From the Corrections page in today’s New York Times:
The Political Times column on Wednesday, about the role of ethnic identity in politics, misstated the subject of an ethnic joke that the biographer Lou Cannon said Ronald Reagan frequently regaled crowds with while campaigning. The joke, which most likely would destroy a promising candidacy today, centered on a monkey and an organ grinder — not Polish and Italian participants at a cockfight.Related reading
[Image from the Library of Congress.]
Looks kinda Warholian, no?
Hyperspectral Imaging by Library of Congress Reveals Change Made by Thomas Jefferson in Original Declaration of Independence Draft (Library of Congress)
[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]
This dowdy mug (distressed by design) is a gift from my son. For use in and out of “the dowdy world.” Thanks, Ben!
Related reading
All “dowdy world” posts (via Pinboard)
Dowdy cup and saucer
From Lady Killer (1933) (Another dowdy beverage receptacle)
From This American Life, a New Hampshire story: “House on Loon Lake.” It is as described, “a real-life Hardy Boys mystery.” Listen online, or download for 99¢.
(Thanks, Rachel!)
Elaine Fine found this postcard in a library book. Paul Drake is busy on a case with Perry Mason, so Elaine asked me to investigate.
The Old Trading Post was the work of Janet and Paul Rothenburger. The earliest reference to the Post that I can find is in a 1945 issue of Publishers Weekly. An item about the bookstore appears in the April 15 and July 15, 1950 issues of Billboard, in the unsigned columns “Dealer Doings” and “Merchandising Ideas Increase Disk Sales.” So the Post sold both books and records:
In the 1950s, the bookstore ran small classifieds in the New York Times. From April 1, 1951:
In 1967, the American Book Trade Directory (New York: R.R. Bowker), lists Janet Rothenburger as the sole proprietor. The Social Security Death Index lists a Paul Rothenburger, 1900–1967, with Lisbon, New Hampshire as his last residence. The last reference to an active store that I’ve found is from 1968, a listing in Book Dealers in North America (London: Sheppard Press, 1968). No SSDI record for Janet Rothenburger.
The Old Trading Post closed in 1968. A 1970 New York Times article on rural bookstores explains in passing the Post’s passing, in an account of Donald and Georgene Wattses’ Coventry Bookstore, which opened in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1968:
[Lewis Nichols, “Speaking of Books: Rural Byways to Bookshops.” New York Times, October 4, 1970.]
No sign of the Coventry Bookstore anywhere. That’s a case for Paul Drake.
[Sources: Google Books, the New York Times archive, the Social Security Death Index.]
A related post
Invitation to a dance (An old invitation, investigated)
From Joya Sherrill’s children’s television show Time for Joya, WPIX, New York, 1970. Sherrill has just introduced her “very first boss”:
Joya Sherrill: Duke, I tell you, I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that you got up this early to come and be on Time for Joya.A related post
Duke Ellington: Well, eight o’clock in the morning, one never gets up. One only stays up.
The news comes this morning from Chris Albertson’s Stomp Off in C that the singer Joya Sherrill has died. She sang with Duke Ellington in the 1940s (and again in 1957 and 1963), starting in July 1942, with her mother as chaperone:
“I opened in Chicago at the College Inn in the Hotel Sherman, July of 1942. Ivie Anderson, I shall never forget, was still with the band. You called me to sing ‘Mood Indigo’ (it was Ivie’s song), and she pulled me back before I walked out to sing, and said, ‘Sing it good, or I’ll come behind you and sing it too!’ I was terrified, but determined to do a good job.”Here, from 1943, is a sample of Sherrill’s work with Ellington: “The Blues,” from Black, Brown and Beige.
Quoted in Duke Ellington’s Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
Type in your location and better understand the size of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill: If It Was My Home.
Here in the American midwest, the spill would stretch from west of St. Louis to east of Indianapolis.
(Yes, if it were my home is right, as the site’s maker Andy Lintner acknowledges in the FAQ.)
[Click for a larger view.]
Of all the items in the Museum of Supplies, this one might be the oldest. It’s a carpenter’s rule that belonged to my grandfather. As I remember it, the young people were allowed to take something from the basement when my grandparents sold their house. This item was my choice, probably because I had never seen anything like it.
It’s a Stanley double-folding carpenter’s rule, unfolding to twenty-four inches, made of boxwood and brass. The ruler is marked in eighths of an inch on the outside surfaces, sixteenths on the inside. Note that the inches are numbered from right to left. That convention of American ruler-making apparently disappeared in the 1940s. How did it get started? One collector suggests that it was a matter of “simple perversity,” as British manufacturers marked from left to right. One tiny alignment pin, just visible to the right of the 17, helps keep the halves together when folded. Descriptions of these rulers mention up to three pins. This ruler was made with only one. It is a tribute to the manufacturer’s art that after seventy or eighty or ninety years, the halves of the ruler hold together as if magnetized.
Reading about rulers got me looking closely enough to realize that the manufacturer’s name is legible, barely, to the right of the 10. And there’s a model number to the right of the 9: № 32½, I think. That number was indeed a Stanley model number. I like thinking about a world in which model numbers involved fractions, the world in which my grandfather used this ruler.
[“Stanley” and “№ 32½.”]
[This post is the eighth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photographs by Michael Leddy.]
Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Just a couple of weeks ago, Mike Love was talking up a Beach Boys reunion with Brian Wilson:
“We began in the fall of 1961, and our first tour was in 1962, and it’s been nonstop since then. Now we’re gearing up for the 50th anniversary, and Brian Wilson, who has been working on some unfinished Gershwin music project, will rejoin us.”Now Love has retracted that claim, with the usual Lovely arrogance: “At this time there are no plans for my cousin Brian to rejoin the tour.”
