Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 29, 2022

Acceptance, otherwise known as the last of the five stages of grief.

But that crammed week will make for a great ‘what I did during summer vacation’ essay . . . that is, if English/writing teachers still assign those.

Not as much fun as you’d hope.

School started in my area today.

Impossible.

Where do they live? In upper Illinois, the schools opened Aug 17. This is the start of the second full week of school.

Weirdly enough, “grace under pressure” actually was a pgrase from Hemingway, just as all those stupid quote websites and blog posts, who would rather get it wrong by stuffing words into the mouths of random celebrities than take a couple of minutes trouble to get ot right, would have it.

-start quote-Hemingway first said the words “grace under pressure” in a letter he sent F. Scott Fitzgerald from Paris. Here’s the relevant paragraph from that 20 April 1926 letter:

It makes no difference your telling G[erald] Murphy about bull fighting statement except will be careful about making such statements. Was not referring to guts but to something else. Grace under pressure. Guts never made any money or anybody except violin string manufacturers.*

Dorothy Parker got those words into print in her New Yorker profile of Hemingway:

That brings me to the point which I have been trying to reach all this time: Ernest Hemingway’s definition of courage. Mr. Hemingway did not use the term ‘courage.’ Ever the euphemist, he referred to the quality as ‘guts,’ and he was attributing its possession to an absent friend.

“Now just a minute,” somebody said, for it was one of those argumentative evenings. “Listen. Look here a minute. Exactly what do you mean by ‘guts’?”

“I mean,” Ernest Hemingway said, “grace under pressure.”

Carlos Baker (ed.), Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981), pp. 199-201.

Baker’s footnote to that paragraph says:

The origin of the famous phrase, later given currency in Dorothy Parker’s profile of EH, “The Artist’s Reward,” New Yorker 5 (30 November 1929): 28-31.- end quote -

A summer not wasted is a summer wasted.

The cartoonist lives in Michigan, I think. They don’t start school until after Labor Day, I believe.

It’s amazing how many people I see here and on JumpStart going “kids around here are back in school; how come the ones in the comic aren’t?” Can you point out to me what state or federal statute says that comics have to 100% follow real-life schedules?

WAIT, WAIT! We can’t send the “kids” back to school, yet – Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis haven’t finished “deconstructing” them!

Relaxing under duress is peace.

the artist is dating themself. school hasn’t opened after labor day since the 70’s

Schools that open after Labor Day:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=What+schools+open+after+labor+day&cvid=48a0df5c3bef4208bf8f7b57b7cd013f&aqs=edge..69i57.13493j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=DCTS#&sl=en

Have you worn your flipflops? Not every school allows them?

For several household budgets in the last decade or two, many people’s vacations have been staycations.