From Sonny Rollins’s notebooks
No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.
Orange Crate Art
Revised cosmology
It’s cicadas all the way down.
Another Alito flag
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A review: Anne Curzan, Says Who?
Again and again I found myself at odds with her perspective. Part of what put me off, wrongly or rightly, is the book's relentless cheeriness: the “kinder, funner ” of the title, the too-frequent use of exclamation points. A larger problem is Curzan’s division of the individual psyche into “grammando” and “wordie,” both a matter not of a speaker/writer but of a listener/reader responding to other people’s words.
“Mad Hot Cicada Spring”
Elaine wrote a short piece for piccolo and violin, “Mad Hot Cicada Spring.”
Mystery actor
I’m always slightly amazed at the way women in older movies appear to time-travel when their hair is wet. They lose their 1930s- or ’40s-ness and suddenly show up in the world of tomorrow. As is the case here
Orange Crate Art: Planet of the monkey house
In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, a Kurt Vonnegut book is visible on a table in what appears to be the residence of a human serving the apes. The cover isn’t readable, but it’s easy to guess what that book must be.
Mary Miller, shilling
East-central Illinois’s Mary Miller (IL-15) was one of the faithful yelling outside the courthouse today.
EXchange names fill the screen
From Larceny (dir. George Sherman, 1948). The page fills the screen; otherwise, you might not believe that someone is really looking at a telephone directory.
Twelve movies
Fallen Leaves and others.
Shopping
I like this photograph because it captures one way people used to do the marketing: with their own two arms carrying a bag of groceries.
Someone wrote a letter
In the second episode of the Shrinking Trump podcast, someone suggests that this passage from a May 15 interview with Hugh Hewitt should be shared widely as evidence that Donald Trump cannot formulate ideas cognitively.
Orange Crate Art: Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Antique letter opener.”
What is a “bottle episode”?
I asked those who would know if there’s a name for a television episode with two characters stuck in, say, an elevator or a basement, talking about whatever until they get free. There is, and Merriam-Webster has it.
Orange Crate Art: Desert Island Discs : Keith Richards
From BBC Radio 4: the Keith Richards episode of Desert Island Discs.
John McWhorter’s apostrophes
If John McWhorter really wants to eliminate most apostrophes, he had better seek alternative publishers, no?
Weevil- and hyphen-free
A slip amid the sweet potatoes, still without a hyphen.
Perhaps the best words I’ll read today
“MOUSE CAUGHT”: on the side of a Tomcat Kill & Contain Mouse Trap.
Shrinking Trump
Cognitive decline + personality disorder = Shrinking Trump, a new podcast, available from the usual purveyors.
What John said
“ ‘I Dig a Pygmy,’ by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids”: after all these years, I discovered by chance who Charles Hawtrey was.
Handwriting vs. typing
Old news by now, I’d say, but still news: “Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning” (NPR).
“Mister”
NBC Nightly News: it’s galling to hear Michael Cohen called “Cohen” and Donald Trump called “Mister Trump,” every damn time. Too much deference.
Alice Munro (1931-2024)
“My stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories,” she told the interviewer. “I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not something you play around with until you got a novel written.”
Redbud and sky
The solar storm gave us a sky dark as night. Much more attractive is the sky seen through the leaves of our redbud tree.
Paul Berman on slogans
“Bad faith is when you don’t like the truth so you lie about it. Then you lie about having lied about it. You might even convince yourself that in lying about lying you’re not lying. That’s bad faith. It’s a twisted consciousness. We’re seeing a mass movement for a twisted consciousness.”
Bud’s Eraser Shop
A Far Side production.
Witness for the prosecution
A courtroom sketch meant to depict Michael Cohen. But it looks like Fred Rogers, or Neil Gorsuch, or a family friend.
FSRC: annual report
The Four Seasons Reading Club, our household’s two-person adventure in reading, has finished its ninth year.
Reading or not in college
The limited ability of many students to read and write about complex or lengthy texts is a sad and still largely unacknowledged fact of college life.
Car trouble, continued
Last Sunday we had car trouble on Madison Avenue. I found a second photograph with the same trouble, seen from the other side of the avenue.