Jon Batiste FTW

As Sanjay Gupta came on stage on The Late Show tonight, Jon Batiste played a bit of Billy Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G.” The initials stand for Upper Manhattan Medical Group. Arthur Logan, Duke Ellington’s doctor, was a member.

Batiste has used this medical tag before. See this post for more on “U.M.M.G.”

Allegory redux

I am dismayed to find friends already declaring that they won’t vote for Joe Biden in November. On Monday I voted for Joe Biden here in Illinois. I would have preferred to vote for Elizabeth Warren. But I waited to see what would happen on Super Tuesday, and after Warren brought her campaign to an end, I voted for the candidate who has (as I see it) the best chance of defeating the current occupant of the White House.

I know what it’s like to not want to vote for a candidate. That’s how I felt in 2016 about Hillary Clinton. But I voted for her in the general election, “utterly without enthusiasm,” as I wrote at the time. If Joe Biden becomes the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him with only the mildest enthusiasm. But enthusiasm or no enthusiasm, no one should imagine they have the luxury of not voting in 2020.

Here, for anyone who might find it persuasive, is most of a post I wrote in August 2016. The post title was Allegory:

The restaurant has a limited menu — very limited. There are, for practical purposes, just two dishes, A and B. If you order one of them, you will get it or the other dish. There are other dishes on the menu, but no chance of getting them. If you order one of these other dishes, you’ll get A or B, and you’ll have lost your chance to choose between the two (which, of course, might not have made a difference). There are no other restaurants. So you choose from what’s available: A or B.

In 2016 the other dishes on the allegorical menu included the Green Party. In 2020 the allegory might be altered to include writing in your own choice of entree. But the real choice remains: A or B. In November that will almost certainly mean voting for Joe Biden.

Something else I wrote in August 2016, in a comment on a friend’s blog: “It’s good to know your own mind, but it’s good, too, to know that you can change it.”

Shirley’s whom

“You saw who — I mean, whom ?”: Sara Crewe (Shirley Temple), in The Little Princess (dir. Walter Lang, 1939). A random moment of self-correction that I caught while flipping channels.

Other who s and whom s
Fritzi Ritz : Lucy van Pelt : Mooch

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.