Notecards, 2023-02-04
For your virtual 3x5 card file: A reading list of intriguing unsorted significance from all corners, annotated.
Some samplings of the “glorious miscellany,” as my father used to put it, that careened through my brain over this past couple weeks and taught me more about some of the less-noticed building blocks that make up our world. (For more on the notecard above, read to the bottom.)
COOLEST UNEXPECTED WISDOM this week goes to Rachel Cabitt for this piece from her fascinating Substack, The Art of Cover Art, that examines cloud iconography on album covers. I particularly love how omnivorous the piece is, connecting cloud-focused album art with the tradition of clouds in other realms of the art world (and even, famously, screensavers).
ARCHIVISTS DON’T HAVE IT EASY these days. They’re often caught between competing interests. This piece from The Conversation makes the case for supporting what they do. Writes Stuart Kells: “Without evidence, there can be no history. And without history, we can’t understand ourselves or chart a good course into the future.”
HOW CAN YOU NOT READ an article called “6 doctors swallowed Lego heads for science. Here's what came out”? Particularly when it starts with an editor’s note that says, “This episode contains frequent and mildly graphic mentions of poop.”
JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR Colin Woodard is one of the best thinkers around when it comes to pondering what makes up the American nation and considering how its key ingredients aren’t always what we typically think. His book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” has been very influential in the way I write about American culture over the past five years. Now he’s on the way to run something called the “Nationhood Lab” at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. Read more about the lab here.
THE MUSIC YOU HEAR in movie trailers is an industry onto itself. Who knew? The storytelling needs to be compact, and messages — urgently epic and compelling messages — need to be gotten across in mere moments. Learn more about the building blocks of “trailerization” in this fascinating deep dive by Eric Ducker for The New York Times. As Cato, the one-named composer, puts it in the piece:
“You have to suck people into the theater and tell a story in 2½ minutes. That is so intense and builds so quickly that most music written for the actual movie will be way too long and drawn out.”
SPINNING THE FAMILIAR AND THE NOSTALGIC into something that’s both comforting and new is a delicate task, but companies are finding novel ways to do it. This AP piece from Michelle Chapman connects the dots and presents to us, among other things, a collision-slash-collab of Peeps and Dr. Pepper.
CAN MANDATORY SICK NOTES for work be problematic? This piece from The New Republic examines that notion. I was particularly fascinated by this nugget, which struck a chord given that early in my journalism career, I covered the coalfields of West Virginia:
“During nineteenth-century industrialization, many American companies employed on-site physicians. According to historian David Rosner, these doctors served as both medics and human resource managers, in both cases ultimately serving corporate interests. So while on-site physicians healed injured workers, they also identified those deemed too injured to remain productive, helping companies “prune” the workforce over time.”
EVER HEARD OF the “right to repair” your own devices? I hadn’t either until this TED.com Ideas piece, but it’s intriguing. My dad used to fix things all the time, and repurpose other things. The disposable society — encouraged by replacement-focused companies — has, sadly, helped to reduce this instinct. In Europe, they’re giving this issue a closer look.
And finally …
HOW DOES ONE START an effective pulp novel? Follow the Twitter thread below for some good guidance — whatever writing you might be doing. Be mindful of this, though: The first thing may also be the final one. “The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonize for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.”
AND IF YOU’VE READ THIS FAR …
A note about the image above: My father, an avid consumer of (producer of?) 3x5 cards, left this one behind in an unsorted box of miscellany. I have canvassed relatives, and sadly it appears that the reason he created a notecard containing only the words “juggling monkeys” is lost to the mists of history.
I'm late getting to this one (had the tab open for a week-plus), but I just wanted to say that I too have been heavily influenced by 'American Nations.' Was not aware of the Nationhood Lab, so thanks for that tip!