Postal abbreviations

Not new, but new to me: Gary Gulman explains how the states got their two-letter abbreviations.

Thanks, Lu.

[I’ve watched his 2019 and 2023 Max specials. Highly recommended.]

Review: Carol Beggy, Pencil

Carol Beggy. Pencil. New York: Bloomsbury, 2024. xiv + 136 pages. $14.95 paper.

This small book is a big disappointment. It’s a volume in the series Object Lessons, short books devoted to the contemplation of everyday things: barcodes, hyphens, rust. Other volumes in this series might be terrific. But Pencil is not.

The first sentence to bring me up short, on page three, was about Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of its manufacture.

I noticed that the word its has no referent. A possible revision:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of the pencil’s manufacture.

But don’t they amount to the same thing? Better:

He details both the history of pencil-making and the modern manufacturing process.

Am I being picky? Let’s see.

On page six:

A pencil used to be the go-to tool for when a cassette tape needed to be rewound.

A possible revision:

The pencil was once the go–to tool for rewinding a cassette tape.

On page nineteen:

The Musgrave Pencil Company is family-owned and operates out of Shelbyville, TN, which was dubbed “Pencil City, USA,” because a half dozen manufacturers once had factories in the Middle Tennessee town.

A possible revision:

The family-owned Musgrave Pencil Company is based in “Pencil City, USA,” the Middle Tennessee town of Shelbyville, once home to a half dozen pencil manufacturers.

Many sentences are, well, unnecessarily cluttered. On page eighty-three:

When writing his book on the pencil, Petroski devotes the opening of his first chapter to Thoreau and how he made lists of everything he used each day, what was in his cabin in the woods, and the animals, trees, and weather he spotted along the way.

A possible revision:

Petroski begins The Pencil with Thoreau and his lists: of the things he used each day, the contents of his cabin, the animals, trees, and weather conditions he observed.

Often the parts of a sentence can be rearranged to the writer’s (and reader’s) advantage. On page eighty-one:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery are the graves of some of the best-known US writers and thinkers in the mid– to late-nineteenth century along Authors Ridge.

A possible revision, putting all the details of location in one place:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery is Authors Ridge, which houses the graves of some of the best-known nineteenth-century American writers and thinkers.

And often the writing is marred by plain carelessness. Many sentences lack necessary punctuation. Here’s one, from page fifty-three:

The problem is that when you spot these claims there never appears to be any attribution and thousands of these references show up in searches.

Elsewhere, words are missing. On page fifty-eight:

I learned a lot from the other members then and still [continue to learn?].

On page sixty-seven:

I know that there are some out [there?] confused by the thought that there are members of a pencil collecting group who travel great distances to meet with their fellow collectors.

That sentence could benefit from rewriting to eliminate the repeated “that there are”:

I’m sure some people are amused by the idea of pencil collectors traveling great distances to meet.

And back on page twenty-two, there’s just a mess:

the Blackwing 602, which it’s distinctive, flattened ferrule

I don’t know what accounts for such writing. In an afterword Beggy mentions a missed deadline and “life, health, and the world such as it is in 2023” getting in the way of her finishing the book. What I do know is that Bloomsbury, a reputable publisher, put this book out, as it is, and is charging $14.95 for it. Bloomsbury, that’s unconscionable.

I suspect that Mary Norris’s Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015) strongly influenced Pencil. Like Norris, Beggy has worked as an editor (at The Boston Globe ) and has written a chatty, digressive book. But Norris’s book has a premise — her life as a copyeditor at The New Yorker — that admits of manifold personal asides and digressions. Beggy’s subject is the pencil. Many of the asides and digressions in Pencil have little to do with that subject (or object).

My favorite bit in Pencil : Beggy’s explanation of why reporters take three writing instruments with them on assignment: ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, and pencil. In those paragraphs the pencil and the personal mesh nicely.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[An excerpt from a Stephen Sondheim interview that I posted in these pages appears in this book, properly credited. But credit should really have gone to the site with the interview itself.]

