(Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.)
“You, Cinderella?” she said. “You, all covered with dust and dirt, and you want to go to the festival? You have neither clothes nor shoes, and yet you want to dance!”
(But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.)
However, because Cinderella kept asking, the stepmother finally said, “I have scattered a bowl of lentils into the ashes for you. If you can pick them out again in two hours, then you may go with us.”
(“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”)
The girl went through the back door into the garden, and called out, “You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me to gather:
The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop.”
Two white pigeons came in through the kitchen window, and then the turtledoves, and finally all the birds beneath the sky came whirring and swarming in, and lit around the ashes. The pigeons nodded their heads and began to pick, pick, pick, pick. And the others also began to pick, pick, pick, pick. They gathered all the good grains into the bowl. Hardly one hour had passed before they were finished, and they all flew out again.
The girl took the bowl to her stepmother, and was happy, thinking that now she would be allowed to go to the festival with them.
(“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
But the stepmother said, “No, Cinderella, you have no clothes, and you don’t know how to dance. Everyone would only laugh at you.”
Cinderella began to cry, and then the stepmother said, “You may go if you are able to pick two bowls of lentils out of the ashes for me in one hour,” thinking to herself, “She will never be able to do that.”
The girl went through the back door into the garden, and called out, “You tame pigeons, you turtledoves, and all you birds beneath the sky, come and help me to gather:
The good ones go into the pot,
The bad ones go into your crop.”
(“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
Two white pigeons came in through the kitchen window, and then the turtledoves, and finally all the birds beneath the sky came whirring and swarming in, and lit around the ashes. The pigeons nodded their heads and began to pick, pick, pick, pick. And the others also began to pick, pick, pick, pick. They gathered all the good grains into the bowls. Before a half hour had passed they were finished, and they all flew out again.
The girl took the bowls to her stepmother, and was happy, thinking that now she would be allowed to go to the festival with them.
But the stepmother said, “It’s no use. You are not coming with us, for you have no clothes, and you don’t know how to dance. We would be ashamed of you.” With this she turned her back on Cinderella, and hurried away with her two proud daughters.
(“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”)
Now that no one else was at home, Cinderella went to her mother’s grave beneath the hazel tree, and cried out:
Shake and quiver, little tree,
Throw gold and silver down to me.
Then the bird threw a gold and silver dress down to her, and slippers embroidered with silk and silver. She quickly put on the dress and went to the festival.
Her stepsisters and her stepmother did not recognize her. They thought she must be a foreign princess, for she looked so beautiful in the golden dress. They never once thought it was Cinderella, for they thought that she was sitting at home in the dirt, looking for lentils in the ashes.
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
–From “Cinderella,” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and “Love (III),” by George Herbert
Author Archives: Emdashes
Banks, But No Banks
Lines Cribbed in (Supposedly) Early Fall, As I Remove My Favorite Jacket
“It’s fall, dear.”
“I say it’s summer, and I say the hell with it.”
This Will Probably Be My Favorite Sentence on the Internet All Week
“Sassy mice claiming rights beyond their station might appear in any number of second-tier long-running comic strips (see for instance Garfield, 9/8-11/08).”
Friday Bouillabaisse: Noble Nursing, “Sexy Puritans,” the ’64 World’s Fair, Ricky Gervais, Suzanne Vega, Chimamanda Adichie, and a Very Doggy Tilley
We’ve already noted the commendable choice of Alex Ross as one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows; Chimamanda Adichie is also a winner, and I’m so glad. Here’s the MacArthur website’s description of a third accomplished and deserving recipient, Regina Benjamin:
Regina Benjamin is a rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites. She has established a family practice that allows her to treat all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region.
This immediately brought to mind “Children of the Bayou,” Katherine Boo’s outstanding 2006 piece about Louisiana nurses who travel to help young mothers learn to care for their babies. I find myself recommending it every few months. Boo has a satisfyingly long interview with Matt Dellinger on the New Yorker website; read it, and find the piece. It’ll slay you.
Speaking of noble professions, I was moved to tears by a comment from a social worker about how Suzanne Vega’s song “Luka” helped child advocates do their jobs by raising awareness about abuse and taking a little of the fear out of reporting it. The comment is on Vega’s absolutely terrific essay for the New York Times about writing the song and listeners’ many (and sometimes surprising) reactions. I was also struck by Vega’s description of what having a hit song feels like: “‘Hit’ is a good name for it — a feeling of intense communication with a huge amount of people at the same time. As with a baseball and a bat, a cracking, quick connection. As with drugs, a sudden alteration of reality. You could get used to it.”
I was led to all this by Clive Thompson’s post about Vega’s “Tom’s Diner,” a song close to many hearts, but particularly those graduates of Barnard and Columbia who have also listened to the cathedral bells and thought of a long-lost midnight voice, over sodden fries and (deliciously) gluey gravy. Vega writes stirringly about that song for the Times, too.
