Caravaggesque

[Barbara Britton and Vladimir Sokoloff in Till We Meet Again (dir. Frank Borzage, 1944). Click for a larger view.]

In a four-sentence review of this movie, I wrote that Theodor Sparkuhl’s camerawork has moments that are Caravaggesque. Here’s one.

[I’d love to see this movie in a superior print. And I’d prefer Caravaggio-like, but Caravaggesque is more common.]

The case of the odious odor

A godawful chemical smell was coming from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Did a plastic bottle of cleaning product leak? Did a container of cleanser tip over?

We checked every bottle and container. Nothing wrong. What the deuce?

And then we realized: we had bought a roll of scented trash bags by mistake. The roll is now close to its end, or center. The smell apparently gets much stronger as the roll dwindles down.

*

September 8: Paul Drake dropped in and figured out the real source of the smell: not the now-dwindling roll of trash bags we’ve been using but a new box of bags, yet to be opened. “The smell is coming from inside the box!” Paul exclaimed. “And the box isn’t even open yet,” Perry Mason added.

The box goes back to the store this afternoon, wrapped in a trash bag to keep the smell from stinking up the car.

A handful of pencils

[Lee J. Cobb, Douglas Kennedy, and a handful of pencils. From Miami Exposé (dir. Fred F. Sears, 1956). Click for a larger view.]

One of the stranger exchanges in a movie full of strange ones. Stevie is Bart’s girlfriend’s son:

Dan (Kennedy), handing over some pencils: “Stevie said he wanted some pencils.”

Bart (Cobb): “For a five-year-old, this kid sure uses up a lot of pencils.”

And it’s a good thing: as MarketWatch reported last month, pencils continue to sell well because kids use them.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Oops

“If me and my co-counsel”: a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, in a televised hearing from a Fulton County courthouse just now.

[Someone else will have to catch further errors. I‘m watching for just a few minutes.]

How to improve writing (no. 113)

Here’s the start of an obituary in today’s New York Times. Try reading aloud:

Gloria Coates, an adventurous composer who wrote symphonies — she was one of the few women to do so — as well as other works, pieces that were seldom performed in her home country, the United States, but found audiences in Europe, where she lived much of her professional life, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89.

That’s not the first time a Times obituary has opened with a sentence that tries to say too much. Here’s a 2013 OCA post that looks at another opening sentence with a parenthetical sprawl between subject and verb.

I have to invokes E.B. White’s advice again:

When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences.

A possible revision:

Gloria Coates, one of the few female composers to write symphonies, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89. Though her works were seldom performed in the United States, they found audiences in Europe, where the Wisconsin-born composer lived much of her professional life.

Elaine, who knows hella lot more about music than the obituary writer does, takes issue with the “one of the few.” Better still:

Gloria Coates, a composer best known for her symphonies, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89. Though her works were seldom performed in the United States, they found audiences in Europe, where the Wisconsin-born composer lived much of her professional life.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 113 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. The passage from E.B. White appears in The Elements of Style, in “An Approach to Style,” the chapter White added when revising William Strunk Jr.’s book. Searching the Institute for Composer Diversity shows 1021 female composers of orchestral music and 233 female composers of works with symphony in their titles.]

A pocket notebook sighting

[Crime boss Phil Jackman (Russ Conway) holds a notebook listing the taverns whose pinball machines he controls. From Portland Exposé (dir. Harold Schuster, 1957). Click for a larger view.]

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : The Fearmakers : The Flight That Disappeared : A Foreign Affair : Foreign Correspondent : Four in a Jeep : Fury : The Girl in Black Stockings : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : If I Had a Million : L’Innocent : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Lost Horizon : M : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Mr. Klein : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : What Happened Was . . . : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once : Young and Innocent

“Therapeutic and neuroprotective”

Financial Times reports on the psychological importance of stationery:

Buying a new pencil case as a signal of intent to organise your life isn’t as fanciful as it might sound. The compartments are a “way of organising our central nervous system as well as ensuring that we have the right things for the job,” cognitive neuroscientist Rachel Taylor says. “The whole ritual of buying a new pencil case can be both therapeutic and neuroprotective.”

