Sad songs

“Sad songs, that was life”: Rita Forrester, granddaughter of A.P. and Sara Carter of the Carter Family.

[From a 2002 New York Times article. Found in an old file.]

The Daily Tar Heel front page

[The Daily Tar Heel, August 30, 2023. Click for a much larger view.]

I sent a copy of this front page to my member of Congress, Mary Miller. She won’t read it, but perhaps an aide will. Miller is, of course, what they call a “staunch defender” of the Second Amendment. I hope this page gives someone in her office reason to think about the culture of fear and violence their boss fosters.

Today’s newspaper is here.

Goodbye, Fine Arts elevators

Sad news from the Chicago Sun-Times: so-called modern elevators will soon replace the manually operated elevators in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building:

“We have been holding on to them as long as humanly possible and the time has finally come. Truly, it’s harder to get the parts and it’s far more expensive to maintain,” said Jacob Harvey, managing artistic director for a building that first opened in 1898 and was built to display and repair Studebaker carriages and wagons. . . .

But it’s going to mean the loss of something the tenants — puppet makers, piano teachers, yoga instructors, dancers, luthiers (not to mention countless tourists and architecture enthusiasts) — have held dear for decades.

Those elevators are a wonder. You step inside, and there’s an operator to talk to. It’s a strangely intimate form of travel. Here, from The Columbia Chronicle, is a brief tour.

The last time Elaine and I were in the building, we were deeply under the spell of Willa Cather’s Lucy Gayheart, whose protagonist visits the building several times:

Exactly at ten o’clock she went into the Arts Building and told the hall porter she had an engagement with Mr. Sebastian. He rang for the elevator, and she was taken up to the sixth storey.

*

She always started very early for Michigan Avenue, and had an hour or so to walk along the Lake front before she went into the Arts Building.

*

The city was very sloppy on the morning after the snow-storm, and Lucy did not take her usual walk along the Lake; she was afraid of splashing her new dress. She went straight to the Arts Building. How glad she was to greet the hall porter, and to step into the elevator once more!

And so on.

Elaine and I took the elevator to the tenth (top) floor and walked down, looking at door after door. And at the tile. And at a radiator. And at the elevator button.

The Times like

[A photograph caption. The New York Times, August 30, 2023.]

I was surprised by the comma, and I was surprised by the like. If I were writing captions, or if I were working at a no-longer-existing Times copy desk, I might cast the sentence like so:

Aides such as Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita (center) have been working for months behind the scenes to ensure that Mr. Trump will have loyal delegates in state parties across the country.

But the Times approves of that like. From The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (1999):

Like is the preferred expression rather than such as in this kind of phrase: painters like Rubens.

As for such as :

In introducing an example (multinational companies such as Coca-Cola ), the phrase is stilted and should usually be replaced by like. The phrase is slightly less stiff when a noun falls between the words (such companies as PepsiCo ), but like remains more fluid. (Some writers believe that like, in this sense, can be used only to compare a group to an example outside the group: in other words, that Coca-Cola, in the illustration above, should not be introduced by like because it is one of the multinational companies. Usage authorities dispute that rule.)

The 2015 edition bends:

In introducing an example or examples, like and such as are equally acceptable: Impressionist painters like Monet and Degas; expenses such as rent and utilities.

Garner’s Modern English Usage seems to find both like and such as acceptable:

As a preposition, like often takes on the sense “similar to” or “resembling” <I want something like a Degas print>. This use often verges into the sense “as for example” <I enjoy the work of painters like Degas>. Does a reference like that one — such as that one — exclude or include Degas? Do you enjoy the work of painters who resemble Degas but not that of Degas himself? (This is the pedantic position.) Or do you enjoy the work of Degas and others like him? (This is the more usual relaxed position.)

"The pedantic position”: I, a pedant? Nah. I know that “like Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita” includes Wiles and LaCivita. But I do think “such as” is better phrasing. A succinct explanation from Geoff Pope: “Like” implies comparison. “Such as” implies inclusion. Nicely said.

I wonder if I’d have even noticed the Times like without that careless comma after it.

“Slang Stew”

“I'll have bossy in a bowl, flop two, & extra sea dust! Also, a side of bullets, and drag one through Georgia!”

Diner lingo, in today’s Zippy.

Venn reading
All OCA diner posts : diner and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

A January day

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children, trans. Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (New York: New York Review Books, 2022).

Also from this novel
Time, moving fast, moving slowly, or unnoticed

A Very British Cult

“The sinister life coaching company that takes over your life.” From BBC Sounds, it’s A Very British Cult, an eight-episode podcast by Catrin Nye. Absolutely chilling, and the group’s website — I won’t link to it — makes clear that any former member who dares to speak out does so at great cost.

Plenty of nothing

Champaign-Urbana’s News-Gazette reports that millions in federal money are going to projects in downstate Illinois. But nothing for Mary Miller’s congressional district. Miller refuses to do earmarks.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

“Not the odds, but the stakes”

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen (via kottke.org):

“Not the odds, but the stakes.”

That’s my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

And not long after, on MSNBC:

“Donald Trump may be the runaway favorite for the nomination, but a brand-new poll suggests there could be an opening for three other candidates.”

Turgenev understood the flow state

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children, trans. Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (New York: New York Review Books, 2022).

Compare Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990):

The safest generalization to make … is to say that during the flow experience the sense of time bears little relation to the passage of time as measured by the absolute convention of the clock.

And:

Most flow activities do not depend on clock time; like baseball, they have their own pace, their own sequences of events marking transitions from one state to another without regard to equal intervals of duration. It is not clear whether this dimension of flow is just an epiphenomenon — a by-product of the intense concentration required for the activity at hand — or whether it is something that contributes in its own right to the positive quality of the experience. Although it seems likely that losing track of the clock is not one of the major elements of enjoyment, freedom from the tyranny of time does add to the exhilaration we feel during a state of complete involvement.

Flow states aside, I highly recommend Fathers and Children. Great social satire — like a Jane Austen novel if Jane Austen had written about nihilists. And it so happens that Maya Slater’s fiction is Austen-centric.

Two more Csikszentmihalyi posts
Boredom and attention : “The flow of the mind”