"I am having a hard time understanding the following Logan Pearsall Smith quote: 'People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.'"

"Googling didn't help much other than whose quote it is. What exactly does the above quote mean?"

Wrote someone at the English Language & Usage website, 12 years ago.

I'm reading that because I was reading — not living — this 2017 New Yorker article: "Philip Larkin and Me: A Friendship with Holes in It": "I remember him one day snatching from my mantelpiece a bookmark, on which was inscribed Logan Pearsall Smith’s remark 'People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.' He threw it down in a little fit of anger, protesting that nothing is more important than life."

These days, someone who couldn't even understand the quote — perhaps someone new to English and mystified by "is the thing" — would probably ask A.I.

I talked to A.I., which is not living, and I said: Understanding the quote (and the love for or objection to it) on a deeper level requires you to come to terms with the question whether you are not living when you are reading.

And then, getting into my A.I.-induced flow, I said: Smith is making a joke out of the implication that to read is not to live. Presumably other people, like Paul's grandfather, in "A Hard Day's Night," say that those who are reading are not living. Instead of fighting with that assertion, Smith says he'd rather read. That's a cheeky response. But it infuriates Larkin. 

"I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band."

Said Ringo Starr, about Roger Daltrey who fired Ringo's son Zak from The Who. Ringo is quoted in "Ringo Starr Doesn’t Like ‘That Little Man’ From the Who" (NY Magazine).

How little is "that little man"? The internet tells me Roger Daltrey is 5'6". Ringo is 5'8".

"[I was] at the top of the mountain, and gradually it worked its way down. And then I looked up and life came back. I truly believe in looking up."

"You’re always in a better mood if you’re looking up. It’s one of those things you notice, walking around London, or it doesn’t matter where. They’re all looking down. There’s nothing down there."

Said Ringo Starr, quoted in "Ringo Starr: ‘I only want to be in a band. You can’t play Yesterday just on drums’/In a rare interview, the Beatle says Liverpool was always the capital of country music and reveals the lesson he learnt from Elton John’s mum" (London Times).

Don’t let anyone tell you that Starr is jumping on the country bandwagon....  he sang lead vocals on the Beatles’ version of Buck Owens’s Act Naturally on the Help! album nearly 60 years ago...“There was no plan to make a country record,” says Starr....

"It's a world of hopes and a world of fears...."

Terrifying, but take a moment to mourn for Richard Sherman — "Richard Sherman, Songwriter of Many Spoonfuls of Sugar, Dies at 95/He and his brother, Robert, teamed up to write the songs for 'Mary Poppins' and other Disney classics. They also gave the world 'It’s a Small World (After All)'" (NYT).

Sherman and his brother wrote "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious," "Chim Chim Cher-ee," “Fundamental-Friend-Dependability," "Tall Paul,"  "Let’s Get Together," and the songs from "Charlotte's Web," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."

The brothers also wrote the great rockabilly song that's considered sexually wrong today:

For tonight, I've curated 10 TikTok videos. Let me know what you like best.

1. Joke meets cancel culture.

2. Top skill — embroidery with coriander. 

3. The shortest, looniest video.

4. Miming looking for your wife in a room full of women.

5. Hearing negativity.

6. What his hair this morning is giving.

7. When Harry and Ringo wrote their disco joke into a song.

8. Must Dad say that every time the server brings the bill? 

9. If European-Americans were the traditionally subordinated group: First day at work sketch.

10. Calling 911 cartoons.

"In the Beatles circa 1969, Paul McCartney is the negotiator-in-chief, and he’s aware of every eggshell he has to walk around or smash to achieve greatness..."

