Month: January 2010

Salinger-Related Information (On A Friday)

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1. I learned yesterday (like most of you) that J.D. Salinger died Wednesday, at the age of 91. His New York Times obituary focuses mainly on his 50 years of reclusiveness, but did have this to say about the italics:
The stories were remarkable for their sharp social observation, their pitch-perfect dialogue (Mr. Salinger, who used italics almost as a form of musical notation, was a master not of literary speech but of speech as people actually spoke it), and for the way they demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — in favor of an architecture of emotion, in which a story could turn on a tiny alteration of mood or irony.

2. I have to admit that I always wondered if more Salinger would be published after he died, but now that he’s dead I’d rather think of him still writing every day than of being able to read more of his work.

3. If you would like to read any of the short stories online, you can use your subscription to The New Yorker to do so here or you can read them for free (gasp! just like a library!) here.

ETA: 4. And The Onion’s take on it: Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger. Thank you, Onion.

Speaking Of Alcohol…

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A few weeks ago I found a news article about new research that makes the claim that early humans developed agriculture not for a steady supply of food, but a steady supply of booze. As the article tells us,

[Archaeologist Patrick McGovern’s]bold thesis, which he lays out in his book, Uncorking the Past. The Quest for Wine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverage, states that agriculture–and with it the entire Neolithic Revolution, which began about 11,000 years ago–are ultimately results of the irrepressible impulse toward drinking and intoxication.

“Available evidence suggests that our ancestors in Asia, Mexico, and Africa cultivated wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet primarily for the purpose of producing alcoholic beverages,” McGovern explains. While they were at it, he believes, drink-loving early civilizations managed to ensure their basic survival.

Hey, I think it sounds plausible. If I had to struggle to survive every day, I’d want a drink, too.

When Hemingway Comes In Handy

Karen

Monday night I took a wine class (through the U’s Continuing Education) with a friend from work. Our class was “Value Wines of Italy” and as we moved onto a Tuscan red (not, apparently, an “official” Chianti), the teacher asked, “Who knows what the straw-wrapped bottles of Chianti are called?”

And I had to remember all the times the Colonel in Across the River and Into the Trees asked the hotel staff in Venice for “a fiasco” of some wine or another, and that was indeed the answer.

The teacher went on to explain how most Americans’ first experience with Chianti was so bad that the term was adopted to mean “a complete failure”–which isn’t exactly what the dictionary tells me*, but sounded very charming and plausible when she said it.

*My dictionary says the term came about from the phrase “far fiasco,” literally “to make a bottle,” and was used in Italy to mean “complete failure” since the mid-19th century. Tomato, tomahto…both of which are very nice with Chianti.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Now With More Cables

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Remember at the beginning of the month when I talked about making a traditional Aran sweater? And I was intimidated by the traditional pattern and construction methods? Well, this is the year of speaking up sooner if something is not how I want it to be, and the traditional pattern of the intended sweater was not only difficult–it wasn’t cable-y enough.

Here is the traditional pattern:

And for comparison, here’s something with LOTS o’cables:I don’t like knitting projects to be that challenging (or require that much concentration at night), so this is not the winning pattern. Instead, I compromised with this pattern (very popular among knitters) and a different cable.

Here’s the progress so far

and here’s the different cable–it’s called a staghorn cable.

And I think I used “cable” about 5 times in 100 words. Cables!

Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf

Karen

And happy birthday yesterday to Edith Wharton. If you want to be a perceptive lady novelist, it’s a good time to have a birthday.

(Can you tell I’ve been busy at work? I’m sorry things have just been links or images lately–I don’t have as much time to find or prepare better material. On the upside, we are actually helping to promote a mixed martial arts event in South Carolina and I get to write scripts for the ring announcer. My career is complete!)

Do You Need More Pictures Of Cool People In Your Life?

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If you do, check out If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats. It’s a visual blog of old photos of musicians, actors, mobsters, famous people–and even vintage pattern covers. There are such diverse categories as “The Gunslinger’s Guide to Julie Christie,” “Artists in Action,” and “Before and After” (in case you want to see how people have aged).

Check it out–any blog that has a category devoted to Bob Dylan pictures is OK by me.

Another Reason To Visit The Cook Islands

Karen

If I did, I’d get to see the stars from the Southern Hemisphere. The Astronomy Picture of the Day site had a photo last week demonstrating just that:


On the left the outlines show Orion seen from a beach off Tasmania, and on the right you can see it in the Northern Hemisphere, from the Alborz Mountains in Iran. (See more details and a bigger picture on the APOD site.)

That’s just very cool. My sister-in-law is going to South Africa in the spring and I am jealous!

Tuedsay Project Roundup: No Loose Ends

Karen

Here’s a project from last year for the roundup: I wanted something mindless to knit over Christmas get-togethers, so I made a tube scarf (or infinity scarf) with some very nice berry-colored alpaca (Merry Christmas to me).

I was inspired by this scarf and I have to say that a tube scarf–i.e., a big loop of scarf, with the ends connected–is both fun to knit and wear. Because you don’t have to worry about the ends being long enough to go over your shoulder, you’re done knitting sooner than you would be with a traditional scarf, and it’s nice to not have the bullk of the wrapped ends under your coat.

I just wish my cameral could deal with the light levels in the apartment better. For some reason pictures taken in this same spot of me wearing the scarf came out way too dark, which is why it’s modeled on the hangar.

Happy Birthday, A.A. Milne

Karen

Today is the birthday of the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne. As the Writer’s Almanac tells us, “Milne went to school for mathematics, but ended up spending most of his time writing. He wrote a mediocre novel and then started writing plays, and he ended up writing 27 of them.”

But after publishing three books of children’s poems and the first Pooh book (for his son) within four years, “most people didn’t take him seriously as a writer for adults anymore.”

That may have disappointed Milne, but it’s fine with me–because who doesn’t love the Pooh books, and their Random Capitalizations of Important Thoughts?