Avoiding the d-word

In The New Yorker, Susan Glasser writes about Donald Trump, who turns seventy-eight today: “If ever there were a case for age-related diminishment of a candidate, Donald Trump is it.”

Glasser politely avoids the d-word. But it must be said, as Drs. John Gartner and Harry Segal say, again and again, on their podcast Shrinking Trump, that there is a difference between aging and dementing: one major-party candidate for president has a brain that’s aging; the other, a brain that’s dementing. As Gartner and Segal also point out, psychopathy gives dementia cover: the former guy always says crazy things, right?

You may have seen Tamara Keith veer away from any consideration of the d-word on the PBS NewsHour this past Monday. After a brief compilation of odd remarks from Trump’s June 9 Las Vegas rally (excluding the death by shark/death by electrocution bit), Amna Nawaz asked for comment:

I just want to point out all of those remarks were within one 10-minute window.

Tam, for all his calls for President Biden to undergo some kind of cognitive test, it’s clear to say Mr. Trump’s remarks are not at all coherent in these rallies.

And Keith:

Mr. Trump’s remarks have never been super coherent in his rallies. I’m not sure that I can weigh in on how much they have veered in the last couple of months, but this split screen [Trump/Biden] has always been there, will always be there.

They are different people. And the people who stood in 110-degree weather to see that speech got what they came for. They got the greatest hits. They got some surprising things that they weren’t expecting, because the teleprompter went out, which just made it a little bit more fun.

Yeah, fun.

No master builder

The narrator’s father is an architect.

Anton Chekhov, “My Life: The Story of a Provincial,” in “Peasants” and Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: New York Review Books, 1999).

Related reading
Chekhov and Larry David : Chekhov and Joyce

Domestic comedy

“I realize that’s a shallow thing to say, but I think it’s a valid shallow thing to say.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Another Lassie–MTM connection

[Florence Lake as Martha Dudley. Click for a larger view.]

I somehow discovered that Florence Lake played Martha Dudley in the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Lou’s First Date” (November 3, 1973). A mix-up pairs her with Mr. Grant for a broadcasters’ dinner.

“Who is Florence Lake?” you may ask. None other than the actor who played Jenny, the Calverton telephone operator on the television series Lassie. Lake appeared in eighteen Lassie episodes between 1954 and 1962 and was the only cast member to serve for the duration of the show’s Calverton years. Her off-screen character was spoken to in many, many more episodes: “Hello, Jenny? This is Ruth. Would you ring Doc Weaver?” Jenny’s most prominent Lassie appearances: “Party Line” (December 23, 1956) and “The Phone Hog” (April 3, 1960).

[Florence Lake and, of course, Lassie, in “Party Line.” Click for a larger view.]

Florence Lake started in pictures in 1929. Her last appearance was in television’s Most Wanted in 1977. Here’s her IMDb page. Two fun facts via IMDb: Lake appeared with Ed Asner (who played Lou Grant) in The Girl Most Likely to ..., a 1973 made-for-TV movie, and

In a mid-70s interview, Mary Tyler Moore remembered the cast becoming exasperated with Florence Lake. It seems she didn’t see the character as elderly and feeble as written. Moore said Valerie Harper took special time with Ms. Lake to get the performance needed from her.

“Why another Lassie-MTM connection?” you may ask. Because Ted Knight (Ted Baxter) appeared as a traveling entertainer and World’s Greatest Ventriloquist in an episode of Lassie. And the dog-puppet from that episode showed up in a Mary Tyler Moore episode.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

[I loved Lassie in boyhood and love Lassie now. Straight outta Calverton.]

The Alitos and revenge

Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) writes about “Modern revenge culture, explained by Mrs. and Mr. Alito.”

Here are the Alitos as caught on recordings: Mr. and Mrs.

An aside: the Sacred Heart flag that Mrs. Alito would like to fly is widely understood as a counter to the pride flag. A cursory search will confirm that. See, for instance, a comment left on a webpage selling a Sacred Heart flag.

One more kwoi

[From New Universal Self-Pronouncing Dictionary (Chicago: John C. Winston, 1943).]

Click on the image for a larger kwoi sound. As in macOS Sequoia. Thanks, Kevin, for entrusting me with this beautiful little dictionary.

A related post
macOS Something (How to pronounce sequoia )

Eugene Robinson asks a question

In The Washington Post (gift link): “Is Trump okay?” The answer, which Robinson doesn’t quite voice: No.

New directions in footwear

[Click for a larger size.]

Kids say the darndest things: my Merrell Moab Adventure 3 shoes have been renamed “jungle shoes.”

See also New directions in apparel for “Papa’s gentleman shirts.”

[Image from Zappos, from whom I’ve bought two (three?) pairs of jungle shoes.]

“AI and the Death of Student Writing”

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lisa Lieberman, a community-college instructor, writes about “AI and the Death of Student Writing”:

I called the student in and asked him to write a sentence with the word “depiction.” He admitted he didn’t know what “depiction” meant, much less how to spell it, much less how to use it in a sentence. He confessed he hadn’t written a single word of the essay.

Another student complained when I gave her a zero for using AI. She said, “I don’t know why you’re picking on me. I turned in all my assignments on time. And I never used AI.”

It was true she hadn’t used AI, but when I pressed her, she admitted to using Grammarly.

And it turns out for a small monthly fee, Grammarly can do much more than identify errors in grammar and spelling.

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