Dowdy. World. Mourns. End. Of. Era. Stop.

In the news:

After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.

On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:

"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."

The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin.

"Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams"

I must admit that my use of telegrams was, well, non-existent. Still, it was nice to know that they were around.

For more on "the dowdy world":

The dowdy world on film
The dowdy world on radio

Clam Clip Dispenser

Stationery-wise (as they might say in Billy Wilder's The Apartment), this gadget is just amazing: slide the dispenser over the pages you want to clip, push the blue piece forward, and a clip clips them. The clips are stainless-steel, reusable, and they load at the back of the dispenser. According to online office supply sites, "The Clam Clip System is a product created with pride by Americans who are blind."

Thanks, Stephen, for such a great gift!

Clam Clip Dispenser, from Office Depot

Ellington for beginners

When I'm buying CDs, I sometimes think how lucky I am to have begun listening to Duke Ellington when I did -- about thirty years ago (though alas I caught on only after his death). Back in the day, a typical Sam Goody's held LPs from all eras of Ellington's career -- from the earliest 1924 recordings to 1940s radio broadcasts (releases overseen by Mel Tormé!) to all manner of concert and studio performances. Best of all was the Integrale series from France, a chronological trek through Ellington's RCA work, with alternate takes no less. The Integrale releases of Ellington's 1940-41 recordings are still my favorite versions -- no CD version I've heard comes close to their sound quality. I can still remember the huge (at the time) dent those LPs made in my teenaged finances.

I'd hate to be approaching Ellington's music as a beginner in 2006. The average "books and music" store offers a real mish-mash, as my dad would call it -- one-off concerts of familiar retreads, unreleased studio recordings (great for me, but not a place to start), and compilations cobbled together to make a cynical buck. A further problem: the major-label reissues of Ellington's older recordings often feature horrific sound quality.

So where does one begin? The Ellington disc in the Ken Burns' Jazz series is a decent sampler, though at least four of its twenty selections are somewhat dubious. And its effort to span most of Ellington's career -- with a little bit of this and a little bit of that -- fails to satisfy. For me, there is one best place to start listening to Duke Ellington: The Great Paris Concert, a double-album released on Atlantic in 1973 and recently re-released on the Collectables label as a 2-CD set with additional material, all of it recorded in concert, in Paris (and elsewhere?), in 1963. The original LPs are among my most-played Ellington recordings.

The 1963 band is one of the best Ellington led. The saxophone section has the classic line-up from Ellington's later years: Harry Carney (on baritone, clarinet, and bass clarinet, and who started with Ellington in 1927), Johnny Hodges (alto, who first came on board in 1928), Russell Procope (another mainstay, on alto and clarinet), Jimmy Hamilton (ditto, on tenor and clarinet), and Paul Gonsalves (then and now a sadly undervalued tenor).The trumpet section features Cootie Williams (who first signed on in 1929), Ray Nance (on cornet and violin, and who took Williams' chair in 1940, when Williams left to join Benny Goodman), Cat Anderson (Ellington's high-note specialist), and Roy Burrowes. Lawrence Brown, Buster Cooper, and Chuck Connors are the trombones, with Brown (who first joined in 1932) another recently re-enlisted veteran. Ernie Shepard is probably the strongest bassist from the Ellington band's later years, and Sam Woodyard is second only to Sonny Greer among Ellington's drummers. The band is inspired, and very well recorded, even down to Ellington's claps and grunted cues and the occasional bits of dialogue between musicians on the bandstand.

The performances collected on these CDs are an excellent sampler of Ellingtonia. There's Ellington's cubist version of stride piano on "Kinda Dukish," which leads into "Rockin' in Rhythm," with Harry Carney reprising his original (1931) clarinet solo. But there's nothing antique about this performance, which swings like mad. Three features for Johnny Hodges follow: "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "The Star-Crossed Lovers" (from the Ellington-Strayhorn Shakespearean suite, Such Sweet Thunder), and "All of Me." Hodges' alto was never more extraordinary than on "The Star-Crossed Lovers," a performance of serene beauty and discipline. "Theme from The Asphalt Jungle," with virtuoso passages for the sax section, closes out what used to be called Side One.

