Miniature Rogers

Miniatures by Lance Cardinal. Behold, Mister Rogers’s television house. And behold, the making of said house.

Thanks, Steven.

Daniel Tiger

[A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (dir. Marielle Heller, 2019). Click for a larger view.]

It’s a beautiful movie. And that’s a replica, not the real Daniel Striped Tiger.

The Neighborhood Archive has the full story on Daniel. I’m happy to be reminded that our that dear friend Margie King Barab, who appeared in two early Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes as Miss Margie Nebraska, has a page in the archive.

Related reading
All OCA Mister Rogers posts (Pinboard)

[Orange Crate Art is a Neighborhood-friendly zone.]

Some version of pastoral

“Where tropes of rural self-sufficiency converge with dainty décor”: The New York Times offers an explanation of cottagecore.

I side with William Carlos Williams: “We cannot go to the country / for the country will bring us / no peace.”

Recently updated

“By the Book” for the rest of us Now with a link to questions and answers from blogger Steve Boyko.

BBC Radio 4: Great Lives

A great podcast from BBC Radio 4: Great Lives. With 483 available episodes, so there’s no running out anytime soon.

I listened to most of an episode about Montaigne this morning while walking, and immediately pulled the Essays from the shelf when I got home.

“The intrepid Orph”

Dunstan Ramsay recalls Orpheus Wettenhall, lawyer and sportsman — “quite the most dedicated sportsman I have ever known” — and Wettenhall’s visits to Bertha Shanklin and her niece Mary Dempster:


Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (1970).

Also from this novel
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments” : “Like a duck to water” : “A designer and a manufacturer”

Paranoia and magical thinking

Gabriel Sherman, writing in Vanity Fair:

Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

But thus far Trump’s private concerns haven’t affected his public response. Pressure from the public health community is mounting on Trump to cancel his mass rallies, but Trump is pushing back. “He is going to resist until the very last minute,” a former West Wing official said. “He may take suggestions to stop shaking hands, but in terms of shutting stuff down, his position is: ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Cf. Captain Queeg: “We’re not in any trouble.” The mix of paranoia and magical thinking is frightening.

130, 130

Driving on Illinois Route 130 yesterday, Elaine and I listened to Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 130. Not by design — 130 was just the next quartet in line. I’m listening to them all, and developing what may be a permanently dropped jaw. Boy, that Ludwig van Beethoven, he sure can write.

Here’s the recording we heard, by the Guarneri Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley, Michael Tree, David Soyer): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

I wonder if anyone else has ever listened to 130 on 130.

Cole cuts and beer

From Adam Gopnik’s review of The Letters of Cole Porter, in the January 20 New Yorker:

For all Porter’s aristocratic mien, his tastes were rather plain, as those of the American upper classes usually are — high taste is typically simple taste, as anyone who has eaten at a Wasp club knows. His list of requirements for a hotel room in Philadelphia during a tryout included sliced liverwurst, salami, and bologna, and twenty-four cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Related reading
All OCA liverwurst posts (Pinboard)

The Booksellers

A new documentary about antiquarian booksellers: The Booksellers, directed by D.W. Young. I’d like to be able to see it in a theater. But the trailer alone makes me want to hit Pause again and again and look closely at every shelf on screen.

I like what Fran Lebowitz says in the trailer: “The people that I see reading actual books on the subway are mostly in their twenties. This is one of the few encouraging things you will ever see in a subway.”

[Note that antiquarian means means “dealing in old or rare books.” The or is important.]