March 17, 2026
A follow-up to my 3/16 posting “The breakfast walk”, in which I looked at a few of the businesses and offices on the walk
from 722 Ramona St., between Forest and Homer (my house) to 566 Emerson St., at the northwest corner at Hamilton (the Palo Alto Creamery, a standard place for Saturday breakfast with my daughter Elizabeth in the old days), along a route fixed in its details
with a promise that I’d do a separate botanical posting, about some of the flowers and trees along the way. Necessarily much more selective — there are many hundreds of plant species in those two and a half blocks — and sensitive to date as well as location (customarily, my first example blooms and my last example fruits around now, in the Ides of March / St. Patrick’s Day period); and so it is this year)
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Posted in Language and plants, Names, Palo Alto | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2026
Briefly noted.
In an earlier posting today — “El Palo Alto” — I wrote:
the elegant Nobu Hotel Epiphany … preserves (from the earlier Casa Olga hotel) the 6-story-tall mosaic mural of El Palo Alto, the coast redwood tree for which the city of Palo Alto is named
Which caused my helper Isaac to ask two questions:
— 1 mosaic mural? Aren’t murals paintings?
— 2 Who created the mural?
I have no clue about 2, but 1 is straightforward:
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Posted in Art, Lexicography, Palo Alto | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2026
On the heels of my 3/14 posting “Seeking a penguin caption” (in which the birds are ubiquitous), there come two penguin cartoons in the April 2026 issue of Funny Times: one by Bill DeMain in which the birds are iconic, one by Vaughan Tomlinson in which they are (memically) indistinguishable.
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Posted in Books, Cartoonists, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Penguins, Signs and symbols, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2026
In yesterday’s posting “The breakfast walk”, one notable feature of that walk was what is now the elegant Nobu Hotel Epiphany, which preserves (from the earlier Casa Olga hotel) the 6-story-tall mosaic mural of El Palo Alto, the coast redwood tree for which the city of Palo Alto is named:
(#1) The Casa Olga mural
(#2) The mural on the much-expanded Nobu Hotel Epihany
I remind you that this is a short distance from my house, but has just become part of the urban landscape, taken for granted — as indeed we take for granted the many actual coast redwoods growing companionably on our streets (reaching straight into the sky, towering over a hundred feet, easily hundreds of years old). (There’s one such tree only about 50 feet from my front door.)
And I remind you that the tree in #1 and #2 is not an abstract or imagined coast redwood, but a specific Sequoia sempervirens — El Palo Alto — that grows in a little urban forest park, alongside the railroad tracks (originally Southern Pacific, now Caltrain) at the border between Palo Alto (in Santa Clara County) and Menlo Park (in San Mateo County), only abut 7 blocks from my house.
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Posted in Etymology, Language and plants, Logos, Mascots, Names, Palo Alto, Signs and symbols, Spanish, Stanford | Leave a Comment »
March 16, 2026
From 722 Ramona St., between Forest and Homer (my house) to 566 Emerson St., at the northwest corner at Hamilton (the Palo Alto Creamery, a standard place for Saturday breakfast with my daughter Elizabeth in the old days), along a route fixed in its details (there will be a map, with commentary). Now notable in that the Creamery is the only business or office on that route that has been there all the time since Jacques and I came to Ramona St. in 1986. This is urban life, with everything in flux.
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Posted in Architecture, Language and food, My life, Palo Alto | 1 Comment »
March 15, 2026
Today: a significant day in my personal life for many years, and also a significant day in world history.
— March 15th was spring Removal Day — Higashi (East) removal — when (for about 10 years) Jacques and I left Palo Alto (after winter quarter at Stanford) to drive the 2650 miles east to Columbus OH (for spring quarter at Ohio State); the winter Removal Day — Nishi (West) removal — in the opposite direction was December 15th
— March 15th is also the Ides of March, the day of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C.E.
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Posted in Holidays, Language and food, Movies and tv, My life | 1 Comment »
March 14, 2026
The New Yorker cartoon caption contest in the 3/6/25 issue features one of my totem animals, the penguin. Well, quite a lot of penguins:
The three finalists for the caption will be announced in the 3/30 issue
The caption — what the woman is saying to the man — could be about that pigeon (maybe the whole thing is stage-managed by the pigeon; or maybe it’s about a pigeon among the penguins, like a cat among the pigeons). Meanwhile, note the prevalence of penguins — driving a car, in the windows of a building, on top of the food truck; they’re everywhere.
Posted in Captions, Linguistics in the comics, Penguins | 2 Comments »
March 13, 2026
Following up on yesterday’s (3/12) posting “Masculine flamboyance” about the political commentator Jon Favreau’s presentation of himself in an advertisement for Crooked Media’s Pod Save America show: as an impish hunk: impish via a half-smile; hunk via a display of his muscular forearms, signs of a ripped body. (I could also have noted his neck muscles and the solid torso beneath his t-shirt):
(#1) JF on display
This is a pose for the camera, so what we see is some mixture of (a) what we might think of as a picture of one of his “natural” personas (unconsciously composed), just being who he is (as if that were a simple thing) and (b) a calculated presentation, with some conscious thought devoted to choosing elements of his presentation for the photo. I would guess that some part of the image was calculated — perhaps, the light dusting of facial scruff, conveying masculinity (in case you might have doubts, given the flamboyance of JF in action, as described in yesterday’s posting).
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Posted in Books, Effeminacy, Facial expression and gesture, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Identities, Language and politics, Language and the body, Language of sex, Masculinity, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »
March 12, 2026
The philosopher Bill Lycan (an old friend, once my colleague at Ohio State, a prolific writer, and an enormously entertaining person) came to my mind when a friend was amazed that I managed to write at least one essay a day — every day of the year — as a posting on this blog (this posting is the second for today, and it’s not yet 9 am; I’m on a roll). At least once at Ohio State, a student asked Bill how he managed to publish so much (perhaps, like Vishnu, he could write with four arms at once). Bill’s wonderful reply:
I have a very high tolerance for error.
This was, in fact, a deeply serious reply, worth some reflection.
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Posted in Academic life, Errors, People, Philosophy | Leave a Comment »
March 12, 2026
adj. flamboyant: (of a person or their behavior) tending to attract attention because of their exuberance, confidence, and stylishness … [from NOAD]
Last Saturday I made the acquaintance (in the first Crooked Media show on MS NOW) of this exemplar of masculine flamboyance, presenting himself in this IMDb photo as an impish hunk:
Jon Favreau (advertising Crooked Media’s Pod Save America show)
Inexplicably, I seem not to have noticed JF before, though he’s someone of great substance. Meanwhile, his performance on the show was hugely entertaining — cutting criticism of our overlord Grabpussy and his administration, flamboyantly delivered. The deep moral commitment of Stephen Colbert performed in a wildly expressive style.
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Posted in Effeminacy, Facial expression and gesture, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and politics, Language of sex, Morality, Movies and tv, Performance, Personas | Leave a Comment »