I think that’s true of all stationery purchases. Be prepared to repeat the key words if challenged about an acquisition: “therapeutic and neuroprotective.” Or, “O, reason not the need.”

I am happy to know that the stationery gene now runs through four generations in my family. There’s little chance of a challenge here.

Phil’s Stationery

[From How To with John Wilson (2023). Click for a larger store.]

I was surprised and delighted to see Phil’s Stationery make a brief appearance in “How to Track Your Package,” the final episode of How To with John Wilson. When Elaine and I visited Phil’s in 2016, I was hoping to find an Ace hard rubber comb. O, reason not the need. I knew that at one time the store had a cache of the extinct Aces. Not any more. So we just started browsing.

The owner (not Phil) asked, “Are you from a production company?” No, we just liked stationery. It turns out that part of the business is furnishing vintage office supplies as props for film and television. I ended up going through a box of old pencils and picking out some choice ones for a friend who was about to retire from teaching. I remember also buying a magnifying thread-counter. O, reason not the need. Elaine chose some items as well. O, reason not her need either.

How does this store manage to make the rent in midtown Manhattan? If I remember correctly, the family owns the building.

Phil’s has made the pages of Ephemeral New York and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. The store has many happy customers, and I am happy to know that it’s still going.

TCRWP LC? LLC!

Teachers College, Columbia University is dissolving the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project:

Moving forward, TC wants to foster more conversations and collaboration among different evidence-based approaches to literacy, and ensure our programs are aligned with the needs of teachers and school districts looking to partner.

To support this objective, the work of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) and its staff will transition to an Advancing Literacy unit within TC’s Continuing Professional Studies (CPS) division for the 2023-2024 year, a return to its original professional development roots. The entity TCRWP, founded in 1981, will be dissolved as part of this shift. TC is working to align the work of TC staff with the needs of school districts and changes in reading curriculum locally and nationwide.

For many years, TCRWP’s founding director Lucy Calkins led efforts to support teachers as they develop students as readers and writers. Dr. Calkins has stepped down as Director of the Reading and Writing Project. She is Robinson Professor in Children's Literature at Teachers College, a tenured faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, on sabbatical during the 2023-2024 academic year.

“Many teachers credit TCRWP for creating communities of practice where teachers gain valuable resources and support,” says KerryAnn O’Meara, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost and Dean of the College. “TC is grateful to Dr. Calkins for her service.”

Dr. Calkins shares her expertise as a consultant through her own LLC. Teachers College is not involved in the operations or provision of services provided by Dr. Calkins in her LLC.

Notice some of the language of this statement:

~ “Evidence-based approaches”: that sounds, no pun intended, like phonics.

~ “Aligned with the needs of teachers and school districts”: because so many have dropped Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study curriculum.

~ “The needs of school districts and changes in reading curriculum locally and nationwide”: the New York City school system is one of many that have abandoned Calkins’s Units of Study curriculum.

~ “‘TC is grateful to Dr. Calkins for her service’”: my, that’s perfunctory. Yes, thank you for your service. I think we’re done here.

And what is Lucy Calkins doing on sabbatical? She’s doubling down and striking back against what she calls “fake reading wars” with an LLC, Rebalancing Literacy. In one of the videos on her website, she claims that podcasts and newspaper articles are scaring the public into thinking that teachers aren’t teaching children “their ABCs.” That’s not an accurate claim. Of course it’s not the alphabet that’s missing; it’s phonics.

One has to wonder why Calkins has created an LLC to do this work. Might she developing a new curriculum to market?

The best way to learn about what’s at stake in the so-called reading wars: listen to Emily Hanford’s podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong (American Public Media). It’s the most consequential podcast I’ve ever heard.

Last year I wrote an e-mail to Lucy Calkins and two other prominent advocates of so-called “balanced literacy,” sharing my thoughts after listening to Sold a Story. No replies, of course.

Related reading
A handful of OCA Sold a Story posts (Pinboard)

[The post title: TCRWP is no more. What’s Lucy Calkins going to do? Create an LLC.]

Linus’s whom

[Peanuts, September 6, 1976. Click for a larger view.]

Linus has yoo-hooed to someone. Sally’s response to his gentle correction: “Forget it!”

See also Lucy’s whom.

[Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. I prefer posting the black-and-white of newsprint.]