March 4, National Grammar Day 2013

Are you motivated to do something about grammar?  If you’re lucky enough to subscribe to the Chicago Tribune and you read the paper today, you probably know where this is going.

Every year on March 4 (also known as march forth! which will make sense in a second), language-minded folks raise their grammartini glasses and drink to National Grammar Day.

Established in 2008 by author and editor Martha Brockenbrough, who also founded the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, National Grammar Day is a celebration of words in all their written, spoken, tweeted, texted splendor.

Grammar police visited this sign — for National Grammar Day? Photo: the_munificent_sasquatch

Probably the best place to start would be Motivated Grammar:

It’s National Grammar Day 2013, which has really snuck up on me. If you’ve been here in previous years, you know that I like to do three things on March 4th: have a rambling speculative discussion about the nature of grammar and/or linguistics, link to some people’s posts I’ve liked, and link to some of my posts. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy with dissertation work lately that I’m a bit worn out on discussion and haven’t been adequately keeping up with everyone’s blogs. So I hope you’ll forgive my breach of etiquette in making this year’s NGD post all Motivated Grammar posts.

Well, not entirely. Everyone in our little community gets in on National Grammar Day, so let me mention a few good posts I’ve seen so far. Kory Stamper discusses her mixed feelings on the day, as well as on correcting people’s language in general. Dennis Baron looks at the abandoned, paranoid, wartime predecessor of NGD, “Better American Speech Week”. And from last year, but only better from the aging process, Jonathon Owen and goofy had posts asking what counts as evidence for grammatical correctness or incorrectness, and why we’re so often content to repeat grammar myths.

Yeah, yeah.  He said “snuck.”  You and I know he should have said “sneaked,” but he’s probably go the new dictionaries that caved on the issue.  I think this breach of common sense and moral standards of grammar is the cause of our present political trouble in Washington, the Stupid Sequestration, and the Great Gridlock.

The rest of the post is pretty good, though, especially the debunking of ten more myths of grammar.  Go see.

An actual National Grammar Day website exists, courtesy of Grammar Girl, I think.

Excited yet?  Go back to that Chicago Tribune article:

A highlight of the holiday each year is the haiku contest, in which contestants are urged to tweet grammar- or usage-based haikus. Judges include Ben Zimmer, the Boston Globe language columnist and executive producer of Visual Thesaurus, Martha Barnette, who hosts a nationally syndicated public radio program called “A Way with Words,” Bill Walsh, a copy editor at the Washington Post and author of “Lapsing into a Comma,” and, of course, Brockenbrough.

Last year’s winner was Larry Kunz, a technical writer from Raleigh-Durham, N.C.. His winning poem:

Being a dangler,

Jane knew it would have to come

out of the sentence

Runners-up included this gem from one Charlie MacFadyen:

Wanted: one pronoun,

To take the place of he/she

“They” need not apply

And this, from Tom Freeman:

People shouldn’t say

“I could care less” when they mean

“I could care fewer”

The holiday is not, planners says, an opportunity to scold.

I understand Grammarly runs an annual photo contest.  I haven’t found it yet.  Will you let us know in comments, if you find the photos?  (This isn’t it, though there may be overlap).

(But, no, Dear Reader, I had not been aware of National Grammar Day, either, until just about an hour ago.  March 4th/March Forth!, is the link, I suppose.  We’re ten days away from International Pi Day, too:  3.14.)

Also, let me interject one of my favorite sentences.  In a long, sometimes bitter discussion about grammar and social reform way back in 1957, there were people who argued that grammar is essential to meaning, and that correct grammar could carry the entire meaning.  To that idea, Noam Chomsky came up with a rebuttal in the form of a sentence that, though completely correct grammatically, means absolutely nothing.  Watching politics, life and organizations, you will discover Prof. Chomsky’s sentence applies in way more places than it should, or than you can stand.  Chomsky’s grammatically perfect, though meaningless sentence?

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

More:

• A Way With Words, first Naitonal Grammar Day broadcast, 2008
• National Grammar Day 2013: Ten More Grammar Myths, Debunked (proswrite.com)
• Happy National Grammar Day 2013! Take Our Quiz to Prove You Are Truly a Word Nerd (digitalsherpa.com)
• National Grammar Day! (missriki.com)
• Higher Ed Marketing – National Grammar Day 2013: Sound off, fellow curmudgeons (andrewcareaga.wordpress.com)
• Grammar Worksheets and Printables (education.com)
• Today In Geek History: In 2008, National Grammar Day Begins (geekosystem.com)
• The Learning Network Blog: How Good is Your Grammar? (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)
• How Do We Love Thee, Grammar? Count the Ways on Grammar Day (theatlanticwire.com)
• Happy National Grammar Day! (mightyredpen.wordpress.com)
• Grammarly.com — get your grammar corrections here!

 

Typewriters of the moment: Isaac Asimov’s astonishingly prolific career

Isaac Asimov remains one of my favorite writers.  He wrote well enough, and his curiosity took him to topics I often find interesting.  At one time having published more books than anyone else in history on a wide variety of topics from quantum mechanics to trivia in the books of the Bible (does he still hold that record?), it was a sure bet one could find at least one book in one’s area of interest penned by Asimov.

When I started the spasmodic feature, “Typewriter of the Moment,” years ago I did a search for Asimov with a typewriter.  I didn’t find an image I thought suitable back when the internet was still operated by steam, and somehow I just never got back to that.

