A telegram, an actual telegram

[Click for a much larger view.]

Thinking about telegrams made me remember that I have one. It appears in Ted Berrigan’s “C” magazine, vol. 1, no. 10 (1965), pasted inside a telegram-sized outline with the words “When the mercenaries ran away ...” typed along one side. I wonder what made it onto other copies of this mimeographed page.

The telegram, from Galeria Bonino, a Manhattan gallery, was sent to the artist and writer Joe Brainard. From Brazilian Bulletin, January 1, 1964:

Those who are acquainted with the Galeria Bonino in Rio de Janeiro will be pleased to know that Alfredo Bonino and Emilio del Junco have opened a new art gallery in New York City, at 7 West 57th Street. Other Bonino galleries are in Buenos Aires, Rome and Toronto.

Did Joe Brainard ever have a show at Galeria Bonino? There’s nothing listed in the exhibition history in Joe Brainard: A Retrospective (2001).

Pop quiz: Why would a Manhattan gallery be sending a telegram to a Manhattan resident?

Related reading
All OCA Joe Brainard posts : telegram posts (Pinboard)

“Letters! Actual Letters!”

The latest episode of This American Life is all about real mail: “Letters! Actual Letters!” With enough human interest to fill a relay box.

Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)

Feeling seen

Jonathan Capehart, as PBS closed its coverage of the Democratic National Convention tonight. For context: he was holding a handkerchief that was a present from PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz:

“Yesterday I said, in politics people want to be seen. They want to be seen in the way their politicans talk to them and talk about them. And when I pulled out my Amna hankie, it was when Michelle Obama said that Kamala Harris — we never have the grace of failing forward; we never have the benefit of generational wealth; if things don’t go our way, we don’t get to complain. That’s how Michelle Obama lived her life — lives her life; that’s how Barack Obama lives [his] life. That’s how I live my life. And to hear that, coming from the former First Lady, is just too — and I’m sorry, but I feel seen. And I think people in this hall feel seen. And I’m certain that millions of Americans feel seen. I’ll leave it there.”

*

Wednesday morning: You can watch and listen here.

Oof!

Michelle Obama, just now: “Who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”

Psst, David Brooks

I wasn’t going to make this post. But after reading David Brooks’s baffling appraisal of the speech Joe Biden gave last night, here I am.

David Brooks didn’t like the speech. In The New York Times he writes, “I was hoping for something in the spirit of the Harris campaign — ebullient and joyful.”

I noticed ebullient twice in Brooks’s comments during PBS’s coverage of the DNC last night, each time pronounced /EB-yə-lənt/. As Garner’s Modern English Usage notes, that’s a common mispronunciation.

Has David Brooks latched onto this word for use in talking and writing about Kamala Harris? If so, I hope he gets it right. (Perhaps Jonathan Capehart can clue him in.) I will be listening and watching.

[I left a comment about ebullient on the Times piece. Maybe Brooks will see it.]

Firing the librarians

From Inside Higher Ed:

Western Illinois University is laying off all nine of its library faculty — eight of them tenured or on the tenure track — as part of wider efforts to offset a $22 million budget deficit driven by rising operational costs and a 21 percent enrollment drop since fall 2019.

While the university said in an Aug. 9 news release that it’s “made every effort to minimize the impact on students,” the planned elimination of the library faculty by May 2025 has academic librarians both inside and outside the institution questioning how WIU’s library will be able to effectively serve faculty and students in the future.

“It’s quite alarming,” said Leo Lo, president of the national Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), adding that in addition to assisting faculty in their teaching and research, librarians are especially helpful to first-generation college students finding their footing in higher education. “Without libraries to help them, it may hurt student retention” and recruitment, he said.

But Alisha Looney, a spokesperson for WIU, wrote in an email Friday that the university “will continue to have adequate coverage in the library” after the layoffs.

Western is also closing a library at a branch campus, to be replaced by a service desk at which patrons can put in requests for materials, Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. It’s all part of “a new vision” for that campus.

Loony, indeed.

Related reading
All OCA library posts (Pinboard)

Calendaring and efforting

Calendaring and efforting ? I learned about them just a couple of days ago, but they’ve been around for a while. Columbia Journalism Review has them covered: “When nouns are turned into verbs.”

What do I think about efforting ? Eff that!

Jackie’s in the house

“Higher and Higher,” playing at the DNC.

[Orange Crate Art is a Jackie Wilson-friendly zone.]

Extra strength

From Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting: American Encounters (New York: New York Review Books, 2024), the story of a present, from Marcel Duchamp to Joseph Cornell:

It was a readymade, “done on the spot.” Cornell was almost beside himself with pleasure at how cleanly and swiftly Duchamp had made his present. He had picked up a red-and-yellow glue carton that said “strength” on one side and, admiring the American phrase, had written “gimme” above it and then signed the whole “Marcel Duchamp,” dated Christmas 1942.

On Saturday morning Elaine and I went for a walk after reading about Cornell and Duchamp. And where a road ended and a path through a meadow began, I saw this tiny Tarot card, 1 3/8″ × 13/16″.

You can see Duchamp’s gift via Google Books.

Related reading
All OCA synchronicity posts (Pinboard)

Hold the hold music

From Letters of Note, a plea to CVS: “Please change your hold music.”