Low Hanging Fruit

Bret Harte elementary principal Hilinski (Mejia/Chronicle)

At the cost of $500 per student per year, a San Francisco elementary school has seen "jaw dropping" improvement in literacy skills: [bold added]

[San Francisco principal Jeremy Hilinski's] school-based assessments showed that 80% of the kindergarten and first-grade students participating in the tutoring were mastering foundational literacy skills by the end of the year, which was a “gigantic” improvement, he said.

Chapter One is a private tutoring company providing trained, paid tutors who are based in specific classrooms each day, working individually with students for five to 15 minutes at a time on letter recognition, letter sounds and other foundational reading skills. The students who were tutored saw their grade-level literacy rates jump to 54% from 24% in the limited period, according to initial progress reports.

“There’s no shortage of programs going into San Francisco schools for literacy,” he said. “This one actually worked.”

And it only costs $500 per student per academic year, with the donations-based San Francisco Education Fund covering the cost for just over 1,000 mostly K-2 students for the final five months of the past school year...

The Ed Fund not only paid for the tutors, but also covered the cost and staffing required to manage the program — work that included scheduling the tutors and coordinating with teachers as well as all the other bureaucratic and logistical issues that administrators and educators don’t have time for.

Individual instruction of "five or 10 minutes each day" was enough to show results; it may explain why parents who spend time reading to their kids can make such a difference. It may also explain why home schooling, for all its drawbacks, produces kids who are on average superior academically to those who graduate from public school.

According to a Census bureau 2024 report San Francisco spent $23,654 per student in FY2022. Where all the money went remains a mystery, but it's clear that "administrators and educators don’t have time for" a $500 proven program that helps children read.

Reading in the Room

Library tote bags (Chron photo)

Marketers have struggled to figure out how to appeal to older members of Gen Z, aka twenty-somethings, but this trend comes as a surprise. Emily Hoeven writes: [bold added]

It’s no secret that young people in San Francisco don’t frequent bars and nightclubs the way they once did.

This has left many perplexed. If the city’s dwindling population of 20-somethings isn’t drinking and dancing, what are they doing?

This 20-something has spent much of her time this summer at the San Francisco Public Library. And based on my observations, plenty of other young adults have, too.

No, we aren’t geeks. The library is cool.

To start, it’s a free third space — a perk that cannot be overstated in this ridiculously expensive city.

I recently visited the Chinatown library shortly before it closed at 8 p.m. There was barely an empty seat in the house. And it was impossible not to notice the sizable number of young adults.

Is it any surprise we’d forgo a moody bar when a glass of wine can set you back $20 these days?

Thousands have earned the library tote bags that are given to those who complete 20 hours of reading (books) over the summer. Given enough time, everything passé, even reading books, will become cool again.

Wealth Ladder - Getting the Rungs Right

I'm a sucker for "rate yourself" tests on the Internet, for example, how do you measure up in health, sports knowledge, 20th century history, or wealth? Concerning the latter, Nick Maggiulli's Wealth Ladder has specific numerical criteria: [bold added]

Those on the first rung have almost no wealth; the threshold is less than $10,000. Each subsequent rung represents an upper threshold of wealth 10 times as large as the previous level. Mr. Maggiulli’s scale is designed to express the declining utility of money as it accumulates. He also denotes each rung by the “freedom” such wealth generates.

Level 2, $10,000 to $100,000, offers “Grocery freedom” because “you can buy what you want at the grocery store without worrying about your finances.” Level 3, $100,000 to $1 million, provides “Restaurant freedom” because you can order what you want when you dine out. The fourth rung, $1 million to $10 million, means you can travel wherever you want; the fifth, $10 million to $100 million, means you can afford the home of your dreams. Mr. Maggiulli’s sixth and highest level, anything above $100 million, gives you the ability “to have a profound impact on the lives of others” through business and philanthropy....

