Walking in the twilight zone

Elaine and I drove out to take a walk in the woods around a lake on Monday. We entered the woods after walking a long stretch of pavement that runs alongside the lake. A complete circuit around the lake is about five miles. Think of the woods as a box, five miles in length, with a way in or out at each end.

Walking on the pavement, toward the woods, we saw a young woman walking toward us, from the woods. She wore glasses, pink headphones, and a branded sweatshirt. We walked about a mile and a half into the woods before turning around to head back to the pavement and our car. And on our way out of the woods, we saw her again, walking toward us — glasses, pink headphones, and a branded sweatshirt. Why was she walking back into the woods? Had she lost something on her walk? Who knows.

Driving back into town, we saw her again, walking on a sidewalk. We were now about two and a half miles from the lake. She had not passed us on our way out of the woods.

[A true story.]

Veterans Day

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918 at 11:00 a.m. Paris time. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations, Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. In the United States, Armistice Day is now Veterans Day.

In 1926 Armistice Day fell on a Thursday. In New York City, a two-minute period of silence began at 11:00 a.m.

[“Whole City Pauses on Armistice Day.” The New York Times, November 12, 1926.]

Climbing a hill to see the world

Sarah Orne Jewett, A Marsh Island . 1885. (Los Angeles: Smith & Taylor, 2026).

The book’s front matter calls A Marsh Island “the first American gay novel,” but that’s a bit of a reach. It’s certainly a novel about an other, a city-dwelling painter named Dick Dale who injures an already bum ankle and finds himself laid up in coastal Massachusetts among fishermen and salt-hay farmers. Jewett is stronger on description than dialogue. The passage above is especially striking. As someone says in a conversation appended to the novel, Jewett is “such a better painter” than Dick Dale.

Related reading
A handful of Sarah Orne Jewett posts

An Inside Higher Ed AI roundup

The first installment of what will be a monthly feature from Inside Higher Ed : “New in AI.”

Related reading
All OCA AI posts (Pinboard)

“I Have a Dream” draft

From The New York Times (gift link), news of a handwritten draft of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech:

King’s draft had long been assumed to have been discarded. But more than six decades later, it has surfaced from a desk drawer of a former aide, Edward T. Clayton, and will be auctioned at Christie’s in January.

The auction house said it expected the document — the only handwritten final draft of the speech known to survive — to fetch more than $10 million. The proceeds will benefit the King Center in Atlanta and other philanthropic causes chosen by the consignor, the aide’s widow, Xernona Clayton.

Spread across a table at Christie’s offices in Manhattan last month, the document looked unassuming — just seven pages filled with blue ink and the rusted ghost of a paper clip in the upper left corner. But the $10 million-plus price, if reached, would put it in a stratosphere associated with rare copies of the nation’s founding documents.

Peter Klarnet, Christie’s manuscript specialist, said that when he first saw it, his jaw hit the table.

“This is the most important manuscript I’ve ever had the honor to handle,” he said. “I can’t imagine anything better.” He paused, before adding: “That I wouldn’t have to steal out of the National Archives.”

Drafts are tremendously useful for anyone teaching a course in writing: evidence that writing doesn’t just, as they say, “flow.” The page and partial page visible in the Times article would make useful exhibits for their sheer volume of crossouts.

As the Times notes, the draft does not contain the words “I have a dream.” Everyone should know the role Mahalia Jackson played in getting that part of the speech spoken.

“The Moon Is Low”

“The Moon Is Low” (music by Nacio Herb Brown, lyrics by Arthur Freed) debuted in Montana Moon (dir. Malcolm St. Clair, 1930), a pre-Code western starring Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown. You can hear an instrumental version over the opening credits. Brown sings at bit, as does Crawford. Later in the movie there’s a full chorus from Cliff Edwards (aka Ukulele Ike, aka the voice of Jiminy Cricket). If you want more, here’s a 1930 version by a Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra, complete with the verse.

And now for something completely different: a 1940 recording by Fats Waller and His Rhythm: Gene Sedric, tenor; John Hamilton, trumpet; John Smith, guitar; Cedric Wallace, bass; Slick Jones, drums. As I make my way through Waller’s complete recordings (twenty-five CDs, JSP Records), this number jumped out as exceptional: it’s an instrumental; tenor and trumpet get two choruses apiece, and it’s hotter than hot. From Drew Kent’s liner notes:

One often remarks at Fats’ willingness to tackle the mediocre, but his sidemen were just as creditworthy. “The Moon Is Low” is dealt with so briskly and expertly by the band that any negative impressions are dispelled.

And how.

Related reading
All OCA Fats Waller posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Waller Razaf Costello & Batiste: One video disappeared; another takes its place.

Enter the cobbler

[108-13 and 108-17 Atlantic Avenue, Richmond Hill, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

Just a small moment from a day in Queens.

Drop the -ing , and Electric Shoe Repair, like Electric Soup Kitchen, sounds (to me anyway) like the name of a short-lived rock group. Let’s title their one album Lace . O’Sullivan is a name with a stronger basis in reality. Humphrey O’Sullivan, a Massachusetts printer who tired of long hours on his feet, invented the rubber heel.

You’ll have to click for a much larger view to have any idea of what I’m writing about.

A gas station would later occupy this corner. Then nothing. Then a laundromat. The empty corner space is now a parking area.



Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Two Millers

“If it wasn't for President Trump, the United States of America would not exist right now”: Stephen Miller, speaking at Mar-a-Lago yesterday.

Tim Miller, in conversation with Nicolle Wallace: “They’re his two favorite words in the last month, ass and caulk .”

Elaine said the other day that we need to begin speaking in terms of Earth Three. Things around the current occupant are too weird for Earth Two.

*

And now, having written this post, I am reading that the current occupant says that he has offered the job of press secretary to Dana White, CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

A postmaster on the job

Or off the job: “He’d arrive late, leave early, play bridge, and work on his fiction — all while losing mail or simply throwing it away”: William Faulkner, postmaster.

Related reading
All OCA Faulkner posts (Pinboard)