Stoic-colored glasses

We normally characterize an optimist as someone who sees his glass as being half full rather than half empty. For a Stoic, though, this degree of optimism would only be a starting point. After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen. And if he is atop his Stoic game, he might go on to comment about what an astonishing thing glass vessels are: They are cheap and fairly durable, impart no taste to what we put in them, and — miracle of miracles! — allow us to see what they contain. This might sound a bit silly, but to someone who has not lost his capacity for joy, the world is a wonderful place. To such a person, glasses are amazing: to everyone else, a glass is just a glass, and it is half empty to boot.

William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

A terrific book. Reading it, I realize that for years now I’ve been thinking (at least sometimes) along Stoic lines.

Related reading
I can’t get no satisfaction (Another excerpt)
William B. Irvine’s website

Domestic comedy

“I saw that look in your hands.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[The subject was pistachios.]

”How about some good hot coffee?”

[Life, November 15, 1954.]

This advertisement supposes an attentive audience, prepared to read every word. Did it work? It works with me. I am helpless before it. I surrender, gladly, and identify, if only for a moment, with that railroad man. I, too, welcome the question “How about some good hot coffee?” — with or without italics. I, too, welcome a “Coffee-break” — with or without a capital C, with or without quotation marks.

According to the Wikipedia article Break (work), the Pan-American Coffee Bureau was instrumental in popularizing the term coffee-break . Life has several 1952 advertisements with the Bureau’s full-length slogan, “Give yourself a coffee-break . . . and get what coffee gives to you.” Here’s one. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to 1951. Time (March 5, 1951): “Since the war, the coffee break has been written into union contracts.”

120 Wall Street was and is a skyscraper.

I am still peering ahead, as if looking for signals.

Related reading
Coffee and repetition (Submitted for Your Perusal)
All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)

Nancy Malone and The Times

The New York Times at last has an obituary for Nancy Malone. The Los Angeles Times still promises that “a complete obituary” is forthcoming.

I read the Times obituary this morning and, ever curious, searched my stats. Yes, The Times uses highly specialized twenty-first-century research tools:


[May 13, 2014, at 6:22 in the evening.]

If the Times obituary borrows anything from Orange Crate Art, it’s a mistake. When I posted an image of Malone’s 1946 Life cover (bright and early on May 13), I wrote that Malone is “not identified by name.” I came to that mistaken conclusion by looking at the issue’s photo credits. Had I looked more thoroughly, I would have seen a description of the cover on page 3:


[“Nancy Maloney of Long Island, shown on cover holding first issue of LIFE, is one of the most successful younger Powers models.” Not a mistake: she was born Maloney.]

The Times obituary describes Malone on the cover of Life as “an anonymous girl-next-door in pigtails.” True, there’s no name on the cover, but the magazine does identify Malone by name. A Times reporter or researcher might have made the same mistake I made by looking at the cover alone. But turning the pages of the magazine (or the virtual pages, at Google Books) would fix things. I think it likely that the Times borrowed a mistaken detail from me. That’s what can happen when you trust the Internets.

Mark Trail revised

[Mark Trail, May 15, 2014.]

Yes, Old Rex, “the grizzly bear that lives near Cutter’s Bluff,” has entered the scene. Rex will, I assume, save Mark Trail from the other (enraged) bear that has pursued him for many days now. Looking at the expression on Mark’s face, though, I imagine a different scene, one in which Cherry Trail has finally begun to speak frankly of her, uhh, needs.


[Mark Trail revised, May 15, 2014.]

You can read Mark Trail every day at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other fine news outlets.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

WindowMizer

Some years ago, the app WindowShade X made it possible to roll up a Mac window, so to speak, leaving nothing but a title bar. That’s tremendously useful to anyone working on a small screen. I began using this app not long after switching to a Mac in 2007.

As OS X evolved, WindowShade X stopped working. But the app has a worthy successor: RGB World’s WindowMizer (for OS X 10.6 and higher). WindowMizer has many options, among which is an option to hide its Dock icon (seen to the left) — that’s handy with an app that is always on. (Always on at least on my Macs.)

