“I Like my Sleep!”

[Dig the spats. Life, October 14, 1940. Click for a much larger view.]

I found this advertisement while looking, as usual, for something else. I have a soft spot for Al Smith. As a college freshman in an American history course, I wrote a term paper on his 1928 presidential campaign.

Have you ever heard Smith speak? Listen to the governor’s comments upon being presented with the first post-Prohibition case of beer in New York State. Priceless.

This post, with a Pullman car in it, is for my friend Diane.

[I’m not sure how Al Smith was able to underscore an exclamation point when speaking, but so be it.]

“As said before”

Dinnertime for Leopold Bloom. The scene is the dining room of the Ormond Hotel. Pat is the waiter. Richie Goulding is Stephen Dedalus’s uncle and Bloom’s casual acquaintance and impromptu dinner companion. Goulding is a costdrawer (cost accountant) in the legal firm of Collis and Ward. From the “Sirens” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

Joyce is rather playful here. The “Calypso” episode introduces Bloom thusly:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

“It’s for an invalid”

From the “Wandering Rocks” episode. Blazes Boylan is supervising the preparation of a gift basket to be delivered to Molly Bloom, whom he will visit that afternoon.

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

A few notes:

~ Thornton’s: fruiterer and florist, “a very fashionable shop” (Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated).

~ “Fat pears,” “ripe shamefaced peaches”: Boylan would have no trouble understanding the language of emoji. In the “Ithaca” espiode we find a description of the remains of this gift: “an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co’s white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper.”

~ What’s in the jar? Apparently it’s Plumtree’s Potted Meat, flakes of which are found in the Blooms’ bed.

~ The OCA reader will have seen H.E.L.Y’s in a passage from “Lestrygonians.”

~ The “darkbacked figure”: Leopold Bloom.

~ “Invalid port”: a fortified wine. “Es un excelente reconstituyente,” says a webpage I found somewhere. Molly is of course not an invalid.

We last see Boylan in his small section of this episode with a red carnation between his smiling teeth. He takes it from a stem glass and asks the shopgirl if it’s for him.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

“Before Air-Conditioning”

Arthur Miller, writing in The New Yorker in 1998 about life in 1927 or ’28:

Even through the nights, the pall of heat never broke. With a couple of other kids, I would go across 110th to the Park and walk among the hundreds of people, singles and families, who slept on the grass, next to their big alarm clocks, which set up a mild cacophony of the seconds passing, one clock’s ticks syncopating with another’s. Babies cried in the darkness, men’s deep voices murmured, and a woman let out an occasional high laugh beside the lake. I can recall only white people spread out on the grass; Harlem began above 116th Street then.

Tony Dow (1945–2022)

He played Wally Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver. The New York Times has an obituary.

Ulp

From Bryan Garner’s LawProse Lesson #382, “Law graduates who can write”:

No memo or brief or letter is better than what’s in it. No amount of style and form, attention to punctuation and phrasing, can make good writing out of unreliable information and bad judgments. A good piece of writing is much more than phrasing, commas, and semicolons.

On the other hand, no amount of solid research and brilliant analysis will be useful until it’s communicated effectively to others. If your work requires writing, then your work is no better than your writing.

That last sentence should be useful to anyone who teaches writing. I can imagine it instantly instilling greater seriousness in a student.

[If you want to subscribe to Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day and LawProse Lessons (both free): here. If you want to subscribe to LawProse Lessons only: here.]

Changes in ASL

From The New York Times: “How Sign Language Evolves As Our World Does.” Begins with the influence of small screens on ASL but moves to matters of culture.

Another Mary Miller vote

I don’t follow them all. But this one stands out: Miller (R, IL-15) was one of just twenty “no” votes, all Republican, against H.R. 6552, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022. As is often the case, Miller voted with the worst of the worst: Biggs, Boebert, Brooks, Gaetz (no surprise there), Gosar, Greene, &c.

Who runs against Miller in November? Paul Lange.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

A joke in the traditional manner

Who’s the lead administrator in a school of fish?

On what would have been my dad’s ninety-fourth birthday, I continue in the traditional manner.

The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the new insect hybrid? : Did you hear about the shape-shifting car? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do ghosts hide their wrinkles? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : Of all the songs in the Great American Songbook, which is the favorite of pirates? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live? : What’s the worst thing about owning nine houses? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why are supervillains good at staying warm in the winter? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why is the Fonz so cool? : Why sharpen your pencil to write a Dad joke? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for the Autobahn, the elementary school, the Golden Retriever, Bela Lugosi, Samuel Clemens, the doctor, the plumber, the senior citizen, Oliver Hardy, and the ophthalmologist. Elaine gets credit for the Illinois town. Ben gets credit for the supervillains in winter. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them dad jokes.]

At last

From The Washington Post :

The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.