In the early morning raid

I like seeing the Special Counsel’s indictment of Roger Stone point out miscreants’ sloppiness in texting. From Stone himself: “Because of tromp I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you can.” And from Person 2: “I think it[’]s on for tomorrow.”

[Post title with apologies to Gordon Lightfoot.]

Got it

After Stephen Colbert joked about Donald Trump and an EMT’s Heimlich skills, Jon Batiste commented with a couple of bars of Billy Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G.,” whose title refers to the Upper Manhattan Medical Group. Arthur Logan, Duke Ellington’s doctor, was a member.

Someone got it.

*

And now that it’s morning, here’s the evidence. Listen at 9:28.

And here are some recordings of “U.M.M.G.”: the original Ellington band recording, a version with Dizzy Gillespie, a later version from . . . And His Mother Called Him Bill (recorded after Strayhorn’s death), and small-group recordings by Strayhorn and Joe Henderson. Despite what the Internets say, Strayhorn did not compose “U.M.M.G.” on his deathbed. The first recording is from 1956. The piece that Strayhorn wrote in the hospital in 1967 is “Blood Count.”

Notebook on a bus

[You Only Live Once (dir. Fritz Lang, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

Joan Taylor, née Graham (Sylvia Sidney) sets up housekeeping: “Lights, five dollars. Water, two dollars. Gas” — and then we cut to husband Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda), stopping to fill up his truck.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Time Table : T-Men : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

[Dammit: I remembered the bus as a train. Post title now corrected.]

A “spectacular building,”a “beautiful room”

Yesterday afternoon: “If we can handle Iraq, we can handle the middle of Washington and a very, very spectacular building and a beautiful room that we should be in, and that’s where it’s been for a very long time.”

But last night in a tweet: “there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber.”

Is it reasonable to wonder whether someone helped with the name of the beautiful room?

Public Official A

A new podcast series from WBEZ, Chicago: Public Official A, the rise and fall of the now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois.

Blagojevich has been the object of infrequent but spirited mockery in these pages. Don’t miss Blagojevich taking the yearly ethics test for state employees!

It’s National Handwriting Day

[It’s National Handwriting Day. Click for a larger view.]

Yes, and for the third time, or fourth, if you count the post title, “It’s National Handwriting Day.” I’ve done my bit, in SchoolHouse Cursive B.

But handwriting need not mean cursive. Only paper, pen, pencil — or other tools. I thought about that last night while waiting at a railroad crossing and looking at the freight cars’ graffiti. That too is handwriting.

Defunding public higher education

The American Federation of Teachers examines the result of cuts to higher education in Illinois (41% since FY 2000): layoffs, program elimination, increased tuition, lower enrollments. The state’s recent manufactured budget crisis has greatly intensified the damage. As The Daily Show suggested in 2016, the message to young people is “Get the fuck out of Illinois.”

Manufactured budget crises can produce deep and lasting damage. Sometimes that seems to be the point.

⌘-V

In setting up my new Mac, I had to remember an improvement I haven’t thought about since 2011 (the last time I set up a new Mac): change Command-V, ⌘-V, to “Paste and Match Style.” The change greatly simplifies to work of copying and pasting.

And here’s how to type ⌘, ⌥, and other symbols available from Emoji & Symbols. It’s telling, I think, that Apple makes silly emoji front and center but hides the basic stuff of the Mac keyboard from view.

[Is it ⌘V or ⌘-V? Mojave menus say ⌘V. But Apple’s December 2018 page about keyboard shortcuts uses hyphens.]

Giuliani interviewed

This New Yorker interview with Rudy Giuliani is worth reading.

This bit leaves me speechless. Giuliani is speaking about Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Oh, my goodness, yes, he was a great hero of mine. I believe he taught me, like he did all of us, how bad segregation was. Those of us in the North wouldn’t have known that without him.”

A related post
Fools (Giuliani, not a Shakespearean one)

Two minutes

Donald President Trump spent two minutes at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington today. From The New York Times:

Mr. Trump’s stop by the memorial — to observe a moment of silence without extended public remarks — appeared to be a last-minute addition to his calendar. The president’s schedule listed no public events to mark the federal holiday honoring King’s life, which had drawn criticism from civil rights activists.

You can follow Trump’s public schedule at Factbase.