“More traditional”?
The New Yorker calls the Sun Ra Arkestra “more traditional fare.”
Orange Crate Art
“The key to this disorder”
A passage from Giovanni’s Room.
PLEASE
This sign must have been meant as a warning to employees with deconstructive tendencies. Hands off the signifier and the signified!
Chicago pronouns
A Chicago Manual of Style quiz: “Who, Me?” It’s about subject and object pronouns.
Stefan Zweig’s diaries
For the first time in English, Stefan Zweig’s diaries, 1931–1940.
A John McWhorter page-ninety test
I thought to try the page-ninety test with John McWhorter’s Nine Nasty Words: English in The Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever.
An Aldi find
A seasonal item at Aldi: Brussels sprouts with balsamic-glazed bacon. Though I think it should be balsamic-glazed Brussels sprouts with bacon. But either way, it’s a dark, delicious side dish.
Recently updated
More Brooklyn Chock full o’Nuts locations.
Eddie’s Sweet Shop
A Queens ice-cream parlor.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021)
I heartily recommend Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).
Sardines on a bus
In Metropolitan Diary.
Big news
“Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”
John McWhorter’s me
If readers wonder about a sentence, if the sentence looks blatantly wrong, if the sentence displaces attention to your argument, if you feel obliged to take 1,210 words to justify that sentence, you’re doing it wrong. A wiser strategy: practice what Garner’s Modern English Usage calls preventive grammar.
Chock full o’Nuts in Brooklyn
On Fulton Street, c. 1939–1941.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Six-decade game show panelist in A Night at the Opera.”
Sisyphus in Harlem
From Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Manufacturing vinyl records
The New York Times reports on the difficulties of manufacturing vinyl records.
Centrist?
It’s difficult to understand how being a “key holdhout,” a party of one, makes someone a “centrist.”
New directions in academia
“Faculty and staff from around campus are invited to sign up to assist in the dining halls!”
“Every corner, angle, crevice”
From Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Firing Frank Lloyd Wright
“I am sick and tired of hearing people say Mr. Wright is wonderful, but he is not practical.”
Diacritics with an external iPad keyboard
With an external iPad keyboard, diacritics are not especially intuitive. The Option key (⌥) is key.
Skullface
Pareidolia. My first thought was “Cookie Monster.” But the skull shape is so clear, and Halloween is approaching.
A guest lecture
When I walked into the room, the guest was already there, standing at the front of the room, ready to begin. I said I first wanted to take a minute or two to show my students how I had solved a problem with a sentence.
“Idiosyncratic excess”
I think I’m going to stop reading the notes in my edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. ”Idiosyncratic excess” too often describes the editor’s commentary.
Gotham Book Mart
51 West 47th Street, c. 1939—1941.
Merriam-Webster and Typeshift
The Washington Post reports on a dictionary, a game, and words.
John McWhorter on Othello at Michigan
I find myself disagreeing with John McWhorter about lots of things. (For instance.) But I think his discussion of Othello at Michigan gets it right.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Olympic VIP.”
National Dictionary Day
Some pages from an unusual item available at archive.org, a salesperson’s 1937 demonstration model of Webster’s New International Dictionary, second edition, aka Webster’s Second or W2.