Attics
From “We Others.”
Orange Crate Art
Revising again
One more addition to How to e-mail a professor, now that I can get through to ChatGPT: Don’t ask AI to write an e-mail for you. At least not if you want your e-mail to sound like the work of a human being.
Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust
“My seconds in duels can tell you whether I behave with the weakness of an effeminate man.”
Revising
I took a look at How to e-mail a professor the other night and noticed three sentences that needed revision.
Recently updated
Adding a working link to Balzac’s hair-raising essay “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee.”
Clarence Thomas and Horatio Alger
The Alger success story is, really, a story of patronage. One might even call it a story of affirmative action, practiced not by institutions but by individuals.
Retail density
106 East 14th Street.
Hi and Lois watch
Problems with architecture.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Cambridge unit selling through Amazon.”
Wind the clock
Here’s a letter from E.B. White to, it would seem, a one-off correspondent in despair — despair over the state of the world, I would guess.
Beginning the day
From “Getting Closer.”
With Clint Eastwood
I went to the register to buy three sloes and found the cashier beside himself. “Clint Eastwood is in the store,” he said.
The Elements on the stage
Opening in Chicago tomorrow, from The Neo-Futurist Theater: Elements of Style, a stage show based on The Elements of Style. The makers have taken to heart the admonition to omit needless words, having omitted the from their title, and all spoken words from their production.
The New Past
“Here at the Historical Society.”
A visit to the Musgrave Pencil Co.
Smithsonian visits the Musgrave Pencil Company.
A child’s garden of etymology
Why is it called a couch?
Word of the day: boulevard
Branches and limbs are to be left, we have been told, on “the boulevard.” Huh?
Bill Griffith on Ernie Bushmiller
From The New Yorker: an interview with Bill Griffith, and an excerpt from his forthcoming biography of Ernie Bushmiller.
Be wise
A 1930s poster.
A joke in the traditional manner
What kind of pasta do swimmers like?
Smells
Onion powder and Dial soap.
Delicatessen, or food store?
Right next to one another on Fort Hamilton Parkway.
HCR on SCOTUS
On more bad news.
Today’s Zippy
All Griffy, all Nancy, all Sluggo.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Festivus recitation.”
HCR on SCOTUS
Heather Cox Richardson writes about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.
Salomi and prosciuth
An Italian foods store in Calverton.
Dream-machines
From “The Room in the Attic.”
Avocado pareidolia
His name is Augustine Vocado, A. Vocado. He runs a fruit-and-vegetable market (that makes sense) in one of the city’s older neighborhoods.
Footage / Fish
A brief film clip: 1940s French Women Sardine Industry Cannery Workers Brittany Vintage Film Movie.