Cox Richardson gives a short lesson about the history of a peculiarly American idea.

Red flags

David French: “Pass red flag laws. Now. Give families and police a chance to remove guns from the people who tell us they’re dangerous.” Found via The New York Times.

Our household’s representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), has touted, loudly, repeatedly, her opposition to red-flag laws. Here she is, proclaiming her opposition and boasting about her A ratings from the NRA and Gun Owners of America (a organization that deems the NRA too willing to compromise).

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

“Why are you here?”

Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) on the Senate floor not long ago:

“What are we doing? Why are you here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn’t inevitable. These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country, and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking they might be shot that day.”

[Fourteen Eighteen Nineteen children, a teacher, and another adult and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas today.]

Herschel Walker voting

MSNBC has a camera (why?) on Herschel Walker as he votes. He’s taking a very long time, just standing in front if the machine, and I think it’s reasonable to wonder: Does he know how to use a voting machine?

The last pay phones in NYC?

This story is getting considerable attention: “Last street payphone in New York City removed” (CBS News ). And yet:

While there are no more freestanding, public pay phones left in New York City, LinkNYC says they could still exist — on private property. There are also four “Superman booths,” or full-length phonebooths left in the city, but it is unclear if their phones are in service.

That’d be easy for someone for someone to check, no?

In 2009 Scouting New York tracked down those four booths, all on West End Avenue. Google Maps shows them still standing in August 2021, complete with pay phones. Working ones, I hope.

And now I’m kicking myself for not photographing the New York Public Library’s phone booths when I was last there.

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

[Yes, the CBS headline has payphone; the article, pay phone.]

SFW on the shelf

Take a look at this tweeted photograph of Bryan Garner’s bookshelves. Can you spot the book by Sally Foster Wallace, David’s mother?

This 2013 post, a review of Quack This Way, a transcribed conversation between Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace, has links about the Garner–Wallace connection. This 2020 post has some sample sentences from SFW’s book.

Related reading
All OCA Garner posts : DFW posts (Pinboard)

[The book is Practically Painless English (Prentice-Hall, 1980), above the three blue volumes, lower right.]