Orange Crate Art

This is your brain on tea

2013-05-23T06:51:00.002-05:00

[Life, February 12, 1940.]

The schedule appears in an advertisement promoting not a brand of tea but tea itself, the work no doubt of the Tea Board or Tea Council or Tea House or some such industry group.

Related reading
All tea posts (Pinboard)

Wise advice

2013-05-22T06:24:00.001-05:00

A bit of dialogue from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s novel Kavanagh (1849), as seen on a poster in a middle-school hallway:

“Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare to think.”

Bernard Waber (1921–2013)

2013-05-22T06:23:00.001-05:00

He wrote and illustrated the Lyle books, favorites in our house: Bernard Waber, Children’s Author, Is Dead at 91 (New York Times).

Oklahoma

2013-05-21T05:28:00.001-05:00

[Oklahoma state flag, 1911–1925.]

How to help (ABC News)
How to help (CBS News)
How to help (NBC News)

Henry David Thorough

2013-05-20T07:19:00.005-05:00

I just picked up Walden — and couldn’t wait to put it down. Henry David Thorough is thoroughly crabby. He dislikes furniture. He dislikes houses. He dislikes railroads. He dislikes coffee, tea, and wine. He would certainly dislike this brief, breezy commentary on his work. Like I said, crabby.

Reading Walden, I realize that what I most dislike in E. B. White’s writing — the language of man and men — comes straight from Thorough: “If a man,” “When men,” “A man must.” The maleness is less a problem for me than the everybodyness: Yes, we all think and feel as you say we do. You are thoroughly correct.

Repetition Pears

2013-05-17T07:07:00.000-05:00

A produce-crate label depicting three boys standing behind produce crates depicting three boys standing behind produce crates depicting three — that’s the Droste effect.

[“Repetition Pears: Produce of U.S.A., grown and packed by R. Wachsmith, Yakima, Washington.” Lithograph by Schmidt Litho. Co., Seattle. 1940–1949. From the Boston Public Library Flickr set Produce Crate Labels.]

“Repetition Pears” sounds like a title for a John Ashbery poem.

I didn”t realize until after writing this post that it nicely follows this one.

A Lucien Bernhard poster

2013-05-16T09:43:00.001-05:00

Cooper-Hewitt’s Object of the Day: a Lucien Bernhard poster for the Adler typewriter. You can’t go wrong following Object of the Day.

Related posts
Bernhard’s cat (Cat’s Paw logo)
A Manual for Writers of Dissertations (Bernhard Gothic)

The New Yorker on MOOCs

2013-05-16T09:04:00.002-05:00

The May 20 New Yorker has a long article by Nathan Heller on Harvard University and MOOCs (massive open online courses): Laptop U. The article suggests, at least to me, imperial ambitions. Here is Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s president:

“Part of what we need to figure out as teachers and as learners is, Where does the intimacy of the face-to-face have its most powerful impact?” She talked about a MOOC to be released next academic year, called “Science & Cooking.” It teaches chemistry and physics through the kitchen. “I just have this vision in my mind of people cooking all over the globe together,” she said. “It’s kind of nice.”

This article also suggests, at least to me, the reluctance of some in prestigious positions to speak frankly about the effect that MOOCs will have on the academic job market. Michael Smith, Harvard’s Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences:

“I think oftentimes this question is oversimplified,” he said. “We’re working very closely with our graduate school and our graduate students to think about how they can be involved in this process.” Job offers today, he said, will necessarily “be different from the ones I saw when I finished up graduate school.” Some Ph.D. students are being trained in MOOC production as “HarvardX fellows.”

It’s not an oversimplification to say that growing reliance on MOOCs will further diminish the already diminished possibilities for tenure-track teaching. That Harvard would employ its doctoral students in audio-visual production, call those students “fellows,” and cast the matter as the unfolding of an inevitable “process” speaks volumes, at least to me, about academia and self-deception.

Here, from the HarvardX job listings, is a description of the work of a HarvardX Fellow:

The HarvardX Fellow plays a key leadership role in the development and delivery of high quality, high impact online learning experiences for HarvardX, part of Harvard’s partnership with MIT in the edX online learning initiative. Working closely with faculty and as part of a community of HarvardX Fellows, the HarvardX Fellow ensures innovative course development and integration with new technologies and educational research across HarvardX, and plays a key role in the organization’s mission to enhance teaching and learning on campus and worldwide.