"... or just to get shit done.... [H]e comes off as surprisingly aware of the minefield of sensitivities around him... and he’s certainly beyond aware that he’s paying a cost to be the boss. He’s a domineering older brother to George and rival/BFF/frenemy to John, and now he’s playing de facto manager to everyone — not necessarily because he’s taken pole position in the band on merit alone, but because Lennon is suddenly more invested in a woman... Seeing McCartney recognize and articulate all these shifts, and soldier on while he gets a little bit sad about them, is one of the pleasures of 'Get Back.' If you don’t come away from this with just a little more admiration for Paul, you may just be too in the bag for John and Yoko and their bag-ism, but that’s all right. Everybody is going to be your favorite or most admired Beatle, some time before you complete the eight-hour Get Back Challenge. 'Daddy’s gone away now, you know, and we’re on our own at the holiday camp,' McCartney says, about they’ve felt rudderless since the death of manager Brian Epstein. In the contretemps with Harrison where the guitarist famously says 'I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play,' McCartney tells the whole group he’s aware of turning into dad, and he doesn’t like it: 'I’m scared of that one… me being the boss. And I have been for, like, a couple of years – and we all have, you know, no pretending about that.'"

From "Why the Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ May Stand as the Best Rock Doc Ever" by Chris Willman (Variety).

Lots more at the link. I resisted watching this show because I didn't want to subscribe to another streaming service — in this case, Disney. But I gave in, paid the $8 for the first month, and intend to exit as soon as I'm done watching this 8-hour extravaganza. I'm only one hour into it, after 2 sessions. I can only take so much. They look bored, that is, John, George, and Ringo look bored. Paul is more or less everything. That's pretty unpleasant! But I see that's the idea, and I have to watch it slowly enough to appreciate the details, the clues. Is John bored or is he utterly mentally absent, relocated somewhere in drugworld? Is Ringo bored or is he paying intense attention and just essentially, perpetually mute? Is George bored or is he an angry, resentful son of a bitch? 

ADDED: Willman casually used the term "bag-ism" — accomplishing a little play on words. I know what it means. I remember bagism, but I looked up the Wikipedia page anyway:

"I think he had an idea in his head of what he wanted it to sound like, but he couldn't describe it. He couldn't express it. And he was waiting for somebody to bring it out of the air."

Said Shiela Bromberg, whose obituary I blogged 3 days ago. 

The quote appears in the center of the interview embedded below, which a reader called to my attention.

Bromberg was the harpist on The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home." The "he" is Paul McCartney: 

ADDED: If you love Ringo, be sure to watch the video through to the end.

"Some days it’s a journey through hell in my home too. I have things I do to pass the time. Some days I’ll be down and..."

"... moan to myself, Oh, I can’t go on tour. That’s a real positive thing to do, clearly. So I decided that I wasn’t going to do that anymore and get up and do stuff. I decided I wanted to make an EP. Not an album, just an EP with a few songs. I have a huge EP collection of my own. I love it because you can really get into a small amount of tracks, and that’s what the kids love now. They love EPs! And not only that, they love cassettes."

Said Ringo Starr, interviewed at Vulture.

I've thrown out everything cassette-related. Cassettes are back?! I'm getting my information from an 80-year-old man who hasn't left the house more than 8 times in the past year. 

But now I see they've just issued a new cassette version of Nirvana's "Bleach." And last July, NME investigated: "Who the hell is buying cassettes in 2020?/NME investigates/It seems UK music lovers are currently revelling in rectangular nostalgia — there's already been a 103% increase in cassette sales in 2020." 

Last week, NPR reported "Lou Ottens, Inventor Of The Cassette Tape, Has Died": 

"At the very end of a Grammys ceremony that did its best to pretend like the Recording Academy has always supported and centered Black artists, women and especially Black women..."

"... Billie Eilish was put in an impossible position... Awarded record of the year for 'Everything I Wanted'... Eilish could only gush over Megan Thee Stallion. 'This is really embarrassing for me,' Eilish, a white teenager who — like many in her generation and beyond — worships Black culture, said. 'You are a queen, I want to cry thinking about how much I love you.' She went on. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of Adele praising Beyoncé when '25' beat 'Lemonade' for album of the year in 2017... . Some online bristled at the performative white guilt on display, while others applauded Eilish’s apparently sincere fandom."

From "The Best and Worst of the 2021 Grammy Awards/Megan Thee Stallion owned the stage, struggling indie venues got a much needed spotlight and the event proved a pandemic awards show doesn’t have to look like a video conference" (NYT).

