“The power of good penmanship”
From Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer.
Orange Crate Art
Seltzer
The New York Times visits the last seltzer works in New York City.
A coal-hole cover
From Ephemeral New York, the story behind one coal-hole cover.
School Trip grandparents
I think they’re drawn to look unmistakably like Logan Roy and Gerri Kellman of Succession. Am I right?
A new book from Jerry Craft
Drew: “You know, never really see kids like us traveling in books and movies.” Maury: “I wonder why that is.” Jordan: “Hmmm . . .”
Mother’s Day
My mom, not yet a mom, 1954.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Soft hail.”
Einstein Plumbing
“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler.”
.mov and .zip
Google has created eight new top-level domains, including .mov and .zip. Imagine the hilarity when someone clicks to open what appears to be a .mov or .zip file and gets taken to a sketchy website. Taken, indeed.
Recently updated
The Honeymooners: Van Dyke Parks played Tommy Borden, not Tommy Manicotti.
Lollygagging
Beetle Bailey looks up a word.
Portuguese canned fish
A website: Portuguese Canning Industry Digital Museum.
Writing materials
Dolly Parton, writing with whatever she has at hand.
Chris Strachwitz (1931–2023)
Founder of Arhoolie Records. A different kind of record executive.
Legacy
We don’t use the word “illicit”, the host was told. The word is “legacy.”
Still obvious after all these years
I, an academic?
“We too have our stories”
From “The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon.”
Vertigo, up or down
From The Washington Post: “Vertigo is still the best movie ever. Or the worst movie ever. Discuss.” The writer, Ty Burr, leans toward “still the best.” I think so too — it’s been my favorite movie for many years. Dream, need, obsession, sheer weirdness: what’s not to like?
Reading in NYC schools
“Over the next two years, the city’s 32 local school districts will adopt one of three curriculums selected by their superintendents. The curriculums use evidence-supported practices, including phonics — which teaches children how to decode letter sounds — and avoid strategies many reading experts say are flawed, like teaching children to use picture clues to guess words.” Right on.
Benny would not be amused
“Duke Ellington, known as the ‘King of Swing,’ was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century.” A human intelligence failure? Or is that AI at work?
Heather Cox Richardson on the Second Amendment
“The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.”
Money and gossip
“You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s . . . they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip.” For me, that observation sums up Succession.
La casa dei Roventini
Johnny Roventini lived here. Down the block, I was an infant.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
"Shortened studies."
Medieval Nancy
Geo-B spotted Nancy in today’s Hagar.
A Gershwin and a Mongol
George, composing.
Look to the tip
Making my Apple Pencil work.
Foot and feet
Five-foot shelf, two-feet Sluggo.
MSNBC, sheesh
“As Ryan enunciated . . . .”
How to improve writing (no. 110)
It never fails: or, rather, it always fails. I look at Talking Points Memo and I end up tinkering with one or more sentences from Josh Marshall.