Mr. Maggiulli recognizes that knowing which rung of the ladder you’re on doesn’t help in getting to the next one, so at each level he describes what is required to climb higher. Getting more education is most effective at Level 2. Income-producing assets are vital at Level 3. Once you get to Level 4, you’re going to have to take a different approach. If you reached Level 5 it is probably thanks to concentrated investments—the result of starting a business or accruing a big slug of company stock.

Some rungs are far too wide. Rung 3 spans $100,000 to $1,000,000, but IMHO there is a huge difference between the low and high end of the range. In the Bay Area $100,000 could be a half-year's salary, perhaps enough for an emergency expense reserve, while $1 million in many parts of the country allows one to have a paid-up home plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings.

There is a similar difference between $1 million and $10 million; again in the Bay Area, the lower amount could be a down payment while $10 million does allow one to have that four-bedroom house plus a comfortable retirement.

As for rung #5, over $100 million, I'll never get there and I'm glad because I don't need those kinds of problems (he said disingenuously).

Update - 7/29: Nick Maggiulli elaborates in a Morningstar interview.

Christine Benz: You share what you call as the 0.01% rule. Can you talk about what that is and how it can aid with decision-making about doing spending, and what expenditures to stress out about and which to not stress out about?

Nick Maggiulli: Yeah, so the 0.01% rule basically says that you can spend 0.01% of your wealth or just another way of looking at it’s one-10,000th. So you could call this the one-10,000th rule as well. You can spend one-10,000th of your wealth on a daily basis without having to worry about anything. And so I’ll explain where that comes from. So let’s say your net worth is $10,000. You’re basically right on the cusp between level one and level two. That means you can spend an extra $1 per day without any worry about jeopardizing your future wealth. And where that $1 that 0.01% comes from is, on an annualized basis, if you’ve got a return of 0.01% a day, that’s like a little bit under 4% a year. It’s like 3.7% a year. It’s very conservative return. So every day your wealth is generating that much money. So if you have $10,000 in wealth every day in theory, you’re generating an extra $1 a day without doing anything. So in theory, you could spend that $1 and not jeopardize your future wealth. So if you have $100,000 in wealth, you could spend $10 a day. If you have $1 million in wealth, you can spend $100 a day, et cetera. Now, obviously this isn’t your total spending. If you live in the United States, you’re not going to survive on $1 a day. This is the marginal spend. Everyone’s making a spending decision, you’re making it on the margin.

Like when you go to buy a car, you’re not saying, oh, should I get a Toyota Camry or a Maserati? You’re debating between the Camry and the slightly nicer Camry. That’s what I’m saying. You’re always doing it on the margin. Like when you sit down in a restaurant and you’re like, do I want to get the burger for $20 or the salmon for $30? That marginal difference is $10. And so my argument is that once you have like $100,000 in wealth, that extra $10, you can spend that every time you go to a restaurant without worrying about it. And so the 0.1% rule works in that way by just it allows you to have some lifestyle creep because you’ve shown financial disciplines. Like, hey, look, I’ve reached this level of wealth so I can now spend more in certain categories. But until I reach that level of wealth, I’m not going to do that.

And so like in my example—I still to this day, I don’t have basically any travel freedom. When I go to a restaurant, I’ll buy whatever I want. I don’t care. But I am still getting the coach seat. Maybe I will upgrade my seat to a slightly nicer seat, not a first-class seat, but I’ll go like get something with more legroom. That’s where I’m at in my wealth journey. Like one day if I do well, if things go well for me, I will maybe always get a first-class seat, but that’s not in the cards for me right now. And so I’m spending according to my wealth level, and I’m very strict about that.

It’s because that the extra whatever $100 or whatever it is, is not enough to upgrade to first class every time. So I can’t spend that money. That’s how I work through it.

Still Appreciated by Termites, Though

Your humble blogger went to school before mobile phones, before the Internet, even before there were personal computers (I received my MBA in 1975, one year before Apple was incorporated).

Mine was a generation that did all its research in libraries, and index cards were the pathway to getting information. Today most index card drawers are empty--if they haven't been tossed out--but at Yale they have been repurposed:

If you open one of the hundreds of card catalog drawers that line the south side of the Sterling Memorial Library nave, you won’t find any cards; online catalogs have rendered them obsolete.

