From "Long Overdue, the Bookmobile Is Back" (Smithsonian Magazine, February 2011):
"... The bookmobile thus is a portable, wandering marvel, that searches you out in a world that more and more waits for you to search instead.”
“They’re traveling cathedrals of beauty and truth and peace,” Anne Lamott adds reverently. “A place where children can have access to all the great wisdom of the ages – from the deepest and most profound truths to the greatest belly-laughs.”
From "What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness" (City Journal, Winter 2011):
I began taking notes and mailed a letter to William Safire at the New York Times, urging him to do a column on the devolution of coherent speech. Undergraduates, I said, seemed to be shifting the burden of communication from speaker to listener. Ambiguity, evasion, and body language, such as air quotes—using fingers as quotation marks to indicate clichés—were transforming college English into a coded sign language in which speakers worked hard to avoid saying anything definite. I called it Vagueness.
[...]
Is Vagueness simply an unexplainable descent into nonsense? Did Vagueness begin as an antidote to the demands of political correctness in the classroom, a way of sidestepping the danger of speaking forbidden ideas? Does Vagueness offer an undereducated generation a technique for camouflaging a lack of knowledge?
From "Your Life Torn Open, Essay 1: Sharing Is a Trap" (Wired, March 2011):
The digital networking of the world is both relentless and inevitable. A report from media-research company Nielsen revealed that in June 2010 Americans spent almost 23 per cent of their online time using social-media networking -- up a staggering 43 per cent year on year, with use among 50 to 64-year-olds almost doubling in this period. Facebook, with more than half a billion members investing more than 700 billion of their minutes per month on the network, is expected to hit a billion members within the next 12 months. By the end of 2011, half of all American consumers are expected to own networked smartphones, thereby sweeping them into the social-media maelstrom. Like it or not, Tapscott and Williams's "age of network intelligence" is imminent -- the only question is how intelligent we really all will be in this brave new social world.
From "The lost art of editing" (The Guardian, February 11):
Diana Athill: Very often I'm brought to a halt by some ridiculous mistake that hasn't been picked up by an editor, which makes me think there can't be much line-by-line editing going on in publishing houses these days. I don't know that it matters all that much. It makes a lot of people absolutely furious so they can hardly enjoy reading. But for me if what is being said comes clearly across that's what matters. It is a bit pedantic to fuss too much about the editing of detail. On the other hand, it does offend my personal instincts, having been trained in the old-fashioned ways, which meant our texts should be perfect. The answer I found for myself is that I take much more trouble than I used to in the line-by-line editing of my own manuscript, and I think authors should now take that responsibility on themselves if they don't want to be annoyed by minor details.Related RDA here.
It's no secret that I love WGN 720 AM and have for more than six years. This coupled with the lousy FM reception we get in the car means that, for better or worse, I don't hear much contemporary music.
On the ride home from lunch yesterday, though, bathed in the butter-yellow of February's strangely deceptive sun, we decided to try to tune in some music again. And when we landed on a station we could hear, we were reduced to tears (because music can do that and of course, happiness makes you cry) by a new-to-us song that everyone else has probably already heard, forwarded, added to their playlist, and forgotten.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?— every, every minute?We're not saints, but there is something of the poet in each of us because we realize.
No. [pause] The saints and poets, maybe — they do some.
"Be mine."
He said.
He said, "Thanks for being my Valentine, yet again."
He said, with you, I never feel old or get tired.
He said, with you, I don't get discouraged or disappointed.
He said, I love you.
And I said, "I love you."
And I know.
And I know.
And you're welcome.
I said.
"I am. I already was. I always will be."
■ The Nest Home Design Handbook (Carley Roney)
■ Decorating Ideas That Work (Heather J. Paper)
■ Speed Decorating (Jill Vegas)
■ Flip! for Decorating (Elizabeth Mayhew)
■ Home Decor: A Sunset Design Guide (Kerrie L. Kelly)
Non-fiction; how-to. Yes, there is a theme here. Yes, there were many other titles; these were just the ones to which I kept returning. No, I don't have photos yet. And yes, this is why I have utterly abandoned Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (Anthony Esolen), which I picked up to participate in the book club over at Ordo Amoris. [Insert small sigh.] I will read the book and prepare a chapbook entry. One of these days.
■ Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Amy Chua)
Memoir; parenting. Mentioned here.
■ Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Play; classic. Related entries here and here.
■ The Other Side of the Island (Allegra Goodman)
Fiction; dystopian. Mentioned here.
■ A Lantern in Her Hand (Bess Streeter Aldrich)
Fiction. Mentioned here.
■ Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Winifred Watson)
Fiction. Girl Detective recommended this, calling it "cheering." And it was. Will seek out the film in early March.
From "A Song on the End of the World" by Czeslaw Milosz (related entry here):
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
From "Slacking as Self-Discovery" (The New Atlantis, Fall 2010):
If this is really how young adults are thinking about their futures, they are in for a good deal of disappointment. Noble as it may sound to aspire to selflessness, independence of mind, and responsibility for one’s actions, these qualities are subjective, limitless, and have little specifically to do with adulthood. They are marks of good character — in children as much as adults — but being an adult is not clearly synonymous with being a nice or admirable person. Even a relatively responsible person can always become more so — is he not an adult at forty-five even if he becomes more responsible at fifty-five? Moreover, if adulthood comes to be defined as independence from other people — “standing alone” — then it is at odds with family and indeed, most of the social life of adults, which has the tendency to trap one in a web of pesky obligations and dependencies without which society cannot persist. [Emphasis added.]
From "Narcissus Regards a Book" (The Chronicle, January 31):
Media no longer seek to shape taste. They do not try to educate the public. And this is so in part because no one seems to know what literary and cultural education would consist of. What does make a book great, anyway? And the media have another reason for not trying to shape taste: It pisses off the readers. They feel insulted, condescended to; they feel dumb. And no one will pay you for making him feel dumb. Public entertainment generally works in just the opposite way—by making the consumer feel like a genius. Even the most august publications and broadcasts no longer attempt to shape taste. They merely seek to reflect it. They hold the cultural mirror up to the reader—what the reader likes, the writer and the editor like. They hold the mirror up and the reader and—what else can he do?—the reader falls in love. The common reader today is someone who has fallen in love, with himself.You'll find related entries here and here.
