On Louis Armstrong’s birthday

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901.

Here, from the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recording of music from Porgy and Bess (1959), is “Bess, Oh Where’s My Bess?”, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, with an orchestra conducted by Russell Garcia.

From the Verve LP liner notes: “When Ira Gershwin heard Louis Armstrong’s rendition of this song, he found it most touching and poignant.”

Related reading
All OCA Louis Armstrong posts (Pinboard)

[Why not embed the YouTube video? Not all videos allow it. And if they do embed, they almost always do so with ads. Use a browser extension or two to block ads in YouTube itself.]

Graffiti Moe

Brett Terpstra’s Graffiti Moe is a free service that appends a random quotation to a Mac Terminal window.

I rarely use the Mac Terminal, but I couldn’t resist contributing a couple of quotations.

One, from an informal list of rules for a college art department, found in Learning by Heart, a book by the artist Corita Kent:

Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.

I shared Rule 7 on syllabi for many years and wrote a post about it in 2005. (And note: the list of rules is not the work of John Cage.)

Two, a lyric that appears in the OCA sidebar:

I'm not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it one more try

Sufjan Stevens, "Jacksonville"

I’m a Sufjan fan, and I’m especially a fan of this song (another version), which our fambly performed at a local coffeehouse some years ago.

So far there are 129 contributions. If I were using the Terminal, I’d be happy to have any one of them brighten the day. You can see the most recent ones and add one or more of your own at graffiti.moe/add. (Why not?)

A Seminary Co-op postcard

[The small print: “‘Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.’ (Motto over the entrance to Epicurus’ Garden.)” Context here.]

I’ve had this postcard for many years. Notice the opening time: you could get there before a 9:00 class. Times change: these days the Seminary Co-op is open M-F 11-6, S 10-5, and closed on the other S.

Related reading
All OCA postcard posts (Pinboard)

Three packs

I was preparing to drive to a southern state to buy three packs of cigarettes — they’re so much cheaper there. I was torn between Camels and Pall Malls: should I get three packs of the one, or the other? Or one pack of one and two of the other? And which of which? And yes, yes, I was going to quit, eventually, but I wanted to have some packs to keep around.

Now I’m puzzled that Lucky Strikes weren’t part of my purchasing dilemma.

The likely inspirations for this dream: watching A Private Life (dir. Rebecca Zlotowski, 2025), in which a psychoanalyst’s patient stops smoking after hypnosis but takes up the habit again, and looking at a photograph of J.D. Salinger and trying to figure out the identity of the pack on his desk. Nearly thirty-seven years after I stopped smoking (October 8, 1989), cigarettes still turn up in my dreams. But I’ve never smoked there.

This dream happened before I watched I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Related reading
All OCA cigarette dreams (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951). ]

How to improve writing (no. 136)

A reader (and writer) passed on a headline from the Writers Guild of America:

It’s Time to Take on Free Work

The Guild meant, of course, that writers should challenge the idea of free work, not that they should work for free. So let’s have the headline say so:

It’s Time to Say No to Free Work

Thanks, reader (and writer).

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 136 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. And to be a little persnickety: on is better capitalized. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (8.160), on titles: “Lowercase prepositions of fewer than five letters, except when they are used adverbially or adjectivally (up in Look Up, down in Turn Down, on in The On Button, to in Come To, etc.) or when they compose part of a Latin expression used adjectivally or adverbially (De Facto, In Vitro, etc.).” Do I have qualms about giving my writing away here? Not at all. I’m working only for myself and whoever reads.]

Strawberries, again

A reminder: just as the current occupant insists that vandals destroyed the surface of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with sharp knives, Captain Queeg insisted that the strawberries were stolen with a duplicate key to the icebox.

But as I wrote in a 2020 post, Queeg had the self-awareness to stop himself mid-rant.

FOR SALE

[169 Lombardy Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

This is the fourth WPA tax photograph I’ve posted from East Williamsburg. Next Sunday I’m going to get back to tax photographs with genuine sidewalks. Click for the much larger view and you might be surprised to see what was for sale in industrial Brooklyn. Today the address is occupied by Rich’s Skylights & Roof Hatches.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[“Well rotted,” the ads said.]

On James Baldwin’s birthday

Heber Taylor reminds his readers that today is James Baldwin’s birthday. It must be no coincidence that the Criterion Channel’s August offerings include James Baldwin On-Screen, five films about him. Missing: the 1965 Cambridge University debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley, readily available at YouTube.

Last night we watched I Heard It Through the Grapevine (dir. Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, 1982), a documentary in which Baldwin revisits the American south (with a sidetrip to Newark, New Jersey) and talks with veterans of the fight for human rights. The sad conclusion: everything had changed, and nothing had changed. Baldwin: “Twenty years later, and the same old piano playing the blues.”

Related reading
All OCA James Baldwin posts (Pinboard)

The emperor’s new pool

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson writes about the travesty of the botched effort to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the current occupant’s insistence, nonetheless, that vandals were to blame for the damage.

The utter absurdity of this story would make it a fitting representation of the lunacy of this regime, save that the human costs are fairly negligible. Cutting off foreign aid, promulgating medical quackery, killing protestors and boat crews, demonizing those who are not white and those who are transgender, seizing and imprisoning and deporting people without due process, beginning an ill-considered war of choice: there the human costs are much higher.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, composing as Anna Stiga (Stan Again). It’s a tough one. There is sports trivia: 43-A, six letters, “First State school mascot, appropriately.” There is sports trivia that I do not understand: 25-D, seven letters, “Three NFL nicknames.” There are non-sports answers I do not understand: 15-A, nine letters, “Verbal matter of fact.” There is obscurity: 2-D, eight letters, “About 27,000 gallons on the farm.” There is at least one answer that doesn’t ring true (or ring at all): 40-D, eight letters, “Fashion rebel.” But there are still moments of 44-D, six letters, “Flash.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

21-A, three letters, “Quick lunch.” Short and snappy.

27-D, seven letters, “Having bills.” In debt? Or flush with cash?

37-A, fifteen letters, “Discussion agreement.” Given the effort it took me to solve this puzzle, I’m happy to accept this plain-ish spanner.

50-A, four letters, “Gobi Desert’s day.” Nice.

59-A, five letters, “Toon swimmer saying ‘If I become human....’” It helps to have grandchildren.

65-A, letters, “Didn’t write off too quickly.” I like the weirdness of the word that is the answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 52-D, five letters, “Irish first name.” Because even after I got it, it took me a while to get it.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.