The Fierce Urgency of Meow

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It may come as a surprise to our cat, Angel, that I do not speak cat. Not fluently, anyway. But she keeps talking to us as if we understand and await her each beckoning meow.

(I do not know if her meows can be classified as “beckoning.'” She might be telling me to eff off, but I choose to believe that I understand her various vocalizations as beckoning.)
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Today in History: Oct. 17

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

He had pouchy eyes, smoked a cigarette, and sat at the kitchen table in an undershirt, black tuxedo pants, and bare feet. His fingers danced nervously on the valves of his brilliant gold-plated horn.
 
On weekend nights, Chernecke played in the Blue Moon, which was under the el, three blocks from his house. Now on a rough, fuzzy Saturday morning after a bust-out night at the Blue Moon, he had me, this Catholic school kid who instinctively blew his notes louder when an el train passed. The only thing you’re learning is to compete with an el, he said. But he had such deplorable personal habits that he needed the three dollars for a lesson desperately.—from a new story by Jimmy Breslin, “Trumpet Lessons, Life Lessons“

I first encountered Jimmy Breslin, who turns 86 today, in the pages of the New York Daily News in the 1970s, when I first fell in love with newspapers. (Like all things related to love, my immediate affection for newspapers was inexplicable and still fills me with joy.)

My father used to buy the News on Sundays for reasons I never learned but I think had to do with making sure there was more than one colorful comics section available in the house to amuse my sister and me. I loved the comics sections, but I also read every columnist.
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Who Do I Trust?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My first instinct, which is that my first instinct can not be trusted, is usually wrong. This often puts me in any number of conundra.

The paragraph immediately above gives a clear example: My typing fingers wanted to write “conundrum,” then wanted the plural form. But what is the plural of conundrum? My all-too clever brain thought: “conundra. That’s funny. It’ll get a smile from someone.” The someone who smiled was me, which was enough to make it so, and I typed “conundra” for “conundrums.” But I go look it up and learn—thanks, World of Information!—that since conundrum does not come from a Latin root, but sounds like it might have, the proper plural is “conundrums.” Further, the word “conundra” has existed for a long, long while as a humorous, mock-educated plural form for plural problems. “Mock-educated.” That’s me, so it remains “conundra.”
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