At the Museum of the City of New York

After just two visits, the Museum of the City of New York, or the City Museum, has become one of our household’s favorite museums. We visited last week for the Folk City and Jacob Riis exhibits. A surprise: an exhibit of photographs by Carl Van Vechten. One reason I like smaller museums: they change the pace of museum-going. With less schlepping about, I find it easier to take my time. Elaine and I spent a good two-and-a-half hours in the Museum and could easily have spent more. (There are at least seven other exhibits now on view, three of which we had already seen.)

Even getting around the City Museum has its attractions. A spiral staircase is likely to wow younger and older visitors alike. A plain old stairwell is an exhibit in itself, with photographs and observations about New York on its walls. (The entryway reads: “This Is New York’s Most Exciting Stairwell.”) From Lewis Mumford (1979): “New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.”

Here’s a photograph that gives a good idea of the stairwell. And here’s an OCA post from 2014, also singing the Museum’s praises.

Overheard

[On the 6 train headed downtown. Three young men discuss boxing promotion as they share a package of Gummi Bears. ]

“I think about it synergistically.”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Where’s my Profile?

If you notice something missing: the Profile that should appear in the sidebar has gone missing. And yet it still exists. The Blogger Help Forum has no answers, at least not yet. Here’s hoping that I can figure out the problem.

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8:04 p.m.: For now there’s a cheap fascimile in the sidebar.

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8:41 p.m.: Now the Profile is back, with my tweaks and improvements gone. Thanks, Google.

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8:58 p.m.: The problem seems to be deep in the heart of Blogger. Change the title from Profile and the whole thing disappears. Change “View my complete profile” to the more sensible “View profile” and the whole thing disappears.

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9:04 p.m.: How I got around the problem: I took a screenshot of the sidebar photograph, complete with border, from my saved version of Orange Crate Art. I uploaded the image to this post to get a URL. I then created a Text widget, put in the HTML for the photograph, and added the text underneath. Thus I now have a pseudo-Profile that satisfies my requirements, not Blogger’s.

Back in April, writing about Blogger’s blurry-Profile-picture problem, I described Google’s unannounced change in managing images as just one more eff yew from Google to its “users.” True then, true now.

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December 1: It appears that Profiles have vanished from and returned to many a sidebar. My final (I think) fix for the problem: I put the HTML for my old profile in a Text widget and added the blurry-Profile-picture fix to the Search widget. No more working against Blogger’s standards for the sidebar Profile.

Welcome to Illinois

“The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power, taking advantage of regulatory, legal and cultural shifts that have carved new paths for infusing money into campaigns”: “A Wealthy Governor and His Friends Are Remaking Illinois” (The New York Times ).

Governor Bruce Rauner is Illinois’s version of Scott Walker. Woe is us.

[See Citizen Koch (dir. Carl Deal, Tia Lessin, 2013) for the playbook.]

Sold!

“Salmon is an easy sell. But sardines? Not easy”: Barton Seaver sells Lynne Rossetto Kasper on canned sardines. But also: don’t miss the salmon-cake recipe. Thanks for the link, Diane.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper is the reason our household now has a half sheet pan. It’s changed our cooking for the better, greatly so.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

A joke in the traditional manner

Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

And: Tidy?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the toy, the squirrel-doctor, Santa Claus, and this one. Is punchline-in-the-comments meant to encourage feed-readers to visit Orange Crate Art? Well, yes.]

Thoureauvian Zippy rocks

 
[Zippy  November 29, 2015. First and third panels.]

I like it that the third panel prompts you (or me) to look again for “some rocks.” There they are, back in panel the first. Yow!

Related reading (via Pinboard)
All OCA Nancy posts
All OCA Nancy and Zippy posts (with more rocks)
All OCA Zippy posts

Billy Strayhorn centenary

[“Portrait of Billy Strayhorn, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948.” Photograph by William Gottlieb (1917–2006). From the William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress. Click for a larger view, or visit the Collection for a much larger view.]

William Thomas Strayhorn was born on November 29, 1915. He died on May 31, 1967. Duke Ellington, in his (anti-)autobiography Music Is My Mistress (1973):

He was not, as he was often referred to by many, my alter ego. Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.

Also from that book, an excerpt from what Ellington wrote after Strayhorn’s death:

He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important and moral of freedoms: freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might himself; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor.

His patience was incomparable and unlimited. He had no aspirations to enter into any kind of competition, yet the legacy he leaves, his oeuvre , will never be less than the ultimate on the highest plateau of culture (whether by comparison or not).

God bless Billy Strayhorn.

I am baffled by the apparent absence of Strayhorn programming from Columbia University’s WKCR. Here is a YouTube sampler, with performances by Strayhorn himself, the Ellington band, or assorted Ellingtonians.

“Blood Count” : “Chelsea Bridge” : “The Intimacy of the Blues” : “Johnny Come Lately” : “Lotus Blossom” : “Lush Life” : “My Little Brown Book” : “Rain Check” : “Take the ‘A’ Train” : “U. M. M. G.”

And a website: billystrayhorn.com. And a related post: Strayhorn on humility and individuality.

Familiar phrasing

Elaine and I are back home after ten days visiting family and friends. “Family and friends”: what a bland phrase, so easily trivialized by the abbreviation ’n’ , so easily commodified into a “plan.” And yet the only words we have for our most important human relationships.

Nabokov: Van Veen, eraser

Dr. Van Veen, psychologist, in lecture mode:


Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969).

Nabokov himself famously said that his pencils outlasted their erasers. Not (contra The Atlantic ) in Speak, Memory but in a 1962 interview with unidentified journalists, published in Strong Opinions (1973): “I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)