Side Two begins with two features for Cootie Williams, "Concerto for Cootie" (a 1940 classic) and "Tutti for Cootie," Williams making up in ferocity what he's lost in speed. The remainder of the side is an extended composition in four parts, Suite Thursday, inspired by John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday. This live version is a far more exciting performance than the one studio version I've heard. Suite Thursday is held together by an interval of a descending minor sixth (thank you, Elaine), which figures prominently in three of its four parts. Highlights here are "Zweet Zurzday," Ellington-Strayhorn at their most elegant, and "Lay-By," a blues for Ray Nance's violin (Duke exhorts him to "Come on down" as his solo builds in intensity).

Side Three begins with a showpiece version of "Perdido," starting out with a boppish line for the two tenors, followed by "The Eighth Veil," "Rose of the Rio Grande," and "Cop Out" (features for Cat Anderson, Lawrence Brown, and Paul Gonsalves), and "Bula," a latter-day piece of "jungle music," which Ellington describes as a "gutbucket bolero" -- which indeed it is.

And Side Four: "Jam with Sam" gives us Duke calling the roll of his soloists (Paul Gonsalves is said to be from "Newport, Rhode Island," in homage to his tenor solo at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival). It's always fascinating to hear Ellington addressing an audience, full of charm and irony and wit, and never exactly straightforward. "Happy-Go-Lucky Local" follows, a train piece that, appropriated, became the hit "Night Train." And finally, "A Tone Parallel to Harlem," my favorite among Ellington's extended compositions, a series of vivid musical impressions -- Sunday morning churchgoing, a chorus line, a "chic chick" stopping traffic, a funeral, a civil rights protest. This recording of "Harlem" is the best one I know.

The previous CD release of The Great Paris Concert included additional contemporaneous live performances (previously available on a Columbia Special Products Greatest Hits LP), and I'm happy to see that they're still here. Some of the material is fairly pedestrian -- "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me," "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "Pyramid," and "Satin Doll." "Do Nothing" and "The Blues" (from Black, Brown, and Beige), both featuring Milt Grayson, hint at Ellington's idiosyncratic taste in male vocalists. But two of the extra tracks are, simply, great. A long medley of "Black and Tan Fantasy," "Creole Love Call," and "The Mooche" has moments of almost frightening power, and an ending that puts me in mind of The Rite of Spring. It adds the one element that's missing from the rest of The Great Paris Concert -- the late-20s "jungle music" that gave Ellington's early band its signature sound. The other crucial track is "Echoes of Harlem," a Cootie Williams feature from 1936. "Old man now, man -- can't play all them fast numbers -- out of air," Williams says as he steps up to the microphone. With piano, bass, and drums for a backdrop, he delivers a trumpet solo of astonishing intensity and beauty.

That's all of it: many of the greatest Ellington soloists, two extended pieces, and a repertoire that ranges from the late 1920s to 1963. And the excitement of a live recording without "the medley" -- the parade of a dozen or more hits that is the low point of many live Ellington recordings (though a handy device to please audiences and get the requisite hits out of the way). The Great Paris Concert is where I'd start: there's no better way to enter the world of Duke Ellington.

[Update, August 29, 2006: A reader has asked whether I can confirm that the additional performances on the earlier CD release appear on the Collectables reissue. I can't — having discovered, as this reader did, that online track listings don't include them. It's puzzling, because I did check when I wrote this post in January. My best guess is that what I found back then was the track listing from the previous CDs, simply cut-and-pasted into a page for the new ones.

Amazon does though list the previous CD reissue of The Great Paris Concert as still available from various sellers, most with reasonable prices.]

