November 2010 Archives
“Cosimo . . . learned the art of printing and began to print some pamphlets or gazettes (among them The Magpie’s Gazette), later all collected under the title, The Biped’s Monitor. He had brought into a nut tree a typographer’s table and chase, a press, a case of type, and a crock of ink, and he spent his days composing his pages and pulling his copies. Sometimes spiders and butterflies would get caught between type and paper, and their marks would be printed on the page; sometimes a lizard would jump on the sheet while the ink was fresh and smear everything with its tail; sometimes the squirrels would take a letter of the alphabet and carry it off to their lair thinking it was something to eat, as happened with the letter Q, which because of its round shape and stalk the mistook for a fruit. . . .”
—Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, 1959.
“From the ash tree where he was crouching, Cosimo began to whistle . . . and call, ‘Here, come back here, Ottimo Massimo, come back here, where are you going?’ but the dog did not obey, did not even turn; he ran on and on through the field until nothing could be seen but a distant dot like a comma—his tail—and even that vanished.”
—Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, 1959.
“If the moon turns green
And rivers began to flow upstream
This is all a crazy dream
I wouldn't be surprised
’Cause anything can happen
If you can fall in love with me”
—“If The Moon Turns Green”, words and music by Paul Coates & Bernie Hanighen, recorded by Billie Holiday in 1952.
“Oh the gray cat piddled in the white cat’s eye,
The white cat said ‘Cor blimey!’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I piddled in your eye,
I didn’t know you was behind me.’ ”
“A nip for new,
Two for blue,
Sixteen
For bottle green.”
(punishment for wearing new clothes)
“This is the night of Halloween
When the witches can be seen;
Some are red and some are green
And some are the color of a turkey bean.”
“Black currant, red currant, raspberry tart,
Tell me the name of your sweetheart.
A, B, C, D . . .”
(skipping)
“Roses are red,
Violets are blue
The shorter the skirt
The better the view.”
“What began the afternoon as a piece of tree ended it as the rib of a ship
It was backbreaking work and subject to cruel disappointment. The crosscuts might reveal a black and rotten heart. The old sayings about men and women, that their hearts were black or rotten, come from this disappointment and exhaustion.”
—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.
It was backbreaking work and subject to cruel disappointment. The crosscuts might reveal a black and rotten heart. The old sayings about men and women, that their hearts were black or rotten, come from this disappointment and exhaustion.”
—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.
“During most of the quarter millennium in which sailing warships were the principal instrument of state power abroad, the gundecks, where the bulk of the crew gathered to fire the cannons, were painted red, so as not to show blood.”
—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.
—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.