Unforgivable
In downstate Illinois, a county fair refused to allow a pop-up site for COVID-19 vaccinations.
Orange Crate Art
Salinger’s voice
Weirdness in the news: Betty Eppes, who in 1980 secretly recorded twenty-seven minutes’ worth of conversation with J. D. Salinger, says that the tape will be cremated with her.
On Louis Armstrong’s birthday
Louis Armstrong signing autographs for neighborhood kids, 1965.
Stand down, Andrew
With thanks to the English Beat.
A Sebald biography
“What lay behind his writing was this great trauma that he was expressing and suffering,” says Carole Angier, who has written a soon-to-be-published biography of W. G. Sebald.
Exams in the mail in the news
A professor of business law is suing her university after administrators changed the grade she gave a student.
Squirrels?
If there’s any doubt that the hand(s) behind Beetle Bailey are phoning it in, consider those “squirrels.”
“qX3;nE7%sX9*zL4, e.g.”
Four hundred billion years to crack.
Rewriting
The New York Times reports on Republican efforts to rewrite the events of January 6: “The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line.” Cf. George Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Hi and Lois watch
SPISH?
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“How stalactites form.”
Chuck E. Weiss (1945–2021)
His first name and his middle initial are part of American music. The Los Angeles Times has an obituary and a remembrance by Rickie Lee Jones.
Saying and believing
It’s the same tactic Donald Trump used re: Ukraine. Just say there’s an investigation of Hunter Biden. Just say that the election was corrupt.
Gilgamesh to Iraq
A looted tablet with a crucial part of the Gilgamesh story, once displayed at Hobby Lobby’s Museum of the Bible, is returning to Iraq.
Welty and Hurston and a pear tree
A childhood rhyme about a pear tree.
Pinboard tags
Make Pinboard useful for non-users, by searching for a word or phrase or name instead of a tag.
The final four
Ephemeral New York takes a look at the last outdoor telephone booths in New York City.
Mary Miller, outcast
The Illinois House Speaker will not be meeting with her.
We heard what we heard
She said “subpoenas.” But we heard what we heard, the two of us.
“The Invention of ‘Introvert’”
A new episode of the podcast Word Matters.
“So smooth and clear”
A Eudora Welty variation on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Useful reading
A ten-point checklist from Samuel L. Perry, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma: How can we spot #ChristianNationalism in the wild? My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), hits on at least eight of ten.
Truth
“You’re downplaying an event that happened to the country itself, to democracy, to the rule of law”: Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, a few minutes ago, commenting on those who would minimize the events of January 6, 2021.
Parisian hand-bills
Nabokov and Bove: strange to move from one novel to another and find a similar moment, also on a Paris street.
Griffy and Zippy and Hi and Lois
Hi and Lois as satire.
A leaking pen
Nancy dances. A pen leaks.
Walking with Pete
I was walking with Pete Seeger back from a protest. Pete was wearing his usual 1960s–70s uniform: jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a dense floral design. He heard someone calling his name from a window. It was a third-story window in a three-story apartment building.
Call “Dr. Fauci” by his full name
A note to the news, not that the news is listening: When introducing or making a first reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, please refer to him by his full name and position. He is not a cartoon or character, à la Drs. Evil, No, Oz, and Phil. So “Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” please.
Peanuts selfhood
I followed as best I could the guidance in “How to draw yourself as a Peanuts character.”
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“Hard to read at the table.”