This is a 2 year term position, with the possibility of renewal contingent on funding, university priorities and satisfactory job performance.

There are two such positions now available.

Orson Trail

2013-05-16T08:25:00.001-05:00

[Mark Trail, May 8, 9, 16, 2013.]

Once is bad enough. Now this comic strip is beginning to resemble The Lady from Shanghai.

Related reading
Other Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)
Other Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)
Other Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

“Make My Jotter Quit!”

2013-05-15T08:37:00.000-05:00

If I didn’t already have several Jotters around, this advertisement would inspire me to buy one, no joke. Charles Newman was right, and remains right: a Jotter refill lasts a long time. How long? As yet I do not know: my black and blue Jotters still have their original cartridges. But given this circumstance, this as-yet-unknowing, it is appropriate to ask: are these “original” cartridges themselves refills? And if so, of what? Which is to ask: what is the nature of the now-lost plenitude that they attempt to re-fill? And the Jotter in my hand: was it itself a pen as such before it came to possess a point? These questions take us to the boundary, beyond which we cannot proceed. Yet if we remain on this side of that line, it is nonetheless permissible to ask: how does one tell the difference between the so-called refill and the cartridge whose place the refill takes, the “original” cartridge, the pen’s “point,” as it were, imperial, serene, solitary, or so it would seem, yet always to be displaced by a New-man, an identical impostor, one in a series of impostors, each claiming the work of inscription as its own? We “miss the point,” we say, but the point at the same time misses us, eluding our grasp, leaving us to scrape and scratch like an inferior writing instrument — some not-Jotter — against metaphysics’s corrasable bond. [Translated from the imaginary French.]

Other T-Ball Jotter posts
Five pens
Last-minute shopping (A 1964 ad)
Parker T-Ball Jotter (A 1963 ad)

Related reading
Eaton’s Corrasable Bond

[Advertisement from Life, August 27, 1971.]

Primates and screwdrivers

2013-05-14T08:45:00.000-05:00

From Christine Kenneally’s The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (New York: Viking, 2007):

There is a saying among primate keepers . . . that if you give a screwdriver to a chimp, it will throw it at someone. If you give a screwdriver to a gorilla, it will scratch itself. But if you give a screwdriver to an orangutan, it will let itself out of its cage.

The First Word is a disappointing book: oddly organized, with much textbookese and many cumbersome sentences. (How many times can you begin with For example before catching yourself and breaking the habit?) I had to correct an error in the text (“give a give a screwdriver”) to share this passage, which is well worth sharing.

A related post
Note to self re: bookbuying (I need to follow my advice)

Another Route 66 mystery guest

2013-05-13T07:07:00.002-05:00

Television viewers of a certain age have most likely seen this actor many times. In his Route 66 guest turn, he plays a West Coast trumpeter who bears a strong resemblance to Chet Baker. This trumpeter plays (as did Baker) in a pianoless quartet. In low light he even looks something like Baker in his later years, especially in the first of these images. Do you recognize the actor?

The episode in which this actor appears is full of music and talk about music. Dig the dialogue between Buz (George Maharis) and Not Buz (Martin Milner) as the two discuss a nightclub singer. Not Buz (aka Tod) has foolishly averred that the singer is his type. Buz, self-proclaimed “music buff,” begs to differ, and he explains how he plans to approach the woman:

“With a chick like this, you gotta play it glissando.”

Tod, ever the square, asks, “Translation?”

And Buz:

“Cool. Like I say to her, ‘Baby, I don’t dig the fuzzy stuff, but the hard bop really knocks me out.’ Now she tags for me the progressive type. How are you gonna gas her if you don't know the difference between the flatted fifth and raised seventh? That’s the style, fellow. You’ll find something else, I’m sure.”

Real glissando. Like crazy.

*

8:08 a.m.: As Elaine just learned, today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chet Baker’s death.

*

12:43 p.m.: The answer is now in the comments.