[Update, April 19, 2008: The earlier Great Paris Concert with additional material (on Atlantic UK) is again available from Amazon from the link just above, as a 2-CD set or (save for "A Tone Parallel to Harlem") MP3s. Thanks to Peter Hines for sharing this news in a comment.]

Fayard Nicholas

October 20, 1914 – January 24, 2006

"We were tap-dancers, but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork," Harold Nicholas recalled in a 1987 interview.

Harold, who died in 2000, once likened his older brother's dancing to poetry, saying that he was "talking to you with his hands and feet."

From the New York Times obituary, "Fayard Nicholas, Groundbreaking Hoofer, Dies at 91"

To see the young Nicholas Brothers in motion, click on the link below. And then get hold of the 1943 movie Stormy Weather.

The Maxwell DeMille Productions Screening Room Presents the Nicholas Brothers

Google and censorship

In today's news:

Google Inc. launched a search engine in China on Wednesday that censors material about human rights, Tibet and other topics sensitive to Beijing -- defending the move as a trade-off granting Chinese greater access to other information.

Within minutes of the launch of the new site bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government Web sites.

Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results.

In most such cases, only official Chinese government sites or those with a ".cn" suffix were included.

Google, which has as its motto "Don't Be Evil," says the new site aims to make its search engine more accessible in China, thereby expanding access to information.

Yet the move has already been criticized by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which also has chided Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime.

"When a search engine collaborates with the government like this, it makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control what is being said on the Internet," said Julien Pain, head of the group's Internet desk.

Curious, I typed in "dalai lama" this morning. With google.com, there are three news results -- links to articles from the Hindustan Times, Jerusalem Post, and Washington Post. The first site listed is the official site of the Government of Tibet in Exile. Google returns 5,070,000 results for "dalai lama."

With google.cn, there are no news results. The first site listed is a page from the China Internet Information Center. A sample of the propaganda to be found therein:

Donning the cloak of "religious leader'', he travelled around to spread rumors to mislead international opinion. Out of their own need, some in the West hailed him as the deity and lauded him as "the peace envoy'' and "human rights fighter''. However, it is this ex-leader of Tibetan Buddhism who, discarding the tradition of his predecessors of loving the motherland to trample on religious doctrines, hoodwink the religious sentiments of Tibetan Buddhists, organize an illegal government-in-exile, trumpet "Tibetan independence'' to split the motherland, and undermine internal unity and rules of Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, he has gone far to betray the motherland and the Tibetan people.

Clear enough? Unless I'm missing something crucial in Chinese characters, Google.cn returns a mere 17,100 results for "dalai lama."

Interestingly, if one types "tibet.com" into Google.cn, a working link to the Government of Tibet in Exile results. And typing "tibet.org" returns a working link to Tibet Online. Whether someone in China would find these links working, I don't know. Perhaps Google still needs to get the kinks out of its censorship algorithms to really keep these sites from Chinese computer users.

Shame on you, Google.

Link: Google agrees to censor results in China (from the Associated Press)

A related post: "Human rights" and other four-letter words

A correction

From the Corrections page in today's New York Times:

A film review in Weekend on Friday about "Le Pont des Arts" misspelled a word in the title of a Monteverdi madrigal that a character sings on a recording. It is "Lamento della ninfa," not "ninja."

Pope's shield

For my 2601 students:

From the British Library, an extract from Alexander Pope's draft translation of the Iliad, with Pope's sketch of Achilles' shield. The Library's Online Gallery is a great site to get lost in.

Pope's draft

The British Library's Online Gallery

Modernism and the "Orient"

For my 3703 students:

"Petals on a wet black bough": American Modernist Writers and the Orient, from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University

If you click on the page for Harriet Monroe and the "Imagists", you'll see "In a Station of the Metro" as it appeared in Poetry in 1913.

