Growing

Paddy, our narrator, has carried fallen branches home while riding her scooter. And then the branches hit a lamp-post and Paddy came tumbling down. Her mother Louey is cross: “Just look at you. You’re not going out on that scooter again.” And Paddy reminds her mother that when they were walking the day before, they saw lots of fallen branches and her mother said they’d save money if they could carry them home for firewood.

Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).

Also from this novel
“Oh all the things kids do”

Recently updated

A Honeymooners correction, still needed The New York Times won’t be making a correction.

Bob Newhart (1929–2024)

The New York Times has an obituary. From a 2019 interview with the Times (both gift links):

Do you ever think about death?

I think I know what’s on the other side, but I’m not sure. Maybe it just ends. Some people think you come back. Maybe I’ll come back as Shelley Berman and be pissed off at myself.

What do you think happens on the other side?

I think if you lived a good life, some people say it is rapture. You spend the rest of your life in a state of rapture. That’d be nice. What I’m actually hoping is there’s the Pearly Gates and God’s there and he says to me, “What did you do in life?” And I say, “I was a stand-up comedian.” And he says: “Get in that real short line over there.”

[Context: Shelley Berman wrongly accused Newhart of stealing the use of a telephone in stand-up comedy from him.]

In the news

It’s not just Project 2025: “A network of well-funded far-right activists is preparing for the former President’s return to the White House.” Jonathan Blitzer’s “Inside the Trump Plan for 2025” is worth reading (The New Yorker ).

George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC looks like a PAC worth supporting.

The Seneca Project looks like a project worth supporting. The project’s video about what J.D. Vance thinks about women — in his own words — is worth watching.

Recently updated

The banana man I misunderstood. Now with what really happened, which is even more ridiculous.

Separated at birth

[Lee Marvin and Jerome the Giraffe. Click either image for a larger view.]

Steven Hall suggested this frankly unsettling pairing. But who am I kidding? When I see these two side by side, I cannot help laughing.

Everyone knows Lee Marvin. Jerome the Giraffe appeared on the CBC children’s show The Friendly Giant (1958–1985). The show had some American distribution as well: Elaine watched on Boston’s WGBH. As Steven points out, YouTube has an episode from PBS Wisconsin.

The Lee Marvin connection is apparently not a coincidence. Man and puppet do sound similar. Steven suggests listening to this clip. And he mentions a “You Know You’re a Canadian When” list that included something like this: “you feel nostalgic for a man who hangs out with a hyper-kinetic rooster in a bag and a purple and orange giraffe with a sleepy-Lee-Marvin voice.”

I’ve drained the purple and orange and everything else from Jerome to make the photographs more uniform.

Thanks, Steven, for some unexpected amusement.

Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)

“Oh all the things kids do”

From a novel of a working-class girlhood in England before and during the Second World War.

Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).

The banana man

We were waiting at the register in Aldi, with many things to pay for. A man came up behind us with one banana. I insisted that he go ahead of us. He wondered if the cashier could ring up one banana. I said that since bananas were sold by weight, it shouldn’t be a problem. I was right and wrong.

The purchase took some time. The man put his card in the reader, but the reader didn’t bite, so he swiped. Several minutes of inaudible customer-cashier conversation followed, with the cashier opening the till twice. I tried to send Elaine a message by telepathy about good deeds and punishment.

And then we found out what had happened. The banana man had wanted cash back with his purchase — that was the whole point of buying the banana. And having received his cash, he wanted to return his banana for an additional eighteen cents.

I misunderstood. Here’s what did happen:

The banana man paid for his banana with his card and wanted cash back. The cashier told him that she couldn’t give him back cash that exceeded the amount of his purchase. The banana man wanted to return his banana. The cashier, now with more customers waiting, told him that she wasn’t going to run a return for eighteen cents. She gave him the coins instead. She told us that she didn’t think Aldi would mind. We told her that we would have her back if they did.

Note: The banana man could have asked about cash back before paying for his banana.

Thank you, Elaine, for straightening me out.

[Context, in case anyone is wondering: the customer was clearly not indigent. He was, I’d say, feeling remarkably entitled.]

Nancy, multitasking

[Nancy, August 5, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

I like that Nancy is able to speak (and what’s more, soliloquize) as she drinks water.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

“Churches and synagogues” (Project 2025)

Just one sentence from the foreword to the Project 2025 Policy Agenda:

We cannot outsource to others our obligation to ensure the conditions that allow our families, local communities, churches and synagogues, and neighborhoods to thrive.

“Churches and synagogues”: that’s conspicuously limited phrasing. But it’s not surprising in a document that refers to the “Judeo-Christian tradition” and to time and a half pay “for hours worked on the Sabbath.” “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest,” the document says. But the default Sabbath, no surprise, is Sunday.

More inclusive: “places of worship.”

Related posts
Relative frequency of words in Project 2025 : Project 2025 on marriage and parental roles : Names in school : “Leftist broadcasters” : Trump and Project 2025 : Librarians and teachers