The other night this image popped up on one of my Facebook feeds, from “the Other 98%”:

Painting of Isaac Asimov creating at a typewriter, an early IBM Selectric. Who did the painting?

I appreciate the sentiment in the quote.  Asimov noted the Dunning-Kruger Effect, even if he didn’t have the advantage of Dunning and Kruger having named it yet, and he lamented the powerful undertone of anti-intellectualism that victims of the syndrome exhibit:

Anti- intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. (Asimov in an essay for Newsweek: “A Cult of Ignorance,” January 21, 1980, p. 19)

It’s an arresting image, a heckuva a quote, and it would make a good poster.  Plus, it’s an early IBM Selectric typewriter, marrying Asimov’s creativity with a great technological advancement in writing tools.

One boggles at the idea of Asimov with a great word processing program, a fast computer with great memory, and the internet at his disposal.  If Asimov were alive and creating today, we’d think Moore’s Law a great hindrance to the advancement of knowledge.

The painting delights me.  It’s almost photographic, and I like paintings that take great care to get small details right, photographically.  No dig at more spare or even abstract art, but this sort of painting takes great skill and great creativity.  Rising spirit-like from the typewriter’s platen we see a satellite (manned spacecraft, perhaps?), a flask of chemicals, and a leather-bound book, essential components in science fiction, and science.

So, who did the painting?  Was it done solely for that Facebook poster?

This is what that typewriter in the painting looks like, from the author’s angle. An IBM Selectric typewriter, model 713 (Selectric I with 11″ writing line), circa 1970. Wikipedia image

I’ve searched on TinEye, and Bing and Google, without success to identify the painter.

One version of the painting, before text was added, showed up at IO9, a site dedicated to science fiction, in an article discussing the writing habits of famous writers.

This does not appear to me to be the original, simply because data on the artist is not contained in the information section of the image.  The artist who did this illustration would be proud of it, and want to advertise her or his work.

This version has a slightly higher resolution; click on the image and note the reflections of lights in Asimov’s glasses, the reflections on the desk, and even the dings on the edge of the desk facing the viewer — this is great stuff!

But still I wonder:  Who was the original artist?

Any ideas, Dear Reader?

The painting of Asimov at his typewriter, before posterization with a quote over his head. Found at IO9

Did Asimov write on a Selectric?  Did he switch to the newer version, with a wider carriage, or stick with the old original?  Is there a photo upon which this painting is based?

Almost immediate update:  This site claims the artist is the same as the one at the bottom of the post, Rowena Morrill.  That’s a start.  Here’s more:  At Rowenaart, both pictures appear credited to Rowena.  Mystery solved?  Go buy a poster from her; this is great stuff.

More:

• At Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
  • “Annals of global warming:  Al Gore didn’t invent it; Asimov explained it in 1989″
  • Asimov’s (usually misquoted and misused) tribute to the American National Anthem
  • “Symphony of Science:  Climate Change”
  • “1984:  History of technology”
• Isaac Asimov explains his three laws of robotics: First Law: A… (exp.lore.com)
• The Roboearth API: Isaac Asimov Would be Impressed (programmableweb.com)
• Paul Krugman’s Favorite Fiction: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy Dramatized for Radio (1973) (openculture.com)
• Isaac Asimov made me an economist (guardian.co.uk)
• Paul Krugman: Asimov’s Foundation novels grounded my economics (3quarksdaily.com)

Hello! Could this be by the same artist? Caption from Wikipedia: This image is a reproduction of an original painting by renowned science-fiction and fantasy illustrator Rowena http://www.rowenaart.com/. It depicts Dr. Isaac Asimov enthroned with symbols of his life’s work. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Encore typewriter of the moment: Mencken and the 1948 conventions

Mencken at 1948 Democratic Convention

Photo from the collection of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, at the Park Library, University of North Carolina.

H. L. Mencken at one of the 1948 political conventions (Thomas Dewey was the Republican nominee, Harry S. Truman was the Democratic nominee). Obviously the photo is a copy from the National Press Club Library. The Park Library site describes the photo and Mencken:

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) was a familiar figure at many national political conventions. This photo, taken at the one in 1948, was his last political convention. He is well known for his attacks on American taste and culture, or the lack of same. His magnum opus, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, was first published in 1919 and remains a classic. From 1906 to 1941, he worked chiefly as a reporter, editor, and columnist for the Baltimore Sun. (Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Sun Library.)

Assuming Mencken covered both conventions, this photo was taken at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in mid-July, 1948. We know it was taken in Philadelphia since both parties held their conventions there that year, the Republicans from June 21 to June 26, and the Democrats from July 12 to July 14.

Republicans nominated New York Gov. Thomas J. Dewey and California Gov. Earl Warren for president and vice president.

After a contentious convention that saw Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey propose a civil rights plank that got South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond to walk out of the convention and found his own States’ Rights (Dixiecrat) Party (with himself as the nominee for president), and former Vice President Henry Wallace walk out because the party platform was too conservative (Wallace ran on the Socialist Progressive Party ticket), Democrats nominated President Harry S Truman and Kentucky Sen. Alben W. Barkley for president and vice president. Truman narrowly defeated Georgia Sen. Richard B. Russell for the nomination. Had Thurmond not walked out, Truman may well have lost the nomination of his own party.

And the rest of the story?

