Reluctant professors
“Thousands of instructors at American colleges and universities have told administrators in recent days that they are unwilling to resume in-person classes because of the pandemic.”
Orange Crate Art
“The time just before”
Every so often I’ve tried to track down a passage I read years ago — something to the effect that the time we’re most curious about or enamored of or nostalgic for is the time just before our own. I thought I might have finally found the passage.
The sentences that made me give up on Shirley
“Ah!” said I, shaking my head, and heaving a deep sigh. Life’s too short.
Simile of the day
"It’s like they hitched their wagon to a time bomb.”
Idiom of the day: go to pot
Elaine and I wondered about the pot in go to pot . We had three guesses between us: a chamber pot, a cooking pot, and a pot for a plant.
Word of the day: hogwash
As found in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849).
“Heritage”
He won’t be happy until there’s a second civil war.
Pizza with sardines
Savory, fishy, absolutely satisfying.
A pocket notebook sighting
From The Devil and Miss Jones (dir. Sam Wood, 1941).
Is it treason yet?
“Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.”
Milton Glaser (1929–2020)
The graphic designer who gave us I♥︎NY.
Twelve movies
The Haunting and others.
Some trees
From Charlotte Brontë's Shirley.
“Existential”
The New York Times reports on college towns in the time of the coronavirus.
Alexander, not great
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) is not exactly a profile in courage.
マンホール蓋
Today’s Zippy takes us to Japan, where manhole covers are things of beauty.
Death wishes
Donald Trump expresses more interest in preserving “beautiful monuments” than in preserving American lives. Truly, Trump equals death.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Game Goldfinger cheats at.”
Polishing
“Rome is burning, and he’s polishing the Washington Monument”: David Gregory on CNN just now.
An EXchange name sighting
EXbrook.
Small things
A sentence from Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley.
Mail, real mail
The New York Times reports on snail mail in the time of the coronavirus.
Something is rotten in Iowa
This one small story captures much of what’s wrong with higher education: enormous administrative salaries, administrative bloat, and contempt for those who do the work of teaching, worsened here by a refusal to take a medical condition seriously when it affects a woman of color.
“In all quarters of the sky”
From Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor.
Orange Crate Art redux
I think the Omnivore description — “sounds like nothing before or since” — is objectively accurate. Orange Crate Art is music of no time and for all time.
Music then and again
This great and joyous performance by Anita O’Day, which I’ve seen dozens of times, moved me to tears when I thought about how we’ve lost the happiness of listening to music together. But not forever.
A dark thought, but I’ll air it
The Trump* cult — No mask? No test? No problem! — really is a death cult.
Bumps
Like the Brontës, William Crimsworth’s new acquaintance Hunsden Yorke Hunsdsen appears to ascribe to physiognomy and phrenology.
The Lincoln Project
I’ve been impressed by their ads for a while now. But it’s the latest, snark-free one that made me decide to give some money to The Lincoln Project.
Jane Eyre, descriptivist
”There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things,” sighs Jane Eyre. In contrast, Jane herself, as she sets off from Thornfield Hall to mail a letter: