Saturday, April 4, 2015

"General Life-Theory": A Candidate!

"Only Air Clean Laundry!"
 An aphorism is "a pithy observation that contains a general truth."  After a long recess, Aphorism One is back on-line.  Aphorism 149 and 150 is from William Wharton's memoir, Houseboat on the Seine.

Aphorism 149:

A candidate for a worthy 'general life-theory'; "If you don't know how things should be done, everything is possible."

Full quote: "This is all according to my general life-theory that if you don't know how things should be done, everything is possible."


Aphorism 150:   

"There are so many ways to do things wrong."  

Saturday, November 16, 2013

From Margaret Drabble's novel The Radiant Way



Aphorism 144: "Check your battles, you may have selected the wrong ones!"
Full Quote: "Is it the wrong battle I have been fighting, all these years?"
 
Aphorism 145: "Choose your own parable!"
Full Quote: "'That's what people say, these days,' she said. 'We all choose our own parables.'"

 Aphorism 146: "Be alert to the unsatisfactory nature of knowledge!"
Full Quote: "Propped up, alone, in her white five-year-old nightdress, she studied the unsatisfactory nature of knowledge."

Aphorism 147: "Contenious comments are usually not worth presenting reasoned arguments!"
Full Quote: "She applauded this decision.  It was not worth presenting reasoned arguments to Mrs Harper."

Aphorism 148: "Summon up that small ghost called inspiration!"
Full Quote: "...in order to learn again the smell of the mountain air, the shapes of the hill, the darknesses of the forests, in order to summon up that small ghost called inspiration that brings to life our documents and transcriptions, our months in libraries and years at our own desks..."

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson

 Photo by owner's iPhone.

Aphorism 140:   "Panic feeds in the dark."

Aphorism  141: "Think more spectacularly!"
 
Aphorism  142:  "The problem is that vacuums fill!"
 
Aphorism 143:  "In the absence of facts, we grow more curious."
 
 

 

 

Sunday, August 11, 2013

A Lesson from David Crosby's Days As A Cub Report

Aphorism 139:  "Don't bury the Lead!" 


What David Crosby, PhD and pastor First Baptist New Orleans learned from his editor in his earlier days as a cub reporter with The Times Picayune.  The lead of the story was on paragraph 16.  David, "You buried the lead, it goes first," said the editor.    Story reported Aug. 11, 2013.
 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

State of Wonder, Aphorisms Inspired by Ann Patatchett

Photo taken by Bob Eason, top of his library bookshelves.

From State of Wonder, Aphorisms Inspired by Ann Patchett

Aphorism 133: "No patience?  Then create the illusion of patience."

Aphorism 134: "A little walk at night will do you good."

Aphorism 135: "Focus your gaze!"

Aphorism 136: "Humans--they come, they build, they leave."

Aphorism 137: "Need to leave?  Leave quickly before there is another offer to decline."

Aphorism 138: "...what we do down here in hell."

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Is the end near?


I love the feel, smell, and touch of a traditional book.  However, is there pending danger for us bibliophiles and book traditionalists?  Is our precious hobby about to fall victim of the electronic age?  I have typed Clive Thompson’s “The Paper Chase” from this month’s Smithsonian for your consideration. 

Bobby

Thompson, Clive, “The Paper Chase,” Smithsonian, May 2013, p. 14

The iPhone became the world’s best-selling smart-phone partly because Steve Jobs was obsessed with the ergonomics of everyday life.  If you want people to carry a computer, it had to hit the “sweet spot” where it was big enough do display “detailed, legible graphics, but small enough to fit comfortably in the hand and Pocket.”

Seventy-five years ago, another American innovator had the same epiphany: Robert Fair de Graff realized he could change the way people read by making books radically smaller.  Back then, it was surprisingly hard for ordinary Americans to get good novels and nonfiction.  The country only had about 500 bookstores, all clustered in the biggest 12 cities, and hardcovers cost $2.50 (about $40 in today’s currency). 

De Graff revolutionized that market when h got backing from Simon & Schuster to launch Pocket Books in May 1939.  A petite 4 by 6 inches and priced at a mere 25 cents, the Pocket Book changed everything about who could read and where.  Suddenly people read all the time, much as we now peek at e-mail and Twitter on our phones.  And by working with the often gangster-riddled magazine-distribution industry, De Graff sold books where they had never been available before—grocery stores, drugstores and airport terminals.  With two years he’d sold 17 million.

“They literally couldn’t keep up with demand,” says historian Kenneth C. Davis, who documented De Graff’s triumph in his book Two-Bit Culture.  “They tapped into a huge reservoir of Americans who nobody realized wanted to read.”

Other publishers rushed into the business. And, like all forms of new media, pocket-size books panicked the elites.  Sure, some books were quality literature, but the biggest sellers were mysteries, westerns, thinly veiled smut—a potential “flood of trash” that threatened to “debase farther the popular taste,” as the social critic Harvey Swados worried.  But the tumult also gave birth to new and distinctly American literary genres, from Mickey Spillane’s gritty detective stories to Ray Bradbury’s cerebral science fiction.

The financial success of the paperback became its cultural downfall.  Media conglomerates bought the upstart pocket-book firms and began hiking prices and chasing after quick-money best-sellers, including jokey fare like 101 Uses for a Dead Cat.  And while paperbacks remain commonplace, they’re no longer dizzingly cheaper than hardcovers.

Instead, there’s a new reading format that’s shifting the terrain.  Min-tablets and e-readers not only fit in your pocket; they allow your entire library to fit in your pocket.  And, as with De Graff’s invention, e-readers are producing new forms, prices and publishers.

The upshot, says Mike Shatzkin—CEO of the Idea Logical Company, a consultancy for publishes—is that “more reading is taking place,” as we tuck it into ever more stray moments.  But he also worries that as e-book consumers shift more to multifunctional tablets, reading might take a back seat to other portable entertainment:  more “Angry Birds,” less Jennifer Egan.  Still, whatever the outcome, the true revolution in portable publishing began not with e-books but the De Graff, whose paperback made reading into an activity that ravels everywhere.

Sunday, May 1, 2011



















Diane Keaton's library by Blogger Photo.

Walking Home to Brighton

Aphorism 132: "Keep to the shady side!" Roy B

Full quote, “I wandered along it, keeping to the shady side as the sun rose higher.” By Roy B in his blog walkinghometo50

Aphorism 131: “Try to get better!” Poly Styrene

Full Quote: [by frontwoman Poly Styrene as quoted by Roy B], “Early the next morning I read that she had died that day, her last Facebook status “Slowly slowly trying 2 get better miss my walk along the promenade."

Aphorism 130: “Nothing left to do but promenade” Roy B

Full Quote: “Nothing left to do but promenade to the end of the pier.”

Aphorism 129: “Life is neither ugly nor beautiful, but it’s original!” Italo Sveyo from “Zeno’s Conscience.”