Sen. Estes Kefauver

• Truman had a contentious second term, and was defeated in the New Hampshire primary in 1952 by Sen. Estes Kefauver; Truman ended his campaign for a second full term shortly after.
• Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Truman’s successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in late 1953. Warren is remembered for engineering the 9-0 decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Educationwhich ruled “separate but equal” school systems to violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, and for his chairing the commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
  

  Earl Warren on the cover of Life Magazine, May 10, 1948; copyright Time-Life

• Hubert Humphrey moved on to the U.S. Senate, served as Vice President to Lyndon Johnson, and won the Democratic nomination for president in another contentious convention in 1968 in Chicago. Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon, and returned to the U.S. Senate two years later.
• Strom Thurmond won election to the U.S. Senate in 1954, switching parties to Republican in 1964, and serving until his death in 2003.
• Russell, who had served as Georgia’s senator since 1933, continued to serve to his death on January 21, 1971; he was a key member of the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Russell Senate Office Building is named in his honor, the oldest of the three Senate office buildings.
• Barkley was the oldest vice president ever inaugurated, aged 71. He remarried in his first year as vice president (his first wife died in 1947). Barkley’s nephew suggested that he should be called “the veep” because “Mr. Vice President” was too long. The title was seized up on by headline writers. Considered too old to run for the presidency in 1952, Barkley won a U.S. Senate seat from Kentucky in the 1954 elections, serving from 1955 to his death in 1956. Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River is named in his honor, as is the lake behind it, Lake Barkley.
• Henry Wallace finished a distant fourth in the 1948 election, behind Dewey and Thurmond. His political career was essentially over due to his inability or unwillingness to disavow communist support. He achieved success as a chicken breeder. In a daramatic turnabout, he wrote a book, Where I Was Wrong, disavowing communism and critical of Joseph Stalin, and endorsed Republican candidates in 1956 and 1960. He died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 1965.
• Dewey returned to his law practice. In 1952, Dewey helped engineer the nomination of Eisenhower over his old political nemesis Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, pushed Richard Nixon as the Vice Presidential nominee, and in 1956 first convinced Ike to run again, and then to keep Nixon on the ticket. Dewey politely refused offers of offices, including refusing a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, sticking to his law practice which made him very wealthy. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1971, at age 68.
• Mencken suffered a stroke later in 1948 that left him unable to speak, or read, or write for a time. He spent much of the rest of his life working to organize his papers, and died in 1956. His epitaph, on his tombstone and on a plaque in the lobby of the Baltimore Sun, reads: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl.”

This is an encore post.  Some new links have been added — though, as you can see, I don’t yet have a better photo of Mencken at the conventions.  More news sources, below.

More, Other Sources:

• Memorable Moments From Democratic Conventions Of The Past (npr.org)
• Obama hopes to follow Truman’s example (politico.com)
• LIFE’s Best Convention Photos: The Democrats (life.time.com)
• Party Conventions Are All Show. The Platforms Aren’t (businessweek.com)
• Feel Like Mencken Love (lambertham5859.wordpress.com)
• Memorable Moments From Democratic Conventions Of The Past (wnyc.org)
• MFB’s account of Mencken’s hoax column, “A Neglected Anniversary”
• May 23, 1926: Mencken confessed the Millard Fillmore bathtub hoax
• Mencken’s typewriter

Pixar’s 22 rules for a good story (how do they fit your organization?)

From The Pixar Touch, a set of rules for writing a good story to translate to the screen.

Good rules to keep in mind for composition of stories in English, no?  Good rules of writing to keep in mind for any essay writing.

Where else do these rules apply?

Pixar story rules (one version)

Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 03:39PM

Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” over the past month and a half — guidelines that she learned from her more senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Presumably she’ll have more to come. Also, watch for her personal side project, a science-fiction short called Horizon, to come to a festival near you.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Farnam Street, who adds:

Still curious?Watch as Kurt Vonnegut explains the different shapes that stories can take.

Where else can you use this?

Consider the project you’ve got to lead, with one person from each department in your company.  What is your vision (the hackneyed but apt word) for how the project ends up?  Storyboard it — and keep in mind these 22 rules.  What’s the essence of your view of the project?  Can you tell it in a minute?  Get the story down to 30 seconds.  What are the stakes, if you get this project done well?  What are the stakes if you fail?   Everybody on the team knows the stakes?  Is your plan on paper?  Have you revised it?

More:

• 12 Rules of PIXAR Storytelling in Lego Form (geektyrant.com)
• Pixar’s Storytelling Rules get LEGO’d! (theketchupwar.com)

Quote of the moment: Hemingway, writers need “shock-proof, [excrement] detector”

Ernest Hemingway with his cat, Cristobal, at his home, Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba.  Date unknown (circa 1955?) Photo from Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. (Copyright status unknown)

Was Ernest Hemingway the greatest writer in English of the 20th century?  Fortunately we don’t have to choose.  We can read Hemingway, and Faulkner (with whom he had a few bones to pick), and Hammett, and Parker, and Feynman, and Vonnegut, Bellow, Morrison, dos Passos,  Shaw, Kipling, Ford, Conrad and a dozen more, enjoying each for the gifts she or he demonstrated so well on a page.

Any way you stack it, though, Hemingway was a great one.

In an interview with George Plimpton, published in the Paris Review in 1958, Hemingway talked about what it takes to be a great writer.  Maybe it’s something one needs to be born with:

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.

If we could make a machine to substitute for that, a solid-gold, built-in, shock-proof [excrement] detector, we could improve writing, politics, government, business, and a hundred other fields of endeavor.

If we had a just and appropriately skeptical world, everyone would have one, a “solid gold, built-in, shock-proof [excrement] detector.”

