Recently updated

Words of the year Now with enshittification .

Recently updated

Fliqlo lives! Alas, this screensaver still uses — at least on my Mac — an enormous amount of memory.

An overview of the science of reading

“An effort to overhaul how children learn to read, known as the science of reading movement, is sweeping the country. Here’s where it stands”: “What to Know About the Science of Reading” (The New York Times, gift link).

I missed this article when it appeared earlier this month. Thanks, Joe.

Hail to thee, blithe Parsnip!

Carrot thou never wert.

I think of the parsnip as the carrot’s quiet cousin. There’s the carrot, in the center of the room, doing a magic trick or telling a colorful (heh) story. And there’s the parsnip, over in a corner, looking at the titles on the bookshelf.

As you may have guessed, I like parsnips. I like carrots too. They both belong in the stew.

[Post title with apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley and my friend and Shelley devotee Rob Zseleczky. Our household’s parsnips come from Ed Fields & Sons.]

Intertextuality

[Hi and Lois, January 11, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

[Zippy, January 11, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

Intertextuality in today’s comics.

How did Lois know to use that enormous pot to make cocoa? She got hold of the script.

Venn reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts : Hi and Lois and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

A pallet on the floor

Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure (1944).

The opening sentence of Boston Adventure announces the key signatures, so to speak, of the novel: D and P. The novel is Dickensian, beginning as the story of a girlhood spent in poverty, and Proustian, beginning with sleep. Proust: “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.” Or in Lydia Davis’s translation, “For a long time, I went to bed early.”

The moments of involuntary memory in the novel, the miniature essays that universalize the narrator’s experience into a “we” — so Proustian. But Proust’s narrator, unlike Sonie Marburg, never had to sleep on the floor.

Boston Adventure has been reissued by New York Review Books. My only relation to the link is that of a happy reader.

“Too many things”

Ted Berrigan, in a 1962 journal:

Got rid of all my books (about 400) except for about 75. Sold them to pay Joe’s rent or gave them to Dick & Carol. Also gave up stealing entirely. We have money and it’s a joy to buy something, to save for it, then read it! Too many things make everything less.

From Get the Money! Collected Prose (1961–1983) (San Francisco: City Lights, 2022).

Joe: Joe Brainard. Dick & Carol: Dick Gallup and Carol Clifford (later Carol Gallup).

Related reading
All OCA Ted Berrigan posts : Joe Brainard posts : A poem by Dick Gallup

Meta detectives

From I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (dir. William Nigh, 1948). A police detective (Rory Mallinson) has just told Tom Quinn (Don Castle) that he’s under arrest for murder:

“Now wait a minute, you guys aren’t serious. What are you, a couple of actors out of work? You don’t even look like detectives.”

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes is still streaming at the Criterion Channel.

Also from this movie
A Mongol pencil sighting

Capitulation or compromise

From a New York Times article about budget negotiations between House majority leader Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer:

It is not clear whether disgruntled right-wing Republicans will try to depose Mr. Johnson as they did his predecessor. But they have already signaled that the latitude some of them afforded him during his first weeks in the job is vanishing, and that their patience is wearing thin with his capitulations to Democrats.

But capitulations makes sense only if the sentence is recast to reflect the view of the hard right: “their patience is wearing thin with what they see as his capitulations to Democrats.”

I’d choose compromises with. To compromise, to come to an agreement, is not to capitulate. And as the article makes clear, the agreement is a matter of compromise, with each side giving up something. If the repeated with — “with his compromises with” — grates, the sentence can be rewritten:

But they have already signaled that the latitude some of them afforded him during his first weeks in the job is vanishing, and that they disapprove of his compromises with Democrats.

The article goes on to say that “Some Republicans suggested that Mr. Johnson was merely bowing to the reality of divided government.”

Which just might involve the possibility of compromise.

Fliqlo lives!

A new version of the Mac flip-clock screensaver Fliqlo (for Sonoma and beyond) is now available. It’s a free download, with donations accepted.

As I wrote in a previous recommendation: For those who teach and have conferences with students, Fliqlo can be a handy way to keep track of time without awkward glances at a phone or watch.

*

Alas, Sonoma still identifies Fliqlo as a legacy item, and for whatever reason, it uses an enormous amount of memory, at least on my Mac — more than 500 MB this morning.