 

ADDED: I have saved a lot of time in life by never being interested in the Grammys. When I was young, in the 1960s, the Grammys didn't recognize the great music that I liked. They seemed irrelevant and archaic back then. I have spent some of my precious time caring about movie awards, but I guess that's not happening anymore, because the Oscar nominations just came out, and I don't care enough even to consider pushing myself to write something about it.

Happy Christmas!

pic.twitter.com/3XlcA2czny

— #RingoStarr (@ringostarrmusic) December 25, 2020

ADDED: From Craig Brown's "150 Glimpses of the Beatles":

Alone of all the Beatles, Ringo possessed no talent for composing. But one day, in a sudden flash of inspiration, the germs of a song entered his head, as if from nowhere. He worked on the song for three hours, and presented it to the other three the next day. After an awkward silence, they felt obliged to point out that it had already been written and recorded by Bob Dylan.

Brown doesn't say what Dylan song this was. But what song could it have been? It would have to have been something simple. But what? I try to think of a simple Bob Dylan song from the 1960s, and I think "I Want You," because that's a simple sentiment: "I want you/I want you/I want you/So bad." 

I have somewhere else I want to go with this post, but writing out the chorus like that, I'm smacked in the head with the realization that a non-Ringo Beatle did in fact write — and record — that very song originally written by Bob Dylan, same title and all: "I Want You." Lyrics: "I want you, I want you so bad." 

Did no one feel obliged to tell John Lennon that Bob Dylan had already written and recorded that song? No, obviously not. And it's not as if Lennon fleshed out the song. His "I Want You" hardly has any lyrics. It's just "I want you so bad/It's driving me mad" repeated.

Originally, I was going to say that Ringo couldn't possibly have believed he'd written "I Want You" because it has complicated Dylanesque lyrics: The guilty undertaker sighs/The lonesome organ grinder cries/The silver saxophones say I should refuse you... But Lennon's "I Want You" shows how Ringo might have done it. Just use the chorus. The chorus is perfectly simple.

Imagine 80-year-old John Lennon.

John would’ve been 80 today I send you peace and love I still miss you man peace and love to Yoko and Sean.😎✌️🌟❤️☮️ pic.twitter.com/wQzM884pzT

— #RingoStarr (@ringostarrmusic) September 9, 2020

An extremely light diversion: 4 completely different songs titled — variously spelled — "La Dee Dah"

The most familiar one to me is this — on the first 4 Seasons album. Much as I've loved the 4 Seasons in my time, I've got to promote the Billy and Lillie version from 1958:



This is a silly song, with lyrics that include: "La dee dah, oh boy/Let's go/Cha, cha, cha/I feel so fine/Now that you are mine...." Excellent candy.

I'm not sure if I remember the Ringo song "La De Da" — spelled like that. This is from 1998, from his 11th album:

"I’ve always been a wriggler. I mean, I am my own fantasy. I am the ‘Cosmic Dancer’ who dances his way out of the womb and into the tomb on Electric Warrior."

"I’m not frightened to get up there and groove in front of 6 million people on TV because it doesn’t look cool. That’s the way I would do it at home. It’s not serious. I’m serious about the music, but I’m not serious about the fantasy."

Said Marc Bolan in 1971, quoted in "The Timeless Glam Perfection of T. Rex: Why Marc Bolan Still Casts a Spell/The new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been a guiding spirit for cosmic dancers from Prince to Harry Styles" (Rolling Stone).

Born in 1947, the son of a Hackney lorry driver, Marc Feld grew up as a mod on the London scene. As a broke young poseur, trying to hustle into showbiz, he got hired one day to paint his manager’s office with another kid. Marc introduced himself as “King Mod,” and declared, “Your shoes are crap.” The other kid was David Bowie. These two rivals would torment each other for years to come. In February 1969, after Bolan blew up on the U.K. charts, he invited Bowie on tour — as a mime. “Marc was quite cruel about David’s as-yet-unproven musical career,” producer Tony Visconti recalled later. “I think it was with great sadistic delight that Marc hired David to open for Tyrannosaurus Rex, not as a musical act, but as a mime.” (What could make it even sweeter for Bolan? Bowie got booed.)