What an enormous If.

Also at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• “Typewriter of the moment:  Ernest Hemingway’s Royal [at Sun Valley]“
• “Typewriter of the moment:  Hemingway’s, at Key West”

Green Fire, the film about Aldo Leopold

English classes in Texas don’t use his writings — sadly — and he’s not in the Texas “Essential Knowledge and Skills” list for social studies or science.

How else can children learn what they should learn about Aldo Leopold and his writings and work?

Here’s a 13-minute trailer on Green Fire, a new film about Leopold.

From the USDA’s YouTube site:

The Aldo Leopold Foundation is working with US Forest Service filmmakers Steve Dunsky, Ann Dunsky and Dave Steinke to produce the hour-long Green Fire: The Life and Legacy of Aldo Leopold. Leopold biographer and conservation biologist Dr. Curt Meine will serve as the film’s on-screen guide. Green Fire describes the formation of Leopold’s idea, exploring how it changed one man and later permeated through all arenas of conservation. The film draws on Leopold’s life and experiences to provide context and validity, then explores the deep impact of his thinking on conservation projects around the world today. The high-definition film will utilize photographs, correspondence, manuscripts and other archival documents from the voluminous Aldo Leopold Archives as well as historical film and contemporary full-color footage on location, including landscapes that influenced Leopold and that he in turn influenced.

Heck, the film’s only 47 minutes longer.

You can get it on DVD.

Bathtub reading for the World Series, and autumn’s appearance (finally!)

Busy as a teacher with 450 papers to grade each week.

That blue color in GE Reveal™ lightbulbs that just turned 10 years old?  Neodymium.  Embedded in the glass, not a coating.  Who knew?  Need to learn a lot more about neodymium — where is it mined, how toxic is it, what else can it do?

How will Rand Paul work up a whine about Reveal lightbulbs?  What will he complain about?

While we’re trolling GE’s press releases, we note the Climate Denialist™ reports of the death of wind power suffer from exaggeration Mark Twain warned us against.

Chart showing effects of 9-9-9 tax plan of Herman Cain, Washington Post

Chart shows Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan overwhelmingly benefits the very rich, while raising taxes on the poor.  Give the man some credit:  Cain’s business acumen was in serving unhealthy food to poor people; gouging money from the poor is probably something he can figure out in his sleep.

Physics fun:  See what you can do with a bunch of pendulums on different lengths of string.  Video at bottom of this post.  Same idea, but with bolt nuts, paper clips, and colored pieces of paper to make it flash in darker light.  Physics fun on the cheap.

Business Insider has charts showing the economic change and job troubles that justify the Occupy Wall Street people.  When Cicero spoke, the people said how well he spoke.  When Demosthenes spoke, the people said, “Let us march!”  Demosthenes seems to have the ear of those protesters.  How long was your last job search?  Is?

Republican super-strategist David Frum calls it quits from Marketplace radio commentaries:  Can’t voice the Republican tripe anymore.  Robert Reich, Frum’s “liberal sparring partner” at the show, eviscerates the philosophy behind the logic that Frum should quit because the Republicans have moved from where Frum feels comfortable — only good and bad politics, Reich says, not right or left politics.  Hate to see Frum go, especially for the state reasons.  Reich is right.  Maybe those Rhodes Scholars should get a good hearing once in a while.

You thought that might be accurate?  No, cosmic rays do not cause global warming — it’s still our fault, and we must act to stop it, if disaster is to be averted.  Yeah, that’s from 2007. Here cosmic ray/cloud expert, Jasper Kirkby explains that his paper does not claim cosmic rays cause clouds and thereby global warming as the Climate Denialists™ claimed.

Worse, as the Yale Climate Forum explains, warming is nearly forever (35,000 years is longer than I expect to live).

Norwegian study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that adequate supplies of folic acid to mothers, pre-natal, leads to normal language development in the baby three years out.  One supplement that keeps on working in study after study.

Washington Post’s Fact Checker looks like a useful tool to have around in an election year.  Glenn Kessler’s done a good job so far.

“Neanderthals still walk the Earth:  Climate deniers don’t believe in evolution, either.”  The National Center for Science Education takes on another goblin stunting our nation’s collective mental development.

Yale Climate Forum, again, takes on some misconceptions about carbon dioxide.

An entertaining post on lies your English teacher told you about writing.  Heck, this is about polishing writing — how do we get teenagers to write at all, today?

U.S.’s NASA and Japanese scientists teamed up to produce an even better, zowie-grosso topographical map of the world.  Scouts everywhere will be impressed.

Why is there gridlock in Congress?  Not sure, Bucky, but you’ll be excited to know that Sen. Jim DeMint  (R-SC) proposes to stop women from communicating with their physicians about abortion on the internet.  Jobs may be the top concern of Americans, but Sen. DeMint can’t be distracted from his task at hand dastardly work.  What?  First Amendment?  Doctor/Patient privilege?  Good health care?  Women’s health and rights?  Sanity?  No, those weren’t mentioned in the amendment.  I don’t think the good senator worries about such things.

Should have seen this one coming:  It’s the fastest growing industry in the U.S.  We export products from it to China.  It employs more than 100,000 people in 5,000 different companies, mostly small businesses.  It helps reduce carbon footprints of everyone, it contributes to making our nation energy independent.  If things continue as they are, there could be as many as 37,000 new jobs added in the next year, and continuing things as they are requires no new federal spending.  So, of course, the Republicans are trying to kill the solar energy industry.  Did someone strike them with a stupid stick?

