An inverted B

Resistance takes many forms: “The Rebel ‘B’” (Print). More here and here.

Down and up

“I’m down to the bottom of my sound, but I’m up to the clearest understanding of my life”: the singer Sylvia Syms, at the age of seventy-four, a month before her death. Syms is quoted in the liner notes to a CD reissue of her 1959 LP Torch Song.

Here’s a performance of “Skylark” (Hoagy Carmichael–Johnny Mercer) from late in Syms’s life. And here, a whole step higher, is a “Skylark” from earlier years. Syms died on May 10, 1992, while receiving a standing ovation after a performance in the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room.

The horror of the news these days makes me especially susceptible to the beauty of music. I can’t hear these performances without tearing up. How about you?

Crispix Corridor

[Zippy, March 15, 2018.]

Today’s Zippy is a treat for anyone who loves the metropolitan dowdy world. Seen on Crispix Corridor, Dingburg’s Main Street, in this one panel, roughly clockwise: signage for Sluggo’s Gym, Town Rug (?), Topknots, 2-Ton Donuts, Z Man, Little Debbie Lodge, Laundro World, Invisible Ink, and Pizza (?) Diner. The other signs in this panel are too small for me to decipher. Elsewhere in today’s strip: signage for Vat of Valvoline, Super Hero Treatment Center, Baby Huey Supplies, Bulbous, Hostess, Pop Rox, Bleach, Toy Trumpets, Toads, Dan Duryea Film Festival, 24 Hour Bowling (All Faiths), X-Treme Ironing Center, House of God, Sen-Sen, Beatniks 4 Rent, Hotel Poindexter, House of Mirrors, Snobbery, Ambiguity, T-Square, Sartre, 2-Tone Shoes, Hard to Read Signs Inc., and several more hard-to-read signs.

I have an abiding daydream of stumbling onto some forgotten midwestern Main Street, with bookshop, music shop, luncheonette, stationery store, all flourishing. Perhaps even a policeman at a crosswalk — because there are so many pedestrians.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard) : The dowdy world goes shopping (Main Street, Hackensack, New Jersey)

Permission

I was watching a play with two friends — a big acclaimed Broadway drama. And a jaded urbanite one row in front of us semi-whispered to his companion: “I can’t believe anyone is taking this seriously.” And just like that, he gave us permission not to.

[Sounds like a dream, but it happened, years ago. I’m not sure what made me think of it now.]

An utterance from another world

From the Father Knows Best episode “Bud, the Campus Romeo” (February 2, 1959), father Jim Anderson speaking to high-schooler son Bud:

“Your dinner jacket just arrived from the cleaners.”

Other FKB posts
“Betty’s Graduation” : Flowers knows best : “Margaret Disowns Her Family” : “A Woman in the House”

[Dinner jackets aside, Father Knows Best is far, far better than received opinion might suggest.]

A film about Joe Brainard

I Remember is a short film by Matt Wolf about the artist and writer Joe Brainard. Photographs, home movies, and period footage, with Ron Padgett’s recollections of his friend and collaborator, and Brainard reading from his I Remember. Watch online for $1 (or more).

Related posts
Good advice on looking at art : “I remember” : I remember Pete Seeger : I remember Sgt. Pepper : I remember Thanksgiving

[The thing about “I remember”: everyone can play.]

Thomas Merton photographs

Photographs by Thomas Merton, on display in New York, through April 13: “I Am Myself As I Exist in the World.”

Related reading
All OCA Thomas Merton posts (Pinboard)

[You don’t have to be a theist to love Thomas Merton. Or at least I don’t.]

“Telephone Inside”

 
[Henry, March 13, 2018.]

Between these two panels, Henry has held open the door and raced ahead to the booth. Thus he is both little gentleman and young lout.

It’s not clear though where he and the lady are. A candy store? A luncheonette? It must be in the dowdy world, not the future, because the telephone booth still has a telephone. Or, less formally, a ’phone.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

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).]