Orange Crate Art

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Overheard

“Evelyn, you got any money?”

“I ain’t got none. I don’t want none. I don’t need none.”

This exchange between girls has been stuck in my head since kidhood. I heard it in Brooklyn, outside my school, P.S. 131. Being nine or ten, I didn’t know about William Carlos Williams’s idea of a vernacular language, “the American idiom,” or here, the African-American idiom. I think I just thought wow.

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All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Some Rachs

From Sean at Contrapuntalism: Some Rachs.

“Some rocks”

[From James Sowerby‘s British Mineralogy: or coloured figures intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain (London: 1804). Made available through the British Library’s Flickr account. Click for a larger view.]

Amid architectural ornaments and decorative letters galore, the British Library’s Flickr has “some rocks.”

Related reading
All OCA “some” posts (Pinboard)

Some rock

[From Milano e il suo territorio, ed. Cesare Cantu (Milan, 1844). Made available through the British Library’s Flickr account. Click for a larger view.]

That’s some rock.

Related reading
All OCA “some” posts (Pinboard)

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

A Henry wall

[Henry, February 9, 2015.]

In the Henry world, all walls are lath and plaster. No drywall allowed.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

College as vodka

From a New York Times article on Stephen Joel Trachtenberg and the rise of George Washington University:

Mr. Trachtenberg convinced people that George Washington was worth a lot more money by charging a lot more money. Unlike most college presidents, he was surprisingly candid about his strategy. College is like vodka, he liked to explain. Vodka is by definition a flavorless beverage. It all tastes the same. But people will spend $30 for a bottle of Absolut because of the brand. A Timex watch costs $20, a Rolex $10,000. They both tell the same time.

O brave new world.

[The Times notes that the article is adapted from a forthcoming book by Kevin Carey, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. Sounds like an argument for MOOCs, alas.]

Monday, February 9, 2015

CBS oops

Scott Pelley, on the CBS Evening News a few minutes ago: “a secret stash of momentos.” Oops. Stop playing with your eyeglasses, sir, and start proofreading.

I’ll post a link to the video when it becomes available.

*

And here it is. The story starts at 14:27.

[The broadcast clocks in at 15:14. Which means that the news is about half commercials?]

“The evolution of big sound”

[Illustration by Jim Flora. From the Life article ”The Sound Flowed Out of Old Musical Streams,” May 21, 1965. Click for a larger view.]

Found while looking, as usual, for something else. The text at the bottom right reads

This drawing shows the evolution of big sound. At bottom are the three major streams. Country and western continues to prosper, produced today’s star, Roger Miller. Gospel is not widely popular but has deeply influenced the blues. The blues spawned jazz, which has come a long cool way from hot Dixieland. All came together since since the 1950’s to form rhythm and blues and its successor, big rock ’n’ roll sound.

This picture of things is not perfect: the category country and western came long after Jimmie Rodgers; James Brown and Hank Williams and Chicago blues (Muddy Waters &c.) are missing; the idea of early blues (Skip James &c.) is largely a matter of 1960s white-blues-fanatic taste. But it’s remarkable how much this picture got right.