Cheating redefined

Appearing in the wake of recent news reports about the declining literacy and numeracy of college graduates, an article from Saturday's Wall Street Journal makes interesting reading. Here's an excerpt:

Twas a situation every middle-schooler dreads. Bonnie Pitzer was cruising through a vocabulary test until she hit the word "desolated" -- and drew a blank. But instead of panicking, she quietly searched the Internet for the definition.

At most schools, looking up test answers online would be considered cheating. But at Mill Creek Middle School in Kent, Wash., some teachers now encourage such tactics. "We can do basically anything on our computers," says the 13-year-old, who took home an A on the test.

In a wireless age where kids can access the Internet's vast store of information from their cellphones and PDAs, schools have been wrestling with how to stem the tide of high-tech cheating. Now, some educators say they have the answer: Change the rules and make it legal. In doing so, they're permitting all kinds of behavior that had been considered off-limits just a few years ago.

The move, which includes some of the country's top institutions, reflects a broader debate about what skills are necessary in today's world -- and how schools should teach them. The real-world strengths of intelligent surfing and analysis, some educators argue, are now just as important as rote memorization.

The old rules still reign in most places, but an increasing number of schools are adjusting them. This includes not only letting kids use the Internet during tests, but in the most extreme cases, allowing them to text message notes or beam each other definitions on vocabulary drills. Schools say they in no way consider this cheating because they're explicitly changing the rules to allow it.

In Ohio, students at Cincinnati Country Day can take their laptops into some tests and search online Cliffs Notes. At Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, Calif., seventh-graders are looking at each other's hand-held computers to get answers on their science drills. And in San Diego, high-schoolers can roam free on the Internet during English exams.

The same logic is being applied even when laptops aren't in the classroom. In Philadelphia, school officials are considering letting kids retake tests, even if it gives them an opportunity to go home and Google topics they saw on the first test. "What we've got to teach kids are the tools to access that information," says Gregory Thornton, the school district's chief academic officer. " 'Cheating' is not the word anymore."

I would suggest that "cheating" is indeed the word, and that "educators" like Mr. Thornton are cheating students in several ways: by cheapening the dignity and value of study (why bother when you can look it up during the test?) and by giving the false impression that learning is not a matter of knowledge and understanding but a matter of "accessing" "information."

This article follows up on Bonnie Pitzer's vocabulary test:

In Bonnie Pitzer's case, teacher Becky Keene says using the Internet helped the seventh-grader, but in the end, she aced the test because she demonstrated she could also use the word in a sentence. "I want the kids to be able to apply the meaning, not to be able to memorize it," says Ms. Keene.

I have several questions for Ms. Keene:

-- Aren't we better capable of understanding and applying meanings of words when we know them?

-- Won't your students encounter many situations in life in which they'll need to know what words mean without looking them up? Imagine one of your students interviewing for a job, no computer available: what happens then?

-- Doesn't someone who knows the words in a sentence have an advantage over someone who has to look them up? (E.D. Hirsch makes that point very clearly in Cultural Literacy -- that constantly having to look things up leads to a breakdown in comprehension.)

-- What makes you so sure that your student didn't find her sample sentence itself online? And if she did, what would be wrong with that? Why is making up an original sentence necessary? Wouldn't finding an appropriate sentence also be evidence of being able to apply the meaning of the word?

In the pre-Internet world, education theorists dismissed the value of memorization because one could look up everything in books. Now, it's the Internet: "It has everything," as someone says in the film Broken Flowers. But if education theorists and Ms. Keene were correct, I'd be a master of Greek and Latin and several other languages that I don't know.

"Legalized 'cheating'" (Wall Street Journal, subscription required)

"Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks" (from CNN)

Makeover

There's nothing funner than being a nervous wreck trying to figure out how to modify a template to make things look the way I'd like them to look. I chose Douglas Bowman's Rounders template to get away from the "blanker whiteness" (to quote Robert Frost) that not so long ago I found appealing. The new style is less "orangey" but easier on "the" eyes, or at least my eyes. Reader, I hope you like it too.