“She wasn’t fit to be seen”

From one of the bleakest stories I’ve ever read. It has, or should have, a place alongside James Joyce’s “Counterparts” and Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend.

Jean Stafford, ”Children Are Bored on Sunday” (1948), in Collected Stories (1969).

Related reading
All OCA Jean Stafford posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: cubeb

Recalling her lone experience of smoking, Emily Vanderpool thinks that she did a better job of it than the furtive, coughing grad students in the women’s smoking room of the college library. From Jean Stafford’s “A Reading Problem” (1956):

I could smoke better than that and I was only ten; I mean the one time I had smoked I did it better — a friend and I each smoked a cubeb she had pinched from her tubercular father.

Smoked a what? And why is someone with tuberculosis smoking anything? An explanation: “Wrapped in standard rice-paper, just like ordinary cigarettes, cubebs were stuffed with the dried, ground berries of a Southeast Asian relative of the pepper plant.” The cubeb was regarded as a treatment for catarrh. Wikipedia reports that cubeb cigarettes were also used to treat asthma, chronic pharyngitis, and hay fever.

[Requa’s Cubeb Cigarettes. Photograph by Joe Haupt (Flickr). Licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 License. Click for a larger view.]

The Beatles with Morecambe and Wise

Here’s the complete Morecambe and Wise Show with the Beatles (recorded December 2, 1963; aired April 18, 1964). The Beatles do “This Boy,” “All My Loving,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and, with Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, “Moonlight Bay” — live, not lip-synced. And there are comedy bits, with and without the Beatles, all good-natured silliness. (Included: silly walks.)

From the liner notes for the Beatles’ Anthology 1 :

Asked in 1994 to name his favourite of the many television programmes the Beatles had appeared on, Paul McCartney scarcely hesitated in responding The Morecambe and Wise Show .

Wonderful stuff.

Domestic comedy

[The subject was breakfast.]

“It’s a good restaurant. It has these things called ‘eggs’?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Please hear the second sentence with a purposeful bit of uptalk.]

Barry Sachs

One bit of instrument naming I can’t stand: “bari sax.” No one says “al sax” or “ten sax.” Why “bari sax”?

I can imagine an objection: “alto” and “tenor” are just two syllables each. “Baritone” is three. True, but “soprano” is also three syllables, and “sopranino” is four. And yet we don’t hear anyone talking about a “sop sax” or a “nino sax”. “Nino sax,” to my surprise, is a thing. (See the comments.)

The only thing worse than “bari” in instrument naming is “bone.” It sounds so falsely hip. Man, that bone was smokin’.

[And yes, people do say “bari sax.” It’s not just something written in liner notes.]

Dream data

This phrase showed up in a dream: “epistemic data.” I have invented two possible meanings.

One: that which we know. Example: The alphabet.

Two: that which may lead to knowledge. In other words, a clue. Examples: Ketchup splattered on the wall, a broken plate on the floor.

Though we can already guess who threw the plate.

More words from dreams
Alecry : Fequid : Misinflame : Skeptiphobia : Winching

[A Google search reveals that “epistemic data” has currency outside the dream world. I’m sticking with homemade definitions.]

The Langston Hughes House

[20 E. 127th Street, Harlem, New York City, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

It’s now the Langston Hughes House, not yet open to the public except for scheduled events. Here from New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, is some history about Hughes and this address, his home from 1948 until his death in 1967.

The NYC Municipal Archives recently posted this photograph with a 1957 recording of Hughes speaking about “The Writer’s Place in America.”

Another Hughes location in a tax photograph: the Harlem Branch Y.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Some sources give 1947 as the year Hughes moved in. Arnold Rampersad’s The Life of Langston Hughes (2002) notes that Emerson Harper, whom Hughes regarded as his uncle, made the purchase on December 23, 1947, evidently keeping Hughes’s name out of the transaction to keep down the price. Harper and Hughes then became joint owners, as did Harper’s wife Toy, whom Hughes regarded as his aunt. Hughes moved to this address in July 1948.]

Fare forward, Brian Wilson

Sad news, as reported in The New York Times: “Brian Wilson’s Family Seeks to Place Him Under a Conservatorship.” An excerpt:

The family of Brian Wilson, the musical architect whose genius helped power the Beach Boys, is seeking to place him under a conservatorship following the death of his wife, Melinda, last month.

According to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this week by lawyers representing the potential conservators, Mr. Wilson, 81, has “a major neurocognitive disorder,” and “is unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health.” Melinda Wilson had previously provided care for her husband, but following her death on Jan. 30, the appointment of a conservator has become necessary, according to the petition filed on Wednesday.

Dementia: to paraphrase Sufjan Stevens, it takes and it takes and it takes.

I’m grateful to have seen Brian on the Pet Sounds and SMiLE tours (2000, 2004). That’s how I’d like to think of him on a stage — engaged with the music, his music. Anyone who’s watched recent clips of Brian in performance (I’m not linking) can see that he’s been declining for some time. I’m glad for him that he’ll now be home, in a familiar and living environment, and getting good care.

Related reading
All OCA Brian Wilson posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman constructing as Lester Ruff, and it’s another Les Ruff puzzle that’s kinda Ruff after all. I began with 50-A, three letters, “Hamlet’s piece of work” and 50-D, four letters, “From which starters are selected.” Those clues opened up the southeast section of the puzzle. And then small struggles here and there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, “Redundant ratification.” I like the colloquialism.

2-D, five letters, “Swahili speaker of the future.” Of course, had to be, or will have to be.

10-D, eight letters, “Shop-at-home advocates.” I can’t abide this answer.

12-D, nine letters, “Abrupt attitude adjustment.” Does anyone recall attitude adjustment hours?

15-A, ten letters, “Toleration termination.” Another alliterative clue.

22-D, four letters, “Do meal micro-managment?” A lot of clue for a familiar answer: Stumper-y..

25-A, seven letters, “Small print with prices.” This one had me stumped for some time.

35-D, eight letters, “Strutting swell.” The puzzle goes from the future (2-D) to the past.

39-D, three letters, “If it contracted.” Good grief.

48-D, five letters, “How Appealing or Constitution Daily.” I thought these might be the names of race horses. But no.

53-A, ten letters, “Boxer in stripes for 50+ years.” I must check to see if this boxer is still at it. Nope.

57-A, ten letters, “Whom ‘LINDBERGH WEDS’ in a ’29 headline.” Quite a reach backward? Someone once gave me a copy of a book of hers, so I had this name, even though 48-D had me convinced that I had made a mistake.

My favorite in this puzzle: 45-A, seven letters, “Traditional place for lesser courses.” TAPASBA? It took me so long to see, and I was happy with myself when I did. Not haughty. Just happy.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“To err is human”

A passage from page 87 of Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision is getting considerable attetion. The passage begins a section of the ruling entitled “Refusal to Admit Error”:

The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.

What Pope wrote, in An Essay on Criticism (1711), line 525:

[To Err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.]

Or with our capitalization and spelling: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Or if one eschews the semicolon, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” The first half, as errare humanum est , has been attributed to Seneca the Younger.

Pope added the contrast between the human and the divine. He didn’t include a second is. But to err is human, and I don’t think Judge Engoron was erring in any matter of greater consequence.

[Text of Pope’s poem from a Harvard Library photostat of An Essay on Criticism (1711).]