break any these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous
I came across this the other day in my reading attributed to one Eric Arthur Blair.
Mr. Blair wrote some rules on writing.
He said:
But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English.
I love that last line.
One could keep all of them and still write bad English.
BTW, Eric Arthur Blair was much better known under the name of George Orwell.
its basically an insurance company … with its own army
What is the Government of the United States of America?
For the federal government is, as an old line puts it, basically an insurance company with an army. Other than military spending — only a small fraction of which, even now, goes to defending democracy in Ukraine — federal dollars mainly go to retirement and health care programs on which scores of millions of Americans, including many Republicans, depend.
I have to admit that instead of thinking of government being those buildings in Washington and politicians and such, picture George F. Babbitt sitting behind a desk.
instagrammable moments lacking are listed don’t we need to pee?
Ginia Bellafante, writing in the New York Times (Must We Gentrify the Rest Stop?) about the changes at rest stops on the New York State Thruway stated:
Five years ago, the New York State Thruway Authority conducted a survey of more than 2,600 drivers to take measure of the customer experience at the service areas lining the 570 miles of road that make up one of the largest toll highways in the country, stretching from the edge of the Bronx up past Buffalo. Whether participants were traveling for work or for pleasure, they had needs that apparently were going unfulfilled.
The resulting report listed as chief takeaways that leisure travelers complained about unappealing interiors and the lack of “Instagrammable moments.”
Instagrammable moments?
Instagrammable moments!
When I was studying history back in college, I was taught over and over, in lectures, in statements, in LOUD RED LETTERS WRITTEN on term papers, to AVOID A SENSE OF PRESENT MINDEDNESS.
What was an instagrammable moment 10 years ago?
What will be an instagrammable moment be ten years from now.
Since the beginning of time people traveling from point A to point B have hoped for a clean, well lighted place to answer a call to nature.
And if it wasn’t too much trouble, maybe a decent cup of coffee and a bun or a biscuit or a doughnut maybe.
Why do these two things do not figure in as the chief takeaway on a survey of customer experience of service areas?
As Ms. Bellafante writes: In a society so casually stratified that major airlines now offer five classes of service and airport security lines can be bypassed for an annual fee, rest stops remain one of the few spaces in modern life that can be generally counted on to level us.
As my Dad would have put it, “Everybody has to pee.”
That won’t change but if it comes it to that, spare me anything instagrammable that captures that moment.
spontaneous and natural not requiring of so much effort
“In an ideal world it is not good to put limits on museum attendance as going to a museum should be spontaneous and natural and not requiring of so much effort,” he said. “Adding yet another barrier is not a good idea.”
So says Guillaume Kientz, who served for nine years as curator of Spanish and Latin American Art at the Louvre and is now the director of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York.
Mr. Kientz was talking about the recently announced 30,000 people a day who are allowed tickets to get entrance to the Louvre.
Back in 2019, it was noted that “Some 80 percent of visitors, according to the Louvre’s research, are here for the Mona Lisa — and most of them leave unhappy.”
Today, according to the article, “Attendance at the museum in 2022, she added, had bounced back to 7.8 million people, 170 percent more than in pandemic-battered 2021 but 19 percent less than 2019, before the coronavirus hit. The renaissance, which Louvre officials attributed to tourists from the United States and Europe, was emblematic of the extent to which the Louvre had recovered after coronavirus travel restrictions buffeted museums in Paris and across the world.”
And most of those folks want to jostle and push and stand in line for a glimpse of one painting so they can tell friends that they jostled and pushed and stood in line to glimpse this one painting and maybe they have a selfie to prove it.
Going to a museum should be spontaneous and natural and not requiring of so much effort.
Growing up in Grand Rapids, it wasn’t too hard to talk my Dad into taking us downtown to the Grand Rapids Public Museum on a Sunday Afternoon.
The museum was never crowded.
There was easy parking though my Dad would look for something within 50 feet of the front door and wonder out loud if the trip was worth it if we had to park at the medical supply building across the street.
We had been to these museum 100s of times and we knew the way around the place front and back.
The diorama’s of stuffed animals.
The oldtime gas light village that represented Grand Rapids in the late 1800’s.
The odd furniture museum up the back stairs.
The Roger B. Chaffee Space corner and Planetarium.
Sometimes we might go the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
The hardest part of a spontaneous and natural visit not requiring of so much effort to this museum focused hitting that magic time when it might be open and there seemed to be no published listing of hours
You just went, it was in an old house, and if it was open, it was open.