Thinking about November

For anyone thinking about voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Jill Stein, or Cornel West, or not voting at all:

Consider this allegory.

Consider what David Foster Wallace said about not voting.

Consider these clips from Trump’s Saturday rant in Dayton, Ohio.

[Comments off. I’m not interested in arguing.]

631–639 5th Avenue

Better known as St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

[St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger cathedral.]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

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

[Leddy is an Irish name.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, and it’s once again supposed to be easier. Les Ruff? O’Reilly? says I. Shaw, Shaw, whatever you say. This puzzle took me thirty-three minutes. Some novelty and lots of misdirection, especially going Across.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Athletic field.” And the misdirection begins. My first thought was GRIDIRON.

1-D, six letters, “Low-hanging fruit, for example.” Nice.

2-D, letters, six letters, “Beat with your feet.” A little tricky.

5-D, three letters, “Protective layer.” Did not fool me.

7-D, five letters, “What M and N are called.” A touch of linguistics.

16-A, six letters, “Deck supervisor.” And the misdirection continues.

17-A, eight letters, “Hardly ‘Definitely.’” My first guess was YESANDNO.

35-D, five letters, “Bogart cross-examinee character.” This clue made me start wondering if I’d call this Bogart’s greatest role. Then I thought aboutHigh Sierra. Then I thought about In a Lonely Place. Then I thought about Casablanca (obviously). Then I thought about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Then I got back to writing this post.

38-A, eight letters, “Clearance sales.” Having once worked in it, I am fond of the language of retail. Where’s my gondola?

40-A, seven letters, “They’re often served in bars.” Funny. And there is a comedy connection.

46-A, six letters, “‘Help wanted’ letters.” Clever.

51-A, four letters, “All of it was in the Louisiana Purchase.” I knew it couldn’t be OKRA.

57-D, four letters, “What P and V are called.” See 7-D.

63-A, eight letters, “They’re often served in bars.” Not quite as funny as 40-A.

67-A, six letters, “Word from the Latin for ‘crush.’” A fun fact.

My favorite in this puzzle: 12-D, eight letters, “Actress name + actress name = airline.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

ə

[xkcd. “Schwa.” March 14, 2024.]

A related post
My proof that I never knew phonics

Recently updated

T. MONK’S ADVICE (1960) Is it a forgery?

A Gamewell close-up

[From Shadow of a Doubt (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). Click for a larger view.]

Like the mail chute in When Strangers Marry, this Gamewell fire alarm, too, was ready for its close-up. A bunch of actors were standing in the way, but they walked off, and for less than a second the alarm had the screen to itself.

Perhaps this alarm is still attached to a pole in Santa Rosa. See also this Gamewell alarm, manufactured between 1938 and 1950, removed sometime after October 2018.

A consequential chute

When I wrote four sentences about When Strangers Marry (dir. William Castle, 1944), I suggested that the movie has the most consequential mail chute in all film. I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong though.

I’m not enlarging the image: that’s the camera closing in on a chute that must have long been ready for its close-up. As the camera closes in, let us pause to ponder a world with five daily mail collections, six days a week. Click any image for a larger view.


And down in the lobby, Lt. Blake (later the police commissioner in another city), is curious: “Do you have a letter there addressed to Fred Graham, Atlanta, Georgia?”


Uh, no. That letter is stuck in the chute. An obliging figurant steps in to propel the Graham letter (in fact an envelope stuffed with money) on its way.


And whoomp, there it is, its contents spilling all over the collection box.


This post is for my friend Diane, who has great photographs of chutes and collection boxes. I have a small number of chutes and boxes in these pages.

No coincidence

“I don’t believe in coincidences”: a substitute MSNBC host, yesterday morning.

“I don’t believe in coincidences”: Jessica Fletcher, last night.