What?
Representative Matt Gaetz (R, Florida-1) just referred to the Rorkshire — or was it Yorkshire? — inkblot test.
Orange Crate Art
“The Standing Family Joke”
Seymour Glass’s take on his brother Buddy’s fiction.
Nadler’s Jotter
Representative Jerrold Nadler (D, New York-10) signing draft articles of impeachment with a Parker T-Ball Jotter.
-ic
Rep. Doug Collins (R, Georgia-9) must really be losing it. He just referred to the Democratic (not “Democrat”) Party.
M-W’s Word of the Day
For an English major of a certain age, sodden , like sempiternal , immediately suggests T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”
Borrowing privileges
College libraries, then and now.
Recently updated
“They,” another word of the year.
Joyce in LA
In Los Angeles, Charlene Matthews, bookbinder, has written out the text of James Joyce’s Ulysses on thirty-eight ship dowels.
Proust in SF
Nathalie Vanderlinden is reading Proust aloud, in French, in San Francisco BART stations.
Brother Thelonious
“With all the interest in Belgian ales and in the monasteries that brew them, it’s time to remind the world that here in the U.S. we have a Monk of our own”: Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale.
A 2019 Nativity scene
From Claremont United Methodist Church.
A 2020 calendar
Here, via Dropbox, is a calendar for 2020, three months per page. All Gill Sans, in Licorice and Cayenne (Apple’s names for black and dark red), with minimal markings: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Highly readable, even across a crowded room, on evenings enchanted or otherwise.
Recently updated
“Voice,” another word of the year.
Lock her up
The judge sure looks like she’s wearing a straitjacket.
Stanley Fish and “partisan politics”
To divest might better be described not as a gesture toward “partisan politics” but as a moral choice that can serve the cause of education.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Stop being square.”
Happy birthday, Willa Cather
In a letter to her brother Roscoe Cather, January 8, 1940, Cather writes about Alfred A. Knopf, who became her publisher in 1920.
“A perfect summary of this whole scheme”
Adam Schiff: “The President doesn’t give a shit about what’s good for our country, what’s good for Ukraine. It’s all about what’s in it for him personally and for his reëlection campaign.”
Wuthering Heights, tonight
it’s a version made for television, with Richard Burton and Rosemary Harris, lost and now found.
Kids and garbage trucks
In The Atlantic, Ashley Fetters works toward “a unifying theory of why kids are so wild about garbage trucks.”
Search Google Books with Alfred
companion that performs a dazzling array of tasks. A post from the Alfred blog inspired me, at last, to create a shortcut to search Google Books. Simple, as it turns out. The trick is figuring out the URL that will work.
Subway ways
From Gothamist : “A Brief History Of NYC Subway Vending Machines.” And from The New York Times : “The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before.”
Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind
Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “The Pearl Harbor Radio Logs.”
“Close enough for jazz”
Jonathan Turley should play with his Goldendoodle and leave music to the musicians.
“So nice and yellow! ”
From J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction (1963).
Johnson on bribery
In today’s impeachment hearing, Jonathan Turley cited definitions of “high,” “crime,” and “misdemeanor” from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. Pamela S. Karlan then added the definition of the word Turley left out — “bribery,” which appears in the 1792 edition of the Dictionary.
Karlan +3
I would like every witness for today’s impeachment hearing to be Pamela S. Karlan.
“He was a chiropodist”
From J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1963).
“Artistically appointed restrooms”
Dialogue from a 1965 episode of Hazel.
Reading in the news
“The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, according to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long effort to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe.”