Mailing a letter
Nabokov’s narrator mails a letter.
Orange Crate Art
Early rocks
In today’s Zippy, an early lesson in geology.
On Willa Cather’s birthday
Now will you be my Santa Claus? I want them to have a good Christmas dinner. I know they won’t buy prunes or dried apricots, they felt too poor to get them last year.
The Christmas sardine
From Zingerman’s Delicatessen, “The Legend of the Christmas Sardine,” by Brad Hedeman.
Speech and conduct
It’s specious to draw a line that divides speech from conduct. As speech-act theory reminds us, there are many contexts in which to speak is to act. (Think of a former president’s pre-January 6 tweets.) And conduct need not constitute harassment to be out of bounds on a college campus.
Florida fail, Illinois fail
Hey, Illinois: don’t issue regular plates and FP plates with the same numbers.
Nuts to dictation
"Not free," not “nut free.”
Chock!
Chock — O! — late.
Investing in reading
“A new study found that California schools got positive results from a targeted investment in the science of reading": from The New York Times.
Squirrel condo
As drawn by Geo-B: a squirrel condo.
Fish and Florida
The New York Times reports that academics — at least those who can — are fleeing Florida (gift link). But guess who’s signed up to teach at Florida’s New College: Stanley Fish.
Harvard, Meta, and veritas
From The Washington Post: “A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.”
Munger mega-dorm nixed?
The dream of a U Cal Santa Barbara mega-dorm, built to the specifications of a billionaire donor. with thousands of students living in single-occupancy windowless rooms, appears to have died with the donor, Charlie Munger.
Recently updated
Another word of the year: “rizz.”
Generations and a settlement house
Lots of human interest in these tax photographs.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Attractions you’ve never seen.”
The Santos vote
Did my member of Congress vote to expel George Santos from Congress? Of course she didn’t!
A 2024 calendar
Free: a 2024 calendar, in large legible Gill Sans, three months per page.
Clockwatchers
This panel in today’s Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy brings back memories. In third grade I was accused of being a clockwatcher.
"Orlovius was displeased”
A narrator thinks about how to begin a new chapter.
How to improve writing (no. 116)
The target of a plot is not at its center.
Costa, Guerriero, and Sued
Yamandu Costa, Brazilian guitar; Luís Guerreiro, Portuguese guitar; Martín Sued, bandoneon. July 3, 2021.
Cogito
I overthink, or at least I think I do; therefore, I am.
Recently updated
Another word of the year.
Evaluations
This is the twenty-seventh teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In all but one, something has goes wrong.
At another rest stop
CAUTION WET FLOOR. They weren’t kidding. But there wasn’t a mop in sight.
Recently updated
The mystery of the name A. Leddy on a nameplate, solved.
Pence, comma
“You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome”: and the absence of a comma has the authority to change everything.
The doctor is in
Peter Lorre makes his American debut as Dr. Gogol.
A pocket notebook sighting
From Mad Love.