Roe

The New York Times newsletter The Morning has a brief but helpful discussion of the Supreme Court draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, with links to many sources.

I looked at the text of the draft, here and there. The four points I found most chilling:

~ The characterization of Roe as the imposition of “the same highly restrictive regime” on the nation. To characterize a decision that affirms an individual freedom as the imposition of a “highly restrictive regime” suggests to me the “Freedom Is Slavery” logic of 1984. Access to abortion does nothing to restrict anyone’s right not to have an abortion.

~ The insistence that the question of abortion be left to the individual states. What further questions of individual freedom might now be left to the individual states to decide? The right to marry? Access to contraception?

~ The absence of the words incest and rape. The members of the majority are unwilling to acknowledge circumstances for which even some zealous opponents of abortion are willing to allow exceptions.

~ The long appendix of nineteenth-century statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy. From Texas, 1854:

every such offender, and every person counseling or aiding or abetting such offender, shall be punished by confinement to hard labor in the Penitentiary not exceeding ten years.

We are going backwards.

Space hotel

[File under A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do, period.]

Looking at CNN’s glimpses of life in a space hotel, I flashed on another interior, a modern “rec” room, as seen in an advertisement for Motorola televisions, Life, July 27, 1962. Gosh — the future future looks so much like the future past.

[In the hotel. Please notice the cellist, lost in space.]

[In the hotel. No curtains? No thanks!]

[Life, July 27, 1962. Click any image for a larger view.]

Thanks, Ben, for pointing our fambly to the space hotel.

[And by the way, contra CNN, you won’t be waking up with a view of the solar system, most of which will (still) be too far away, even if you’ve left earth. But you might be able to say, with Blaise Pascal, “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.”]

Mystery actor

I think he’s instantly recognizable, even through a wet windshield. But if not, the second picture might help.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

Leave your best guess in the comments. I’ll add hints if they’re needed.

*

The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors
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Donald Evans’s stamps

“Watercolor stamps of imaginary countries”: Donald Evans: Philatelic Counter, an exhibit at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

[And for those of me far from the city, thank goodness for interlibrary loan.]

Outtakes (12)

“Outtakes: Behind the Scenes with the Tax Photo Photographers” (NYC Department of Records and Information Services) has many photographs of the photographers and clerks who did the work of the WPA’s tax photographs. I’ll make a final outtakes post with two group shots.

[Outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941, available from 1940s NYC. Click either image for a much larger view.]

In the first photograph it’s cool enough for one fellow to be wearing a sweater. But not an umbrella or raincoat in sight, so perhaps the rain was a surprise. I like the camaraderie on display in the second photo, taken in what I like to call shirtsleeve weather. So few hats in these photos: these WPA guys seem like a modern bunch. They’re still unidentified.

Related posts
Outtakes (1) : Outtakes (2) : Outtakes (3): Outakes (4) : Outtakes (5) : Outtakes (6) : Outtakes (7) : Outtakes (8) : Outtakes (9) : Outtakes (10) : Outtakes (11) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

In Our Time : Antigone

The BBC’s In Our Time takes up Sophocles’s Antigone in an episode that makes an excellent introduction to the play. Edith Hall, classicist: “It will not be long before there is an Antigone set in Ukraine.”

Related reading
Antigone in Ferguson (1) : Antigone in Ferguson (2) : Antigone in Haiti : Antigone as required reading : All OCA Sophocles posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor. I got off to a fast start: 13-A, six letters, “Director whose parents were a screenplay team”; 11-D, five letters, “Mighty Dump Truck maker”; and 19-A, three letters, “Sanctions.” But I soon realized that this puzzle would be a killer: my solving experience was a matter of blank stares and occasional exclamations. 8-D, eight letters, “Literary justification”? Ah! It took me thirty-one minutes to solve this puzzle, which I was pretty sure I wouldn’t solve.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, six letters, “#3 name on the most #1 albums list.” The name surprised me.

1-D, nine letters, “SOS, for instance.” I don’t think I’ve seen the answer in a puzzle before.

4-D, five letters, “‘Double Fudge’ creator.” Here’s an example of how the use of quotation marks for italics (which I’ve added elsewhere) can complicate things. I thought the answer had to concern OREOS.

15-D, seven letters, “Hummers in summer.” Ah!

20-A, six letters, “Kennedy Center singer/songwriter honoree with Seiji and Cicely.” Two days ago I watched a performance from that year’s Kennedy Center Honors. That gave me the answer.

