Orange Crate Art

Thursday, August 17, 2017

News of the future

It’s not yet in The New York Times, not yet in The Washington Post: Congressman Steve Cohen (D, Tennessee-9) “will be introducing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump following the President’s comments on the horrific events in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

[Zippy, August 17, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

It’s real, and I found it by searching for vintage camera shop. Here’s a page with a color photograph. And here’s a photograph in living black and white:

[“The Dark Room, 5370 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA.” Photograph by Marvin Rand. 1972–1977. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Click for a larger view.]

Bill Griffith has drawn The Darkroom in a more recent incarnation as La Boca del Conga. That restaurant disappeared before Google Maps, which does preserve El Toro Cantina, which itself for a time preserved La Boca’s awning. (See the second panel.) Today 5370 is the home of Spare Tire Kitchen & Tavern. The background in the first panel checks out: that tower is real, and dammit, I’ve been to the Staples (not pictured) right across the street from it. And missed The Darkroom. (Not next time!) The signage in the second panel — THERAPY, DRUGS — is, I think, Griffith’s commentary on the function of nostalgia.

[El Toro Cantina, 2009. Spare Tire Kitchen & Tavern, 2016. From Google Maps.]

You can read Zippy every day at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Orange pump art

[“Far-go gas pump, Main Street.” Photograph By John Margolies. Barstow, California, 1979. From the Library of Congress feature John Margolies: Roadside America.]

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange art turtle : Orange batik art : Orange bookmark art : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange dress art : Orange enamel art : Orange flag art : Orange light art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange parking art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange soda-label art : Orange stem art : Orange stereograminator art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

Eleanor Roosevelt on happiness

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).

Also from this book
On doing what you think you cannot do : On honoring the human race : On attention : On maturity : On optimism

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Metaphor, off-course

A commentator on CNN this afternoon: “Corporate America has become the moral compass that is leading the argument.”

Related reading
All OCA metaphor posts (Pinboard)

[I’ve broken my no-cable-news vow, repeatedly, repeatedly.]

“The burden is reality”

James Baldwin on what makes achieving a revolution different from overthrowing a dictator or repelling an invader:

Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go. Perhaps, people being the conundrums that they are, and having so little desire to shoulder the burden of their lives, this is what will always happen. But at the bottom of my heart I do not believe this. I think that people can be better than that, and I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.

“Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind,” in The Fire Next Time (1963).

I started this post planning to quote a passage from this book about why life is tragic, but I see that I already did so in a 2006 post.

Eleanor Roosevelt on optimism

It is true that I am fundamentally an optimist, that I am congenitally hopeful. I do not believe that good always conquers evil, because I have lived a long time in the world and seen that it is not true. I do not seek the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow or think that “everything will have a happy ending” because I would like it too.

It is not wishful thinking that makes me a hopeful woman. Over and over, I have seen, under the most improbable circumstances, that man can remake himself, that he can even remake his world if he cares enough to try. And I have seen him, by the dozen, by the thousands, making that effort. . . .

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).

Also from ER
Doing what you think you cannot do : Honoring the human race : Attention : Maturity

Escaping in a Buick

[Zippy, August 16, 2017.]

Our president was tweeting at 3:12 and 3:18 this morning (EDT). Not normal. I’ll take the Buick.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[I’m well aware that this kind of nostalgia involves a significant element of privilege. A 1947 Buick would be a different proposition if, say, one had to rely on the Green Book when driving, or if, say, one could not afford a car. Or if, say, one had been killed in World War II.]