Some Christmas

[“He’s Checking It Thrice.” Zippy , December 25, 2019.]

Today’s Zippy is devoted to list-making. With a guest star.

“Some rocks” are an abiding preoccupation of these pages.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts: Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Christmas 1919

[“Snow Quickly Removed. Three Thousand Street Cleaners Did a Speedy Christmas Job.” The New York Times, December 26, 1919.]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.

Dalton Baldwin (1931–2019)

The pianist Dalton Baldwin has died at the age of eighty-seven. A New York Times obituary calls him “an eminence among accompanists.”

Elaine and I heard Dalton Baldwin accompany Elly Ameling, long ago, in the year something-something B.C. (Before Children). It was a blissful night. I’ve since heard Baldwin on recordings for many years. He is the sole pianist on Mélodies, the 4-CD EMI set of Francis Poulenc’s songs, accompanying Ameling, Nicolaï Gedda, William Parker, Michel Sénéchal, and Gérard Souzay, Baldwin’s partner in life and music.

Here is a BBC recording of Souzay and Baldwin, performing works by Schubert, Debussy, Françaix, Poulenc, and Roussel.

Italy’s Sardines

“They call themselves the ‘Sardines’ — because they want to quietly pack Italy’s main public squares like fish in a can. Organizers say their goal is to stop a far-right, anti-immigrant wave rising in Italian society and politics”: Sylvia Poggioli reports on the Sardine movement (NPR).

Related reading
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Helicopter campuses

“The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed”: thus a new trend in surveillance, the use of Bluetooth to track college students’ class attendance and campus habits via their phones (The Washington Post ).

For me, the most dispiriting bit in this article is a comment from a professor about surveillance and attendance: “‘They want those points,’ he said. ‘They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.’” Yep. Behaviorally.

[The surveillance company SpotterEDU would not permit the Post to publish a photograph of its Bluetooth devices, saying that “‘currently students do not know what they look like.’” A curious student might find an image search for iBeacon a useful workaround.]

Domestic comedy

“I can’t believe you walked past that multi-tool display.”

“Where?! WHERE?!”

Related reading
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[Not really multi-tools, after all. Knives and flashlights. With this one, it’s probably easy to figure out who said what.]

Today’s Ticonderoga

[“Nervig Endings.” Zippy , December 24, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, cartoonist Conrad Nervig seeks a new career. Stand by for the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2.

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Scribbles & Ink

For kids and those who think like kids: Scribbles & Ink, an online game (or drawing environment, I’d call it) to go with the PBS Kids series of the same name.

If you like Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, you will probably like Scribbles & Ink. Be your own Harold!

Roz Chast, profiled

By Adam Gopnik, in — where else? — The New Yorker. An excerpt:

“Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to be a grownup. Being a child was just not working for me. I didn’t understand little kids. ‘Let’s play! Let’s hit each other!’ Why do you want to do that ? Don’t you want to stay indoors where it’s safe, and read and draw?”

Our household is a Chast-friendly zone.

Related reading
All OCA Roz Chast posts (Pinboard)

Hallmark rising

The New Yorker looks at the Hallmark Channel(s): “How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television.”

Last Friday we tried about half an hour of Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy, the movie whose making runs through the article. Half an hour was enough. But I came away with a favorite line: “I was just leading a workshop on ornament making.” Sounds to me like the start of a John Ashbery poem.