Ethel Stein (1917–2018)

The weaver and sometime-puppetmaker Ethel Stein has died at the age of 100. From the New York Times obituary:

Working largely out of the artistic limelight at her home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Ms. Stein resurrected historical weaving techniques and merged them with 20th-century Bauhaus design sensibilities.

You’ll have to click through to learn about the puppets.

In 2014 I was fortunate to see Ethel Stein’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago. I liked it so much that I wrote her a letter:

Dear Ms. Stein,

I know next to nothing about weaving, although I greatly admire the metis, cunning, of Homer’s Penelope. But I was delighted and moved by the exhibit of your work in the Art Institute of Chicago. Your sense of color and form and your wit are just wonderful to see. The short film that plays in one room of the exhibit left me amazed at the many kinds of skill and attention that go into your art.

I don’t know how many visitors to the exhibit have noticed your address, which is visible on a letter in a photograph of your bulletin board. But I did. And I look forward to revisiting your work at the Art Institute.

Here is the short film that was playing.

“Old timers”

Stationery items of the past included sealing wax, “discontinued in favor of the modern gumming which fastens envelopes much more effectively and rapidly.” And:

Other “old timers” most of which are now past history are Stoake’s automatic shading pens — Brigg’s glass linen marking pens — Rubber marking pens — Clark’s indelible pencil, retailing at 25¢ — Livingston’s and Clark’s indelible ink — Holman’s ink powders — Porcupine quill, oblique and jumbo penholders — Rubber penholders, Nos. 1 to 6, also telescopic pocket rubber penholders — The old No. 41 school “accommodation” steel tip, fluted handle penholders which jobbed for 30¢ per gross. Pastille crayons which were packed twelve assorted colors to a box. Hope bonnet board used principally to shape women’s bonnets — Whale bone in splints, measuring from thirty to ninety inches, used for making hoop-skirts and stays — Tracing wheels, a necessary article used in dressmaking — Perforated board in assorted colors, also in silver and gold with muslin backs. Perforated white, silver and gold board mottoes used for embroidering with colored yarns, “What Is Home Without A Mother,” “God Bless Our Home,” “The Lord Will Provide” being three of the standards. Marriage certificates in beautiful lithographed designs — Reward or merit cards for schools. Transparent slates — Round and square wooden pencil boxes in carved and colored patterns — Heckman’s hemp school bags — Miller’s, Watson’s and Holbrook’s were the names of three popular book clamps, used to carry school books. Traveling was slow during the winter months, requiring travelers to carry shawls for warmth, which created a big demand for the Automatic shawl strap, a popular item in its day — Lunch baskets were used generally — Wood splints used by schools in primary classes — Rattans, the teacher’s “discipline rod,” an effective character “builder” of early days.

Larger book and stationery stores sold globes, maps and revolving book cases, which were on the market before the sectional book cases made their appearance. Book shelves were also in demand; wire dictionary stands, old No. 19 being very popular.

Paul J. Wielandy, The Romance of an Industry: A Retrospective Review of the Book and Stationery Business, with Brief Biographical Sketches of Those More Prominently Identified with Its History. St. Louis: Press of Blackwell Wielandy, 1933.

Paul J. Wielandy (1864–1953) began working as a traveling stationery salesman in 1884. He later co-founded Blackwell Wielandy, a St. Louis stationery and book company. Thanks to Sean at Blackwing Pages and Contrapuntalism for sharing news of this book, still available from a small number of libraries. And thanks, Interlibrary Loan.

As you may have guessed, searching Google Books will turn up many of these stationery items.


[Old No. 19, as advertised in The Publishers’ Trade List Annual (1905).]

The return of the phone booth, sort of

The New York Times reports on the return of the phone booth, sort of — phone-booth-like structures that afford privacy in open-floor workplaces.

Perhaps someone, someday, will come up with the novel idea to have employees work in ones or twos in small rooms with doors — and then it’ll really be the world of tomorrow.

Dowd, Waters, and Walker

Maureen Dowd, writing in The New York Times about a certain man and woman in the news:

As Muddy Waters famously sang the blues, “They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad; Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad.”

Yes, Muddy Waters performed and recorded “Stormy Monday,” or formally, “Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad).” Famously? I’m not so sure. But the song was written by T-Bone Walker. It was Walker’s signature song. Does Dowd know that? At any rate, T-Bone Walker should be credited here. Crediting Muddy Waters is a bit like crediting Peter, Paul and Mary — or anyone other than Bob Dylan — for “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

On a related note: I’ve always heard the lyric as “Thursday’s all so sad.” In an NPR segment about the song, with B.B. King, Duke Robillard, and Bernita Ruth Walker, the transcription reads “also.” But it sure sounds to me like Walker’s daughter is saying “all so.”