But you might find a surprise. Over the past few years, students and other visitors to the library have created a tradition of leaving notes in the drawers to be found by others. Some are inspirational (“keep chasing your dreams, but don’t be afraid if the path to your dream changes”) and some are aspirational (“2016. In eight years, I’ll return as a Yale student”), and they are written in many languages. It’s a delightful adaptive reuse: hardware that was once used to organize the search for knowledge now holds the promise of serendipity.

Now if I can just find a use for my slide rule....

U.S. Master Tax Guide

I have ordered a copy of the U.S. Master Tax Guide nearly every year. It's a handy one-volume guide to tax law; on the back cover publisher Wolters Kluwer calls the 944-page tome "the tax professional's quick reference."

Real tax professionals disdain the MTG. Their libraries contain the Internal Revenue Code, the Regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, and court cases. Combined with a research service or two, a full set of publications would cover an entire wall. All the information is available through online subscriptions, so an extra wall is no longer required.

As for me, I like riffling through pages to look up stuff, so I will continue to get a hard copy of the U.S. Master Tax Guide. It reminds me of how it used to be in the old days, and yes, I am no longer a "real" tax professional.

Squirrelly Behavior

Vole aka "meadow mouse" (Sonja Wild/UC Davis/SFGate)

Aa a beginning grade school reader in the 1950's my first reading material was the classic Golden Books. I moved on to the "Mother West Wind" series by Thornton W. Burgess (1874-1965), who populated the Green Meadows with over a dozen animal characters. My favorite was Danny Meadow Mouse, who frolicked with Jerry Muskrat, old Mr. Toad, Jimmy Skunk, and Chatterer the Squirrel.

A recent discovery revealed that Thornton W. Burgess' Green Meadows is red in tooth and claw, and we're not even talking about predators like coyotes and cougars: [bold added]

Squirrel eating vole (Sonja Wild/UC Davis/SFGate)

In June 2024, Jennifer E. Smith of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire received a disturbing report from her research team conducting fieldwork at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County. It’s a sprawling expanse of grasslands and oak woodlands known for scenic trails, views of Mount Diablo and a thriving bird-watching scene. However, Smith’s students had documented something far more unsettling than a rare bird or damage on a trail: an unsettling description of a California ground squirrel actively hunting, killing and ripping apart the bodies of tiny California voles...

For squirrels observed consuming their kills immediately rather than carrying the carcass back to a den, the behavior followed a grimly methodical pattern. In every case, the squirrels “first removed the head of the vole” before pulling meat from the torso. They then “stripped fur from each of the body parts” before devouring the exposed flesh, organs and even cartilage, behavior that was reminiscent of a more seasoned predator.

The scientists speculate that a spike in the vole population induced the squirrels to switch to an easier, abundant source of protein. What was remarkable was how quickly the mainly granivorous ("relying primarily on seeds, grains and vegetation") squirrels became skilled predators.

Danny Meadow Mouse needs to be more careful about who he hangs out with.

Books Discarded Wistfully

I'm going through some of the books in my not-completed pile and have had to face an uncomfortable truth: if I live to a hundred I'll never finish some of them because, frankly, I have other things I'd rather do.

Nevertheless, guilty feelings remained until book reviewer Maya Chung gave permission to (h/t Ann Althouse), Go Ahead, Put Down That Book [bold added]

This week, Sophie Vershbow asked English teachers, librarians, writers, and readers when it’s okay not to finish a book. My answer to that question is: almost always, unless you’re writing a review of it; in that case, please read it from cover to cover. You might think that, as a book-review editor, I’d have a completist attitude toward reading. In reality, I tend to drop books early and often...

