Happy Halloween

[A view of a child playing in his Halloween costume. Photograph by George Silk, 1960. From the Life Photo Archive.]

“Julia A. Moore” on “Lord Byron”

“Lord Byron” was an Englishman
    A poet I believe,
His first works in old England
    Was poorly received.
Perhaps it was “Lord Byron’s” fault
    And perhaps it was not.
His life was full of misfortunes,
    Ah, strange was his lot.

“Julia A. Moore’s” “Sketch of Lord Byron’s Life” is a wonderfully bad poem. Read it all, if you dare. “Moore,” “The Sweet Singer of Michigan,” was the model for “Emmeline Grangerford,” the teenaged death-poet of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Further reading
“Julia A. Moore” (Wikipedia)

Byron disses “Turdsworth”

A collection of Byron’s letters in which he describes a stormy affair with a servant girl, attacks Christianity and dismisses his rival poet as William “Turdsworth” were sold yesterday for more than £250,000. The price is a world record for a series of letters or a manuscript by a British romantic poet, Sotheby’s said.

Read all about it:

Byron’s vitriolic letters on rivals and religion set auction record (Times Online)

David Levinson Wilk crossword record

If you’re not a regular solver, you might still want to look at the New York Times crossword today (or in six weeks, on December 11, when today’s puzzle appears in syndication). David Levinson Wilk has set a record, constructing a puzzle that contains twelve — count ’em, twelve — full-length, fifteen-letter answers. And for a Friday puzzle, it’s relatively easy to solve.

My favorite answer in this puzzle is for 24 Across, “1974 Rolling Stones hit”: DOODOODOODOODOO. (No spoilers here. Highlight the empty space to see the answer.)

Why no link? The online puzzle requires a subscription.

Of weather

The weather today is inescapable, even indoors. Its mood is my mood. Bleak am I, says the weather. Woe is me, says I.

A tree in front of my house wore its fall colors for a few days and now stands almost bare. The crazy green grass that seemed amusing a few days ago now seems out of place. What, are you still here?

The picture in my window is grey and greyer. I must turn on more lights.

Student e-mail accounts on the wane?

A short piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that the institutional practice of creating student e-mail accounts may be waning:

So says a report issued by Educause, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of information technology in higher education. The “Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2008 Summary Report” took information from nearly 930 colleges and universities regarding their IT practices and environments.

It found, among other things, that in 2008 nearly 10 percent of associate, baccalaureate, and master’s institutions as well as 25 percent of doctoral institutions were considering putting an end to student e-mail addresses because so many students were already using personal e-mail accounts. That is a large shift from the 1 to 2 percent of institutions that were considering this in 2004.

Of course students are already using personal accounts. But that’s hardly a good reason to drop student accounts, as different accounts serve different purposes. The first piece of advice in my post How to e-mail a professor:

Write from your college or university e-mail account. That immediately lets your professor see that your e-mail is legitimate and not spam. The cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address that might be okay when you send an e-mail to a friend is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

More advice for any students reading: if you haven’t yet done so, set up a Gmail account like so —

firstname.lastname@gmail.com

— or as close to that as you can get. This address will serve you well in the world beyond college, and if your school drops student accounts, you’ll have an appropriate address for academic use.

Ulysses “Seen”

Robert Berry is adapting James Joyce’s Ulysses as a webcomic, Ulysses “Seen.” Above, a moment from the novel’s first episode, “Telemachus.” Buck Mulligan is referencing Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “The Triumph of Time”: “I will go back to the great sweet mother, / Mother and lover of men, the sea.”

U.S. Postal Service sells greeting cards

Not from the Onion: the U.S. Postal Service is selling greeting cards, in “a one-year experiment that may lead the nation's 34,000 postal outlets to eventually sell other goods and services, including banking, insurance and cellphones.” Says Robert F. Bernstock, president of U.S.P.S. mailing and shipping services, “If we can get some energy behind greeting cards, which are incredibly linked to the mail, what better place to sell them and merchandise them than at our post offices?”

That’s a big if. Someone dowdy enough to care about greeting cards is not likely to settle for the selection available in the post office (birthday and get-well cards only). Someone buying on the fly has more convenient options than a separate trip to the post office (going to a drugstore, say). And someone buying stamps or mailing a package is likely to want to get in line and not lose time browsing on impulse. Postal Service, I wish you well, you know I do, but this venture does not inspire confidence.

Pnin’s pencil sharpener

With the help of the janitor he screwed onto the side of the desk a pencil sharpener — that highly satisfying, highly philosophical implement that goes ticonderoga-ticonderoga, feeding on the yellow finish and sweet wood, and ends up in a kind of soundlessly spinning ethereal void as we all must. He had other, even more ambitious plans, such as an armchair and a tall lamp.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957)

The pencil sharpener is part of Timofey Pnin’s effort to “Pninize” his office, “Office R.” As this tribute to the Dixon Ticonderoga suggests, Nabokov was a pencil man. And yes, I have a touch of Nabokov fever. The Original of Laura drops, as they say, on November 17.

Related posts
Is there a pencil in The House? (Dixon Ticonderogas in film)
Musical-comedy pencils (more Dixon Ticonderogas)
Pnin’s posy
Vladimir Nabokov’s index cards

Pnin’s posy

He worked very slowly, with a certain vagueness of manner that might have been taken for a mist of abstraction in a less methodical man. He gathered the wiped spoons into a posy, placed them in a pitcher which he had washed but not dried, and then took them out one by one and wiped them all over again.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957)

These sentences have stuck with me for twenty-five years or so. I often think of Timofey Pnin’s posy (bouquet) when I’m gathering forks, knives, and spoons from the sink.