The NYT description of NYC in August quotes "The Great Gatsby."

From "New York Today: Empty City":

But in the winding-down of summer, the city moves at a slower pace, and the lazy days of August can be quite pleasant.

Or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Great Gatsby":

"I love New York on summer afternoons when every one’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it — overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."

Did we ever do that sentence in the old Gatsby project? Oh, it's 2 sentences, and we only read one sentence at a time, but it's the second sentence, the one with the fruits, that's asking for it. If we did, I'm sure we didn't take it to mean simply that summer in the city is lazy and pleasant.

So, yes, we did read that sentence, back on March 2, 2013, and I see that I did throw the first sentence in for context:

You should know that ["There’s something very sensuous about it"] refers to "New York on summer afternoons when every one’s away." That's New York City, of course, not the whole state. People in New York mean New York City when they say "New York." They call the state "New York State" if it's ever worth talking about....

What kind of sensuous, overripe, funny fruits are falling into your hands... wherever you are when "every one's away"?

In the comments, Sydney said, "New York City must have been a hell hole in the summer before air conditioning," and I said, enlarging the context:

Yeah, the sentence is from a passage in which the problem is no a/c. Some characters want to go to the movies and others want to just drive around, which seems to be a way of being out and catching some breeze.

Also, this sentence is very close to one of the favorite "Gatsby" project sentences, the one known for short as "hot whips of panic."...

There's less overripe, falling, funny fruit when air-conditioning is everywhere every where.

Anyway, in the end, the conversation orbited around Harvey Keitel's balls (after kentuckyliz brought up the old famous-for-male-nudity movie "The Piano").

A mother who opts her kid out of standardized testing is condemning him to a life of dismal underachievement.

I'm "reading" the photograph that accompanies a NYT article, "Only Alternative for Some Students Sitting Out Standardized Tests: Do Nothing." The article is ostensibly about the "sit and stare" policy at some schools, which makes kids who opt out sit at their desks with nothing at all to do. You can see the point of the policy: to create pressure not to opt out. That policy seems to be failing because the opters-out were able to make an issue out of the "sit and stare" policy. The idea was to undercut them, not empower them. Unintended consequences. Time for a new policy. The new policy is: Let the kids who don't take the tests leave the classroom and go to the library to do other things.

“They’re being snarky,” Mr. Burns said of some students who refused the test. Saying, ‘Ha-ha, I don’t have to take the test!’ as they’re leaving the room. Or ‘Good luck on the test!’ in that derogatory tone.

Oh, no! The new policy also creates opportunities for those whose power was supposed to be undercut. How can we get the non-test-takers to leave the room without expressing any indication that they're pleased to get out? You can't, of course. How dare they manifest snark? Mr. Burns is, presumably, hoping to iron out any flashes of emotion in the rebel kids. The kids who stay in the room and take the tests must not see that the alternative is desirable.

Anyway, I'm fascinated by the picture they chose to put at the top of the article. It has the caption: "Angie Carnright made shirts for her son Blake, a fifth grader in upstate New York, to wear on test days. They say: 'I refuse NYS Tests. Score Me 999,' the code indicating a student opted out." I'm sure there were many alternative photographs in which the boy showed off the T-shirt, but in this one, he's sitting on the porch step, leaned over, arms crossed, hiding the words on the shirt. I thought that was odd, and it drew me into all the details in the photograph and how it was framed. The mother is sitting next to him, with a complacently smug look on her face. I'll refrain from commenting on her clothes, her hair, and her lack of makeup. The picture seems deliberately framed to draw our eyes to the dilapidated wood of the porch and the mishmash of junk — a trash can, a snow shovel, a pair of boots (not upright or aligned), and...



... what is that? Poop on a scoop?! That's right at the edge of the photograph, and as a framer and cropper of photographs myself, I am virtually certain that edge was chosen. As a reader of journalism, including journalistic photographs, I'm going to opine that the picture expresses an editorial opinion: A mother who opts her kid out of standardized testing is condemning him to a life of dismal underachievement.

IN THE COMMENTS: sydney said:

My favorite New York Times photo editorializing. The photos completely undercut the premise of the whole article which was from the point of view of the rich woman who was buying the baby, er, renting the womb.

Amazing. Porches loom large there too.

"There’s something very sensuous about it — overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."

There. I've given you another sentence from "The Great Gatsby." I'm doing it now because over there in the "Whenever I think of Indianapolis" post, sydney said "Quick, do a Gatsby post so betamax has an outlet for his literary yearnings." If that makes sense to you, you must be a regular in these "Gatsby" project posts, and you know betamax3000 haunts the comments threads in his distinctly freaky style, which he's resorted to applying to the old "One Day at a Time" TV show in lieu of "The Great Gatsby."