I often find that I can prematurely part ways without angst even with a volume I’m thoroughly enjoying; I know that if I’m meant to finish it, I’ll find my way back eventually. Of course, if I want to recommend a book widely or rave about it on the internet, I need to complete it, in case the story takes an unexpected turn or something happens in the last few pages that changes my perspective. The same rule applies if I feel like hating. “Not finishing a story weakens your ability to properly assess it,” Vershbow advises. “It’s fine to abandon a title, but if you do, keep the strong opinions to a minimum.”

Not long ago, one of my colleagues told me about a rule her friend’s mother’s book club follows, and I’ve been sharing it with friends when they admit that they’re struggling through this or that beloved title: Subtract your age from 100, and you’ll end up with the number of pages you need to read before dropping a book. Only 20 years old? You’ll need to read 80 pages before you can move on. But if you’re 90, you need to read only 10. By that age, you’ve earned the right not to spend a second of your time on something that doesn’t bring you joy.

In a couple of weeks the church is having a parking-lot sale, and I'm donating some of my uncompleted books (pictured). I'll discard them wistfully, much as I gaze on foods that I no longer eat. I'll follow Ms. Chung's "100 minus" rule, however, and read at least 29 pages--I have already done so with many of them--before putting them in the box.

New Year's Resolutions: Limited Accountability

These resolutions, reproduced from four years ago, are more like good habits to be developed than concrete goals (it's the contrast between "lose weight" and "lose 10 pounds"):

More	Less
Reading books	Web-surfing
Water	Sugar
Getting rid of stuff	Buying stuff
Taking courses	Electronic games
Writing letters	Saying "yes"
Sleep	Texting, esp. thank-you's
Fruits and vegetables	Fried foods
Exercise	TV
Organization	Procrastination

I'm going to apply numerical criteria; the first, "reading books," will become "read one book each month." As for the rest, I'm going to keep them to myself. Public accountability is over-rated.

Revival, But Not in the Way Imagined

(CBC news photo)

There are very few indoor, relatively safe, public gathering places--with restroom facilities--that remain open to all. That's why Libraries Are the New Front Line in America’s Mental-Health Crisis

Librarians are helping more patrons in crisis, and many cities are hiring social workers to help them. About two-thirds of nearly 600 library workers surveyed by Urban Librarians Unite in 2022 said they had experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons.

One of the few indoor public spaces open to all comers, libraries are now the scene for all that ails a public scarred by the pandemic and an opioid epidemic. For staff, that means reversing overdoses in bathrooms; confronting patrons watching pornography; or defending against people brandishing guns, or a snake in a jar. Some people come to the library to sleep, get warm or use the bathroom. Others are looking for jobs, housing or just somewhere safe to read.

Libraries have been transformed from mere repositories of books to ad hoc community centers. They provide free internet access and a growing array of services, e.g. job placement, mental-health treatment, and housing assistance.

If a person is idle, reading in a comfortable setting is an edifying and even useful way of passing the time.

When we contributed to the construction of the town library in the mid-1990's, we had hoped that it would become a valuable resource in the community.

Little did we imagine the form that it would take.

Jordan Peterson's Rule 8: "Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie"

"At the beginning of time, according to the great Western tradition, the Word of God transformed chaos into Being through the act of speech. It is axiomatic, within that tradition, that man and woman alike are made in the image of that God. We also transform chaos into Being, through speech. We transform the manifold possibilities of the future into the actualities of past and present.

To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness.

See the truth. Tell the truth.

Truth will not come in the guise of opinions shared by others, as the truth is neither a collection of slogans nor an ideology. It will instead be personal. Your truth is something only you can tell, based as it is on the unique circumstances of your life. Apprehend your personal truth. Communicate it carefully, in an articulate manner, to yourself and others. This will ensure your security and your life more abundantly now, while you inhabit the structure of your current beliefs. This will ensure the benevolence of the future, diverging as it might from the certainties of the past.

The truth springs forth ever anew from the most profound wellsprings of Being. It will keep your soul from withering and dying while you encounter the inevitable tragedy of life. It will help you avoid the terrible desire to seek vengeance for that tragedy—part of the terrible sin of Being, which everything must bear gracefully, just so it can exist.

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.

Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie."

Excerpt From: Jordan B. Peterson. “12 Rules for Life.”

Persuasion by Netflix

Not your grandmother's Jane Austen: Dakota Johnson's
Anne Elliot breaks the fourth wall and holds a rabbit
throughout the film.

Still a Jane Austen neophyte, I watched Netflix' Persuasion this month. Like the screen versions of Pride and Prejudice, the movie necessarily dispenses with the nuances of the novel in order to tell the story in under two hours. If inspired to move on to the book, the viewer can then savor the subtleties of the characters as they navigate the rules of Regency society.

To get right to the point, I liked the film. It had outrageously self-absorbed characters that provided the grist for protagonist Anne Elliot's ironic observations, and the requisite Austen plot twists that provided a happy ending for most of the players.

But it's a good thing that I didn't read the reviews first. They slammed the movie because of the modern dialogue ("He's a 10" "Now we're strangers, worse than strangers, we're exes") and the 21st-century sensibility of Anne Elliot.

Here's an example of movie dialogue that would never come from the pen of Jane Austen.

[Male character]: He [Wentworth] could be an admiral some day, great service to the Crown and all that it holds dear, but instead he'd rather fart around inland for the rest of his life.

[Woman character] Oh, let the man fart where he likes.

It's obvious why diehard Austen fans ("Janeites") are outraged, but I'm not so wedded to historical authenticity. It's fiction.

Around the Ala Wai

The Ala Wai Golf Course

Two Fridays ago our part of the city was in the high 70's with a light breeze, cool by Honolulu standards. It was a perfect morning to walk around the neighborhood.

Reality: the Waikiki Library was smaller than I remembered.

The Ala Wai golf course is an almost totally flat public course ideal for beginners and oldsters. Constructed in 1931 on the mauka side of Ala Wai Canal, it could never be built today given the price of Waikiki real estate.

Near the southern end of the golf course is the Waikiki Library, where I occasionally did my homework. Before there were computerized databases, one could sometimes find a book that had been checked out of the Main Branch downtown.

The Ala Wai Canal was looking especially fine. Sometimes the air hangs heavy and the water stagnates, but not today. The final two mile straightaway went quickly, and I was home in time to pick up lunch for Mom.

The Popcorn is Cheaper at Home

Black Widow's value is abbreviated (AP/WSJ photo)

Significant but slow-developing issues don't get the public's attention unless a celebrity is involved. Such is the case with how movie actors are compensated now that theaters appear to be dying: [bold added]

Scarlett Johansson, star of the latest Marvel movie “Black Widow,” filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Disney, alleging her contract was breached when the media giant released the film on its Disney+ streaming service at the same time as its theatrical debut...

The suit could be a bellwether for the entertainment industry. Major media companies are giving priority to their streaming services in pursuit of growth, and are increasingly putting their high-value content on those platforms. Those changes have significant financial implications for actors and producers, who want to ensure that growth in streaming doesn’t come at their expense.

During its July 9 opening weekend, “Black Widow” grossed $80 million at the domestic box office and $78 million overseas, and generated another $60 million from $30 at-home purchases on Disney+. It was the first time Disney broke out a film’s streaming performance in such detail. Disney shares ticked upward on the news that Monday.

The current model--theatrical release to streaming purchases to DVD sales to premium channels to non-premium channels with ads--is being upended again with the time compression between events, or in Black Widow's case, no delay at all between the theatrical release and initial streaming.

Apparently, Ms. Johansson's contract was not up-to-date with the latest market developments, further aggravated by the lack of future Black Widow opportunities (the character is less marketable because she died in an earlier movie). The issue of actors' compensation will recede as contracts adapt.

Honolulu's Cinerama theater, where I saw It's a Mad
Mad Mad Mad World, How the West Was Won, and
2001, is now an auto parts store.

The important takeaway is this: the coronavirus only accelerated the trend towards streaming as the at-home technology became cheaper and better. Brick-and-mortar theaters have high labor and plant costs, and last year's health issues were the killer blow (the opposite of the killer app that marks the birth of an industry).

