Category: NOC

Via The Morning News, Cornelia Dean visits a conference of the North American Sea Glass Association.

(With some help from Leta.)

• William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies and several other books less well-remembered. No matter, he received a Booker and Nobel for his work.
• William Goldman writes screenplays, including the magically popular The Princess Bride and the Penelope Ann Miller vehicle Year of the Comet. He is the source of the catchphrase “Nobody knows anything.”
• James Goldman made the stage play The Lion in Winter and collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on Follies and Evening Primrose.

Still confused about the Goldmans? It’s not surprising: they’re brothers.

A few weeks ago, Bas Bleu retraced the track of a bicycle trip she took across France 30 years ago, this time en voiture. I’m reading her reports completely out of order, chronologically and geographically, but I don’t think it matters. You could pick up the thread with her in Bordeaux, perhaps.

Via Arts & Letters Daily, Stuart Jeffries explores the recent population explosion of bangs, and in passing visits a small town in Québec (named for what I think of as a feature of landscape architecture), Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!

“Cut out all those exclamation marks,” wrote F Scott Fitzgerald. “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.”

Bill Bryson is the guy who writes the humorous travel books; Bill Buford used to edit Granta; Bill Bruford was the drummer for Yes. Bruford is the Brit; Bryson, although a resident of the U.K. for a time, is from Iowa.

Google Maps’ search features have become more forgiving, so that a state-by-state search for thoroughfares named Gorsline turns up usable results:

• Gorsline Street, Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York (I’ve visited here once)
• Gorsline Street, Rochester, New York
• Gorsline Road, Prince Edward, Ontario, on a peninsula across the lake from Rochester
• Gorsline Road, Battle Creek, Michigan
• Gorsline Drive, El Cajon, California, outside San Diego

Each one is a concrete tracing of someplace that my ancestors and family have passed through.

How did I miss this for so long?

My blogger code (using an old Geek Code-style modifier): B9 d t++(+) k+ s u f i o x- e l+(-) c-

No post, the title just looks good up there.