I went looking for a Marc Bolan/Hall of Fame article after Bolan came up in the first post of the day, the one about "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo." That post quoted Marc eating potatoes with Ringo and saying "Ooh you, boogaloo." In the comments over there, I said:

He goes into the the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... it was just announced a few weeks ago. I should do a post on that. I am a big Marc Bolan fan from back when his band was called Tyrannosaurus Rex.

As a college kid in 1969, I would make anyone I could get to put up with it listen to the album "Unicorn."

Anyone else here a fan of "Unicorn"?

Here's the whole album. Just imagine yourself captive in 18-year-old Althouse's dorm room!...

The toad road licked my wheels like a sabre
Winds of the marsh lightly blew
Stone jars stacked with stars on her shoulders
Hunters of pity she slew...

Are you listening?!!!

A couple years later, Marc was much more accessible, and everyone loved...



... didn't they?

"A sense of crisis enveloped the capital of Virginia on Thursday, with the police on heightened alert and Richmond bracing for possible violence ahead of a gun rally next week..."

"... that is expected to draw white supremacists and other anti-government extremists. Members of numerous armed militias and white power proponents vowed to converge on the city despite the state of emergency declared by Gov. Ralph Northam, who temporarily banned weapons from the grounds of the State Capitol. The potential for an armed confrontation prompted fears of a rerun of the 2017 far-right rally that left one person dead and some two dozen injured in Charlottesville, about an hour’s drive from Monday’s rally. The unease increased after the F.B.I. announced the arrest on Thursday of three armed men suspected of being members of a neo-Nazi hate group, including a former Canadian Army reservist, who had obtained weapons and discussed participating in the Richmond rally. The men were linked to the Base, a group that aims to create a white ethnostate, according to the F.B.I. For weeks, discussions about the rally have lit up Facebook pages and chat rooms frequented by militia members and white supremacists. Various extremist organizations or their adherents are calling Monday’s rally the 'boogaloo.' In the lexicon of white supremacists, that is an event that will accelerate the race war they have anticipated for decades."

From "Virginia Capital on Edge as F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Neo-Nazis Before Gun Rally/The three men had obtained guns and discussed traveling to Virginia for protests against new gun control measures, officials said" (NYT).

From a week ago, at NPR, "'Boogaloo' Is The New Far-Right Slang For Civil War" (audio & transcript). "Boogaloo" was originally a song and dance, then a reference to a famously bad movie ("Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo"), and then slang for "any unwanted sequel." Then it got attached to the idea of another civil war — "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo." The NPR reporter, Hannah Allam says the word is used by "anarchists and others on the far left" as well as "right-wing militias and self-described patriot groups." We hear an audio montage of unidentified persons:

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: So many people are saying that the boogaloo is about to kick off in Virginia.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: When the boogaloo happens, these are the people that you're going to have to watch out for.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: Do not think for one second that there aren't people that would love to see this thing to get started, that would love to see this boogaloo start rolling. Personally, I do not want to see that. I don't want it to come to that....

Interesting that all 3 of those persons were talking about those other people over there.

Next we hear from Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League, who tells us that pop culture references are "weaponized" to spread an extremist message. Then the NPR reporter, Hannah Allam wraps it up:

ALLAM: For a subset of the far-right, the fringe of the fringe, civil war isn't enough. They're spoiling for a race war. Decades later, boogaloo is no longer about music, but about menace - a word coined by black and brown people now used by some who envision a country without them.

Here's the Urban Dictionary page for the word. There's a graph showing a big spike in May 2019:

Here's the Ringo song from 1971, "Back Off Boogaloo" — "Back off boogaloo/What do you think I'm going to do?/I got a flash right from the start/Wake up, meat head/Don't pretend that you are dead." Get it? The walrus was Paul, and "Boogaloo" was Paul. No. Wait. That's the rumor...