WindowMizer is not free and not exactly cheap: a $14.99 license allows installation on two machines. Given the app’s usefulness, the price is a bargain. And the app’s developer, Chris Kassa, stands by his work. E-mail him with a question or problem, as I did yesterday, and he’ll give you a friendly, helpful response. My problem: I was trying to install an old version of the app, not the more recent version for which I have a license. Chris figured that out, not me.

Before there was WindowMizer, before there was WindowShade X, and before there was OS X, there was WindowShade, built into the Mac operating system. A post at RGB World tells the story: History of WindowShade.


[A Chrome window, rolled up with WindowMizer.]

Musician v. singer again

About the categories musician and singer again:

“Anita was not a singer, in my estimation. She was a musician who used her voice as an instrument.”

That’s the trumpeter Denny Roche speaking, in the documentary Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (dir. Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden, 2007), a great documentary about a great singer and musician. O’Day’s sense of time and her phrasing: where did they come from? She was a wonder.

If you’ve never seen the great clip of Anita O’Day at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival: here you go.

Nancy Malone in Life magazine

To my knowledge, she made three appearances.


[Life, November 25, 1946. Eleven-year-old Nancy Malone on the cover of Life ’s tenth-anniversary issue. She is identified on page 3 of the magazine as “Nancy Maloney of Long Island,” “one of the most successful younger Powers models.”]




[“Hokum and More Hokum,” Life, December 22, 1952. Ronald Alexander’s comedy Time Out for Ginger ran for 248 performances on Broadway. Notice that Nancy Malone’s character, a high-schooler who wants to try out for the football team, makes the cover of Life.]


[“Stubborn sinner Bill Walker (Eli Wallach) wallops a Salvation Army lass (Nancy Malone) to show his contempt while meek down-and-outers watch.” “Handsome Soapbox for Shaw,”Life, December 10, 1956. The scene is from a Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara.]

*

May 16: A correction: when I made this post, I wrote that Malone was not identified by name in the November 25, 1946 issue of Life. I came to that mistaken conclusion by reading the issue’s photo credits. But a description of the cover on page 3 of this issue identifies Malone (then Maloney) by name. The New York Times may have borrowed my mistake. I’ve made a correction above.

Related reading
A letter from Nancy Malone
Nancy Malone (1935–2014)

Mrs. Flood’s pencils

“I’m a product of Mrs. Flood. She didn’t take my crap”: Dixon Ticonderoga’s CEO Tim Gomez donates 100,000 pencils in honor of his high-school English teacher Wilma Flood.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

A letter from Nancy Malone

Last March, Elaine and I wrote a letter to Nancy Malone. We told her — in a bit of understatement — that we had become die-hard Naked City fans. We praised the show’s writing, acting, and cinematography. We told her that we especially liked hearing Adam and Libby talk in poetry: “Hail to thee, blithe salami-bringer! Bird thou never wert.” We wondered if there might have been a backstory that explained such stuff. Did Adam and Libby meet in college, perhaps?

We were (as we explained) going on an incomplete acquaintance with the series, knowing only the episodes then available in a 10-DVD set. Had we seen the entire run (now available in a 29-DVD set), we would have known that Adam Flint was an English major who wrote a thesis on Emily Dickinson (as revealed in this episode). But that still wouldn’t explain how Adam and Libby met.

We were thrilled to get a reply, postmarked June 1 and beginning “Dear Michael and Elaine.” Nancy thanked us for our letter and praised the show’s writers and directors and crew. She called the director of photography Jack Priestly “simply astounding.” And she answered our question:


[“The back story on how they [insert: Libby + Adam] met was never made clear to us — we just invented our past — and as Paul was a joy to work with — he agreed + I agreed to our relationship from — ‘chance meeting in an acting class’ etc.”]

So there is more to Adam Flint than we ever suspected.

The Archive of American Television’s Naked City page has a wonderful interview with Nancy Malone. The conversation about the series begins at 40:47. Here’s her description of auditioning actors for the part of Adam Flint: “As soon as Paul Burke walked in the room, I thought, You better not go any further.” And explaining the chemistry between the characters: “Paul Burke and Nancy Malone were crazy people, who loved each other as people and trusted each other as actors.”

Elaine and I will always be grateful to Nancy Malone for taking the time to respond to our deep affection for her work.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)