Archives for June 12, 2007

I am, in theory, back in New York. The flies in the ointment number four:
(1) I spent twelve hours on the road yesterday and so am not entirely myself this morning.
(2) Neither is my iBook. The wonder-working women of Ms Mac are on their way over to my apartment at this very moment to pour Drano into its ports and make it happy again.
(3) Just in case the problem is more serious than it seems, I have to try to finish writing this week’s Wall Street Journal drama column before they get here.
(4) I depart for North Carolina and Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Between now and then, I need to see two shows and do all the stuff I left undone last week in Smalltown, U.S.A.
For all these reasons, I can’t promise that I’ll be doing a whole lot of blogging between now and my departure. If that changes, though, you’ll be the first to know….

“One time, years ago, the veteran Baltimore newspaperman, H.L. Mencken, was checking copy coming in from the night editor and sighing at the rising number of errors he was noticing, errors of fact but also of syntax, and even some idioms that didn’t sound quite right. He shook his head and said, as much to himself as to the editor at his side: ‘The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.'”
Alistair Cooke, “Memories of the Great and the Good” (courtesy of George Will)