Related reading
Other Route 66 posts (Pinboard)

The waiting game

2013-05-12T12:19:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports on college applicants who have been waitlisted and what they’re doing about it:

When Amanda Wolfbauer, a high school senior, received the admissions verdict from Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., she posted on Twitter, “What does one do once they’re on a college waitlist? #frustrated #worsethanrejection.”

A few minutes later she had gone from dejected to dogged: “Well, @HamiltonAdmssn prepare to be dazzled, because I’m determined to get off that waitlist.”

Don’t miss the accompanying sampler of applicants’ videos. I am happy to know that barring some exceedingly strange turn of events, I will never teach any of these students.

Happy Mother’s Day

2013-05-12T07:32:00.001-05:00

[Photograph by James Leddy, July 21, 1957.]

My mom Louise and me, in a photograph by — who else? — my dad. When I looked at this photograph in boyood, I thought that the object in motion was a bird.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. (Hi, Mom.) And Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers.

Texas teacher’s writing

2013-05-10T14:11:00.001-05:00

If you haven’t seen the short clip of a Texas high-school student asking/telling his teacher to teach instead of handing out “packets”: watch.

Here, verbatim, is text from that teacher’s school webpage:

A man's reach should always exceed his grasp...Robt. Browning

Welcome to World History and Asian American Studies!
As we go thru the year; you will discover alot of new things you never knew about not only about the world but the mysterious continent of Asia.  As you can see - I got to visit Great Wall of China  during the summer of 2011 as well as many other sights in China and Japan!

As I said ...a man's reach (or a woman's ;), should always exceed their grasp!  I meant it...and I want you to also!

Basic writing skills should never exceed a teacher’s grasp. How did this teacher ever make it into the classroom? Would you be happy knowing that she was teaching your child?

[The lines from Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for?” I used non-breaking spaces to reproduce the two spaces after the exclamation point, the periods, and the first China.]

Route 66 mystery guest

2013-05-10T07:36:00.000-05:00

The character is sobering up, or refusing to. If you are a television viewer of a certain age, you have most likely seen this actress, many times. But do you recognize her here? I didn’t.

If you know, or think you do, leave your answer in the comments. (Why not?)

*

3:34 p.m.: The answer’s now in the comments.

Related reading
Other Route 66 posts (Pinboard)

Cheating at Barnard

2013-05-09T15:05:00.002-05:00

Now in the news: a cheating scandal at Barnard College. As one commenter writes, “Cheating on a weekly reading quiz?? Are you kidding me?!”

Here is the difficulty in defending a traditional understanding of “college”: if all a course amounts to is a single two- to three-page paper and weekly quizzes on “basic poem identifications,” quizzes that the students themselves grade, what’s to defend?

[For those who do not recognize the name, Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia University, is one of the Seven Sisters.]

The Thompson twins

2013-05-09T09:21:00.001-05:00

[Mark Trail, May 8 and 9, 2013.]

It’s common knowledge that Mark Trail reuses plots and artwork from old strips. It’s the American way: Use it up — wear it out — make it do! With today’s strip, “old” means “yesterday’s.” Yesterday’s Wes Thompson is today’s Wes Thompson, reversed and tilted and combed. (May 8: stray lock of hair on forehead.)

Related reading
Other Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Addicted? I can quit anytime.]

Words I can live without

2013-05-09T08:29:00.001-05:00

I’ll name one: pedagogy. Its three possible pronunciations make it a stumbling block: with so many choices, whatever one chooses feels wrong. But look past the surface ugliness: pedagogy is ugly to the bone. The word derives from pedagogue: “A schoolmaster, a teacher; esp. a strict, dogmatic, or pedantic one.” In ancient Greece, the pedagogue, or παιδαγωγός , was “a slave who took children to and from school.” We can do better than a word that associates teaching with dogma, pedantry, and servitude. It is telling that Merriam-Webster illustrates the word’s use with this sentence from Alex Ross: “Some of the presentations, a few too many for comfort, lapsed into the familiar contortions of modern pedagogy.”

