Five words
I’m from Brooklyn — it’s just four words.
Orange Crate Art
Annie Ross (1930–2020)
Annie Ross’s voice is one I’ve known from childhood. The Lambert, Hendricks & Ross album Sing a Song of Basie (1957) was a household favorite in my early years. Later I bought my own copy.
Doodles
A two-page spread of doodles from Russell M. Arundel’s Everybody’s Pixillated (1937).
Words in movies
From Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: “doodle,” “doodling,” “doodler,” “pixilated.”
Some stamps
Nancy and Sluggo and hobbies.
Is it fascism yet?
Former senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), speaking about Donald Trump* and the Department of Homeland Security.
😱
Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the basis for the face screaming in fear emoji, may not depict a person screaming.
Recently updated
There was much more to my third-grade teacher’s life than met my third-grade eye.
Tom Finn (1948–2020)
Bassist and singer with the Left Banke.
“Have been and will always be”
From Anna Seghers’s novel Transit.
The Oedipus Project
“Arrogant leadership, ignored prophecy, and a pestilence”: Theater of War has created The Oedipus Project, a staged reading (via Zoom) of scenes from Sophocles’s Oedipus.
Sped up, or speeded up
The car chase at the end of High Sierra: was the film sped up, or speeded up ?
Recently updated
Charges against alleged perpetrators of a racist attack.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Justifications for bizarre behavior.”
John Lewis (1940–2020)
“My philosophy is very simple: when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to stand up, you have to say something, you have to do something. My mother told me over and over again, when I went off to school, not to get in trouble. But I told her I got in good trouble, necessary trouble. Even today, I tell people, ‘We need to get in good trouble.’”
“Let’s Work Together,” again
Canned Heat and William Shatner.
Another day in downstate Illinois
A member of a school board resigns after making racist and homophobic comments on Facebook.
“Hearing an iron rod being sawed”
Xavier de Maistre again, with a deleted passage restored.
“Three steps backwards”
Xavier de Maistre prepares for a second journey.
◯
Draw a circle and see how close you get to perfect. Caution: highly addictive.
Fauci, mensch
This tweet is just one small bit of evidence.
Word of the day: staycation
The Oxford English Dictionary word of the day.
“I rarely follow a straight line”
From Xavier de Maistre’s A Journey Around My Room.
“Bookstores”
Fran Lebowitz, in the documentary film The Booksellers (dir. D.W. Young, 2019): “You know what they used to call independent bookstores? Bookstores.”
Word of the day: tea-fire
A word I encountered in an L.L. Bean cookbook.
What if
Goldie Blumenstyk, a writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, wonders what might be happening if more college and university administrators “had made the moral case for a remote fall from the outset.”
Airing of grievances
As we all know, Trump* is a teetotaler. But the affect here is that of an angry, drunken elder holding his family hostage at the dinner table.
“The craziest postcards”
From Kurt Tucholsky’s novel Castle Gripsholm. I love the cheerful lunacy of youth at work or play here.
Trout fishing in America
Tucker Carlson is going away for a while. I hope he has a nice long trip.
A pocket notebook sighting
It’s Dick Powell’s notebook, and he’s writing fast and slow.