So the good news is that, inexplicably, Comcast fixed the redirects for the pages that I had hosted there, so the pages for Larry Shue and Wood Duck and the archives of pedantic nuthatch are back online. The bad news is that contractors working near my house (truth to tell, for Comcast’s competition) inadvertently cut the cable, so I’m without cable TV and internet until at least Tuesday. At least the hockey playoffs season is done.
Worth a try
If a Unicorn Were on the National Security Council, by Ken Saji.
The unicorn starts out by laying out its plan to counter the North Korean nuclear threat. It says, “Create a giant rainbow over the entire country that lasts 100 years and then flood the DMZ with thousands of puppies—er, kittens.”
An explanation
MOTHER MIRIAM RUTH. You’ll never find the answer to everything, Doctor. One and one is two, yes, but that leads to four and then to eight and soon to infinity. The wonder of science is not in the answers it provides but in the questions it uncovers. For every miracle it finally explains, ten thousand more miracles come into being.
—John Pielmeier, Agnes of God
Art:21
The last time I was in a museum bookstore, I noticed a DVD series called Art:21. This turned out to be a suite of documentaries on practitioners active in the first decade of this century, some of them mature artists like Richard Serra and James Turrell, others in mid-career like Sally Mann, still others that are rising talents and less well-known. It’s been running on PBS stations for a while, but I flat missed it, since I rarely watch broadcast. So I took a break from the line of Perry Mason episodes I’ve been going through and added the discs to my Netflix queue.
The films are selective and to the point. Each hour-long episode deals with four artists, about ten to fifteen minutes apiece. With a few exceptions, there are no voiceovers or interviewer questions: the films (carefully edited) allow the artists to tell their stories in their own words. Title cards superimposed on images of the work provide dates and a bit of context. Each episode carries a thematic title (“place,” “spirituality,” “identity, “consumption” from the first season), but the connection of each artist’s work to the theme is sometimes tenuous. Each episode is introduced by a framing segment, of highly variable quality; Laurie Anderson does a fine job introducing the series premiere, but a collaboration between Steve Martin and William Wegman is fluff.
What I find especially encouraging about the project is its selectivity—the refusal by the producers (Executive Director Susan Sollins and her staff) to pump out material just for the sake of making product. Each season consists of only four hours of programming, and the seasons are produced every other year. So, after eight years, we have sixteen hours of film covering 60-odd artists. I’m looking forward to watching it all.
Mucho agua
When today’s biggest storm blew through Sterling at 3:00, the wind and rain whistling on the gravel roof of our office building sounded like someone pulling romex through a tube. DCist has a series of posts on the carnage.
Trees were down all along the Georgetown Pike corridor, so I was detoured onto Utterback Store Road and Old Dominon Drive, but once I got to the Beltway, my commute to Silver Spring was rather easy. At the Stage, we had water in the building, but not for the expected reasons. Rather, a contractor working on the sidewalk upstairs had basically punched a hole in our ceiling. Fortunately for our productivity, the water was at the other end of the suite, in the green room, so we could work while a crew cleaned up.
Back at home, a couple of my clocks were flashing 12:00, but the power cut must have been only a flicker. And most importantly, the house remains watertight. Although the overgrown tuliptree in the back, quite sodden, now looks like it wants to climb onto the roof.
I get confused: 1
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.
TE/XTP/REFS
Via i love typography: tell the people at the Text Prefs project what font, size, and spacing is most readable for you.
Biblical invective
The running gag in Incorruptible is that Jack, the layman, always misidentifies the source of a Bible quotation—he mistakes St. Paul for the Pentateuch, that sort of thing. The joke culminates with a particularly venomous curse from Agatha, drawn from Psalms 58:6-8. As Hollinger has it:
AGATHA. …”O God, break the teeth in their mouths…. Like grass let them be trodden down and wither. Let them be like the snail which dissolves into slime, like the untimely birth that never sees the sun!”
Jack guesses Leviticus.
Hollinger helps us out a lot here. Most of the translations of verse 7 employ an image of blunted arrows, rather than that of reaped or withered grass. The King James version of this passage, for instance, is more roundabout:
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD. Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
I found this commentary on Ps. 58 particularly helpful. That image of the dissolving snail is rather fine.
A project of mutual benefit
Spammers don’t even make sense when you talk to them on the phone. Daniel Cressey makes a telephone call to “Robert Pasteiner” about a claimed affiliation with the University of London.
My name is Daniel and I’m a journalist at the magazine Nature.
Daniel, or journalist, or whatever. You should have to learn how to approach someone. OK? How do you mean that I’m claiming to be? I am the person that is talking to you and you’re telling me I’m claiming to be. You should have some courtesy before you call someone on the phone.
Incorruptible update
We’ve blocked Act 1 and have worked it a couple of times through. Lots of familiar faces in this cast (Robin, Craig, Ted, Kathie, Sally), but I’m particularly pleased to be working with some people new to me, John, Jose, and Vincent. This should be a very funny show, so long as everything keeps fizzing along quickly enough that the viewer doesn’t realize that some of the gags are venerable. I tell people that Leta has chosen to direct a door-slamming sex farce (Leta dislikes door-slamming sex farces) without any doors (Andy has designed this cool colonnade for the up right wall) and very little sex. Incorruptible is actually a black comedy about grave-robbing monks in the Middle Ages, but it has a silver kernel of faith inside it, and that faith is vindicated.
Jumbo
Joe Queenan gives me another megabook to strive to complete: Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities.
I’m not suggesting that gigantic books are useful only as an excuse for avoiding responsibility. No, those who read them also reap the psychic benefits of being admitted to an exclusive club, like Icelandic rodeo queens or American presidents whose administrations did not end in disaster.
Some links: 28
Oh, I think I need to try me some of these: Unclutterer sings the praises of transparent Post-its.
(Link via Lifehacker.)
Lewis Falls-Blackrock circuit
First hot day of the summer, so what better time for the ceremonial first seasonal exposure of my lower limbs to sunlight? I pointed my car west on I-66, heard the whine of the pavement as I headed for Prince William County and higher elevations beyond.
I hiked the easy-rated Lewis Falls-Blackrock circuit (#19 in the current PATC guide), 4-plus miles with side trips. My notes say that the last time I took this loop was July, 1998. I didn’t record a time then, but this time I went around in 2:15. I measured 900-foot elevation change, so I got my workout.
It’s a fairly popular hike for a summer holiday weekend. Like many of the hikes in the park, it’s deceptive in that you’re walking downhill to get to the attraction (in this case, the little gem of Lewis Falls with its tiny rainbow in the spray). You may be facing a tough climb to get back to your car, as one middle-aged urbanite whom I met on her way back had discovered, to her pain.
Be prepared?
…Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
—E.M. Forster, Howards End, chap. 12
New ballpark
Tuesday evening, Leta and I took in the game at the Nationals’ new ballpark. A well-pitched game that ended, alas, with a 1-0 loss to the Phillies.
We hard fairly good seats, down the right field line, so I craned over my shoulder to see the new, very sharp scoreboard. Too bad that it wasn’t put to better use for some of the replays: many of us missed a good look at a close play at the plate.
The new stadium hasn’t acquired much local character yet, but I do like the formstone used for the backstop. Local materials, y’know. The main promenade around the park is at street level, which makes for easy circulation, and I like the local restaurants with food outlets at the park. Next time I’ll get there early enough to make it through the line for Ben’s Chili Bowl as well as to watch BP.