A last Beatles song

You know there’s a last new Beatles song coming this Thursday, yes? I’ve been looking forward to it since June. The song is “Now and Then,” known from a demo piano-voice recording that John Lennon made circa 1979. A New York Times article tells the story of how the Beatles version has come about.

I’ll repeat what I wrote in June: I think John’s piano-vocal demo is a beautifully sad song. I hope that feeling isn’t lost under too many layers of production as the demo gets turned into a record.

I was just a kid when the Beatles came on the scene. Suddenly the world seemed brighter, more exciting, full of possibility. I am not making this up. In this dark time, I feel something of that feeling now. And I’ve ordered two copies of the single.

A short documentary is to appear today on the Beatles’ YouTube channel. A music video will follow this Friday. More info at the Beatles’ website.

*

Here’s the short documentary: Now and Then — The Last Beatles Song.

Related reading
All OCA Beatles posts (Pinboard)

Gloria Grahame at TCM

At TCM, Tuesdays this November are for Gloria Grahame.

Halloween tally

Six trick-or-treaters. We had nine last year. Fourteen Milky Way Fun Size bars dispensed, twenty-two left over. We began with three bars per kid but dropped to two, thinking we might run out. No such luck.

PBS at WVU

On tonight’s PBS NewsHour, a segment about eliminating programs and faculty positions at West Virginia University.

According to NewsHour correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, thirty-two majors and 169 faculty positions are being eliminated. According to university president E. Gordon Gee, it’s seventy faculty positions. The other faculty cuts, he says, are “due to retirements and a variety of other things.” I would guess that at least some faculty who haven’t gone elsewhere have chosen to retire rather than be fired.

Sreenivasan spoke with Jonah Katz, an associate professor (i.e., tenured) in the Department of World Languages, Literatures, & Linguistics. Katz and his department are being eliminated:

“I think the level of reputational damage that the university is going to take will not be survivable. I don’t think that this will be a viable research university in five to ten years. And it essentially means that there’s no real tenure here anymore. And so nobody is going to come teach here unless they have absolutely no other choice.”

Related posts
College completion : Dickinson State, firing : Emporia State, firing : WVU cuts

“Fried or boiled?”

The housekeeper has a question for the ladies:

Katherine Mansfield, “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (1921).

Related reading
All OCA Mansfield posts (Pinboard)

Kids wearing masks

[Kids wearing masks for Halloween. Photograph by Angelo Rizzuto. New York, October 1964. From the Library of Congress. Click for a larger view.]

Angelo Rizzuto (1906–1967), aka Anthony Angel, was a prolific photographer of mid-century New York City. The story of his life and work suggests a lonelier, more desperate version of Vivian Maier. A great difference: Rizzuto gave his photographs — roughly 60,000 of them — to the Library of Congress. Begin here: “Through the Eyes of an Angel: New York Photos by Anthony Angel.”

Also, Happy Halloween.

Elvis, not to be found

From Gale Walden’s “David’s Presence,” about the writer’s relationship with David Foster Wallace:

It was David who introduced me to the Urbana Free Library on a visit to his parents, shortly after we started dating. “This is where I studied in high school,” he said. “Not at the university?” I asked. The University of Illinois, a few blocks down the street, has several wonderful libraries; the main reading room has long wooden tables and small lamps, like a library in a movie. Across the atrium, behind the circulation desk, there are stacks and stacks of books that move at the push of a button, compressing and expanding like an accordion. There is a little shrine to Elvis Presley, who once ordered a library card from there. Since David’s father, a philosophy professor, had an office next door, I assumed he would have worked there. “No, way more relaxed and down home at the public library,” he said.

This passage piqued my interest. I sometimes work in the Urbana Free Library when Elaine is at a rehearsal and we’re spending a day in Champaign-Urbana. And I’ve spent many hours roaming the stacks at University Library, UIUC’s main library. But I’ve never seen an Elvis shrine.

We spent some of the day in C-U yesterday and made a quick stop at the University Library. I am sorry to report that the Elvis shrine, created in 1994, seems to be no more. A staff member showed me where it was once housed, in a corner right before one enters the stacks. No one knew when it had been removed. Years ago, before their time.

[Where the shrine once stood.]

But wait, there’s more:

A 2013 story about spooky stuff at UIUC has the shrine’s backstory (it has to do with the Divine Comedy, not a library card) and the story of its removal and relocation:

For more than a decade, it hung in a metal case near the circulation desk . . . . Alas, duct and drywall work in 2008 necessitated the shrine’s removal to the remote corridor of the stacks where it now dwells, somewhat unappreciated.

Is the shrine still in the stacks? If it is, the librarians weren’t saying, at least not to me.

[The main library at UIUC is beyond huge — searching for the shrine in the stacks could take days.]

Google, what the?

A 2007 OCA post about a supremely sketchy and now-defunct “honors” outfit, the National Dean’s List, is at the top of Google search results for the NDL. Yay me, I suppose.

But look at what Google displays when one searches for national deans list, no quotation marks:

[“The National Dean's List sponsors the largest Free Book Program conducted by any publisher in any field. The books are provided, free of charge, ...”]

That chunk of text isn’t even from the post I wrote; it’s from a comment on the post left by someone who may have had a connection to the company.

When one searches for national deans list with quotation marks, my post appears at the top as a featured snippet:

[“Every year, professors, deans and leaders of civic and community service organizations affiliated with post secondary institutions are invited to nominate outstanding students who have achieved ‘Dean’s List’ honors, or comparable academic achievement, have a ‘B+’ average or are in the upper 10% of their classes.”]

That’s something I quoted from the now-defunct NDL website. I prefaced the quotation with these words: “If I were a genuine high-achieving college student, I might not have reason to doubt the claims on the NDL website.”

A sentence from the post that gives an accurate idea of the post:

The National Dean’s List is about as selective as a telephone book.

What made it possible for me to come to that conclusion? Mail from the NDL — letters of “invitation for nomination” — addressed to me (then almost thirty years out of college) and to a non-existent person, both names taken from mailing lists. The 2007 post explains in more detail.

The company marketing the National Dean’s List folded in 2007, so I’m surprised to see that my post about the NDL still gets visits daily. There must be many people aspiring to live in the past. At any rate, the National Dean’s List remains defunct.

A dictionary, done

“It was started in 1883 and now we’re done”: Svenska Akademiens ordbok, the official Swedish dictionary, analogous to the OED, has been completed after 140 years (The Guardian ). Ten thousand additional words — allergy, Barbie doll, computer, &c. — still need to be added to the volumes for A through R.

The dictionary is available online.

[Ordbok: yes, dictionary. Word book.]

A technological trick

From the Recomendo newsletter, a description of a revised Metaverse:

Although each person is wearing goggles, they experience a full-sized 3D avatar of the other person without goggles. It’s a technological trick that seems to work, and might be in our future as something better than Zoom.

Or it might not be in “our” future. It won’t be in mine.

Here’s a conversation showing the technology in use. I can’t imagine ever wanting to use it, much less using it and thinking it cool.

[A funny comment on the video: “Can’t wait to avoid eye contact in the Metaverse!”]