“Earl was to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball”: Porter Wagoner, quoted in the New York Times obituary for Earl Scruggs, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-eight.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Adrienne Rich (1929–2012)
The New York Times reports that the poet Adrienne Rich died yesterday at the age of eighty-two. From the poem “Seven Skins”:
What a girl I was then what a body
ready for breaking open like a lobster
what a little provincial village
what a hermit crab seeking nobler shells
what a beach of rattling stones what an offshore
raincloud
what a gone-and-come tidepool
what a look into eternity I took and did not return it
From Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995–1998 (1999).
Regency-era slang
Having just typed eh wot? in a comment, I felt compelled to look and learn a little more, and found Simone Smith’s short guide to Regency-era slang.
Jeffrey Toobin on the ACA
Jeffrey Toobin’s March 26 New Yorker comment offers a clear exposition of the arguments concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Duke Ellington, Blackwing
Johnson’s Baby Powder user
Not a Blackwing pencil in sight, but this dressing-room scene is rich in detail. Notice the Johnson’s Baby Powder: another item that no doubt helped Ellington to create “timeless works of art.”
The context for this post, as explained in an earlier post: a pencil company’s choice to market its merchandise by using the Ellington name. The Blackwing is a celebrated pencil that California Cedar has recreated in replica form. The company’s choice to associate Ellington with its merchandise rests on a single photograph of Ellington with a Blackwing (the real thing, not the replica) that I posted on Orange Crate Art late last year.
We now have one photograph of Duke Ellington with Johnson’s Baby Powder, one photograph of Ellington wearing a sombrero, one photograph of Ellington playing a balalaika, and one photograph of Ellington writing with a Blackwing pencil. These single photographs do not support the conclusion that Ellington had any particular attachment to Johnson’s Baby Powder, sombreros, balalaikas, or Blackwings. In the absence of evidence of such attachment, capitalizing (pun intended) on the Ellington name seems to me a cynical way to sell pencils (or the other stuff).
California Cedar has removed Frank Lloyd Wright’s name from its marketing materials. It should remove Duke Ellington’s name as well.
March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.
Related posts
Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)
[Some Ellington preferences: Beaujolais, Coca-Cola with extra sugar, coffee with lemon, hot water, Pall Mall cigarettes. These preferences are well documented.]
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Duke Ellington,
Blackwing sombrero user
The Ellington orchestra toured Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico in 1968. The album Latin American Suite followed in 1972. It stands to reason [crosses fingers] that a sombrero must have inspired the music therein. My claim rests on this one photograph, which appears in Derek Jewell’s Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977).
Thus far: one photograph of Duke Ellington wearing a sombrero, one photograph of Ellington playing a balalaika, and one photograph of Ellington writing with a Blackwing pencil. “The state of facts and evidence” does not support the conclusion that Ellington had any particular attachment to sombreros, balalaikas, or Blackwing pencils. A pencil manufacturer’s association of the Ellington name with its replica version of the Blackwing pencil is a matter of very wishful thinking. Some might call such marketing cynical and misleading.
Why do I care? The balalaika post explains.
March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.
Related posts
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)
[“Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”: John Adams,
Monday, March 26, 2012
Duke Ellington,
Blackwing balalaika user
Look: it’s Duke Ellington, and he’s playing a balalaika. Can we leap to the conclusion that this instrument helped him create “timeless works of art”? Sure we can. Can you prove that it didn’t happen?
If you’re tuning in late, the context for this post is a pencil company’s choice to market its merchandise by using the Ellington name. The Blackwing is a celebrated pencil that California Cedar has recreated in replica form. The company’s choice to associate Ellington with its merchandise rests on exactly one photograph of Ellington with a Blackwing (the real thing, not the replica) that I posted late last year.
Why I care: I’ve been listening to Duke Ellington for about thirty-six years, and I don’t like seeing his name used in a tacky commercial ploy. And I think that facts ought to remain stubborn things. John Adams, as quoted in David McCullough’s 2001 biography: “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The state of facts and evidence — a single photograph — does not support the conclusion that Duke Ellington had any particular attachment to the Blackwing pencil.
And if you’ve decided that you should really listen to some Ellington music, this post suggests the best place to start.
March 29: I’m happy to report that Duke Ellington’s name no longer appears on the Blackwing Experience page. Thanks to Gunther and Sean for passing on the news.
Related posts
Duke Ellington,
Duke Ellington,
All Blackwing posts (via Pinboard)
All Duke Ellington posts (via Pinboard)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Tonight's Mad Men
[No spoilers here.]
Tonight’s Mad Men (the first episode of the show’s fifth season) was to my mind dreary and disappointing. I started watching Mad Men in its second season and grew disenchanted when Frank O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky,” which figured so importantly in that season’s first episode, turned out to be a MacGuffin, playing no significant role in the season’s story line, not even in its final episode, though that episode was named after O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency (1957), the book that includes “Mayakovsky.” Oh well. I came back in season four and found the show more engaging.
Tonight’s episode though was another matter. Watching Mad Men is not like watching a television show set in the 1960s; it’s like watching a television show that has been made to appear to be set in the 1960s. The markers of “the time” are so unartfully contrived: A protest scene equals “Negroes, priests, and cops.” A discussion of advertising for Heinz Beans includes a suggestion that an ad be pitched to college students “sitting in.” A journalist introduces himself by explaining that he writes for “underground papers, mostly.” Someone even speaks of smoking “tea.” Yes, something is happening here, and you do know what it is, don’t you, Mr. Jones, and you keep making sure that we know that you know too.
What most disappointed me in tonight’s episode though was the plodding, uninspired dialogue. My new experiment in watching Mad Men is to imagine that I’m reading its dialogue as subtitles, a trick that makes the show both more and less interesting. To modify a line from an old commercial: Try it. You might like it.
[With apologies to Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” and Alka-Seltzer.]
Friday, March 23, 2012
The Snatchel Project
“If they have their own, they can leave ours alone!” The Snatchel Project. Possibly NSFW.
[Thanks, Elaine and Carrie.]
“I think about my own kids”
President Obama has commented on the killing of Trayvon Martin: “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.” Same here.
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