Three passages from Michelle Obama

From The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times (New York: Crown, 2022).

On navigating the world as someone “different”:

You learn, as my family did, to be watchful. You figure out how to guard your energy, to count every step. And at the heart of this lies a head-spinning paradox: Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.

On putting something small, like knitting, alongside big things:

Any time your circumstances start to feel all-consuming, I suggest you try going in the other direction — toward the small. Look for something that'll help you rearrange your thoughts, a pocket of contentedness where you can live for a while. And by this I don't mean sitting passively in front of your television or scrolling through your phone. Find something that’s active, something that asks for your mind but uses your body as well. Immerse yourself in the process. And forgive yourself for temporarily ducking out of the storm.

On seing children growing up. When the Obamas visit Malia and Sasha, who are sharing an apartment in Los Angeles, Malia produces a charcuterie board. And then:

Sasha attempted to fix us a couple of weak martinis — Wait, you know how to make martinis? — and served them in water glasses, first laying down a couple of newly purchased coasters so that we wouldn’t mark up their brand-new coffee table with our drinks.

I watched all this with some astonishment. It’s not that I’m surprised that our kids have grown up, exactly, but somehow the whole scene — the coasters, in particular — signaled a different sort of landmark, the type of thing every parent spends years scanning for, which is evidence of common sense.

As Sasha set down our drinks that night, I thought about all the coasters she and her sister hadn’t bothered to use when they were under our care, all the times over the years I’d tried to get watermarks out of various tables, including at the White House.

But the dynamics had changed. We were at their table now. They owned it, and they were protecting it. Clearly they had learned.

I still find it difficult to believe that Elaine and I had the good fortune to meet both Michelle and Barack Obama in 2004, during Barack Obama’s Senate campaign. And I still find it difficult to believe that our country went from eight years of an Obama presidency to — what? Michelle Obama, too, finds that difficult to believe.

Also by Michelle Obama
From Becoming

NYT Letter Boxed fail

[The New York Times Letter Boxed, December 20, 2022.]

I am indignant. I had no idea where I might have gone after grimpen, but I wanted grimpen, a word known to many a reader from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker”:

On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure
    foothold.

The Oxford English Dictionary can only guess: “? A marshy area.”

Eliot seems to have picked up grimpen from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, where it appears as part of a place name:

Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.

The Annotated Sherlock Holmes explains:

As is well known, Watson’s “Great Grimpen Mire” is Grimspound Bog, three miles to the north and west of Widecombe-in-the-Moor.

All three citations — 1902, 1940, 1968 — appear in the OED, and are the only citations for the word.

Vladimir Nabokov has some fun with Eliot’s vocabulary in Pale Fire (1962). In John Shade’s poem of that name, his daughter Hazel reads in her bedroom:

Sometimes I’d help her with a Latin text,
Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next
To my fluorescent lair, and you would be
In your own study, twice removed from me,
And I would hear both voices now and then:
“Mother, what’s grimpen ?” “What is what?”
                                                                “Grim
    Pen.”
Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:
“Mother, what’s chthonic ?” That, too, you’d explain,
Appending: “Would you like a tangerine?”
“No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?”
You’d hesitate. And lustily I’d roar
The answer from my desk through the closed door.

A reader of Four Quartets should be able to answer all three of Hazel’s questions.

Related reading
From the Doyle edition (a page of “East Coker,” all marked up) : NYT Spelling Bee fail

Terry Hall (1959–2022)

Terry Hall, best known as the lead singer of The Specials, has died at the age of sixty-three. The Guardian has an obituary and a life in photographs.

Here’s one memorable Specials moment: the video for “Ghost Town.” The song was released as one side of a 12-inch 45. I still have my copy, bought in 1981 at a record store in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.


[The Specials, “Ghost Town” (Jerry Dammers). 2 Tone (1981).]

Here’s the extended version of the song that appeared on the 45.

*

December 27: The New York Times has an obituary.

Referrals

Here come the criminal referrals, as announced by Representative Jamie Raskin (D, Maryland-8):

Obstruction of an official proceeding: Donald Trump, John Eastman, and others.

Conspiracy to defraud the United States: Donald Trump, John Eastman, and others.

Conspiracy to make a false statement: Donald Trump and others.

“Incite,“ ”assist,” or “aid or comfort” an insurrection: Donald Trump.

And: “These are not the only statutes that are potentially relevant“ to Trump’s behavior.

And: the committee is referring four members of Congress for sanction to the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with lawful subpoenas.

And the committee stands adjourned.

[I’d like to see the fourth referral rephrased to parallel the first three: Inciting, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to an insurrection. I originally wrote that I’d like to see Merrick Garland do his job, but the referrals are to Special Counsel Jack Smith. The four members are Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, and Scott Perry.]

Sally’s collectibles

[Peanuts, December 26, 1975. Click for a larger view.]

Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. And Sally was far ahead of her time.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

[For context at some future point: I’m thinking about a defeated former president’s so-called “digital trading cards.”]

Chess Story adapted

Stefan Zweig’s novella Chess Story has been adapted for the screen by Phillip Stolzl. Here’s the story and a trailer. The movie arrives in New York on January 13.

Related reading
All OCA Zweig posts (Pinboard)

Density and amenities

[2456 Jerome Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I like urban density. The southwest corner of the intersection of East Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue was full of it. And look at all the amenities: a mailbox, telephone booths, and public transportation. You can see just a bit of the IRT Jerome Avenue Line to the right. Notice too all the paper bags, held by people shopping on foot, buying what they can carry.

As a commuting college student, I drove through this intersection many times, long after the heyday of United Cigars. An Optimo Cigars sign was on the corner store when I was a student. Today that corner is a drugstore. No phone booths, no doubt. And no mailbox outside. The IRT still runs above.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Urban density on 14th Street

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” or Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle editor, using the pseudonym that signifies an easier Stumper. What else might signify easier Stumper ? Teresa Umpires? I think Stan’s pseudonym is better.

This Stumper was easier, though not too easy. Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, twelve letters, “One paid to talk since the 1920s.” The decade should have helped, but for me this clue seems to have a deliberate obliqueness.

6-D, seven letters, “Show stoppers.” BIGHITS? No. So simple once you see it, if you see it.

12-D, six letters, “Melt down or hand down.” Really clever.

18-A, seven letters, “Not as sensible.” I typed this word yesterday, probably for the first time, and checked to make sure it’s a real word.

29-A, four letters, “Painter’s canvas.” Nice.

48-A, five letters, “Sweet sandwich.” Five letters — no OREO here.

56-D, four letters, “Very soon after.” The most modest words can slightly baffle.

62-A, twelve letters, “Hardly in a sorry state.” I would’ve liked FITASAFIDDLE.

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 59-A, fifteen letters, “Supermarket checkout staple.” Definitely not an IMPULSEPURCHASE for me.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Dots and forms

[Click for a dottier view.]

It’s oddly reassuring to see that our trash pickup still bills with a dot-matrix printer and tractor-feed forms. But this year: no side perforations on the forms. Times, changing.

Luddite Club

“We’re not expecting everyone to have a flip phone. We just see a problem with mental health and screen use”: in Brooklyn, teenagers have formed a Luddite Club. They meet to draw, paint, read, talk. Their mascot: Arthur from PBS.

[A great premise for a Wes Anderson film?]