NJ OED

“Welcome to Jersey, where the sandwiches are fat, GSP can refer to a mall or a major highway and ripper isn’t part of the moniker for a serial killer”: the Oxford English Dictionary is looking for words from New Jersey.

This post is for our friends Luanne and Jim, who introduced us to Rutt’s Hut, home of the ripper. It was great to restaurant-hop with Luanne and Jim here in Illinois this week.

[Fat sandwiches: yikes. GSP: Garden State Plaza, Garden State Parkway.]

Clarence Fountain (1929–2018)

Clarence Fountain, gospel singer and leader of the Blind Boys of Alabama, has died at the age of eighty-eight. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here is one small sample of Clarence Fountain’s voice that’s dear to me: “Stop Do Not Go On,” from The Gospel at Colonus (1985), with the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, J.J. Farley and the Original Soul Stirrers, and Sam Butler. Lyrics by Lee Breuer, music by Bob Telson. Based on Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, as translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. YouTube also has The Gospel at Colonus in its entirety. It’s one of the most remarkable and emotionally powerful reimaginings of ancient myth I know.

Recently updated

Oui yogurt Now with Vietnamese coffee.

Rogers artifacts

A puppet, a letter, a memo, a photograph, a video clip: “Fred Rogers’s Life in Five Artifacts.” The documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (dir. Morgan Neville) opens on June 8.

Mister Rogers really did answer his mail. We have two letters from him in our files, one for the grown-ups, one for the non-.

Related posts
Blaming Mister Rogers : Fred Rogers and Pittsburgh : Lady Elaine’s can : Off, or back, to school

Got gum?

[Henry, June 6, 2018.]

In the dowdy world, all stamps must be licked. But not at the window.

Related reading
All OCA dowdy world and Henry posts (Pinboard)

Putting the wagon before the horse

Driving through Amish country, I saw a wagon with one horse, one driver, and a second horse tethered to the wagon and following behind. I wondered: an Amish tow truck? No, more likely a horse in training, or a horse that needed to be dropped off somewhere. Which would make the wagon something of a tow truck, wouldn’t it? Your guess may be better than mine.

“Exquisite Mexico melange”

Coffee, coffee, coffee:


Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. 1929. Trans. Michael Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).

Related reading
All OCA Döblin posts (Pinboard)

From my dad’s CDs

I’m closing in on the end of the recorded alphabet: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones, Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Rushing, Catherine Russell, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Artie Shaw, George Shearing, Horace Silver, Frank Sinatra, Paul Smith, Jeri Southern, Jo Stafford, Art Tatum, Claude Thornhill, Mel Tormé, McCoy Tyner, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Venuti, Fats Waller, Fran Warren, Dinah Washington, Ethel Waters, Ben Webster, Paul Weston, Margaret Whiting, and now, Lee Wiley.

Lee Wiley (1908–1975) — I know, hardly a household name, and I’ve known her from just a single LP — was a terrific singer. I’d liken her to Billie Holiday: not a virtuoso but a distinctive and instantly recognizable voice. Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz (1960) calls attention to the “husky, erotic warmth” in Wiley’s voice. I’d note also the beautifully fragile, reedy quality of her high register. Here are two tunes from Night in Manhattan (Columbia, 1951), with Joe Bushkin and His Swinging Strings. Bushkin is at the piano; Bobby Hackett plays cornet:

“I’ve Got a Crush on You” (George Gershwin–Ira Gershwin)
“Manhattan” (Richard Rodgers–Lorenz Hart)


[“Vocalist Lee Wiley singing accompanied by her husband pianist Jess Stacy, Eddie Condon on guitar, Sid Weiss on bass & Cozy Cole on drums during jam session in studio of LIFE photographer Gjon Mili.” Photograph by Gjon Mili. 1943. From the Life Photo Archive. Photographs from this session appeared in the Life feature “Jam Session,” October 11, 1943. Click for a larger view.]

Thanks to Fresca for Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz, which includes home addresses for musicians willing to list them. It’s mid-century again in Manhattan, and Lee Wiley resides at 60 Sutton Place South.

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian : Blossom Dearie : Duke Ellington : Coleman Hawkins : Billie Holiday : Louis Jordan : Charlie Parker : Jimmy Rushing : Artie Shaw : Frank Sinatra : Art Tatum : Mel Tormé : Sarah Vaughan : Joe Venuti : Fats Waller

It’s ringing

“The expectation of pickup was what made phones a synchronous medium:” Alexis Madrigal, “Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore” (The Atlantic).

Group work

[Nancy, June 3, 2018.]

“Group work is good preparation for what it will be like to work in teams when you have real jobs,” Nancy’s teacher just announced. In the earlier-that-same-day final panel of today’s strip, another teacher tells Nancy’s teacher that she’s forgotten to plan for class: “Let’s just fill the time with group work.”

I don’t think I’ve ever known a student who favored group projects to be completed outside the classroom. I’ve heard too many accounts from trusted sources of projects in which one or two students ended up doing the work of the group. I have nothing against students splitting into small groups in class, say, to read and talk about a piece of student writing. But I know that even the reading-and-discussing-in-class can be an easy way for an instructor to take some time off from teaching (and sit grading papers).

I always liked asking students to realize that they’d been doing “group work” all their lives. Being a member of a family, of a circle of friends, of an organization, being a resident of a dorm: that’s all group work. And I still agree with what Richard Mitchell wrote in The Graves of Academe (1981): “It is only in a mind that the work of the mind can be done.” As anyone stuck with doing the work of the whole group can attest.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
Models for education (“Sage on the stage,” “guide on the side”)
Review: Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift

[The last sentence of this post: a joke. I do believe in the possibilities of collaboration.]