I love these shots of futuristic World’s Fair bus shelters left over from the 1964 World’s Fair, from my friend Paul Lukas, who discovered the far-out shelters northwest of Shea Stadium after last night’s thrilling Mets game.
Very funny: Things that upset Ricky Gervais.
The website Baby New Yorker has some very cute stuff, and is also a natural choice for the New Yorker-minded. The Baby Talk onesie has a New Yorker cartoon feel to it, to be sure, and you’ve got to see the Dog New Yorker Shirt for yourself: “Our Comical Canine Version of the Original Eustace Tilley by Rea Irvin, Cover illustration for The New Yorker, 1925.” A small image is below, but you’ll want to click inside the Baby Talk website to see all the very funny detail. Yes, this is unsolicited endorsement; it’s good for the soul.
I am interviewed.
Meanwhile, Tom Perrotta writes in Slate:
Caribou hunting aside, Sarah Palin represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman–let’s call her the Sexy Puritan–that’s become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years.
…
I didn’t think too much about Sexy Puritans as a type until I began looking into the abstinence-only sex-education movement while researching my novel, The Abstinence Teacher. I expected to encounter a lot of stern James Dobson-style scolds warning teenagers about the dangers of premarital sex–and there were a few of those–but what I found over and over again were thoughtful, attractive, downright sexy young women talking about their personal decision to remain pure until marriage. Erika Harold, Miss America of 2003 (the right sure loves beauty queens), is probably the best-known to the wider public, but no abstinence rally is complete without the testimony of a very pretty virgin in her early- to mid-20s. At a Silver Ring Thing event I attended in New Jersey in 2007, a slender young blond woman in tight jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt–she wouldn’t have looked out of place at a frat kegger–bragged about all the college boys who’d tried and failed to talk her into their beds. She reveled in her ability to resist them, to stand alone until she’d found the perfect guy, the fiancé with whom she would soon share a lifetime full of amazing sex. While her explicit message was forceful and empowering–virginity is a form of strength and self-sufficiency–the implicit one was clear as well: Abstinence isn’t just sour grapes for losers, a consolation prize for girls who can’t get a date anyway.
Doesn’t that make you think of those wonderful, ardent, chaste, and slightly self-contradictory Strawberry Queens from Plant City, Florida, the subjects of that terrific New Yorker story by Anne Hull a month or so ago? Here’s a slide show from that piece; Brian Finke did the riveting portraits of the shortcakes and their long gowns.
Next week, know what it is? The New Yorker Festival, the high point of the Emdashes year, in all sincerity (we are, in fact, card-carrying members of The New Sincerity, and also, for crying out loud, The Corduroy Appreciation Club.) For the fourth straight year, we will be attending events, racing to the Starbucks/McDonald’s/Bryant Park/office, and posting our impressions. We’ll even be Twittering. Later, after videos are released of some of the events, we’ll post links to those, too. Gee baby, ain’t I good to you?
¿Winners? We’ve Got Winners! And Coming Soon, a New Contest!
Paul Morris, who also drew the triumphant illustration above, writes:
In a village of La Mancha, the name of which we have no desire to call to mind, a lone upside-down question mark polishes off his newly granted escutcheon. He had been invited to appear at the royal palace at Aranjuez the night before. There, he had jostled with his worthy and eminent rivals: second-place winner The Qué Mark, submitted by Liesl Schillinger, and third-place winner Quiggle, proposed by Carolita Johnson.
With a sultry clickety-clack of Sevillean castanets, the strumming of veteran vihuelas, and the Mediterranean thumping on the adufe, the upside-down question mark received his name: Interroverti, proposed by Nadine and Chris LaRoche. The Spanish kings smiled gracefully at their faithful servant, who was treated to a glass of sherry and a display of fireworks that illuminated the Tajo on the hot September night. Interroverti’s rivals were also bedecked with medals hammered from fine silver and cinnabar from the mines of Almadén.
The newly named punctuation mark will now sit proudly on his lean hack, and tilt at grammatical windmills with lance and buckler.
We here at Emdashes would like to thank all who submitted entries to our contest, and we invite you all to participate in our upcoming contest, to be announced soon. It, too, has a punctuation theme!
And, as before, there will be prizes. For their winning entry in this contest, Nadine and Chris LaRoche will enjoy either dinner for two at the Spanish, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Dominican, &c., restaurant of their choice, or a beautiful copy of Pablo Neruda’s immortal The Book of Questions. Nadine and Chris, let us know your choice, and we’ll get it to you by something faster than the existential-pony express.
