Self-rule and survival

Timothy Snyder, on “Self-Rule and Survival”:

Thanks to Ukrainian resistance, we have all been given a chance to think, with at least some hope, about the future of democracy. Thanks to the January 6 hearings, Americans have been given a chance to think about the choice they can make to preserve our republic. It would be a very good thing if, in our midterm elections of 2022, we voted only for candidates who denounce the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election. Beyond that, it is important for all of us, these next two years, to make clear what we stand for. A second coup is being planned in America. Like the first one it will fail if it is attempted — but it will fail in a different way, by breaking the country apart. America will not survive without self-rule, and I fear it is unlikely to survive a second attempt to take it away.

Other posts quoting Timothy Snyder
“Believe in truth” : “The individual who investigates” : Nationalism, patriotism, and possible futures : “9 Theses on Putin’s Fascism”

Nightspots

I took a look at 52nd Street and found the Onyx Club and the Famous Door, fabled names in jazz.

[The Onyx Club, 62 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[The Famous Door, 66 West 52nd Street, c. 1939–1941.]

[Both clubs, c. 1939–1941. All photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives Collections.]

The name on the Onyx Club’s marquee: Kenny Watts. Patrick Burke‘s Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) notes that the Onyx Club closed in December 1939 after being picketed as unfair to union musicians,

both because the club had failed to pay union members adequately and because it was currently featuring Kenny Watts and his Kilowatts, “a non-union combination.” In September 1940, the union picketed the Swing Club at 35 West 52nd, and in October the Famous Door appeared on the “Unfair List of Local 802.” Although their recourse to the union could be helpful, it is clear that performing on 52nd Street could be a difficult way for musicians to make a living.

At the Famous Door when these photographs were taken: Ella Fitzgerald. That banner (wow) reads “First Lady of Swing.” One side says, I think, “The Tisket A Tasket Girl.” Or is it “Gal”? Fitzgerald would have been in a new role at the Famous Door, fronting a band not long after the death of drummer and bandleader Chick Webb.

Among the musicians associated with the Onxy Club, the violinist and singer Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys.

[Stuff Smith at the Onyx Club. Date unknown.]

Here are three samples of Stuff: “Onyx Club Spree” (1937), a 1965 quartet performance, and a 1957 (?) appearance with Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, and the Oscar Peterson Trio.

Look closely at the first photograph and you’ll see between the two nightspots a third, Lou Richman’s Dizzy Club. Richman was the brother of the entertainer Harry Richman. In 1936 Time mentioned the club’s seventeen-year-old female bouncer. The club would not have been named for Dizzy Gillespie — who was years away from being a personage on 52nd Street.

And Chez Lina, at 70 West 52nd (visible in the second photograph): that was a restaurant.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : The Famous Door and The Onyx Club (Wikipedia)

Domestic comedy

[Star Trek. Shatner front and center.]

“What acting.”

“What acting?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. Though SZ is known as maker of difficult puzzles, her Stumpers tend to be relatively easy. Not today’s puzzle though, which took me half an hour to finish. A solid Stumper. So I can finally throw back my head like a baying hound and bellow “Stella! Stella!” And mean it.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, ten letters, “Diva designation.” This clue seemed to me a giveaway. A good start. Thank you.

6-D, six letters, “Region abutting Switzerland and Germany.” Of note to me because Elaine and I and our friend Margie King Barab once rendezvoused at a restaurant with this region’s cuisine. We were in Manhattan.

9-D, eight letters, “Went over.” Dig the vagueness.

12-D, ten letters, “Bit associated with Elvis.” I once saw an exhibit of Elvis artifacts at the local mall. The saddest exhibit I’ve ever seen. Sunglasses with the TCB insigina (Taking Care of Business.) Many 12-Ds.

17-A, ten letters. “Foldable food.” Yes, indeed.

18-A, four letters, “Badly in need of a wash.” Ick.

25-A, seven letters, “Much consumed juice.” A little deceptive, but I was not deceived.

25-D, ten letters, “Ready to go.” Oof.

27-D, ten letters, “Evincing one’s annoyance.” Oof. Oof.

31-A, five letters, “It’s in tanks a lot.” A wonderful clue. My first thought was SANKA.

46-D, five letters, “A little relief.” Very clever.

38-A, eight letters, “Drying out, perhaps.” ONTHEWAG — no, it doesn’t fit.

50-D, four letters, “County with radio station KVYN.” Now I get it.

56-A, ten letters, “Got nowhere.” I think the first four letters are meant to mislead.

61-A, ten letters, “Absents oneself.” Lovely.

My favorite: 36-D, eight letters, “Redundant reckoning.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

[“I can finally throw back,” &c.: paraphrasing the stage direction from the play.]

A fix for the check engine light light

A possible fix: remove the gas cap and put it back on, making sure that it’s firmly in place. Then see if the light goes away.

Or does everyone already know this trick?

Manufacturing fear

From The Fearmakers (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1958). Alan Eaton (Dana Andrews), POW and victim of brainwashing, returns from Korea to Washington, D.C., only to find that his partner in a two-man public-relations and polling firm is dead and that the business has been taken over by one Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran). The new company is in the business not of measuring public opinion but of manufacturing it, with faux-roots organizations and mass-produced letters to politicians promoting Soviet-approved positions. “We turn the screws on the United States Congress,” McGinnis brags. “And from there it’s just a step to the White House.”

Eaton says that McGinnis is just manufacturing fear:

“Millions of people being lied to, taken for suckers. You know, it's a funny thing: they have pure food and drug laws to keep people from buying poison to put in their stomachs. And you're peddling poison to put in their minds.”

And Eaton to the company secretary, Lorraine Dennis (Matilee Earle), as the two stand before the Lincoln Memorial:

“You know, he was right. You can't fool all the people all the time. But nowadays you don't have to fool all the people — just enough to swing it for the Fletchers and the Jessups.”

It’s a prescient movie, streaming at TCM through July 31.

[“The Fletchers and the Jessups”: referencing other characters, lobbyists and Communist sympathizers.]

Mary Miller in The Boston Globe

Jaclyn Friedman, writing in The Boston Globe :

So many people in power have been plainly declaring their ugliest beliefs and plans lately that it ironically has become hard to hear them all. But our collective future depends on hearing the signal in all the noise.

Friedman begins the piece with House Republican Mary Miller (IL-15), and her infamous “historic victory for white life” gaffe/not-gaffe.

Miller continues on her wayward way. Recently, she voted against H.R. 8404, the Respect for Marriage Act (codifying equal marriage rights), and H.R. 8373, which would protect the right to contraception. She even voted against H.R. 7693, the National Park Foundation Reauthorization Act of 2022, one of twenty-two Republicans to do so.

There’s something about Mary.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Last words

“Mike Pence let me down”: Donald Trump’s last words before leaving the West Wing circa 6:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021. Perhaps media outlets will finally begin to address what many an unprofessional observer has long sensed: that the defeated former president is a psychopath. It’s never not about him.

What matters

Adam Kinzinger (R, IL-16): “Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters.”

Harmonizes nicely with what Representative Adam Schiff (D, CA-28) said in 2020.

Juxtaposition

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) raising a clenched fist for the crowd (not yet mob) at the U.S. Capitol.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) running down a Capitol hallway, then down a flight of stairs, fleeing to safety.

[From tonight’s hearing. Here’s the video. Laughter ensued.]