Hot water and the Great Depression

It was widely reported today that the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston, Maine, has begun publishing a daily money-saving tip on its front page. The paper promises a refund to any subscriber who doesn't save at least twice the cost of a subscription.

Reading this news item made me recall reading (somewhere) about the Depression-era practice of placing a bowl of water over a stove-top pilot light at night. In the morning: hot water for shaving.

Reader, do you know of other Depression-era practices that will still work in the 21st century?

Mmmm . . . starches

From a newspaper advertisement pitching a Valentine's Day menu:

So romantic! But I hope the diners don't get sand in their food.

Telephone exchange names on screen

[From The Public Enemy, dir. William Wellman, 1931.]

This exchange name is soon to vanish from the screen, as the doors are flung open and floral cargo tossed into the street to make room for cases of liquor. Why? Prohibition begins at midnight.

The Public Enemy is a great film, with far more than its famous grapefruit-in-face scene. The final moments, with Tom Powers (James Cagney) at the door as a record plays "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," shock even with repeated viewings. I wonder how audiences reacted in 1931. (The New York Times archive has, alas, no review.)

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
Baby Face
Born Yesterday
Deception
The Man Who Cheated Himself
Nightmare Alley

Casinos, museums, and parks

What do museums and parks have in common with casinos? They are among the items in a series in Senator Tom Coburn's (R-OK) proposed Amendment No. 175 to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan (aka the "stimulus package"):

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas.

Senator Coburn may have had a traumatic experience or two involving zero-gravity chairs and saunas, but that's no reason to remove culture from the proposed legislation.

If you agree, here's a way to let your senators know:

Vote NO on the Coburn "Limitation on Funds Amendment No. 175" (American Arts Alliance)

(via Musical Assumptions)

Goodbye, Pages for All Ages

A bookstore's closing is reason for a special sort of sadness, as it's nearly certain that no other bookstore will be coming along to take its place. My family began buying books at Pages for All Ages in 1988, the year the store opened. Pages was for many years the bookstore in our corner of the world. My children spent hours in the children's section, which featured a nifty nook for reading and play. The kid-sized stools had legs that looked like giant pencils.

Along came Borders. Along came Barnes & Noble. (Or vice versa.) Pages moved to a new location and added CDs and coffee. And DVDs. The owner of a recently closed record store came on as the music manager, and the CD selections became a marvel of discernment. (Thank you, Morgan Usadel, for bringing so many good jazz recordings to central Illinois.)

In recent years (post-Amazon), the inventory — of all sorts — began to dwindle. Books that you'd think would be there weren't there. The CD shelves grew emptier, then empty. I'd go in and end up buying something, anything, to do my bit. I noticed last year that the store was not stocking 2009 planners — that seemed like a bad sign.

On my last visit to Pages, in late December, I was looking for a copy of Charles Dickens's Bleak House. No soap. When my daughter and I drove to Pages last week, the store was dark, and a sign on the front door announced a closing for inventory. That closing is now permanent, as the evening news just announced.

Goodbye, Pages.

Pages for All Ages a victim of recession (The News-Gazette)

Domestic comedy

"I'm so glad that you're not a fraud."

"Thank you."

Related reading
All "domestic comedy" posts

One doctor's bag

I wondered a while ago about the likely contents of the doctor's bag I remember from the housecalls of my childhood. The Life photo archive offers what might be the best answer I'll ever find.


[Photograph by W. Eugene Smith, 1948.]

Smith took this photograph while working on what became the September 20, 1948 Life feature "Country Doctor," a look at the daily routine of Dr. Ernest Ceriani, of Kremmling, Colorado. I'd like to know what someone in medicine might find interesting in the details of the full-size photograph.

[T., any thoughts?]

Joe Ades

Watch the late Joe Ades in action and try to imagine resisting his sales pitch.

RIP, Joe Ades (kottke.org)

[The peeler is now available from Amazon.]

Review: Leave Me Alone!

[Harvey Pekar and Harvey Pekar.]

Leave Me Alone! A Jazz Opera in Two Acts
Streamed live from Oberlin College, January 31, 2009

Leave Me Alone! seems to me to add up to less than the sum of its parts, the parts being Harvey Pekar's libretto and Dan Plonsey's music (with additional words by the principals' spouses, Mantra Ben-ya'akova Plonsey and Joyce Brabner, and additional music by Josh Smith). Pekar's stated intention, to create an opera about the fate of the avant-garde and "the problems faced by turn of the 21st century artists in general," feels unrealized in performance: what I saw and heard on my laptop (in what appears to have been the opera's sole planned performance) is less an inquiry into artistic production and reception and more an examination of problems in the lives of Harvey Pekar and Dan Plonsey: day jobs, domestic quarrels over chores, opossums in the basement. The opera's final moments enact a squabble between the Plonseys over ibuprofen dosage. Earlier, a recorded telephone conversation between Pekar and Robert Crumb lets us hear Crumb's skepticism about whether the opera-in-progress is going to work. "A buck is a buck, man," says Pekar, who spends most of his time on stage sitting on a couch reading.

The four-singer cast works gamely, with movement and masks adding interest here and there. But the libretto — e.g., "Music is against system, even when employing systematic elements" — often leaves little room for expressive singing.

Bright moments: Dan Plonsey's music, with deep influences from Charles Mingus and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; Joyce Brabner's monologue, offering another perspective on the Pekar-Brabner household; and the work of the instrumentalists, particularly the tenor saxophonist, who contributed a volcanic, voluminous opening solo. (Was it Josh Smith? The credits are vague.)

[Corrections: Co-Musical Director Daniel Michalak notes that Dan Plonsey played the opening solo. (I wish I'd been able to see that!) And there were five singers in all.]

Leave Me Alone! (Real Time Opera)
Dan Plonsey (composer's site)

Related reading
All Harvey Pekar posts

Erica, Erika

The New York Times Corrections column makes for unpredictably enjoyable reading:

An article on Jan. 11 about the television show United States of Tara, whose protagonist has dissociative identity disorder (once known as multiple personality disorder), misidentified a soap opera character who has the illness and the actress who portrays her. Viki Lord Davidson, a character on ABC's One Life to Live played by Erika Slezak, has the disorder — not Erica Kane, a character on ABC's All My Children portrayed by Susan Lucci.

The Four (at Least) Faces of Tara (New York Times)

My friend Stefan Hagemann caught this mistake last month. Stefan, feel vindicated!

[The Times correction links to the wrong article; I've linked to the right one above.]