No, theaters won't completely disappear but will be more like booksellers where only one or two major chains survive.

I'll start going to the movies again, but it won't be this year.

Making Lists and Getting Serious

I can point to a few recipes I've learned, some books I've read, and clutter I've cleared, but basically it's been an unproductive 15 months. During the pandemic it's easy to make excuses for not tackling projects that matter. Now's the time to make lists and get serious.

Yes, it's time to get the ducks in a row.

When Gaining Weight Wasn't a Problem

In a world where one is forced to be a locavore, where there is no refrigeration, and where starvation is a much more severe problem than obesity, the cook has very different priorities.

Ladies and gentlemen, a 1750's recipe book from Yale's Rare Books Library:

Feeling peckish!! Here is a collection of recipes which includes "savory dishes such as calves’ foot pudding; hedgehog pudding; roast eel and lobsters" and plague water! https://t.co/4YJWE6f0Ae

— Haim A. Gottschalk (@GottschalkHaim) April 11, 2021

Book Deal

"New" edition of LOTR coming out in 2021!
I'll buy it if there's a new preface by the author.

The Wall Street Journal writes that its parent News Corp is about to acquire the consumer arm of book publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

The deal, which the people said could be announced as early as Monday, would add a portfolio of high-profile novels from authors such as George Orwell, Philip Roth and J.R.R. Tolkien to News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers division. Terms of the deal couldn’t be learned.

Comments:
1) "Terms of the deal couldn't be learned" is probably not entirely true because the WSJ reporters' contacts with the finance industry are second to none, and they also have internal connections with parent News Corp. However, for legal and ethical reasons only the parties directly involved can release merger information. This information restriction is an example of the Chinese Wall.

2) Nice to know that someone still thinks that they can make money off of books.

3) "authors such as George Orwell, Philip Roth and J.R.R. Tolkien" -- I have read and like these well-known writers, though I hope that they're getting some authors who, you know, aren't dead.

Reading, like Wine, Can be Better After Aging

2019's Little Women was the most recent film adaptation

Sure, you've "read" a book, but how much of it did you retain, and how much of it did you understand?

I read Little Women as a schoolboy. Enjoying the tale of Jo March and her sisters, I picked up its sequel, Little Men, which sat on the Louisa May Alcott shelf in the Winne Units library. The latter book about the following generation wasn't as compelling, but I digress.

As a junior staffer I had a boss who bent the rules without much self-reflection. His favorite aphorism was "it's easier to be forgiven than to ask permission." He was not successful in his business or personal life and was fired two years later.

Revisiting Little Women in 2020, I came across the passage where the teenaged Jo is earning good money for writing "sensational" fiction but doesn't want to tell her parents:

She had a feeling that Father and Mother would not approve, and preferred to have her own way first, and beg pardon afterward.

Four decades after hearing my ex-boss's wisdom, I made the connection to a sentence from a 19th-century children's book.

If good writing is re-writing, then appreciative reading is re-reading, sometimes 60 years later.

Related, from The Therapeutic Value of Reading:

When times are uncertain and scary, something familiar can be a source of solace. The survey of pandemic reading habits conducted by the researchers at Aston University found two types of readers: Those who focused on reading something new to them, to expand their knowledge, and those who re-read familiar books for the sense of comfort and stability and the lack of surprises.

The writer was being too dismissive: re-reading can expand knowledge, too.

A Time Gone By

I've slowly been making my way through the pile of books on the nightstand and have gotten to Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), which I bought in Portland 2½ years ago. Jack Kerouac's writing is consistent with the language and style of half a century ago, and one easily gets a sense of how rapidly cultural references are changing. It's unlikely that younger, educated readers will understand all four of the highlighted terms below (I didn't know "pulled wrists").

I went to the cold-water flat with the boys, and Dean came to the door in his shorts. Marylou was jumping off the couch; Dean had dispatched the occupant of the apartment to the kitchen, probably to make coffee, while he proceeded with his love-problems, for to him sex was the one and only holy and important thing in life, although he had to sweat and curse to make a living and so on.