Ungodly and unholy silence from conservatives and Christians about this terrorist-supporting claim from a pillar of right-wing thought.  No wonder Jesus weeps (not past tense).  On October 18, Limbaugh went back to the topic to laugh about it.  Cold blooded creature, isn’t he?

Update, 10/20:  Even the usually cluelessly callous Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe takes Limbaugh to task — but gently (see 1:45:00 into the C-SPAN video).

Occupy Sesame Street?

Yeah, that chart to the right goes on forever — big, big tax cuts to the richest Americans from Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 idea.

Scroll to the bottom to see the pendulum video.

Typewriter of the moment: William Saroyan (again)

On the 30th anniversary of the death of William Saroyan, we repeat an earlier post on his typewriter:

William Saroyan's typewriter, displayed at the Saroyan Museum at his home in San Francisco - photo from the Bancroft Library, University of California; Berkeley

William Saroyan’s niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, recently gifted the Bancroft Library with a significant part of the archives of Saroyan’s work. The press release on the gift included a photo of Saroyan’s Fox typewriter, which is displayed at the Saroyan museum in San Francisco.

Saroyan came from an Armenian American family, born in Fresno, California in 1908. His writings illuminated the experience of Californians and Armenian Americans, especially during the Great Depression.

In many ways Saroyan’s work symbolizes the uniqueness of the Armenian community in America, especially California. [You still out there, Ben Davidian?] Wikipedia strikes the right tone:

Saroyan’s stories celebrated optimism in the midst of the trials and tribulations of the Depression. Several of Saroyan’s works were drawn from his own experiences, although his approach to autobiographical fact contained a fair bit of poetic license.

His advice to a young writer was: “Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell.” Saroyan endeavored to create a prose style full of zest for life and seemingly impressionistic, that came to be called “Saroyanesque”.

The complete May 19, 2010, press release from the University of California is below.

The Bancroft Library's new archival material on William Saroyan includes (left to right) a sketch "from a Turkish admirer," a photo of the author in his youth, and a framed drawing of Saroyan with a passage of his writing on Armenia. (Images courtesy of the Bancroft Library)

The Bancroft Library accepts gift of William Saroyan archives

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 19 May 2010

William Saroyan (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

BERKELEY — The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has received a spectacular gift of hundreds of books, drawings, correspondence and other personal communications to and from one of America’s best-known writers, the Armenian-American author and playwright William Saroyan.

The rich collection includes approximately 48 cartons with 1,200 books and other archival materials assembled by his niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, of San Francisco, who also is the founder of the William Saroyan Literary Foundation International. A celebration of the gift is set for noon on Friday (May 21) at The Faculty Club on campus.

“UC Berkeley is such an incredible place of learning and growing and intellectual exploration,” said Kazarian, who earned degrees in communication and decorative arts at UC Berkeley in the early 1950s. “I know that my uncle wanted his library, manuscripts and galleys to go to Berkeley. Students will be inspired by the collection.”

Apart from this gift, The Bancroft Library already retains significant holdings of Saroyan’s work that it collected over the course of his life and career, and it continues to add to that collection. Most of the latest materials come from Saroyan’s home on San Francisco’s 15th Avenue that is now a Saroyan museum directed by Kazarian. Those materials were supplemented by Kazarian’s extensive personal collection, as well as by items of Saroyan’s that she acquired through a prominent Boston archivist and via a Saroyan friend.

“Jacqueline Kazarian’s new gift is the largest and most substantial augmentation to the Saroyan collections at Bancroft that we have ever received,” said Peter Hanff, Bancroft’s deputy director.

The author’s classic Fox manual typewriter, as displayed at his San Francisco home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Saroyan, born in Fresno, Calif., in 1908, drew extensively on his Armenian-American heritage and childhood experiences for his books, plays and short stories. Much of his writing was considered impressionistic and reflected a hearty optimism often hard to find during the gritty Great Depression. He died in 1981 at the age of 72, with his niece at his side.When Story magazine editors Martha Foley and Whit Burnett printed Saroyan’s “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” in 1934, it was an immediate success, triggering Saroyan’s fame and standing as one of his many literary achievements.

“Uncle Bill’s writing revolutionized the short story,” said Kazarian, adding that she has always found his work “almost spiritual and fable-like.”

His five-act play, “The Time of Your Life,” is the only American play to have won both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Saroyan’s work as a screenwriter with Hollywood director Louis B. Mayer on the film “The Human Comedy” won an Academy Award in 1943, and Saroyan later wrote a widely acclaimed book with the same title.

Kazarian’s gift to The Bancroft Library includes multiple first editions of Saroyan’s works, such as “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” “My Name is Aram” (1940), “The Human Comedy” and “Obituaries” (1979), and many materials personally inscribed by the writer. Also among the new items according to Steven Black, the head of acquisitions for Bancroft, are letters, telegrams and notes written by Saroyan to relatives and others close to him, mostly during the 1930s and 1940s.

Antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard of Berkeley, poring through Saroyan materials. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

“He personalized a lot of what passed through his hands,” Black said, noting that much of the material features marginalia reflecting Saroyan’s thoughts and interests.

There also is a copy of Henry Miller’s “Aller Retour New York,” an 80-page journal about a 1935 visit by Miller to New York City and his journey aboard a Dutch ship back to Europe. It is inscribed by Miller to Saroyan.