Several commentators have interpreted the lyrics as an attack on Paul McCartney, reflecting Starr's disdain.... Ringo Starr identified his initial inspiration for "Back Off Boogaloo" as having come from Marc Bolan... Over dinner one evening at Starr's home... Bolan had used the word "boogaloo"...  "[Bolan] was an energised guy. He used to speak: 'Back off, boogaloo ... ooh you, boogaloo.' 'Do you want some potatoes?' 'Ooh you, boogaloo!'"

ADDED: It's funny that Ringo's story has Marc Bolan saying "Ooh you, boogaloo." I'd say that reinforces the theory that the Boogaloo was Paul, because one year before that pass-the-potatoes conversation between Ringo and Marc Bolan, Paul put out a song, "Oo, You":



ALSO: There are also Antifa plans to attend that Richmond rally, and not to oppose the conservative gun-rights people, Vice reports:

"For men who are allegedly so 'proud' of being straight, they seem to show real incompetence at attracting women to their event."

"Seems more like a 'I-Struggle-With-Masculinity' parade to me. Hope they grow enough over the next year to support / join LGBTQ fam next #Pride."

Tweeted Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in what I judge to be apt, light-hearted pushback (reported at The Hill).

Here's the video that accompanied her gentle mockery:

The #StraightPrideParade now on its way to City Hall Plaza. #Boston25 pic.twitter.com/44RayYZVRU

— Kelly Sullivan (@ksullivannews) August 31, 2019

What's with "Make Normalcy Normal Again"? What a sad slogan! If you were genuinely proud of what you are, why would you need You, the Individual to also be the norm? And if you are genuinely needy, why would it be enough to be recognized as — of all things — normal?

Also, guys, when you're marching in a parade about your pride, don't be staring down into your cell phone. That's no way to express pride. It is a good way to express neediness. Has anyone "liked" me in the last few seconds?

And maybe refrain from giving the finger?



I mean, is that your plan for the return to normalcy?

By the way, "normalcy" is a word tightly connected to one President, the President most well known for being bad, Warren G. Harding. His famous quote:

"America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality."

From Wikipedia, "Return to normalcy":

Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920. Although detractors of the time tried to belittle the word "normalcy" as a neologism as well as a malapropism, saying that it was poorly coined by Harding (as opposed to the more accepted term normality), there was contemporaneous discussion and evidence that normalcy had been listed in dictionaries as far back as 1857.

I can't help thinking that whoever put the word "normalcy" in the straight-pridesters slogan intended to screw with the heteronormalists.

ADDED: In "A Hard Day's Night," Ringo, the original incel, is incited to go "parading," and seconds after he responds to the incitement to parade, Ringo gives the Hitler salute!

"Infants should always sleep on their back, on a separate, flat and firm sleep surface without any bumpers or bedding."

Said Rachel Moon, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics's Task Force on SIDS.

Quoted in "Parents dread life ‘without a Rock n Play’: Fisher-Price recall triggers shock and frustration."

Last week’s recall of nearly 5 million Rock 'n Plays hit close to home for sleep-deprived parents who have turned to the Fisher-Price product for a moment of reprieve -- or a night’s sleep -- since it was introduced a decade ago. The cloth-covered cradle, which vibrates, plays music and positions the baby at an incline....

It's called "Rock n Play," which suggests baby and parents are all awake, but that's not how it was being used.

Original reports had said that 10 babies, all older than 3 months, had died when they rolled over while unrestrained in the cradle. But last week, a Consumer Reports investigation found that at least 32 children had died, including some younger than 3 months, who had died from asphyxia when they were unable to breathe in the cloth-covered cradle....

Jilly Blankenship, a pediatric nurse and baby sleep consultant in San Francisco.... said she has been telling parents for years that the device does not meet standards for safe sleep, but parents often turn to the Rock 'n Play as a last resort, when their babies have trouble staying asleep in a crib or bassinet.

“They’re often desperate and saying, ‘What do we do now if our baby won’t sleep anywhere else?’" she said....

“Every single parent I know uses a Rock 'n Play -- literally everybody[," said one young woman. "]It was the number one recommended item at my baby shower."

