Staying in one place

I know nothing about making models, but I’m struck by this (pre-pandemic) observation from Philip Reed, a professional model maker. It’s from a short film, Zen and the Art of Model Making, found at J.D. Lowe’s 30 Squares:

“I do not see that just having to stay in one place is a restriction on life. It’s more having to stay in one place in your head that’s a restriction on life.”

I’d say that when people you love are many miles away, having to stay in one place is a restriction. But the point I take from Reed’s observation: Feed Your Head.

A third Robert Johnson photograph

It appears on the cover of a book published this week, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach (Hachette). Mrs. Anderson is Robert Johnson’s stepsister.

Vanity Fair has a brief feature on the book and the photograph. The magazine notes that Annye C. Anderson prefers to be called Mrs. Anderson.

Related posts
Johnson playing for an Italian wedding : A New York Times obituary for Johnson : On slowing down Johnson’s recordings

Soaking up lit

[“Chapter and Worse.” Zippy, June 12, 2020.]

Will Nicholson Baker read today’s Zippy ?

If the name Virgil Partch doesn’t click: he is better known as the cartoonist Vip, a quintessential mid-century modern cartoonist. No connection to Baker that I know of. I must have first seen Vip’s work in Professional Mixing Guide: The Accredited List Of Recognized And Accepted Standard Formulas For Mixed Drinks, a tiny pamphlet (4 11/16 × 2 3/4) published by Angostura-Wupperman, makers of Angostura bitters. My copy is a fifty-second printing, with a copyright date of 1961. I’ve had this pamphlet since childhood (really) — it came with a bottle of whiskey we bought for my paternal grandfather, but it stayed with me. I liked its tiny size. I would have had no idea what Professional Mixing Guide even meant. But Vip would have: many of his cartoons were alcohol-themed.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard) : From The Anthologist : Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Nicholson Baker on Maeve Brennan : Nicholson Baker reviews the Kindle : How to make an Old Fashioned (From the Guide)

Sonny Rollins on presidents

Sonny Rollins, talking with The New Yorker, on whether the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, known as Pres, would make a better president than the present occupant of the White House:

“Well, I don’t really know the present occupant personally, but I knew Lester Young personally, and I would go with Lester Young. His music speaks for itself, and he’s a human being whose personality, whose humanity, made his music what it was. A great musician, but also a great person.”

Related reading
All OCA Sonny Rollins posts (Pinboard) : Billie Holiday and Lester Young

Racism, the word, revised

From WGBH: Kennedy Mitchum, a recent college graduate, has prompted Merriam-Webster to begin revising its definition of racism.

Scott Robinson, “8 min. 46 sec.”

[Found via Music Clip of the Day. Thanks, Richard.]

Millimetres

Fernando Pessoa, from “Millimetres (the sensation of small things),” The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).

See also William Carlos Williams and Wallace Shawn on powders, pencils, mountains, and cigars.

Related reading
All OCA Pessoa posts (Pinboard)

[Five periods: the translator’s symbol for a “place where a sentence breaks off, space left for an unwritten sentence or paragraph, or blank space inside a sentence where the hiatus does not interrupt a phrasal unit.”]

A metaphor

From a Washington Post article about Republicans fearing doom in November:

There is no sign yet of a mass exodus from the runaway Trump train. If anything, most elected Republicans see themselves as prisoners onboard, calculating that jumping off would lead to almost certain defeat, according to interviews with more than a dozen party strategists, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

Oh, those poor helpless passengers. How could they have known that that the driver was utterly unqualified to operate a train? And that there never were any brakes?

Related reading
All OCA metaphor posts (Pinboard)

The country and the city

Fernando Pessoa, text 459, The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).

Related reading
All OCA Pessoa posts (Pinboard)

Opportunities

From a New York Times article about the life of George Floyd:

After graduating from high school, Mr. Floyd left Texas on a basketball scholarship to South Florida Community College (now South Florida State College).

“I was looking for a power forward and he fit the bill. He was athletic and I liked the way he handled the ball,” said George Walker, who recruited Mr. Floyd. “He was a starter and scored 12 to 14 points and seven to eight rebounds.”

Mr. Floyd transferred two years later, in 1995, to Texas A&M University’s Kingsville campus, but he did not stay long. He returned home to Houston — and to the Third Ward — without a degree.

I know nothing of George Floyd’s experiences in secondary and higher education. But I know something about the ways in which educational institutions can exploit student-athletes. And I know something about the ways in which educational institutions can leave students, athletes and non-athletes, woefully underprepared for future learning. So I think it’s reasonable to wonder: did high school, where George Floyd excelled in both basketball and football, prepare him well for college? Did community college prepare him well for a four-year school? Did that four-year school offer him — a first-generation student, raised in poverty — the support he might have needed to succeed?

This comment in the Times article, from Stephen Jackson, a retired NBA player and friend of Floyd’s, struck me:

“I tell people all the time, the only difference between me and George Floyd, the only difference between me and my twin, the only difference between me and Georgie, is the fact that I had more opportunities.”

*

October 8: A Washington Post article about how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life describes his time in college:

By the time Floyd left high school in 1993, he wasn’t academically prepared to go to college. But his athletic skills earned him a place at a two-year program in South Florida before he transferred closer to home — to Texas A&M University-Kingsville, a small, mostly Latino school known as a pipeline to the NFL.

“Big Floyd was always talking about going to the league,” said his close friend Demetrius Lott, who also was on the football team and lived in the same apartment complex. “It was what we all wanted.”

The Black students stuck together and supported one another. The red tile-roofed Spanish Mission architecture of the campus, with its rustling palm trees lining quiet streets, was a world away from Third Ward projects. Adjusting to college life wasn’t always easy for him, his friends said, but it was a happy, triumphant time because few from his neighborhood had made it that far. . . .

Floyd, a tight end, went to practice every day, but he wasn’t making the grades or completing the credits that would have allowed him to get on the field. Many of Floyd’s friends also fell short, unable to finish college or make it to the pros.

Other students, particularly White ones, had “a better foundation, a better support system,” said college roommate Marcus Williams. “Me and Floyd didn’t have that.”

There are more Washington Post articles to come. The next one is to be all about education.

*

The second article in the Post series clears up the question of whether Floyd was an athlete at Texas Kingsville: he was taking developmental (remedial) classes that did not count toward eligibility. Thus he could practice with the football team but not play.