Mystery actor
Who?
Orange Crate Art
Additional reverie
Perry Mason, Paul Drake, and the Remington Rand Photocharger.
Charge!
In search of lost library technology: the Remington Rand Photocharger.
A confession
In the company of all those society folk, at those endless luncheons and soirées, like, say, the one in The Guermantes Way that runs for 132 pages, weren’t you ever bored, Marcel?
Art and speed and haste
A sentence from Finding Time Again.
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“Outdoor accommodations.”
More Adalbert Stifter
New York Review Books is publishing Motley Stones, a sequence of six novellas, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole. Publication date: May 4.
“A child immediately rises up”
A sentence from Finding Time Again.
Vintage library supplies
From Smithsonian magazine: “Vintage Supplies that Kept Libraries Running.”
Back to the office
“To see March 2020 even though it’s 2021 kind of spooked me a little.”
Block that metaphor
“Here he is, now at the precipice of introducing a new era.”
On Duke Ellington’s birthday
Symphonette and The UWIS Suite.
Theories
A sentence from Finding Time Again.
ABC
On “the preeminence of ABC.” From Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order.
"Millionaire cousins“
A sentence from Finding Time Again.
John Richards (1923–2021)
The founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society.
“Blue, black, yellow, plaid, etc.”
Why do white people so often bring colors not found in humankind into discussions of race?
The Netflix DVD library that was
Jim Vorel, writing about the Netflix DVD library that was: “We traded in a library of 100,000 titles for one that currently has less than 4,000 — and we’re never going to get the former back.”
A Joe Biden notecard
My son Ben thought I would like this photograph of a notecard in Joe Biden’s hands. I do.
Mystery actor
This guy’s in trouble. Just look at the beads of sweat on his forehead and temples.
Astraios, music and film
A concert from Astraios Chamber Music, available through May 3: Music & Silent Film. A total delight, and probably the most artful COVID-era online production I’ve seen, right through to the closing credits.
Will Shortz, enemy of free verse
Will Shortz’s blend of smarty-pants certitude and cluelessness (no pun intended) irks me whenever it surfaces. As it did this morning.
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“Walks, for example.”
“Fully Vaccinated”
I like the aberrant literalism of today’s xkcd.
Sardine-O-Rama
Recipes and a tinned seafood newsletter.
Small pleasures
Buffering . . .
Advice from Raymond Chandler
“It is never stupid to ask questions. It is only stupid to guess at the answers and take a chance on being wrong.”
Pocket notebook sighting
From The Bad and the Beautiful.
I am not that guy
I frequently get e-mails for some guy with my name. But I am not that guy.
“Grammar-Nerd Heaven”
Mary Norris writes about Taming the Tongue in the Heyday of English Grammar (1713-1851), an exhibition of grammars from Bryan Garner’s collection.