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of pedagogy
contains an apt alternative: “The art, occupation, or practice of teaching.” Where others speak of pedagogy, I prefer to speak of the art of teaching. Not best practices, not instruction delivery, not methods, not a science or a system, but an art, whose exercise requires compassion, intuition, and wit.

Worse than pedagogy are its evil relations pedagogical and pedagogically. The adjective and adverb are often superfluous: if one is speaking about teaching, it’s not necessary to describe a practice or strategy as pedagogically useful, no more than it would be to describe an element in a building’s design as architecturally useful. Pedagogy, pedagogical, pedagogically, good riddance.

More words I can live without
A 2009 list (Bluesy, craft as a verb, &c.)
A 2012 list (Delve, -flecked, &c.)
“Some Enchanted Evening” (Words never to use in a poem)
~~That said,~~ (Yes, I crossed it out.)

[All quotations from the Oxford English Dictionary except as noted.]

Help for DARE

2013-05-08T21:04:00.000-05:00

The Dictionary of American Regional English must be feelin’ its keepin’, having received two major donations (and many more smaller ones) in recent weeks. Context here.

How to improve writing (no. 44)

2013-05-08T09:46:00.000-05:00

[Mark Trail, May 8, 2013.]

When Mark Trail and Wes Thompson went off in a plane to “look at sheep,” leaving “the girls” (Mark’s wife Cherry, Wes’s wife Shelley) alone at camp, trouble was sure to follow. Trouble, one might say, was in the air : the plane crashed, and Mark and Wes have been stuck in the mountains for many days’ worth of comics.

Trouble is also in this panel’s dialogue, in the form of the clunky however that begins Wes’s sentence. In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White offer good advice: “Avoid starting a sentence with however when the meaning is ‘nevertheless.’ The word usually serves better when not in first position.” That sounds like a matter of style. But Strunk and White then confuse matters by seeming to suggest a prohibition: “When however comes first, it means ‘in whatever way’ or ‘to whatever extent.’”

Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage takes up however with greater clarity:

It seems everyone has heard that sentences should not begin with this word — not, that is, when a contrast is intended. But doing so isn't a grammatical error; it’s merely a stylistic lapse, the word But or Yet ordinarily being much preferable. . . . The reason is that However — three syllables followed by a comma — is a ponderous way of introducing a contrast, and it leads to unemphatic sentences.

And re: today’s Mark Trail, I’d add that no one talks like that, especially not with a broken foot. I have revised the panel to eliminate the ponderous however and add a bit more drama:

[Mark Trail revised, May 8, 2013.]

How I wish I could travel back to student days and remove howevers from the beginnings of my sentences. But it’s what I was taught as an element of intelligent writing: independent clause – semicolon – conjunctive adverb, any conjunctive adverb – comma – independent clause. O ponderousness!

“Let’s go,” by the way, is an instance of the hortatory subjunctive.

Related reading
Other How to improve writing posts
Other Mark Trail posts

[This post is no. 44 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. Cherry made tea this past Monday.]

Spellings of the future

2013-05-07T07:50:00.000-05:00

A spelling of the future is a misspelling so strange that it must be traveling backward in time to give us a foretaste of our language’s evolution. Today’s spelling of tomorrow, or vice versa:

A sample sentence: Yes, we have now bananas.

I have seen now for no three times in recent months. If now for no is a typo, it’s a mighty strange one. I think that the sound of know explains now.

Other spellings of the future
Aww : Bard-wired fence

Some more rocks

2013-05-07T07:39:00.001-05:00

[“Seek and Ye Shall Mind,” Zippy, May 7, 2013.]

Sunday: Proust. Monday: some rocks. And today: some more rocks. Some rocks + some more rocks = really many rocks. But Zerbina’s rocks may be the very rocks Zippy was looking at yesterday, in which case they remain “some rocks.”

“Some rocks” (Zippy)

2013-05-06T12:15:00.001-05:00

[“Victimless Crime,” Zippy, May 6, 2013.]

Two Zippy posts in two days: I hadn’t planned on it. But as they say, attention must be paid. By me, at least. To the mystical grouping known as “some rocks.” End of sentence fragments.

Some posts
Hommage à Ernie Bushmiller
“Bushmiller Country”
Landscape with some rocks