The moon's in charge

The tides might tell themselves stories about why they’re rushing in and out, but it’s ultimately the moon that’s in charge.

Leslie Jamison, The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage, New Yorker (Jan. 15, 2024)

Thanks, teachers!

Thank you to the English teachers of Kansas public schools, who told a child from a family of laborers that she was a writer who deserved to be heard: in elementary school, Val Cheatham; in middle school, Patty Strothman; in high school, Stacey Walters and Lawna Bass Kurya; at a state university, Mary Klayder and Tom Lorenz.

Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of  Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (New York: Scribner, 2018), p. 290

Reading? Not in the Smallweed family

 "Don't you read or get read to?" 

The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!"

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (orig. pub. 1853) (Mr. Smallweed, answering a question from Mr. George)

Wiglomeration

"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done." 

 "More what, guardian?" said I. 

"More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have something to say about it; Master Somebody—a sort of ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane—will have something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general, wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a pit of it, I don't know; so it is."

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (orig. pub. 1853), ch. VIII

Some Birthdays Are Like That

“Listen to what it says in the horoscopes: ‘If it is your birthday, there may be an increased amount of mail. Expect gifts, friendly salutations from people and the occasional surprise. Possibility of cake.’ That’s so weird—I wonder if any of it will come true?” 

Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), p. 50

Hitting 50 Isn’t So Bad

That’s the thing about hitting fifty. All your life you think the half century is death’s adolescence, but actually it’s really not that bad, as long as you can remember where you left your glasses.

Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), p. 17

Keeping track of papers is hard

Ulysses S. Grant, who left office in 1877, said, 

“The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat pocket or the hands of a clerk…more careful than myself.” 

Ronald G. Shafer, Presidential papers have long been turning up in unexpected places, Wash. Post (Feb. 4, 2023)