A bonus

[Probably from the seventeenth century. As seen, and touched, in the University of Illinois Music Library. Click for a larger view.]

This bonus appears in a gradual, “a service book containing the musical portion of the Mass sung by the choir” (Webster’s Second ). This gradual is on display in the Music Library, the vellum pages right there for the turning. I wish I had thought to take the book’s measurements. Let’s just say massive.

More about this gradual here.

George Frazier’s liner notes

From the liner notes for the 10" LP Lee Wiley Sings Rodgers and Hart (Storyville, 1954):

[I]f I have any objection to this portfolio, it is that it will doubtless assail me with bittersweet memories — with the stabbing remembrance of the tall, breathtaking-lovely Wellesley girl with whom I was so desperately in love in the long-departed November when the band at the Copley Plaza in Boston used to play “My Heart Stood Still” as couples tea-danced after football games on crisp Saturday afternoons, with reawakened desire for the succession of exquisite girls with whom I spent many a crepuscular hour listening to cocktail pianists give muted voice to “Funny Valentine,” of the first time I saw Connecticut Yankee , of — Yes, of the first years of my marriage and listening to Lee Wiley records with my wife late at night.

It’s like something from the Salinger world, isn’t it?

George Frazier was an American journalist. He wrote the words to “Harvard Blues,” recorded by Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra. It begins:

I wear Brooks clothes and white shoes all
    the time
I wear Brooks clothes and white shoes all
    the time
Get three Cs, a D, and think checks from
    home sublime.

The song’s mysterious Rinehart plays a part in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man. Bliss P. Rinehart is a shapeshifter, a series of masks (rind and heart , as the novel’s narrator thinks), and The Man Who Wasn’t There. (He never appears in the novel). More background here.

And here’s Lee Wiley singing Rodgers and Hart’s “You Took Advantage of Me.”

[The LP has been reissued with the title Duologue (Black Lion, 1988), with four unrelated recordings by Ellis Larkins. With Wiley: Ruby Braff, cornet; Jimmy Jones, piano; Bill Pemberton, bass; Jo Jones, drums. Lee Wiley was one of my dad’s favorite singers. The CD I’m listening to was his. Ellison’s use of the name Rinehart is also a shout-out to fellow Oklahoman Rushing, who at one point worked for Ellison’s father. Ellison wrote about Rushing in the 1958 essay “Remembering Jimmy.”]

Zippy ink

[Zippy , April 15, 2016.]

I love the way this strip makes space for whatever is in its maker’s mind. I’m guessing that if Zerbina is worrying, Bill Griffith is worrying, too.

My ink of choice: Aurora black. It’s not a document ink (waterproof). But it’s deep and dark, and it always flows.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Ringo Starr, Canned Heat, LGBT discrimination

Ringo Starr has canceled a concert in North Carolina to protest state-sponsored discrimination against LGBT people. I am a bit thrilled to see that he has cited Canned Heat in doing so: “As Canned Heat sang, ‘Let’s work together.’” Starr also cited a group who sang that “All you need is love.”

The footnoter in me wants to give credit to Wilbert Harrison, who wrote “Let’s Work Together” and recorded it twice, in 1962 and again in 1969. The story goes that Canned Heat waited to give Harrison’s 1969 recording its chance on the charts before recording the song themselves. The Heat’s version appears on the 1970 album Future Blues (1970). Harrison also had a hit with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Kansas City.” LGBT people in Missouri, too, are up against state-sponsored discrimination.

Related reading
HRC Missouri : HRC North Carolina

The shadow of an angry Bert

It’s just the shadow of a lamp on paneling. But when I noticed it the other day, it looked like the shadow of an angry Bert. Perhaps he was after someone who was messing with his paper-clip collection. Watch out, Ernie.

[Watching Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1973) makes everything scary.]

Spring and not spring

This sentence suits the weather these days:


Verlyn Klinkenborg, “April,” The Rural Life (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Verlyn Klinkenborg posts (Pinboard)

Favorite lines from The Apartment

[Click either image for a larger view.]

Dialogue from The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960). The screenplay is by Wilder and his longtime collaborator I. A. L. Diamond. Aspiring junior executive C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) and elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) are talking. Miss Kubelik lends her compact so that Mr. Baxter can see how he looks in his new hat. She sees his jaunty smile fade:

“What’s the matter?”

“Uh, the mirror. It’s broken.”

“Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.”

To understand why Mr. Baxter’s smile fades, you’ll have to watch.

Bruce Rauner: “an epic F”

The Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn gives Illinois’s governor Bruce Rauner “an epic F” at midterm:

Illinois still doesn’t have — and at this rate probably never will have — a budget for the fiscal year that began last July, which has put many human service providers and public colleges and universities into a financial crisis.

Now, yes, it’s quite true that Rauner didn’t create the underlying economic problems facing Illinois — those came about due to decades of irresponsible governance, some of it bipartisan, much of it Democratic.

But he’s made those problems worse.

He campaigned for office promising to “shake up Springfield.” Instead he has cold-cocked it.

Eric Zorn is just one columnist. The Tribune endorsed Rauner in 2014 and appears to stand by him: the paper’s editorial board recently characterized him not as “anti-union” but as “pro-taxpayer.” Except for the taypayers who are losing jobs, losing access to social services, and losing opportunities for public higher education.

Related reading
All OCA Illinois higher-ed crisis posts (Pinboard)

From a Van Gogh letter

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, c. May 4, 1888:

As for me, I shall carry on working, and here and there something of my work will prove of lasting value — but who will there be to achieve for figure painting what Claude Monet has achieved for landscape? However, you must feel, as I do, that someone like that is on the way — Rodin? — he doesn’t use colour — it won’t be him. But the painter of the future will be a colourist the like of which has never yet been seen.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).

“A colourist the like of which has never yet been seen”: that sounds to me like Henri Matisse, who in 1888 had not yet begun to paint.

Also from Van Gogh’s letters
“Admire as much as you can”
“It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk”
“Lately, during the dark days before Christmas”
“So you must picture me sitting at my attic window”
“At the moment, I can see a splendid effect”
“The ride into the village was beautiful”

A poem by Jack Spicer

Henry Clay was born today, in 1777, as I just learned by chance. His birth was a matter of chance too, I suppose. Clay’s name sticks in my mind not because of “history” but because of this haunting poem by Jack Spicer:



I think that I first saw “For Kids” in the journal o•blék , many years back.

[“Kids”: the poet Joanne Kyger.]