From the Saturday Stumper

A nice clue from today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Frank Longo, 1-Down, seven letters: “Cords and such.” And one more: 56-Across, four letters: “Cream alternative.” No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

When I made a first Saturday Stumper post, I wasn’t planning on many more. But I now have a streak of seventeen Saturdays. What makes today’s puzzle and most Saturday Stumpers so difficult: clues that lead in many directions at once. For 56-Across, for instance, I thought of another power trio: RUSH? No.

WHAT ?

If David Brooks’s most recent New York Times column were a student paper to be graded, I’d be tempted to write, repeatedly, in the margins: WHAT ?

Brooks is trying to exercise empathy, to understand “student mobbists,” as he calls them, though his condescending choice of the word “mobbists” suggests that he’s bound to fail. He acknowledges that he grew up in a different time from today’s college students — in the 1980s, when, he says,

we all wanted basically the same things. For example, though America was plagued by economic divides we all wanted a society in which social mobility and equal opportunity were the rule. Though America is plagued by racism, we all wanted more integration and less bigotry, a place where talent and character mattered more than skin color and prejudice.

Yes, the 1980s, when everyone wanted (basically) the same things. Really? Brooks might read, as a start, a 2017 Washington Post article: “How the Reagan administration stoked fears of anti-white racism”:

More than any other modern U.S. president, it was Ronald Reagan who cultivated the concept of so-called reverse discrimination, which emerged in the 1970s as a backlash against affirmative action in public schooling as court-ordered busing grew throughout the country.

In the 1980s, Brooks says, “sophisticated people” saw themselves as “mistake theorists,” who “believe that the world is complicated and most of our troubles are caused by error and incompetence, not by malice or evil intent.” But discrimination against people of color, against women, against LGBQT people, in education, employment, housing, suffrage, then or now, cannot be explained as a matter of “error and incompetence,” as if it’s the result of hiring careless help. Brooks might consider, say, Martin Luther King Jr.’s call not for fewer errors and greater competence (a technocrat’s solution) but for “a true revolution of values.”

And consider Brooks’s account of how thinking about color has changed:

The idea for decades was that racial justice would come when we reduced individual bigotry — the goal was colorblind individualism. . . .

Now the crucial barriers to racial justice are seen not just as individual, but as structural economic structures, the incarceration crisis, the breakdown of family structure. . . .

Progress is less about understanding and liking each other and more about smashing structures that others defend.

But was there ever a time when the barriers to racial justice were not understood as structural ones? Was there ever a civil-rights movement that was not determined the dismantle the structures that enforced segregation and inequality? Brooks’s model of racial justice as a matter of “liking each other” reminds me of a familiar self-exoneration: “I’m not prejudiced. I treat everyone the same.” Yes, perhaps you do, but you do so having benefited mightily from systemic inequalities. “Liking each other” is not enough. King again: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

I share, to some extent, Brooks’s wariness about chants and groupthink and the equating of an individual mind with one or more cultural categories. But his picture of recent American history is ludicrously misleading and shamelessly self-serving. What is this guy doing in The New York Times? WHAT ?

A related post
David Brooks and SNOOTs

[“Structural economic structures”: I think the Times needs to add a colon after structural. The King passages are from “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, April 4, 1967.]

Oui yogurt

It’s worth buying a four-pack of Yoplait Oui yogurt just for the little glass jars. Remove the label, scrape the glue from the rim, and you have a lovely five-ounce cup. Perfect for holding cream or milk. Perfect for holding hot water to pour over instant oatmeal. Perfect for holding a couple of ounces of whiskey while the news plays. Perfect for holding a couple of ounces of paper clips, because it is a little early for whiskey, or whisky.

*

June 6, 2018: And perfect for making Vietnamese coffee.

A related post
A repurposed tea tin

[Now with a better photograph. When I took an earlier one, I thought, “That’s the best I can do.” And then I realized that I could do better.]

Separated at birth

 
[Ernie Bushmiller, cartoonist; Red Rodney, musician.]

The forehead, the hair: I can’t unsee the resemblance. And Bushmiller, too, was a redhead, at least in his early years.

Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

All the news that’s print

Farhad Manjoo:

Getting news only from print newspapers may be extreme and probably not for everyone. But the experiment taught me several lessons about the pitfalls of digital news and how to avoid them.

Those lessons, summarized in the Michael Pollan manner: “Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.”

Domestic comedy

[Reading the Nutrition Facts.]

“The Chessmen are twice as healthy as the Milanos.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)