21-A, eight letters, “They’re seen on many fall-issued stamps.” Strangely misdirective.

21-D, seven letters, “#1 in African tourist arrivals.” See 31-A.

27-D, nine letters, “Term first used for a legendary Italian.” Huh. Post-solving, I looked it up.

31-A, seven letters, “Sunday Morning correspondent.” See 21-D.

40-D, five letters, “McGarrett’s mom on Hawaii Five-0.” Wha?

46-A, three letters, “Downer of a noun/verb/
adverb/interjection.” I learned something.

49-A, seven letters, “Ring with silver, say.” Defamiliarizing.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Block that metaphor

My friend Stefan Hagemann alerted me to these sentences in The New York Times:

“I think the governor is more popular than Disney — I think the governor is more popular than the former president,” said Anthony Pedicini, a Republican strategist in Tampa. “If you’re running for office as a Republican in Florida and you aren’t toeing the DeSantis mantra, you will not win.”

Garner’s Modern English Usage gives this explanation of toe the line and toe the mark:

These phrases — meaning “to conform to the rules; to do one’s duty” — derive from track-and-field events in which the contestants were once told to put one foot on the starting line. (Now the shouted instruction is On your marks! )

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms gives the same explanation.

Both Stefan and I wondered if the strategist might have said towing — in other words, carrying — which might make more sense. But with Ron DeSantis, there should be no expectation that anything should make sense. At any rate, you can’t toe a mantra, although you can say one, repeatedly, until the cows, or some other metaphors, come home.

Thanks, Stefan.

Related reading
All OCA posts (Pinboard)

Who was Jack the Bear?

Re: Duke Ellington’s “Jack the Bear”: where did that title come from?

John S. Wright identifies Jack the Bear as a name in a ritualized Black American exchange of greetings of the 1930s and ’40s: “How are you?” “Like Jack-the-Bear: just ain’t nowhere.” “Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a state of hibernation,” says the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Mark Tucker writes that “the real Jack the Bear was a Harlem bass player who, as reed-player Garvin Bushell recently [c. 1986] recalled, had a tailor shop at the corner of St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenues.” Jack the Bear has also been identified as a pianist. Perhaps he played both instruments.

The tax photographs in the NYC Municipal Archives Collections show no tailor shop at the corner of Saint Nicholas and Edgecombe, but one block over, at the corner of Edgecombe and 141st Street, a tailor was at work:

[131 Edgecombe Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

If you squint a bit, you can make out the TAILORS signage.


Steven C. Tracy identifies the musician, bassist or pianist, as one John Wilson. Tracy doesn’t identify him as a tailor. The 1940 Manhattan telephone directory lists a John W. Wilson residing at 281 Edgecombe. Ellington lived for many years at 381 Edgecombe.

Was John W. Wilson the tailor at 131 Edgecombe? Was that tailor Jack the Bear? Did Ellington ever make use of his services? I’ll never know.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

Sources
Stephen C. Tracy, “A Delicate Ear, a Retentive Memory, and the Power to Weld the Fragments,” in A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison, ed. Tracy (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Mark Tucker, liner notes to Duke Ellington, The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA, 1986).

John S. Wright, “The Conscious Hero and the Rites of Man: Ellison’s War,” in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”: A Casebook, ed. John F. Callahan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

On Duke Ellington’s birthday

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899.

I bought my first Ellington record in 1973 or ’74: This One’s for Blanton, piano-bass duets with Ray Brown. I bought my second Ellington record not long after: At His Very Best, an RCA compilation. The great 1940 recording “Jack the Bear” — side one, track one — was my introduction to the Ellington band.

Here is the best version of that recording that I can find on YouTube (it’s unembeddable). The players: Duke Ellington, piano, composition; Wallace Jones, Cootie Williams, trumpets; Rex Stewart, cornet; Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton, Lawrence Brown, trombones; Juan Tizol, valve trombone; Barney Bigard, Otto Hardwick, Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, reeds; Fred Guy, guitar; Jimmy Blanton, bass; Sonny Greer, drums. Recorded in Chicago, March 6, 1940. The arrangment is by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The soloists are Blanton, Ellington, Bigard, Williams, Bigard, Carney, Nanton, Blanton.

I’ll invoke Emerson: “perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.” “Jack the Bear” will never be out of date.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)