Fourteen lines? tl;dr

“Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet”: from an Atlantic article by Rose Horowitch, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.”

Related reading
All OCA reading in college posts (Pinboard)

Paul Giamatti’s Closet Picks

From the Criterion Collection: Paul Giamatti’s Closet Picks. His first pick: Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey, 1962) [add exclamation points to taste]

“Tell Me Why You Like Kamala”

At harvest.ink, a song lyric after “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt”: “Tell Me Why You Like Kamala.”

The Brontës get their ë

Better late than never: “An 85-year injustice has been rectified at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey with the corrected spelling of one of the greatest of all literary names” (The Guardian ).

Related reading
All OCA Brontë posts (Pinboard)

Silk cap improved

Do you drink Silk Soymilk? If so, you may have noticed — how could you not? — that the cap is extremely difficult to remove on first use. I’ve sometimes used pliers.

The cap has now been improved. It’s larger and turns easily on first use. And the sharp, narrowly spaced ridges have been replaced by larger rounded ridges. The cap is now less like a half-inch-thick coin, more like a knob.

[The Silk website says soymilk, but the carton says soy. I suspect that’s a defensive move given legislative efforts to restrict the use of the word milk to dairy products.]

Quaker Oatmeal Squares have returned

As you may have noticed, Quaker Oatmeal Squares disappeared from supermarket shelves earlier this year, along with many other Quaker products. The reason: salmonella.

Quaker Oatmeal Squares have now returned. They are a sentimental favorite in our fambly (a food of a certain person’s childhood), so we’re glad to have them back.

I suppose that other Quaker products have also returned. But I care only about the sentimental favorite.

Choice bits from Jack Smith’s filing

I find some of the details of Mike Pence’s efforts to persuade Donald Trump to accept an election loss bizarre and illuminating. These moments make me think of a parent trying to soothe an angry, tantrum-prone toddler:

A call between the defendant and Pence on November 7, the day that media organizations began to project Biden as the winner of the election. Pence “tried to encourage” the defendant “as a friend,” reminding him, “you took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life.”

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A private lunch on November 12 in which Pence reiterated a face-saving option for the defendant: “don’t concede but recognize process is over.”

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A private lunch on November 16 in which Pence tried to encourage the defendant to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024, to which the defendant responded, “I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.”

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A December 21 private lunch in which Pence “encouraged” the defendant “not to look at the election ‘as a loss — just an intermission.’” This was followed later in the day by a private discussion in the Oval Office in which the defendant asked Pence, “what do you think we should do?” Pence said, “after we have exhausted every legal process in the courts and Congress, if we still came up short, [the defendant] should ‘take a bow.’”

And on January 6, when Mike Pence’s life was endangered:

Upon receiving a phone call alerting him that Pence had been taken to a secure location, [Person 15] rushed to the dining room to inform the defendant in hopes that the defendant would take action to ensure Pence’s safety. Instead, after [Person 15] delivered the news, the defendant looked at him and said only, “So what?”

You can read and search the document via The Washington Post.

Yesterday in Wisconsin

Aaron Rupar:

The vice presidential debate will be a main topic of political conversation today, but far more important (and disturbing) things happened before it took place.

That would be Donald Trump in Wisconsin, lying, rambling, and rasping his way through the day.

The New Grown-Ups: “Franklin Roosevelt Is Back Again”

I can think offhand of one other FDR-themed song: Raymond Quevodo’s “FDR in Trinidad,” recorded by Attila the Hun and, years later, by Ry Cooder and Van Dyke Parks. And of course there’s Milton Ager and Jack Yellen’s “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which became Roosevelt’s campaign song.

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Another, suggested by Kevin Hart at harvest.ink: “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt (Parts I and II),” by the Evangelist Singers, and covered by Jesse Winchester. Thanks, Kevin.

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And Stefan Hagemann mentioned Steve Earle’s “Christmastime in Washington,” which mentions Woody Guthrie. Thanks, Stefan.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : “Treehopper” : “I’d Jump the Mississippi” : “What Will Become of Me” : “Early” : “When I Stop Dreaming” : “Taxman Salamander” : “Cheese Closet”/“Billy in the Lowground” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

A complaint

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check.”

[“An obnoxious, offensive, or disgusting person”: that’s J.D. Vance, all night long.]