Sometimes a Great Notions Store: Bits, Bobs, and Blends
1. I am so happy that Bob Dylan has two poems (“17” and “21,” which is not about daring cousins Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns and the secret of the smoked hams) in this week’s magazine. I was picturing David Remnick reading the final TOC, looking at the three entries under “Poems” and beaming: Marilyn Hacker, Bob Dylan. Cool. Be mindful of names, indeed.
Man, I wish Dylan would talk about writing the poems, for half an hour, on “The New Yorker Out Loud.” Anyway, Gary Nelson at Gary Nelson–Acoustic Roots led me to this story from the New York Times that explains how the poems came to be found: “Dylan’s Poetic Pause in Hollywood on the Way to Folk Music Fame.”
2. We usually see the same New Yorker news that Gawker does, but we don’t have a staff, as such, so we don’t always post it. And some things are better posted there, if they need be posted at all, which you can debate elsewhere. Anyway, from the Independent via Gawker, Annie Proulx is put off by “Brokeback Mountain” slash fiction. It can’t all be bad, but the except Gawker posted is atrocious. I hope Proulx will consider lunch with J. K. Rowling (who has some experience in this realm) so they can guffaw about it together.
3. My friend Mark sent me this witty link today, from the Poetry Foundation: “Poetry by the Numbers: Eight shortcuts to writing timeless odes and getting $$$ for it!”
4. Have a really nice weekend. I love fall.
You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello: Intern Roundups, Super-Double-Final Edition
For much of the summer, Emdashes’ summer interns–Sarah Arkebauer, Taylor House, and Adam Shoemaker–have explored the multifarious, multimedia, and at times mellifluous blogs and podcasts at newyorker.com.
While this (combined, two-week) report from Adam and Sarah is the last from their internship, it’s certainly not the last you’ll hear from these talented people. Readers, look forward to more analysis from and news of them in months to come. Sarah, Taylor, and Adam, it’s been a true pleasure working with you, and I’m looking forward to more of your words and your thoughts.
Adam Shoemaker:
Last week in Interesting Times, George Packer analyzed John McCain and proposed that the Arizona senator lives an existence of constant tension between ambition and principle. When the tension relaxes, so does the principle, until the politician recovers his grasp of a moral center through “a searing period of repentance that ends in a renewed commitment to do what is right regardless of the consequences.”
This week in his blog subtitled “Notes on politics, mostly,” Hendrik Hertzberg also considers circularity and the timely term “palindrone” after a reader reminded him that in Ancient Greek, “the word ‘Palin’ means, more or less, ‘backwards’…in the sense of reversing direction.” For those afflicted by “Palinopsia,” Hertzberg recommends a radical palinectomy, and refers readers to Dr. Donald Fagen. I just hope this doesn’t have adverse effects on the National Association of Lutheran Interim Pastors, a good lot, no doubt.
Continuing with the theme of reversals, Hertzberg suggests that the sustained attention lately paid to the McCain campaign is due in large part to convention scheduling: “If the order of this year’s Conventions had been reversed, we would now be looking at a very different set of story lines. The final, reverberating impression left by the Conventions would not have been Sarah Palin’s everygal charm but Barack Obama’s stirring specifics delivered to a cheering throng of eighty thousand under the lights.”
Earlier, Hertzberg reminded us that Sarah Palin’s line, “I told Congress, ‘Thanks but no thanks’ for that bridge to nowhere up in Alaska” is “an absurd lie.” Moving from dublicity to wordcraft, Hertzberg was no happier with Mitt Romney’s convention speech, in which the former governor lamented the current atmosphere in Washington, which is apparently way too liberal for his taste. In this post, Hertzberg may be documenting the birth of something truly horrendous: the cut-and-paste political speech. Though maybe that train has already left the station.
Sasha Frere-Jones laments the passing (from Union Square) of his favorite street band, and rejoices in Jay Smooth’s debunking of hipster rap (as might we all, I suspect). He’s somewhere in the middle on the death of the broadcast music video: he notes the utter pointlessness of today’s Video Music Awards, but also remembers the genre’s glory days.
Last week, Frere-Jones was excited for the New Yorker Festival’s dance party kick-off, which he has been hosting for a new years now. I’m excited, too, particularly as it’s set to be hosted by Megasoid, friend of Lazer Sword, of “Blap To The Future Megamix” fame. Yes. Frere-Jones’ organology lessons continued with an entry on the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. See previous posts on the Tenori-On and Auto-Tune. It’s for this education that I continue to be a devoted reader of the blog, despite the discovery that Frere-Jones recently compared the language of my new home to Cialis spam.
I had the chance to engage in my own nostalgic retrogression when I listened to Blake Eskin’s interview with Adam Gopnik on the New Yorker Out Loud podcast. Gopnick wrote an article in this week’s New Yorker on Babar the Elephant. Turns out the beloved pachyderm is not beloved by all, with some seeing the books as a justification for colonialism and an apology for the westernizing policies of the French in Africa; that dapper green suit might not have been so innocent after all.
