Quelle nuit!

[For people of the future (as the poet Ted Berrigan called them) wondering what this post is about: it's from the night of the Indiana and North Carolina presidential primaries.]

Mildred Loving (1939-2008)

From this morning's New York Times:

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68. . . .

The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.

On June 12, 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, Mildred Loving issued a public statement, "Loving for All." The final paragraphs:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Read more:

Mildred Loving Dies at 68 (New York Times)
Loving for All, Mildred Loving's 2007 statement (Positive Liberty)

A Mother's Day card with damn on it

When Elaine brought this item to my attention in the card aisle last night, I wondered, "Who would buy a Mother's Day card with damn on it?" And I realized: I would.

There's more to this Mother's Day card than meets the eye — literally. Open it, and you'll hear a "violin" playing "Home, Sweet Home." The music comes from a chip in the card, not from the deep emotion the card stirs in the reader. The card's inner message pays tribute to the kindness and thoughtfulness of the maternal addressee, affirming that she is "special as all hell." And then: "Happy Mother's Day!"

I'm fairly certain that in getting a card with damn on it, I'm getting my mom something that she doesn't already have. My mom does have a fine sense of humor, so I'm also fairly certain that she'll enjoy this card. Hell, I'm sure of it.

The Red Leather Diary

Lily Koppel. The Red Leather Diary. New York. Harper. 2008. $23.95.

As a teenager, Florence Wolfson (now Howitt) kept a Mile Stones Five Year Diary from 1929 to 1934. She began on her birthday, four lines a day: "This is my first entry in this beautiful diary 'cause today I'm fourteen years old!"

The Red Leather Diary is a book of three stories: of Florence Wolfson's early life, of the unlikely events that reunited writer and diary in 2006, and of the poignant encounter between the diarist (who turns 93 later this year) and her younger self. Wolfson grew up in Manhattan, the child of a doctor and dress designer. She skipped three grades, was rejected by Barnard ("Too brilliant and individual"), studied at Hunter, and did an M.A. in English at Columbia. She appears in her diary entries as a young woman of tremendous energy and imagination, intellectually and sexually precocious, devoted to art, literature, and music, loving both men and women:

The museum all day — then Molière and again those damned études — it irritates me to practice them, but I cannot stop — what provoking technique — so tricky.

I went to see "Hedda Gabler" straight from school. It was marvelous.

Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven — I feel like a ripe apricot — I'm dizzy with the exotic.

Nat finally kissed me! It was pretty bad, but he was so utterly delightful about it that I didn't care. He's sweet.

She is so sympathetically identical — Why are not men like her?

Koppel, a New York Times reporter whose doorman retrieved the diary from a dumpster and gave it to her, provides choice bits of detail to put us in touch with the lost New York of Wolfson's youth. Koppel's account of finding Florence Howitt is pure serendipity, involving a typewriter repair shop and an investigative attorney with a collection of vintage phonebooks. And Florence Howitt's encounter with Florence Wolfson involves the reckoning we all must make as our dreams run up against circumstance: "I don't feel like a heroine in my own life," Howitt tells Koppel, "but I have to tell you, I've come to terms with myself."

One reservation: I've quoted the diary entries above as they appear in the book. But here is the third, as seen in the New York Times slideshow about the diary:

Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven & music & Huysmans — I feel like a ripe apricot — I'm dizzy with the exotic

Yes, music is redundant, and Huysmans not a household name, but diary entries don't seem fair game for this kind of editing. Does it run throughout the book?

And if you're wondering — yes, there's already talk of a movie.

The Red Leather Diary (HarperCollins)
Speak, Memory (New York Times article)
Speak, Memory (New York Times slideshow)

Saratoga Bar and Cafe

                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), "A Step Away from Them"

The Saratoga Bar and Cafe is a landmark in downtown Terre Haute, Indiana.

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

I dream of Dempsey

Jack Dempsey dropped by for lunch last night. His visit wasn't and was a surprise: he had awarded scholarships to our children (way to go, children!), so we knew that he was coming to our house, but we didn't know when. I answered the door wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Dempsey wore a white shirt and black suit. We shook hands, and I had one thought: how to turn off the washing machine downstairs without calling attention to the fact that it was running.

And now it's time for breakfast.

Meet Ben Whitehouse

I just discovered that much of the content of my Lifehack post N'allez pas trop vite has been borrowed without attribution by a blogger named Ben Whitehouse, in a post that he too calls N'allez pas trop vite.

ML: I like Marcel Proust’s words: N’allez pas trop vite. Don’t go too fast.

BW: I like Marcel Proust’s words: N’allez pas trop vite. Don’t go too fast.