And a Saroyan scrapbook in the collection contains press announcements about the Pulitzer Prize for his book, “The Time of Your Life.” He scoffed at the award, contending that the arts should not be judged by commerce.

The new Bancroft collection also contains a pre-publication proof of “Burnt Norton,” the first poem of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which Black said the publisher may have given to Saroyan “when he crossed the pond” on a trip from his temporary home in France to England.

There also is a wide range of magazines, including issues of Horizon and the Partisan Review, a leading publication of the Anglo-American intelligentsia during the 1930s and ’40s, Black said.

The first major deposit at The Bancroft Library of Saroyan’s papers was recorded in October 1980, and the library agreed to organize the collection and give Saroyan a general description and an index. After Saroyan died in 1981, the Saroyan Foundation paid the library to continue assembling the papers for official archives, which the foundation ultimately decided to place at Stanford University. That happened in 1996.

William Saroyan's niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, surveys materials in his home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Kazarian’s donation is in honor of Berkeley antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard, who has provided appraisal assistance to Bancroft on Saroyan materials and other collections for decades. While director of The Bancroft Library, the late James D. Hart also developed strong professional and personal ties to Saroyan over the years, according to Kazarian and Black.

“Now, the Saroyan family materials come to a place that Saroyan himself would have been happy to see accepting them,” Black said, noting that Bancroft is proud to have so much of Saroyan’s “intellectual remains” to be able to share with the public.

Scheduled to speak about the acquisition at Friday’s event are Jacqueline Kazarian; David Calonne, vice president of education for the Saroyan Literary Foundation International and a Saroyan scholar; San Francisco novelist Herbert Gold; theater director Val Hendrickson reading Saroyan’s short story, “Common Prayer,” and the credo to “The Time of Your Life”; and Charles Faulhaber, director of The Bancroft Library.

UC Berkeley already is home to an Armenian Studies Program, which is focused on contemporary Armenian history, politics, language and culture. And Bancroft, a rich, special collections library containing historical and literary documents and other materials relating to California, the West, Mexico and Latin America, is known for its strong collections on California writers, including Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Bret Harte, Frank Norris and others.

More information about The Bancroft Library is online. Bancroft is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

More:

On commemorative stamps issued in both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Saroyan wears the Armenian-style moustache he wore through most of his later life. For a stamp to honor a man in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union was extremely rare -- maybe unique.

• William Saroyan Society
• William Saroyan Foundation, at Stanford University

Shakespeare: Still viral after all these years

A little sketch in her notebook, an off-the-top-of-her-head list of common phrases.  Common today, but originating with William Shakespeare.

Becky's quick summary of some of the best-known phrases we use everyday, invented by Shakespeare. From Becky, age 20, in London.

Becky’s quick work caught a lot of eyes.  One of NPR’s blogs brought it to my attention.  English teachers, take notice (maybe someone at your school has a large format printer, and can make for you a poster . . .)

Someone could write a book explaining the original Shakespeare meaning of these phrases, the play, the context, and the value in the story. (Perhaps it’s already been done.)  It’s really quite stunning to consider how many phrases trace back to the Bard — surely he did not originate each and every one.  But Shakespeare’s works are rivaled perhaps only by scriptures in producing so many common phrases and aphorisms.

Is this graphic design of a sort that would meet with approval from Edward Tufte and his followers?

Boston University: Writing history, a guide

AP history classes worry about writing more than most history classes.  But we really should do more writing in history class, both as a tool to learn about history in the past, and as an exercise in actually writing history.

Searching for something else, I stumbled on a guide published by thBoston University’s Department of History.  It’s not dull at all, but lively, and therefore quite useful, even though it starts out in French:

Raison d’être

Good, clear writing is, for most historians and professional writers, more of a process than a God-given talent. It begins with a blank piece of paper (or computer screen) and ends with a clearly organized and persuasive argument
in the form of a research paper, a published article, or a book manuscript.

History as a discipline is in its essence the discovery and interpretation of signs of the past as well as conventions of how to cite such evidence. It thus combines research (the search for historical evidence) and the organization of data into a convincing argument. Historical writing is one variety of written expression which seeks to inform and persuade the reader through the use of evidence organized around a central thesis or argument.  Good historical writing is not merely description, though it may employ illustrations and appeals to the reader’s imagination.

AP history teachers may find it useful for their classes.  Students working on National History Day projects may find it useful.  You may find it fun to read.  Check it out:  Boston University Department of History Writing Guide (in .pdf).

“Massive populations of misquotes” said to kill millions

“Over 1 million people a year die because of the massive populations of misquotes.”

I preserve it here just because it gives me a smile; here is the sentence above with what I presume is a typographical error that carries great humor, in its natural habitat:

While there is a a discussion going on whether DDT should be used or not in America, it is undeniable that It should be used in 3rd world countries like in Africa to stop the spread of Malaria. Over 1 million people a year die because of the massive populations of misquotes. No doubt that this number could be lowered dramatically. Not only is DDT a type of pesticide, it is a pest repellent, meaning that even if the bug has grown immunity to the pesticide, it will invariably avoid area’s where DDT is sprayed. To use it to a maximum effect, it would be a good idea to spray it on 1 wall inside a home. That’s all that is required to stop the malaria epidemic in Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delata38 (talk • contribs) 14:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

From Wikipedia’s discussion of the article on DDT.

I have no idea who Delata38 is, and hope she or he is not offended at my preservation of the typo.  The error may have been caused by an over-enthusiastic autocorrect function, and no fault of the author at all.  The statement may be completely correct in a few other contexts, something that should give all journalists pause and cause to strive harder for greater accuracy.

