A different kind of record executive. From the New York Times obituary:
Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.The documentary This Ain’t No Mouse Music! (dir. Maureen Gosling and Chris Simon, 2014) traces Strachwitz’s devotion to blues, bluegrass, norteño, Cajun music, and New Orleans jazz. The film streams at Kanopy, and it’s worth seeking out.
I was listening to an NPR conversation about cannabis. In Illinois, sales of the legal stuff have dropped. Is that because users are turning to illicit (and cheaper) sources?
We don’t use the word illicit, the host was told. The word is legacy.
We were waiting around. Another waiter: “You’re not from around here, are you?”
We’ve lived here for thirty-odd years, but no, not originally.
“I could tell. From __________?”
He was asking what town we live in. And yes, he had that right too.
“University?”
Is it that obvious? Well, yes.
Years ago, I took my kids to meet David Newell/Mr. McFeely at our nearby PBS station. “So you teach at the university?” he asked me. I, an academic? Was it that obvious? Well, yes.
[Re: “__________”: I keep some nouns off OCA. Re: “Well, yes”: but not at an R1 school.]
Steven Millhauser, “The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon,” in Little Kingdoms (1993).
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
From The Washington Post: “Vertigo is still the best movie ever. Or the worst movie ever. Discuss.” The writer, Ty Burr, leans toward “still the best.” I think so too — it’s been my favorite movie for many years. Dream, need, obsession, sheer weirdness: what’s not to like?
Vertigo was a second date for Elaine and me, when the movie was re-released in 1984. I remember vividly that someone in the audience screamed in fear at the end. A real scream, in real fear. And then the movie was over, and everyone had a giddy laugh, including the screamer.
Two Vertigo posts
Scottie and Midge : Nancy and Sluggo and Vertigo
[“Someone in the audience”: not Elaine, not me.]
Big news in The New York Times: reading instruction will be changing in New York City schools:
Hundreds of public schools have been teaching reading the wrong way for the last two decades, leaving an untold number of children struggling to acquire a crucial life skill, according to New York City’s schools chancellor.The recent podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong is a great introduction to the theory and practice of reading instruction in the United States. Though it’s not mentioned in the Times article, I think it must have something to do with the changes in New York City.
Now, David C. Banks, the chancellor, wants to “sound the alarm” and is planning to force the nation’s largest school system to take a new approach.
On Tuesday, Mr. Banks will announce major changes to reading instruction in an aim to tackle a persistent problem: About half of city children in grades three through eight are not proficient in reading. Black, Latino and low-income children fare even worse.
In a recent interview, Mr. Banks said that the city’s approach had been “fundamentally flawed,” and had failed to follow the science of how students learn to read.
“It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault,” Mr. Banks said. “This is the beginning of a massive turnaround.”
Over the next two years, the city’s 32 local school districts will adopt one of three curriculums selected by their superintendents. The curriculums use evidence-supported practices, including phonics — which teaches children how to decode letter sounds — and avoid strategies many reading experts say are flawed, like teaching children to use picture clues to guess words.
From a list of “the ten best Duke Ellington songs of all time,” from a website that cranks out ten-, fifty-, and hundred-best lists:
Duke Ellington, known as the “King of Swing,” was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century.A human intelligence failure? Or is that AI at work?
From the May 6 installment of Letters from an American:
For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.I’m sending a copy of the article to my representative in Congress, Mary Miller, who made her Washington debut by announcing that “Hitler was right on one thing.” I doubt that she’ll read what Richardson has to say. But perhaps some bored young aide tasked with opening the mail will read Richardson and find something to think about.
Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgård) to Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook), in “Tailgate Party,” last night’s episode of Succession:
“You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s . . . they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip.”For me, that observation sums up Succession.
[1444 76th Street, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]
Not a beautiful photograph, though the spots do blend nicely with the snow. The arrow on the identification sign points to 1444. On the first floor lived John Roventini (1910–1998), as in Johnny Roventini, as in “Call for Philip Morris!” Roventini was a bellhop who found a new career in 1933 as a spokesman for Philip Morris cigarettes. In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, he was everywhere — so much so that Philip Morris hired understudies, or what the Associated Press called “traveling ‘Johnnies,’ ” to fill in for personal appearances. But here’s Johnny himself:
[Life, September 18, 1939. Click for a larger view.]
A brief biography:
[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 30, 1936. Click for a larger view.]
And look — Johnny Roventini turns up in Gilbert Sorrentino’s novel Aberration of Starlight (1980). The setting is Bensonhurst:
Uncle Tom always took him to a park to have a catch with a hardball and once showed him the guy who said “Call for Philip Morris!” playing softball.The Roventini family lived at 1444 76th Street for many years. A 1930 photograph has John Roventini at this address. The 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory has a listing in Fred’s name at this address. Here’s Johnny Roventini in the 1950 census, living at this address with his father and mother. His occupation: “Advertising Cigarettes”:
[Click for a larger view.]
