I’m fond of the motto of the Montague (MA) Bookmill, “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find.” A list today of books you don’t need, courtesy of Roger Angell’s Let Me Finish.
Beginning Polo Music in Geriatric Care Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva Pray Your Weight Away Selected Lithuanian Short Stories Toilet Training in Less Than A Day Modern Volleyball The Sexual Christian The Law and Your Dog Septic Tank Practices Successful Fundraising Sermons The Handbook of Wrestling Drills The Father of Air Conditioning Creative Insomnia What Can I Do with My Juicer? Hamtramck Then and Now The Personality of the Horse Breaking Your Horse’s Bad Habits The Passaic River Refrigeration in America All About Guppies The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Haikus for Jews An Essay on Calcareous Manures Meet Calvin Coolidge Knitting with Dog Hair
These are all from the bookshelf of the late Gardner Botsford, a longtime editor of the New Yorker. His office, reports Angell, was near where books destined (or not) to be reviewed by the magazine were delivered. Over the years he collected these obscure, yet earnest titles, which, as Angell puts it, “became a solace for him and his colleagues.” Angell’s recollections of Botsford, less well known than other editorial stars of the magazine, including Angell’s own stepfather, E.B. White, are lovely as is the whole book.
A couple of years back the BPL’s Prints and Photographs department put up a show of travel posters from their voluminous collection. The show is down, but they have a Flickr stream. Good timewaster for the armchair time traveler.
In consulting with my mother-in-law about her trip to DC next week (fireworks, museums, lots of long walks, being that I’m the events director and that’s how I roll), I asked which Smithsonian museums she’d like to see.
Her: “I like American Art”
Me: “There is a museum devoted to that, and a George Bellows show is in town at the National Gallery.”
Her: “That’s good.”
Me: “Just go to the Smithsonian web site and click on links for the American Art Museum to see details.”
Dead silence.
Her: “Okay, but what the hell is a link?”
Got the chance to catch up with Richard Saiz at Silver Docs (the Silver Spring Documentary Festival that just wrapped up). Richard is an award-winning documentarian, former ITVS programmer, and script doctor extraordinaire.
His four guidelines for film writers, (unfairly boiled down into bullets, but it’s a blog!)
Theme: Don’t forget about the theme of your story (yes, plot drives it, but everything has to connect to the larger theme).
Characters: Are your characters vivid and interesting enough to inspire viewer interest? (Given that I have wanted to do a documentary on math which would use equations as ‘characters’ I think he’d say I need some help in this dept.)
Backstory: it needs to be there to answer key questions, but not so present that it seeps into the foreground of the film.
Plot drift: Does the narrative move forward or veer into interesting, but off topic, excursions?
Parallel to advice in other types of writing. If it doesn’t earn its place on the page, out it goes. (Not a rule I find easy to follow.)
Two films he holds up as examples of getting it right:
The Education of Shelby Knox and The Cats of Mirikitani
Neither of which I’ve seen, and both of which are on NetFlix Streaming.
Hadid’s original design for the Olympic Aquatic Center. (Adjustments needed to accommodate additional crowds will block the glass sides unfortunately.) Like Saarinen’s wonderful TWA terminal, it’s ready to take flight.
It is impressive because it is big, and purposeful, and will contain large crowds, but also because the architecture rises to the occasion. The architects’ moves are confident and equal to the scale of the place. They don’t fumble or tinker. More than that, the interior has a feeling of wholeness. It feels moulded or carved, not assembled. It looks like a body more than something constructed out of pieces.
…
Architecture, for her, is something that should make its presence felt, intervene, change things, perhaps get in the way. Her style seems to be about dynamism and weightless modernity, but her buildings are actually massive. They are slow, not fast. They reflect an old idea, common to Palladio and Le Corbusier, that architects sculpt and shape and compose.
Last bit of a lovely A.N. Wilson review of Wodehouse’s letters:
In 1899, Wodehouse (who was to read the works of Shakespeare every year of his life thereafter) wrote to a school chum, “I heard yesterday that Shakespeare was not alive. It steeped me in profound gloom. But I thought eftsoons that I was alive so it was all right for the Literature of the World”. Like many of the best jokes, it was true.
This list courtesy of the bulk spice section of the Takoma Park (MD) Food Co-Op. While looking for cumin, I came across these, and happily pondered what they might possibly be for. Kind of fairy tale meets hipster.
Dulse LeavesElder Berries (well, I know the Monty Python application of this one at least.)
Dulse Leaf
Dong Quai Root
Uva Ursi Leaf
Pau d’Arco Bark
Motherwort Herb
Slippery Elm Bark
Mullein Leaf
Encountering buildings named “Morrill Hall” was a regular feature of my childhood as my family moved to several big university towns in the 1960’s and 70’s. Then, as now, mystified by English spelling, I assumed there was some special rule for spelling “moral” or perhaps “morale” when it was written in stone. Not so, these buildings are in honor of Justin Smith Morrill, the Vermont senator who proposed the legislation that created the Land-grant colleges in 1862.
The 150th anniversary party for the Morrill Act is on in DC this week. And it’s definitely worth celebrating: the land-grants are still around and mostly thriving, and whatever the qualms about higher ed in American may be part of the reason we have this sector at all is the Morrill Act and later commitments from the federal government and the states. Some highlights of the celebration: The Smithsonian’s Annual Folk Life Festival has a “Campus and Community” thread that looks at land-grants’ efforts beyond the classroom and lab (extension and community learning were early parts of the land-grant vision). Current presidents of the many of the Land-grants will be in town for meetings and events. They will be at the Lincoln Memorial Monday (84 degrees, by DC standards a crisp spring day, but not so much if you are in your full academic regalia).
There are also going to be Justin Morrill impersonators on hand (kind of like the Lincoln-seque guy who roams around Ford’s Theater when you go for a play or a tour) as well as the Morrill descendants.
So here’s some of the text from the original act, courtesy of “Our Documents.gov” (a site which gives you the text, as well as large and small images of the original document.)
The Morrill Act (1862)
Original Morrill Land-grant act from 1862Chap. CXXX.–AN ACT Donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there be granted to the several States, for the purposes hereinafter mentioned, an amount of public land, to be apportioned to each State a quantity equal to thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in Congress to which the States are respectively entitled by the apportionment under the census of eighteen hundred and sixty: Provided, That no mineral lands shall be selected or purchased under the provisions of this Act.
….
[Monies …] and the interest of which shall be inviolably appropriated, by each State which may take and claim the benefit of this act, to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.
You can follow the convocation on Twitter: #Morrill150
Beginning Polo 
A Few Reasonable Words 