Heck, this should be a candidate for inclusion in the next edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

In typographical error, truth.

Typewriter of the moment: William Saroyan

William Saroyan's typewriter, displayed at the Saroyan Museum at his home in San Francisco - photo from the Bancroft Library, University of California; Berkeley

William Saroyan’s niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, recently gifted the Bancroft Library with a significant part of the archives of Saroyan’s work.  The press release on the gift included a photo of Saroyan’s Fox typewriter, which is displayed at the Saroyan museum in San Francisco.

Saroyan came from an Armenian American family, born in Fresno, California in 1908.  His writings illuminated the experience of Californians and Armenian Americans, especially during the Great Depression.

In many ways Saroyan’s work symbolizes the uniqueness of the Armenian community in America, especially California.  [You still out there, Ben Davidian?]   Wikipedia strikes the right tone:

Saroyan’s stories celebrated optimism in the midst of the trials and tribulations of the Depression. Several of Saroyan’s works were drawn from his own experiences, although his approach to autobiographical fact contained a fair bit of poetic license.

His advice to a young writer was: “Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell.” Saroyan endeavored to create a prose style full of zest for life and seemingly impressionistic, that came to be called “Saroyanesque”.

The complete May 19, 2010,  press release from the University of California is below.

The Bancroft Library's new archival material on William Saroyan includes (left to right) a sketch "from a Turkish admirer," a photo of the author in his youth, and a framed drawing of Saroyan with a passage of his writing on Armenia. (Images courtesy of the Bancroft Library)

The Bancroft Library accepts gift of William Saroyan archives

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 19 May 2010

William Saroyan (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

BERKELEY — The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has received a spectacular gift of hundreds of books, drawings, correspondence and other personal communications to and from one of America’s best-known writers, the Armenian-American author and playwright William Saroyan.

The rich collection includes approximately 48 cartons with 1,200 books and other archival materials assembled by his niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, of San Francisco, who also is the founder of the William Saroyan Literary Foundation International. A celebration of the gift is set for noon on Friday (May 21) at The Faculty Club on campus.

“UC Berkeley is such an incredible place of learning and growing and intellectual exploration,” said Kazarian, who earned degrees in communication and decorative arts at UC Berkeley in the early 1950s. “I know that my uncle wanted his library, manuscripts and galleys to go to Berkeley. Students will be inspired by the collection.”

Apart from this gift, The Bancroft Library already retains significant holdings of Saroyan’s work that it collected over the course of his life and career, and it continues to add to that collection. Most of the latest materials come from Saroyan’s home on San Francisco’s 15th Avenue that is now a Saroyan museum directed by Kazarian. Those materials were supplemented by Kazarian’s extensive personal collection, as well as by items of Saroyan’s that she acquired through a prominent Boston archivist and via a Saroyan friend.

“Jacqueline Kazarian’s new gift is the largest and most substantial augmentation to the Saroyan collections at Bancroft that we have ever received,” said Peter Hanff, Bancroft’s deputy director.

The author’s classic Fox manual typewriter, as displayed at his San Francisco home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Saroyan, born in Fresno, Calif., in 1908, drew extensively on his Armenian-American heritage and childhood experiences for his books, plays and short stories. Much of his writing was considered impressionistic and reflected a hearty optimism often hard to find during the gritty Great Depression. He died in 1981 at the age of 72, with his niece at his side.When Story magazine editors Martha Foley and Whit Burnett printed Saroyan’s “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” in 1934, it was an immediate success, triggering Saroyan’s fame and standing as one of his many literary achievements.

“Uncle Bill’s writing revolutionized the short story,” said Kazarian, adding that she has always found his work “almost spiritual and fable-like.”

His five-act play, “The Time of Your Life,” is the only American play to have won both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Saroyan’s work as a screenwriter with Hollywood director Louis B. Mayer on the film “The Human Comedy” won an Academy Award in 1943, and Saroyan later wrote a widely acclaimed book with the same title.

Kazarian’s gift to The Bancroft Library includes multiple first editions of Saroyan’s works, such as “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” “My Name is Aram” (1940), “The Human Comedy” and “Obituaries” (1979), and many materials personally inscribed by the writer. Also among the new items according to Steven Black, the head of acquisitions for Bancroft, are letters, telegrams and notes written by Saroyan to relatives and others close to him, mostly during the 1930s and 1940s.

Antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard of Berkeley, poring through Saroyan materials. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

“He personalized a lot of what passed through his hands,” Black said, noting that much of the material features marginalia reflecting Saroyan’s thoughts and interests.

There also is a copy of Henry Miller’s “Aller Retour New York,” an 80-page journal about a 1935 visit by Miller to New York City and his journey aboard a Dutch ship back to Europe. It is inscribed by Miller to Saroyan.

And a Saroyan scrapbook in the collection contains press announcements about the Pulitzer Prize for his book, “The Time of Your Life.” He scoffed at the award, contending that the arts should not be judged by commerce.

The new Bancroft collection also contains a pre-publication proof of “Burnt Norton,” the first poem of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which Black said the publisher may have given to Saroyan “when he crossed the pond” on a trip from his temporary home in France to England.

There also is a wide range of magazines, including issues of Horizon and the Partisan Review, a leading publication of the Anglo-American intelligentsia during the 1930s and ’40s, Black said.