Speaking of Indianapolis, I feel I need to infuse today's "Gatsby" sentence with a little meaning from the previous sentence. You should know that "it" refers to "New York on summer afternoons when every one’s away." That's New York City, of course, not the whole state. People in New York mean New York City when they say "New York." They call the state "New York State" if it's ever worth talking about. They probably never talk about Indianapolis (which probably means "Indiana City").

What kind of sensuous, overripe, funny fruits are falling into your hands... wherever you are when "every one's away"?

Speaking of being called to a higher law and speaking of speaking....

In the previous post, we're talking about what Jesus wrote in the sand and what he said out loud, in the New Testament story where the scribes and Pharisees present Jesus with the question of what to do with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. In the Gospel text, we're told Jesus that wrote on the ground, but not what he wrote, and we're told that he subsequently spoke and said "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

I'm putting up a separate post because I found the scene that sydney said he loved in the movie "The King of Kings." Made in 1927, it's a silent movie, so no one is saying anything out loud. We see what Jesus says written out on the intertitles, and we also see what he writes in the sand.



Beautiful filmmaking, particularly as the sand-words, not written in Roman letters, transform into our English words, naming the sins that the men in the crowd realize they've committed, and that's why they all turn and walk away.

That's not an accurate depiction of what happens in the biblical text though. The movie shows a mob on the verge of stoning the woman and Jesus intervenes and announces his rule about casting the first stone. Only thereafter, does he write the names of the sins in the sand. But in the Bible story, there is no angry mob with stones in hand. There are scribes and Pharisees demanding that Jesus deliver a legal opinion. Jesus bends down and writes on the ground instead of answering the question.  Only after they persist does he stand up and pronounce his new rule, which causes the scribes and Pharisees to walk away — "beginning with the older ones." The movie would have you see the members of the mob acknowledging their sins and their consequent lack of qualification to cast the first stone. But the text has intellectuals trying to box Jesus in on a question of law, and Jesus getting the better of a conversation he didn't want to have in the first place.

It's not surprising that a movie plays up the visible drama, and it's also not surprising that when I — a law professor — read the text, I see something akin to a law school class. The professors try to stump the student and the student transcends their tricky game. To me, the part where Jesus bends over and writes in the sand is like what happens in a law school class when the lawprof poses a difficult hypothetical and the students bend their heads down and go through motions of writing. They don't want to answer. It's not that they're writing something magically revelatory and startling. But if the lawprof keeps pushing and calls on someone, an answer will be spoken out loud.

I guess the law-professorly interpretation of the text isn't terribly cinematic. It's no wonder the movies present an angry mob with stones in hand and Jesus miraculously knowing and changing the hearts of the sinners. (And the adulteress is an actress evincing exactly the form of sexiness that was fashionable in the year the movie was made. I love the eyeliner!)

But to me the lawprof interpretation is thrilling and dramatic. The professors think they've got the upper hand. They know the legal text and it's tough. And then the brilliant student who will soon be the greatest professor of all gets on top of the dialogue and says something they must accept as correct: If you're going to have strict rules and severe mechanisms of enforcement, you must apply them equally to everyone. This is the structural safeguard of equal protection of the laws that is the necessary component of a democratic system. If there can't be exceptions and special treatment for preferred people, legislatures will resist imposing harsh rules and painful punishments.

In this context, let me give you my favorite Justice Scalia quote, which happens to include one of the key words of Christianity: "Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me."

What did Jesus write in the sand? (Or: things I should have learned in church that I figured out from the Althouse comments.)

Yesterday, when many blogs were talking about the Islamist Facebook page with a cartoon showing how to stone a person who had committed adultery, I added the New Testament story, from John 8, in which Jesus said: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." Jesus had just been teaching some people, and the scribes and the Pharisees, looking for a way to trip him up — they wanted to bring charges against him — present Jesus with a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and remind him that the Law of Moses commanded that she should be stoned. "So what do you say?" Instead of answering, Jesus bends over and writes in the dirt. They keep pushing for an answer, and it's only then that he says: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

I didn't include the next few sentences, but the story was very familiar. After Jesus makes his brilliant remark — which finds a new way into the question — the crowd disperses and Jesus tells the woman to "go and... sin no more."

Some of the commenters focused on what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground. I'd always assumed that what Jesus was writing was irrelevant and that he was simply gesturing I'm not going to talk to you. He invoked his right to remain silent, as we say in the United States of America. He knew whatever he said would be used against him. Later, when he arrives at the New Testament doctrine — the higher law — he speaks up and articulates it pithily. He doesn't write it. Jesus isn't the put-it-in-writing type. The scribes are the bad guys here, and he's about talking to the people. The Word is spoken. (It's only written down later.)

But, reading the comments, I see interest in the subject of what Jesus wrote.