Then there were trips to Chicago and Detroit.
Most of my family went off to college at Ann Arbor.
My sister Mary went to college in Chicago for two or three years.
Also my Aunt and Uncle live there.
When ever some needed to be picked up for Thanksgiving or Spring Break my Dad would arrange to take one of two of us kids along and leave early and spend the day in the big city at any of their museums.
Chicago had the Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago Institute of Art while Detroit had Greenfield Village and the Detroit Institute of Art.
I guess I was raised on the concept that going to a museum should be spontaneous and natural and not requiring of so much effort.
I stayed with that as I got older.
History of Art was my minor in college,
Through this course of study, I had unusual access to the Detroit Institute of Art and a sort-of defacto membership in a group of museum guests that was a little bit above the norm.
I remember that I had a meeting scheduled with one of my professors to see some early Tuscan Renaissance works there at the DIA and I was late.
Never mind how I arranged to get a car to get to Detroit or how I got the gas money to get BACK from Detroit but that’s for another day.
Not knowing when I would be back at the DIA, I had to run upstairs and look at their 3 Van Gogh’s.
As an aside, with Vincent back in the news with this new modern exhibit, and the big show in Detroit, I did a little research to see close the nearest Van Gogh is to me where I now live.
Sad to say I’d have to drive to the National Gallery in Washington.
But I digress.
I spotted my professor waiting in the lobby and ran over and apologized for being late.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I had to go and see the Van Gogh’s.”
My professor smiled and nodded and then looked over his shoulder, took my by the arm and leaned in close and said, “I have real doubts about that self portrait.”
I smiled and nodded.
See, I was in the club.
This may have been the same visit that the professor and I were sitting on a bench in the center of a gallery and the professor pointed out the habits of most of the patrons.
“They come in with their guidebooks, check to make sure they are in the right gallery, look at the guidebook, look back at the plates next to artwork THEN they look at the work itself.”
He clucked his tongue, shook his head and said, “Why should that make such a difference?”
But he knew it did and he taught me that it did, but he still wondered.
He also once more looked over his shoulder and then leaned over and said to me, “And I know of enough times paintings and plaques got messed up.”
Reminded me of story told by the great Tom Wolfe of being at a Picasso exhibit and seeing a man who had rented one of those audio tours that back in the day was on a tape cassette player with a headset.
Mr. Wolfe noted that the man was getting more and more frustrated as he walked through the exhibit until the man finally yelled out loud, THIS IS NOT PICASSO’S BLUE PERIOD.
A docent came over and together they figured out that the man had been playing the wrong side of the tape.
So everyone wants to see the Mona Lisa.
I understand that.
But there are more paintings and other Museums.
Close to me is the Telfair Museum in Savannah.
I haven’t been yet but I do want to go.
It its where the the statue of the young lady feeding birds, known as the Bird Girl Statue, is now located.
Sad to say that after being featured in the movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the statue got so much attention and had to be removed from its location in a cemetery and placed in the art museum.
Maybe sometime access to art can be too spontaneous and too natural and should require a little effort.
I also want to see the EK le by Josef Albers.
It is listed as being part of the Telfair Museum Collection.
Going to the Telfair museum for me can be be spontaneous and natural and not requiring of so much effort.
Alas, the online listing for EL le states, “STATUS – Not on view”
America is a disappointment only because it is hope
In his best book, “American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony,” published in 1981, the political scientist Samuel Huntington distills the tension in his final lines:
“Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals.
They are wrong.
America is not a lie; it is a disappointment.
But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.”
Cards and letters may be coming on this one and boy, howdy, do I wish I would stick to the my avowed purpose of this blog and stay away from political comment.
But how can I not?
Maybe a way to get the point of today’s haiku across is to quote Amerigo Bonasera when he said, “I believe in America. America has made my fortune.”
Those are the opening lines of the defining American film, The Godfather.
For Amerigo Bonasera, because he had hope, America was a disappointment.
Sad to say that Mr. Bonasera also said, “Then I said to my wife, ‘for justice, we must go to Don Corleone.'”
Don Corleone succeeded when hope failed and disappointment took over.
Disappointment because there IS a hope.
And that hope, bless it’s heart, continues.
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,
who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time,
who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
So said Barack Obamain Chicago’s Grant Park in 2008 on the night he won the presidency.
Not sure how that can be so long ago.
Hope sure has been kicked around a lot since that night.
I still have hope.
I still have hope that America is the city on the hill where all are welcome.
The problem is, I am not so sure that is what America wants anymore.
No Haiku For You 