The first major deposit at The Bancroft Library of Saroyan’s papers was recorded in October 1980, and the library agreed to organize the collection and give Saroyan a general description and an index. After Saroyan died in 1981, the Saroyan Foundation paid the library to continue assembling the papers for official archives, which the foundation ultimately decided to place at Stanford University. That happened in 1996.

William Saroyan's niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, surveys materials in his home. (Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library)

Kazarian’s donation is in honor of Berkeley antiquarian book dealer Peter Howard, who has provided appraisal assistance to Bancroft on Saroyan materials and other collections for decades. While director of The Bancroft Library, the late James D. Hart also developed strong professional and personal ties to Saroyan over the years, according to Kazarian and Black.

“Now, the Saroyan family materials come to a place that Saroyan himself would have been happy to see accepting them,” Black said, noting that Bancroft is proud to have so much of Saroyan’s “intellectual remains” to be able to share with the public.

Scheduled to speak about the acquisition at Friday’s event are Jacqueline Kazarian; David Calonne, vice president of education for the Saroyan Literary Foundation International and a Saroyan scholar; San Francisco novelist Herbert Gold; theater director Val Hendrickson reading Saroyan’s short story, “Common Prayer,” and the credo to “The Time of Your Life”; and Charles Faulhaber, director of The Bancroft Library.

UC Berkeley already is home to an Armenian Studies Program, which is focused on contemporary Armenian history, politics, language and culture. And Bancroft, a rich, special collections library containing historical and literary documents and other materials relating to California, the West, Mexico and Latin America, is known for its strong collections on California writers, including Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Bret Harte, Frank Norris and others.

More information about The Bancroft Library is online. Bancroft is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

More:

On commemorative stamps issued in both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Saroyan wears the Armenian-style moustache he wore through most of his later life. For a stamp to honor a man in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union was extremely rare -- maybe unique.

• William Saroyan Society
• William Saroyan Foundation, at Stanford University

Dan Valentine – I Miss Kissing You

I MISS KISSING YOU
Words by Daniel Valentine
© 2010

“Why did I have to go and fall for a soldier?
Soldiers march off and oh how I long to hold yer
Face and mouth to mine
While arms and legs and tongues entwine.

Other than in my dreams it’s, like, been forever,
So late at night it seems, since we kissed, and never
Have I missed your touch –
Your lips and fingertips — so much . . .”

Such are the thoughts inside my head,
Alone and lonely home in bed.
Thoughts better left for now unsaid.
So this I wrote my love instead:

“Missing you,
I miss kissing you
Under the mistletoe,
Three or four sweet sips
From a cup of hot cocoa on your lips . . .

Missing you,
I miss kissing you
Under the town hall clock –
Friends and fam’ly there –
Colored bits of confetti in our hair.

I miss kissing you,
Curled up in your arms,
In the glow of firelight.
I miss kissing you
And making up
Those few foolish times we fight.
I miss kissing you
Good morning.
I miss kissing you
Goodnight.

Missing you,
I miss kissing you.
When I think the last time
We kissed was goodbye,
The day you left for the war,
I’m sad for a while
But force a brave smile,
Counting the days and living for when
You walk through the jetway to kiss you again,
Baby, and then
Hold you and kiss you some more.”

Dan Valentine – Wedding ring in the pawnshop window

I’m back and back is beautiful, to tweak a phrase. Where have I been? Taking care of business with the helping hand of a special-special life-long friend.

For now, I’ll simply say: Life is an adventure, a gift and a grand adventure, and more than just a mite irksome at times.

These many weeks, in what little spare time I’ve had, I’ve also been writing lyrics. Everyone needs a hobby. Mine is writing lyrics.

Thus, the following song regarding our times:

WEDDING RING
IN THE PAWNSHOP WINDOW
By Daniel Valentine
(c) 2010

The wedding ring
In the pawnshop window.
The price tag on a string,
Tied to the wedding ring,
Says it all, says ev’rything.
Life seldom ever goes as planned.

The wedding ring
In the pawnshop window.
To think the joy it must
Have brought once. Now it’s just
Sitting there collecting dust,
Pawned for a fast few bucks in hand.

That said, a future groom and bride,
Their savings on the meager side,
Stop to sneak a peak, beguiled and starry-eyed.

And what they see are tons and tons
Of rare old coins, guitars and guns,
One music box, two cuckoo clocks,
Plus a fly or three dead on the sill.
Then they see the ring and all is still.

The wedding ring
In the pawnshop window.
It glimmers and it gleams.
It’s ev’rything that dreams
Are made of, or so it seems,
And all for less than half a grand.

And so, like tens of times before,
The tiny bell above the door
Jingles as the lovers step inside the store.

And, oh, the sparkle in her eyes
When first she tries it on for size.
It fits just right and in the light,
When she holds her left hand out to show,
Like her heart, the diamond’s all aglow.

The wedding ring
In the pawnshop window.
The register ka-chings.
An angel gets its wings.
And a tweetie birdie sings.
All while a credit card is scanned.

The wedding ring
In the panwshop window.
A mom with bills to pay
In need without delay
Pawned the ring to save the day,
Such are the times in our fair land.

How many at Beck’s rally? Just listen . . .

All the professional crowd estimators put the number of people attending Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial at over 50,000 people, but under 100,000 — most came out in the 85,000 to 90,000 range.

But — don’t you love the brevity of Twitter?

lizzwinstead

Michele Bachmann claims 1.6 million at Beck rally. That’s about right if you count the voices in her head. 18 minutes ago via TweetDeck