Apparently, millions of babies have been trained to fall asleep with continual vibration inside an enclosed cushiony cocoon, and suddenly they're all being required to sleep of an inert flat firm surface.

ADDED: The 3 most highly rated comments at WaPo: "Parents 'dread' being without this item. Come on. Millions of us over many, many years never had one of these. It wasn't invented/available way back when," 2. "I had three kids and never used this. I was a stickler for Safe Sleep, no exceptions. My babies didn't always sleep great, but that's how babies are...," and 3. "What will I do without a Rock n Play? Actually take care of your child, that's what you'll do."

AND: There must be a "separate, flat and firm sleep surface" that vibrates. I remember the "Magic Fingers" beds in motels in the 1960s.

ALSO: Maybe you, like me, have a Frank Zappa song playing in your head at the mention of Magic Fingers. From the Wikipedia article for John Houghtaling:

John Joseph Houghtaling (pronounced HUFF-tay-ling; November 14, 1916 – June 17, 2009) was an American entrepreneur and inventor who in 1958 invented the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, a common feature in mid-priced hotels and motels from the 1960s to the early 1980s....

In the 1950s, Houghtaling was still working as a salesman, this time selling vibrating beds in which the vibrating motor and bed were sold as a single unit that was clumsy, expensive, and prone to failure. At a service call for a broken unit, Houghtaling realized that the vibrating motor was the essential component, not the bed, and that a unit could be developed that would attach to any bed, not just the combination vibrating bed units he was selling.

Okay, first of all, this is the answer for the Rock n Playless parents. Just put a vibrator and put it under the baby's separate flat and firm sleep surface. Here's one designed to go under a baby's mattress. Now, back to the story of John Houghtaling:

Houghtaling worked in the basement of his Glen Rock, New Jersey, home and tested hundreds of motors before finding one that weighed relatively little, could be attached to the box springs of an existing bed, and would provide the right level of vibration. Once a quarter was inserted into the attached coin meter, the motor would vibrate the bed for 15 minutes....

By the last half of the 1970s... [t]he devices started to seem out of date and somewhat sleazy, because of the bed's association with seedy motels....

The vibrating bed was frequently featured in 1960s–1980s movies and TV shows. "Magic fingers" is a song by Frank Zappa in the film 200 Motels. It was mentioned by name in songwriter Steve Goodman's "This Hotel Room", sung by Jimmy Buffett, which included the line "Put in a quarter / Turn out the light / Magic Fingers makes you feel all right" and is also mentioned in Buck Owens's "World Famous Paradise Inn." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five also referred to Houghtaling's Magic Fingers; the protagonist Billy Pilgrim used the vibrating bed to help him fall asleep. Magic Fingers was also seen in the 1997 film Lolita, the 1998 Clay Pigeons, and the episode of CSI Vegas "Assume Nothing" (season 4, episode 1). In the classic 1983 National Lampoon film Vacation, Clark and Ellen Griswold can be seen relaxing on a Magic Fingers bed that goes rogue, vibrating excessively and forcing them onto the floor. In the X-Files episode Bad Blood (Season 5, episode 12) Dana Scully used one in a Texas motel, before being interrupted by Mulder, telling her that she had to go perform an autopsy at that moment. She complained "but I just put money in the Magic Fingers." It has been referenced twice in The Simpsons, once as a couch gag and once in the episode "The Cartridge Family" in which Marge takes the kids to the Sleep Eazy (the neon sign is partially burned out to read "Sleazy") Hotel; Bart and Lisa turn on the Magic Fingers and race their vibrating beds across the hotel room. It was also featured several times in the TV show Supernatural. Dean is very fond of the magic fingers as seen in season 2 ep 13.

Man, that is a lot of pop culture referencing. Can any product match that?



Love the Ringo-as-Frank bit, but actually, that's not the Mothers of Invention Magic Fingers song that plays in my head. I hear "What Kind of Girl Do You Think We Are?":

Ever been to a Holiday Inn?
Magic Fingers in the bed (Picture it!)
Wall-mounted TV screen
Coffee Host plugged into the bathroom wall
Formica's really keen!

