“Your hat is a little crushed”

Leopold Bloom and John Henry Menton have a history. “I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls,” Menton tells Ned Lambert. It was the night that Bloom and Marion (Molly) Tweedy first met, at a party at Mat Dillon’s. Menton danced with Molly that night, and he wonders why she ever married the likes of Bloom: “She had plenty of game in her then.” Attending the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom spots Menton, Dignam’s one-time employer. From the “Hades” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

This moment reminds me of the familiar scene in group meetings of all kinds: one person makes a suggestion and it’s ignored. Another person then makes the same suggestion and it’s suddenly a great idea.

After the snub, Bloom thinks: “Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way.”

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

Darren Bailey posted to Facebook

And he said, among other things, “Let’s move on.”

Bailey is the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois. He campaigns with Mary Miller. They’re both endorsed by Donald Trump.

Mary Miller has tweeted

For contrast: here’s what my gun-loving representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), tweeted today. This tweet appeared hours after the murders in Highland Park. No other tweets have followed:

Independence Day reminds us of the reasons we defend our statues, our monuments, our liberty, and our history.

We are blessed to live in a land that is free because of the brave. We are born free, endowed by God with rights no government can take away.

Happy Independence Day! pic.twitter.com/nXoMEazjAz

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) July 4, 2022

The tweet is online, for now. But in case someone has the after-the-fact sense to take it down, here’s a screenshot:


I cannot help seeing the fireworks behind her as gunfire.

And what is this language about “our statues, our monuments” meant to suggest, Mary? Oh wait — I know what it’s meant to suggest. And what do you mean by “our liberty, and our history”? Does that liberty include the right to end an unwanted pregnancy? Does that liberty include the right to be who you are and use the bathroom that fits who you are? Does “our history” include the past that you and your allies want to eliminate from public education? Oh wait — I know the answers to those questions too. And as for God-given rights: if they exist, I do not believe that they include the right to carry weapons of war in everyday life.

There’s something about Mary.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Highland Park

“This scene has repeated itself over and over again because of the unfettered access to weapons of war,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from suburban Chicago. “What was supposed to be a celebration of our freedom and unity today turned into yet another bloody massacre” (The New York Times ).

Artle

From The Washington Post: “‘Wordle’ fan? The National Gallery of Art has launched a copycat.” You get four guesses. I bit:

Artle #57
🎨 🟥 🟩 ⬜ ⬜
https://www.nga.gov/Artle

But I don’t expect to see such success often.

On the Fourth

Today would be a good day to watch Don’t Be a Sucker, a short 1943 film from the U.S. Department of War. Context at Wikipedia. Complete cast at IMDb.

Here’s an excerpt. A soapbox speaker is addressing a small crowd, presenting himself an “American American,” or what Tucker Carlson would call a “legacy American.” The speaker rails against “Negroes,” Catholics, Masons, and “alien foreigners.” A Hungarian-born professor (Paul Lukas) listens with dismay: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.” When the speaker is done, the professor talks at length to another spectator who thought the speaker made “pretty good sense,” at least until he mentioned the Masons:

“We must never let ourselves be divided by race, or color, or religion, because in this country we all belong to minority groups. I was born in Hungary; you are a Mason: these are minorities. And then you belong to other minority groups too. You are a farmer; you have blue eyes; you go to the Methodist church. Your right to belong to these minorities is a precious thing. You have a right to be what you are and say what you think, because here we have personal freedom. We have liberty.

“And these are not just fancy words. This is a practical and priceless way of living. But we must work at it. We must guard everyone's liberty, or we can lose our own. If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution, or by prejudice, we are threatening our own freedom. And this is not simply an idea: this is good hard common sense.

“You see, here in America it is not a question of whether we tolerate minorites. America is minorities. And that means you and me. So let’s not be suckers. We must not allow the freedom or dignity of any man to be threatened by any act or word. Let’s be selfish about it. Let’s forget about we and they. Let’s think about us.”

Everything old is new again. Including this post: it’s more or less a post I made in May. But I wanted to share it again today.

“Where’s the ‘T’?”

The dad joke in today’s Dustin is a worthy one.

I did not expect to be linking to Dustin on two consecutive days.

Tommy Morgan (1932–2022)

Chances are if you hear a harmonica on a pop recording made within the last fifty or so years, you’re hearing Tommy Morgan. Variety has an obituary.

Here’s a tour de force with multiple instruments. Here’s the Beach Boys’ “I Know There’s an Answer” (Brian Wilson–Terry Sachen–Mike Love), with Morgan’s bass harmonica solo. And here’s “My Jeanine” (Van Dyke Parks), from the Parks–Brian Wilson album Orange Crate Art, also with Morgan on bass harmonica.

Ramona, memories, oranges

Here’s some orange crate art from JSTOR. With “Ramona Memories,” from the San Fernando Heights Lemon Association.

As Van Dyke Parks wrote, “Back when Ramona had heart, memories of her orange crate art.”

Thanks to Jim at 30 Squares.

[Like the lemon crate, VDP’s lyric alludes to Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona.]

Kubrick Self Service Stores

[Kubrick Self Service Store, 1267 40th Street, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I was taking a virtual walk down 13th Avenue, Boro Park, c. 1939–1941, and decided to turn down 40th Street. And there I found this sharp photograph. The name of course struck me. But I don’t think there’s a connection: Stanley Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, where his father was a homeopathic physician. The photograph holds up on its own.

I like the retail density: signage at jaunty angles, canned goods and packages stacked high in the windows, and pyramids on crates. Those pyramids would have to come down each night, but it doesn’t look as if the window displays will be coming down anytime soon. I like the unimaginable prices: 16¢, 23¢, 2 for 25¢. The bicycle doesn’t appear to be for deliveries: no basket. I’m not sure that a self-service store would offer delivery anyway. Remember Mr. Potter, the druggist in Orson Welles’s The Stranger? “All your needs are on our shelves.” I like and don’t like the carriages outside the store, because I suspect that mothers out doing the marketing in this world left them unattended. You couldn’t navigate a carriage and do the marketing very easily. But only the Dead End Kids would make off with a carriage for kicks. I think there’s a movie in which they do just that.

I also like the Wes Anderson-like symmetry. And those curved E s.

Kubrick Stores were a chain, limited, it seems, to Brooklyn, headed by Solomon Kubrick. In 1940 there were three more stores at 1411 Avenue J, 4904 Church Avenue, and 6619 18th Avenue, all wih the same “Kubrick Self Service Stores” sign. A store at 4911 13th Avenue (nine blocks from the 40th Street store) appears to postdate the tax photos. There’s a tantalizing snippet about that 13th Avenue store in Google Books. From The Progressive Grocer (1943):

This is how manager Milton Schwartz, of the Kubrick Self Service Food Store, 4911 13th Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y., went after the booming cereal business right after point rationing began.

End of snippet. But how? How? Inquiring minds still want to know.

There’s little information about Kubrick Stores online. DuckDuckGo and Google have nothing. Brooklyn Newsstand has a couple of robberies, a number of Help Wanted listings, and a single appearance in a group advertisement directed at shoppers (Ajax Cleanser, 2 for 23¢). No obituary for Solomon Kubrick at Brooklyn Newsstand or The New York Times. The most recent glimpse of 1267 40th Street in Google Maps shows — what else? — a mobile-phone store.

Coming soon: the buildings that flanked 1267. Stay tuned.

Thanks to my brother Brian for turning up helpful information on Kubrick Stores.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives