Chicagoans: You will want to get this book.

Sign up for my newsletter today and tomorrow you’ll get issue 6, a commonplace book issue that will offer the first 50 of what will eventually, after a subsequent issue, be an even 100 quotes on bores, the boring, and boredom from a wide range of writers.

Talking with students at the UIC library about publishing today & am suddenly remembering the first time I saw a university library, when I was probably about 11 & my mom was getting her degree at USI. Our town library was a Carnegie, beautiful but small, & USI’s awed me.

To allay her mother’s worries, the only thing she could do was promise to leave Central Park by sundown and to never set foot in Brooklyn. —Paulina Bren, The Barbizon

My alderman, standing up for our neighbors.

The number of things that happen in our society, good and bad*, solely because a rich person’s kid said something in passing, man. *These days mostly bad, as the kids have had the temerity to suggest to their rich dads that injustice & difference exist & should be considered, & hoo, boy.

To say that a man is a Londoner implies only that he is not one of the far more definite class of countrymen; it does not stamp him as belonging to any recognised type. —Virginia Woolf, “Literary Geography”

Good morning, friends!

St. Clair McKelway sighting.

I miss the World Series.

Weird doings up in Petoskey.

I seem to be in the minority, but I didn’t really like the new Frankenstein much. As always w/del Toro, the set design, costumes, & colors were good. The story is engaging, but familiar if you know the novel in addition to the movies. But: Oscar Isaac never convinced me he was obsessed. And . . .

Still a long way to go on Ellington’s “The Single Petal of a Rose,” but I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m trying to do. (An earlier recording attempt included me literally pushing up my sleeves between beats as the long arpeggios approached, lol.) youtu.be/P4xQeUjjLz0?...

Even Love Is . . . is getting in on the celebration today.

From Jenkins’s walker yesterday.

Good morning, friends!

Never underestimate the simple of power of saying in unison, "No, fuck you."

Been a while since we had one of those all the right people are happy and all the right people are sad nights. Nice to experience again.

This oft-repeated factoid is untrue. The Ur-quote is probably from Alice Kessler-Harris's Out to Work, A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States: "As late as 1939, legislatures in twenty-six states were considering bills to bar married women from state jobs." Not quite the same thing.

The yearbook from the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School was named Platen.

By 1932, twenty-six states had made it illegal for a married woman to hold a job. —Paulina Bren, The Barbizon

Book and a drink at a bar ahead of seeing Frankenstein at one of my two local 1920s movie theaters.

It’s fun to put in an IT ticket asking for a new keyboard because your current one has started turning the caps lock on and off at a whim, because the text of the ticket itself, a monstrous mishmash of cases, demonstrates the problem. It’s like an onomatopoeia of a JIRA ticket.

Music, to be successful in a street, must be loud before it is beautiful. —Virginia Woolf, “Street Music”

Good morning, friends!

Here’s after a couple of hours of work on Ellington’s “The Single Petal of a Rose,” about 3 of the 5 pages. I’m still reading a lot, as you can see, which limits both rhythm and tone, and the long, descending arpeggios are going to require hours focused solely on them. But I’m enjoying the work.

Still a little jazzed up from Game 7. I can’t imagine what people who had rooting interests must have felt. By my count we hosted friends 23 nights between the opener of the first round on September 30 and Game 7 Saturday night. And we got really good baseball this year for the trouble.

We make ourselves pay for small sins more than large ones. —Nancy Kress, “Trinity”

Good morning, friends!

No task actually kept us here. —John Ashbery, from Flow Chart

You never know when the supply of perfect autumn days is going to run out.

I am genuinely proud that this is the way my entire city seems to be approaching this invasion by masked kidnappers. Document the crimes, document the harms, document the bad actors. Share information. Make it as hard as possible for them to commit these atrocities.

Good morning, friends!

It never felt like the Dodgers had the better chance to win this World Series until the very moment they won it.

We had 15 people at our house watching that incredible game tonight, almost none of whom would have been watching had we not been hosting every October for the past 20+ years. I am so happy I get to share this game I love with them. What a game, what a pair of teams.

Congratulations, Dodgers. See y’all for Opening Day.

Time to bring in Treinen.

This is an incredible game. When Rojas double-clutched, I thought there was no chance. Hero to goat in one inning. But no. Putting winter off at least one more inning.

Holy shit.

Addison Barger looks like a guy who decided his senior year to go out for a play because of a girl and then realized he really liked theater and everybody was like, you’re really good at this, and now in the offseason he goes to see The Play That Goes Wrong on Broadway.

Go get it out of the ocean.

Shouting “Come on, Max!” and realizing I need to be more specific.

Man, Vlad has been a complete player this postseason.

Congratulations to a very good bookstore that has served and adapted with its neighborhood through huge changes over time while keeping its heart. (And their inventory breadth regularly offers pleasant surprises!)

BTW, the reason Kiké Hernandez came up big last night is that a dear old friend from LA, with whom I’ve been texting about Kiké’s exploits as long as he’s had exploits, surprised me by showing up at our door last night in a Kiké Hernandez costume. She had it perfect.

A pumpkin in Uptown

I love how mad this li’l kitten is.

from yesterday's Halloween parade I tried to identify several interesting costumes "Ah, hail Fortunato!" I said to somebody whose head appeared to be bricked in I was met with indifference. The costume was in fact based on something called Minecraft.

Jack-o-lantern spied on Farragut last night.