Gopnik gives a spirited defense and explains why Jean de Brunhoff’s story, despite its traumatic moments and questionable political innuendos, remains a wonderful tale for children and a witty, self-questioning piece for all.
In the previous edition of the podcast, Ariel Levy stopped by to talk about her article on Cindy McCain. Highlights include a look into the darker side of the McCain and Hensley families, Levy’s thoughts on the role of the First Lady, and Cindy McCain’s secret desire for duct tape. A good listen all around.
Finally, we hear from Andy Borowitz over at the Borowitz Report that Sarah Palin has adopted a new technique for her ABC interview: the Governor of Alaska is bringing a Magic Eight Ball along with her. I can think of at least one more special interest group that’s now pulling for McCain. Maybe they can build it right into the press-room podium.
Sarah Arkebauer
On an archived Fiction Podcast Edwidge Danticat discusses Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie),” a provocative yet charming how-to guide. It’s scandalizing and poignant, and the post-reading discussion is not to be missed.
I was pretty thrilled to see Alex Ross reference my home state in his article on Karlheinz Stockton in The Rest Is Noise. He later posted a good quip from Bill O’Reilly, and an interesting treatise, replete with links, on his proposed “World Atonality Day.”
Meanwhile, at the Book Bench, there is news of a Booker Prize surprise, and the Bookspotters find a lost math book, and Augusten Burroughs’ “Running with Scissors.” I also really enjoyed the vision of what being the British Poet Laureate would entail, and the post that includes a link to the blog “Librarians Against Palin.”
Goings On had plenty to say about Sarah Palin as well. First came a disturbing report by Andrea K. Scott on Palin’s treatment of Wasilla’s Historical Museum workers, which was followed by an interesting post by Scott on the Met’s new director that includes a Palin jab. In non-Palin-related events, Scott also wrote up news on political ice cream and financially grim music.
I attended public elementary and middle school during the 1990s-2000s, and have witnessed “Garfield”-related motivational posters that seem to be an obligatory part of modern American education. Despite–or perhaps because of–this, I love reading the online comic strip “Garfield Minus Garfield,” which, as the name would suggest, prints real Garfield comic strips with the title character airbrushed out. I was thoroughly amused, then, by the interview between Dan Walsh, the creator of “Garfield Minus Garfield” and Zachary Kanin at The Cartoon Lounge. Kanin also continues the sandwich duel with the twelfth (cliff-hanging) thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth installments. Farley Katz also posted a turgid review of Bangkok Dangerous.
My favorite piece, though, was a flippant and funny ode to E. E. Cummings, by Drew Dernavich. It makes me yearn for the puddle-wonderful days of springtime.
Editor’s note: The proper capitalization of Cummings’s name is one of my favorite pedantic poodles. See here for a thorough, and historically sound, explanation.
Previous intern roundups: the September 5 report; the August 29 report; the August 22 report; the August 15 report; the August 8 report; the August 1 report; the July 25 report; the July 18 report; the July 11 report.
I Think I Need the “Campaign Trail” Podcast to Be Updated Daily
This is very selfish of me, I know; Ryan Lizza, Hendrik Hertzberg, George Packer, Peter Boyer, John Cassidy, Jeffrey Toobin, Elizabeth Kolbert, David Remnick, and the ultraclassy Dorothy Wickenden, who would very likely get my vote for VP, surely have other things to do besides record humorous yet incisive podcasts about the state of the election, but I don’t care. I am dangerously hooked. I must have more.
I once described Emdashes as “methadone for New Yorker addicts,” for the shakes between the issues. (All due respect and sympathy here for actual addicts, to whom this feeling would be a mere bee in the bonnet when they know from hives.) But what is the remedy for the incurable New Yorker-phile whose itch cannot be scratched by the magazine, weekly-ish podcasts, website, and the pleasant tingle created by the advent of the New Yorker Festival? Also, she is very disturbed by Sarah Palin, yet, like many Americans, cannot look away?
There’s only one answer: more “Campaign Trail.” Could we perhaps wake up to fifteen minutes of the gang chatting over breakfast? Should there be an iPhone app? The withdrawal is already gripping me, and it’s only been a few minutes since my last listen. Good nurses of The New Yorker, please come to my aid.
Related: Martin, who is admirably well informed on things political, is also a fan.
Political Snapshot: Duane Reade, 34th St. and Park Avenue
Taken by my iwishitwereaniPhone. That’s Hillary at the top; sorry I couldn’t quite capture her. Click for a bigger view, and be glad there’s no Sarah Palin face, although you know it’s coming!