You saw that in the way he stood bobbing his head, always looking down, nodding, like a young boxer to instructions, to make you think he was listening to every word, throwing in a thousand “Yeses” and “That’s rights.” My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry—trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent—a sideburned hero of the snowy West. In fact he’d just been working on a ranch, Ed Wall’s in Colorado, before marrying Marylou and coming East. Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she’d heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room. But, outside of being a sweet little girl, she was awfully dumb and capable of doing horrible things. That night we all drank beer and pulled wrists and talked till dawn, and in the morning, while we sat around dumbly smoking butts from ashtrays in the gray light of a gloomy day, Dean got up nervously, paced around, thinking, and decided the thing to do was to have Marylou make breakfast and sweep the floor. “In other words we’ve got to get on the ball, darling, what I’m saying, otherwise it’ll be fluctuating and lack of true knowledge or crystallization of our plans.” Then I went away.

cold-water flat: early-to-mid 20th-century apartments had running water, but real luxury was having water heaters and separate pipes for hot water. Perhaps the last cold-water flat in New York City was being rented for $28 per month in 2018.

Gene Autry (1907-1998): popular Oklahoma singer, movie star, TV actor and producer, and owner of the California Angels, Gene Autry "is the only entertainer to have all five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one each for Radio, Recording, Motion Pictures, Television, and Live Theatre/performance."

Seated Nude (1918)

longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman: Amedeo Modigliani was "a painter and sculptor known for his simplified and elongated forms." Like Vincent Van Gogh, Modigliani (1884-1920) died destitute and was not highly regarded in his lifetime; one of his paintings sold for $157 million in 2018.

pulled wrists: arm-wrestling.

His prose has a kinetic energy, and I do admire his descriptions, so I'll read a few pages of Jack Kerouac every day.

Dump the Book Bins

The local supermarket has a couple of discount-book bins in the corner of the store. They are filled mostly with children's titles---nothing that I would consider reading, even if they were free. One mystery: the supermarket doesn't sell books, just magazines, so where do the books come from?

Physical publication sales have been falling, and the virus has only accelerated the decline. Few want to touch materials that others have handled.

Some small retailers thrive on selling discontinued items and new products that the big food companies test-marketed but decided not to go forward with. The local market would do well to get rid of the book bins and emulate its smaller competitors.

Pride and Prejudice: Getting Unstuck

In June I described why I found the novel Pride and Prejudice to be heavy going:

I find English manners in the 19th century to be stupefying, when women can only meet the male object of their desire by being properly introduced through a mutual acquaintance, they spend chapters discussing how they can manipulate the mutual acquaintance, woman and man have the meeting where a few words are spoken, then the women discuss for chapters what the words meant. Arrggh.

Though Jane Austen's prose wasn't difficult, the various story lines moved at a glacial pace. Finally I got unstuck by watching the 2005 movie, which by necessity had to dispense with wordy nuance and even some minor characters in order to do justice to the major plot lines within the two-hour running time.

One example: a pivotal point in the book, about halfway through, is the letter that Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth Bennett. One chapter is a recitation of the text of the letter, and the next chapter is devoted to Elizabeth's thoughts about it. Just one minute of the film is spent on both, as the letter is reduced to a few bullet points while the actress Keira Knightley's facial expressions communicate her reaction to each revelation.

Once I knew where the novel was going, I resumed reading. With the impetus of finding-out-what-happens removed, I could better appreciate the descriptions of early 19th century England, the obsession with class and wealth in a world where learned but unmarried women had few property rights and could easily fall into a life of desperate poverty, and the interior monologues of the Bennett women (Jane Austen's narrator wasn't privy to the thoughts of the male characters).

The younger me would have refused to see the movie or read the Cliff's Notes version in order experience the novel as the writer intended. The older me is more interested in finishing things, and not necessarily in the best way possible. When the clock is running out, you use the tools at your disposal to get unstuck.