*

ML: : . . . phone conversations, text-messaging, and iPod management . . .

BW: Phone conversations, iPod management and text messaging . . .

*

ML: It might not be practical to slow down when one has ten minutes to get from one end of a campus to the other. But a college student might benefit in numerous ways from slowing down and looking at and learning about her or his surroundings.

BW: It might not be practical to slow down when one has ten minutes to get from one end of a campus to the other. But a student (and me for that matter) might benefit in numerous ways from slowing down and looking at and learning about our surroundings.

My post went on to describe five ways in which a student might slow down and pay greater attention to the details of a campus. Whitehouse borrows the first three:

ML: 1. Learn about a building, your residence hall perhaps, or a classroom building. How old is it? Who designed it? What style of architecture does it represent? For whom was it named? Did it serve another purpose in the past? What if anything once stood where it was built? A neighborhood? A cornfield?

BW: 1. Learn about a building. For whom was it named? Did it serve another purpose in the past? What if anything once stood where it was built? A neighborhood? A cornfield?

*

ML: 2. Give some attention to the monuments and portraits that most students (and faculty) walk past. Commemorative plaques, presidential portraits, class gifts (sometimes in the form of a fountain or gate), memorials to alumni in military service: all these can help you to recognize that as a college student, you’re a member of a community that spans generations of endeavor.

BW: 2. Give some attention to the monuments and portraits that most students (and faculty) walk past. Commemorative plaques, presidential portraits (this is a tradition that's only just started here) all help connest [sic] you to a community that spans generations of endeavor.

*

ML: 3. Learn some legends. Stories, natural and supernatural, abound on college campuses. Learning some local lore (perhaps through clippings or microfilm in the library) might brighten (or darken!) your experience of campus life.

BW: 3. Learn some legends. Stories, natural and supernatural, abound on college campuses. Learning some local lore might brighten (or darken!) your experience of campus life.

What kind of person borrows someone else's words without attribution to make a blog post? I found a book review by Ben Whitehouse with a brief bio:

Ben Whitehouse works at the Guild of Students at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He has a blog [here]. In his spare time he runs a book group, film club, and finds time to campaign on issues around LGBT rights, local residents rights and he also helps entertaining his three nephews who he loves very much.

Which of course doesn't really answer my question.

Extinction

The language of the slot-machine industry:

There's a term bandied about at the trade shows: "extinction." We need to design for extinction, we need to reduce time-to-extinction, and so on.

What's extinction? That's the moment that the customer — the gambler sitting at the slot machine — runs out of money. The wallet, or credit card, is now "extinct." Mission accomplished.

Read more: The flip side of customer experience (Good Experience).

Cigarettes and similes

David Sedaris, from an account of life with cigarettes:

A light cigarette is like a regular one with a pinhole in it. With Kools, it's the difference between being kicked by a donkey and being kicked by a donkey that has socks on.

Related post
Cigarettes and similes ("Love Is Like a Cigarette")

Scriptos in Times Square

Killer's Kiss (1955), written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, is a great film noir. Running only 67 minutes, it feels like a longer, fuller film, as it's told largely in images: fight posters, dance-hall posters, photographs tucked into the edges of a mirror, a doll tethered to a bed railing, a tiled staircase. Boxer Davy Gordon and dance-hall girl Gloria Price (played by Jamie Smith and Irene Kane) meet, fall in love, and become the targets of jealous dance-hall owner Vincent Rapallo (played by Frank Silvera). There are great scenes of Times Square at night and a brutal fight in a mannequin warehouse.

Above, a still from a Times Square scene with Davy and Gloria. Imagine: an electric sign for Scripto mechanical pencils in Times Square. In 1955, people took their pencils seriously. But even better: the sign has moving parts and becomes, as Davy and Gloria talk, an advertisement for ballpoint pens: 29¢, same price as the pencils.



If you're wondering what the sign on the left is advertising, it's Himberama, "a sleight-of-hand musical revue" under the direction of orchestra leader and magician Richard Himber. Note the changing position of the rabbit: this sign too has moving parts. In another shot, the snappy slogans are readable: "A HARE RAISIN' SHOW," "THE 4D PRODUCTION."

In working out the mysteries of Himberama, I'm indebted to the New York Times obituary for Richard Himber (1966) and two articles from American Speech, John Lotz's "The Suffix '-Rama'" (1954) and the unattributed "Some Popular Components of Trade Names" (1958). The phrase "a sleight-of-hand musical revue" is from the Times. I still don't understand the fourth dimension.

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March 9, 2021: I updated the link for Roger Russell’s Scripto pages, which are now saved at the Internet Archive.

Related post
Is there a pencil in The House ? (on pencils in The House on 92nd Street)