Things I learned while looking up other things, 2021.3.11
Dear friends,
One of the most unsettling things (to me) is looking up something and finding ... nothing. As more and more is made available online, it happens less often, but it's more surprising when it does. The latest entry in this catalog of null results was triggered by this image:
[Image from Seeing Through Clothes by Anne Hollander]
The unusual name caught my eye, but when I went to look up 'Urphanis' ... not much was there, and what was there was either references to the book and image above, or OCR errors. The OCR errors, however, gave a clue—many were misreadings of 'orphans'. So I started looking for 'Orphanis', and voilà! From what I can tell (from careful parsing of snippet views), it's an orientalization of a play by George Lillo, The London Merchant. There's no moral here (other than "OCR errors can be clues!") but if you ever wondered what kind of rabbit holes I get stuck in, this is a prime example. I guess it beats thinking about the immortality of the crab? or being an umarell?
Of course, I could just spend my few spare hours refreshing this Diana Vreeland Memo Generator ... I also recently discovered that the San Francisco Public Library offers full access to the entire run of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, so it's worth checking if your library does too! While reading through some issues from the early 1950s I found this description of San Francisco (from a Jan 1 1950 Lilli Ann suit advertisement):
[Image text: "of san francisco" city of sophisticates and superlatives ... of longest bridges and suddenest hills, and fairest flowers and smartest women.] Of course, they meant 'smartest' in the sense of 'most stylish' but we don't have to read it that way if we don't want to ....
Other rabbit holes of the month: the notion of the hidden curriculum (and what happens to the hidden curriculum when school is remote?), that those who stole gold or silver in Aztec society were sacrificed to Xipe Totec (CW: gore), the Marquess of Bath and his devotion to his pet duck, and the criterion of embarrassment.
I hope you found some delightful and diverting rabbit holes this past month, and I hope even more that you were able to find a vaccine, if eligible!
Your friend,
Erin
One of the most unsettling things (to me) is looking up something and finding ... nothing. As more and more is made available online, it happens less often, but it's more surprising when it does. The latest entry in this catalog of null results was triggered by this image:
[Image from Seeing Through Clothes by Anne Hollander]
The unusual name caught my eye, but when I went to look up 'Urphanis' ... not much was there, and what was there was either references to the book and image above, or OCR errors. The OCR errors, however, gave a clue—many were misreadings of 'orphans'. So I started looking for 'Orphanis', and voilà! From what I can tell (from careful parsing of snippet views), it's an orientalization of a play by George Lillo, The London Merchant. There's no moral here (other than "OCR errors can be clues!") but if you ever wondered what kind of rabbit holes I get stuck in, this is a prime example. I guess it beats thinking about the immortality of the crab? or being an umarell?
Of course, I could just spend my few spare hours refreshing this Diana Vreeland Memo Generator ... I also recently discovered that the San Francisco Public Library offers full access to the entire run of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, so it's worth checking if your library does too! While reading through some issues from the early 1950s I found this description of San Francisco (from a Jan 1 1950 Lilli Ann suit advertisement):
[Image text: "of san francisco" city of sophisticates and superlatives ... of longest bridges and suddenest hills, and fairest flowers and smartest women.] Of course, they meant 'smartest' in the sense of 'most stylish' but we don't have to read it that way if we don't want to ....Other rabbit holes of the month: the notion of the hidden curriculum (and what happens to the hidden curriculum when school is remote?), that those who stole gold or silver in Aztec society were sacrificed to Xipe Totec (CW: gore), the Marquess of Bath and his devotion to his pet duck, and the criterion of embarrassment.
I hope you found some delightful and diverting rabbit holes this past month, and I hope even more that you were able to find a vaccine, if eligible!
Your friend,
Erin
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