"the things you think you love — like a pair of Gucci booties — can't reciprocate. That relationship is one-sided."

Writes Mary Carlomagno, a de-cluttering expert, quoted in a WaPo article that talks about many techniques, but has one I haven't see before:

Take a photo. Carlomagno likes the idea of taking a photo to keep ("that leather pencil skirt that you were only able to wear once, after you had food poisoning in 1994") and letting the object go. This solution was a revelation for me when it came to gifts and paper memorabilia — a way to preserve programs from a wedding or an aunt's teacup without having to find a place for them.

The love for things is unreciprocated, so treat them like people who don't love you, whom you may still love. Keep a photograph:

"The Holy Spirit is technically his biological father so he would be mixed-race."

Technically! Is Christianity based on a technicality?!

I found that quote in "Hillsong Unites Believers and Those Old Agnostics John, Paul, George and Ringo/More than a thousand worshipers attended a Pentecostal singalong whose set list included Beatles hits like 'Can’t Buy Me Love' and 'Here Comes the Sun.'" That was in the NYT on December 20th but I'm just noticing it today because I was looking for a link for the report that the Queen is finally getting around to knighting Ringo.

The quote in the post headline is from Nathan Finochio, a pastor at Hillsong, which is, according to the NYT, a "Pentacostal megachurch."

Backstage after the show, Mr. Finochio, who has Christ-length hair and a deadpan sense of humor, admitted that he had been so nervous that he verged on panic. His production came together with many happy accidents, including a notably diverse cast that reflected Hillsong’s membership. Had he meant to imply that baby Jesus — swaddled in blankets and barely perceptible — was black, too?

“The Holy Spirit is technically his biological father so he would be mixed-race,” Mr. Finochio said.

Notice that Finochio was prodded by a question, and the best answer to the question I asked in the first line of this post is that the wording of the answer is a little wrong. He should have said: "The Holy Spirit is his biological father so technically he would be mixed-race." That is, the technicality isn't, Who is the father? The technicality is, What is race?

There needs to be a word for the feeling that you are having a feeling that there needs to be a word for.

That's the feeling I encounter as New York Magazine suggests that I read "10 Extremely Precise Words for Emotions You Didn’t Even Know You Had."

This is an article from last June, so why mention it now? It popped up as related when I was reading something else, something new, in the "Science of Us" section.

But it was freaky because only a couple hours earlier I had an experience that caused me to think about this very subject — a particular emotion that could do with a word.

What was the experience? A song comes on the car radio — it was Ringo Starr singing "It Don't Come Easy" — and my immediate instinct was to change the station, but because Meade immediately began singing along, my original instinct was overridden. My mild inconsequential distaste for the song gave way to my awareness that Meade must be enjoying the song. I was thinking of how often we have these slight inclinations that get tipped the other way by sensing that someone else has a preference, perhaps only an exquisitely slight one, and I thought that if there were a word that expressed that experience, we might notice it quite a bit and benefit by the heightened awareness.

Now, I'm thinking we need a word for the feeling that if there were a word for a specific feeling it would enhance our existence.

"'Mama' Cass Elliot of the Mamas and Papas was born Ellen Naomi Cohen on September 19, 1941."

"She would have turned 75 today. She died in 1974 at age 32."

Says my son John Althouse Cohen in a blogpost — with lots of videos.

He includes something I wrote earlier today, on Facebook, after watching a video of The Mamas & The Papas doing "Monday Monday" on a TV show in 1966:

I remember how it felt to see them on TV like that -- looking so different from other groups of the time. The men were like the other men, but the women were different, because of Cass and because of her contrast with Michelle [Phillips], who would have stood out as phenomenally pretty anyway, but standing there next to Cass, she made a fantastic contrast, and there were many people who were suddenly discovering that the fat one was even more attractive. It was kind of like with The Beatles, the way many girls thought Ringo was the most attractive, when, by conventional standards, he was the only ugly one. Back in the 60s... when everything was a revolution.

John responded to that with:

Now it's hard to imagine anything being a revolution!