Domestic comedy
“Is it raining on the phone, or outside?”
Orange Crate Art
Welcome to Illinois
Not a great look.
Pareidolia
A strawberry.
Madeline Kripke’s dictionaries
Atlas Obscura visits Madeline Kripke’s dictionary collection, perhaps the largest collection of dictionaries ever amassed.
Recently updated
More words of the year.
A “Now and Then” surprise
A surprise: liner notes inside the sleeve, by the music writer John Harris. They explain, among other things, what’s up with the assemblage on the back cover.
“My terrible predicament”
Dr. O’Connor (an unlicensed gynecologist) is the novel’s great talker, a man who knows he should have been born a woman (we would call him trans), a teller of his own troubles, a confessor to his friends, a philosopher of the night. This recounted reconciliation of father and son is the only moment of human reconciliation in Nightwood.
Screensavers, lost
Legacy screensavers and Sonoma trouble.
“I adore ice-cream”
Also from “The Doves’ Nest.”
“C'est un très beau Monsieur"
From “The Doves’ Nest.”
Whom is not calling
In yesterday’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, the clue “Receptionist’s pronoun” takes the answer WHOM. The answer appears to play on the well-known formula of telephone etiquette: “Whom should I say is calling?” The pronoun who, not whom is what’s appropriate there. I think the puzzle’s constructor, Matthew Sewell, must know that, but not every solver will.
A missing word
David Skinner tells the story of “the only major expletive left out of Webster’s Third.”
Tires and skins
A Manhattan building with two mysterious tires and a business in hides.
Dustin pronouns
In today’s Dustin: Hayden speaks out against standardized tests and learns a valuable lesson about pronouns.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Receptionist’s pronoun.”
Veterans Day
From 1923: “In this world-problem and world-task none are more deeply concerned than women. It is we who supremely suffer and mourn when wars rage and sudden death destroys our youth. But we are not without hope.”
Desk reboot
I traded in my old desk (a kitchen table) for an inexpensive standing desk, which meant that I needed to think about a new horizontal plane. Almost three weeks later, it’s still devoid of clutter.
Scotch, bourbon, and radio English
“But the Manleighs are a cinch to want Scotch. People in show business, you know what I mean, those kind always drink Scotch.”
NYRB sale
The Four Seasons Reading Club placed an order this afternoon for Anton Chekhov, Helen Keller, and Jean Stafford.
Cora, Nick, Ticonderoga
Lana Turner, Cecil Kellaway, and a Dixon Ticonderoga.
Twelve movies
The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and others.
Nerves, arms, hands
Three exercises to alleviate arm nerve pain (YouTube). On a related note, The Washington Post has an article about the effect of device use on fine motor skills, including handwriting (gift link).
In Fraiserland
“The more I confessed to friends/strangers I cornered at the park that I craved the Cranes to fall asleep, the more I discovered that other millennial moms had the same postpartum addiction to Frasierland.”
Louis Armstrong’s legacy
Ethan Iverson on Louis Armstrong’s legacy.
Some Mondays
A few citations for dark Mondays.
“Sleeping was her latest discovery”
From “Marriage à la mode.”
Trump as student
When I hear Donald Trump dodge and lie, I sometimes imagine what it might have been like to have him as a student.
“Smudged-looking poems”
In a Katherine Mansfield story.
“Mondays are dark”
Obviously, I have not spent enough of my life among show people.
AI and VDP
It’s dispiriting to see so much AI-generated blather about stuff one loves. Example: an explanation of Van Dyke Parks song.