I really enjoyed “Catch Me If You Can”, both the book and the movie. So here’s something on the long side for you: Frank Abagnale talks at Google.
Shorter bonus: the two red flags to look for.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 184
September 30th, 2020Obit watch: September 30, 2020.
September 30th, 2020Bad day for music.
Ms. Reddy’s first hit was a 1971 cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a hit from the award-winning stage show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The success of “I Am Woman,” with Ms. Reddy’s lyrics and Ray Burton’s music, came a year later.
Ms. Reddy was a frequent guest in the early ’70s on variety, music and talk shows like “The Mike Douglas Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The David Frost Show,” “The Merv Griffin Show” and “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.” “The Helen Reddy Show” (1973) was an eight-episode summer replacement series on NBC.
She made her big-screen debut in the disaster movie “Airport 1975” (released in 1974) as a guitar-playing nun who comforts a sick little girl (Linda Blair) on an almost certainly doomed 747. Ms. Reddy always liked to point out that Gloria Swanson and Myrna Loy were also in the cast.
,,,
Mac Davis, good Lubbock boy.
Mr. Davis enjoyed early success as a songwriter in the late 1960s, supplying Presley with Top 10 pop hits like “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy” after spending much of the decade working in sales and publishing for independent record companies.
He also wrote “Something’s Burning,” a Top 20 pop single in 1970 for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, and “I Believe in Music,” which was recorded by the Detroit pop group Gallery, reaching the Top 40 in 1972.
“I Believe in Music” was recorded by scores of artists and became Mr. Davis’s signature song; he closed his concerts with it for decades. “Watching Scotty Grow,” another of his best-known compositions, stalled just outside the pop Top 10 for Bobby Goldsboro in 1971.
…
Genial, photogenic and fit, Mr. Davis had his own television variety hour, “The Mac Davis Show,” from 1974 to 1976 on NBC and was a regular guest on “The Tonight Show” and other talk shows in those years. He made his acting debut in the 1979 movie “North Dallas Forty,” a comedy that starred Nick Nolte as an aging football star and Mr. Davis as a calculating quarterback.
More recently, after years of inactivity on the charts, Mr. Davis enjoyed a revival as a songwriter, collaborating with latter-day pop artists like Avicii, the Swedish D.J. with whom he wrote the 2014 global pop hit “Addicted to You.” (Avicii died at 28 in 2018.)
He also wrote “Young Girls” with the pop star Bruno Mars; a version released by Mr. Mars in 2012 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Mr. Davis’s other projects over the last few years included collaborations with the country star Keith Urban and the singer Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer.
Clippings.
September 29th, 2020Missed this one until I was tipped off by, shockingly, Mike the Musicologist:
Doc Rivers was fired as head coach of the Clippers yesterday.
The precipitating incident for this seems to have been the team blowing a 3-1 lead in the playoffs and losing to Denver. He was 356-208 in seven seasons, but the team has struggled in the playoffs.
Also noteworthy:
Edited to add: fixed the poor formatting introduced by trying to use the visual editor in the WordPress app on the iPhone.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 183
September 29th, 2020I feel like it has been a while since I’ve done anything with military aircraft, so here’s a nice one for you: “F-14 Tomcat The Total Fighter”, produced by Grumman sometime in the 1980s. It’s only about 10 minutes long, too.
Bonus #1, also short, also from Grumman: “F-14 Air Combat Maneuvering”, featuring F-14 pilots in training at Fighter Town USA (not to be confused with Flavor Town).
Bonus: as a tip of the hat to Ygolonac, please to enjoy the following:
I missed the other big news yesterday.
September 29th, 2020There was another set of indictments that came down which I totally missed. And these are a surprise, though they don’t get the “tax-fattened hyena” tag.
Eight former NFL players and a Houston athletic trainer were indicted in a scheme to attempt to defraud an NFL player trust by submitting false claims for medical benefits, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Monday.
The players, which include former Texans receiver Corey Bradford and linebacker Shantee Orr, are accused of submitting false reimbursement claims for physical therapy by Houston trainer Louis Ray, who owns Rehab Express in the Galleria area.
Apparently, this was the old “create fake invoices” scheme. The players would turn the invoices over to the “Gene Upshaw NFL Player Plan, a health-reimbursement account set up for former players”, get payments, pocket the money, and kick some back to Rehab Express for creating the invoices in the first place.
If I run the numbers on this after taking out Ray’s share, it works out to an average of about $76,000 per player. Which isn’t exactly small change, but it’s not in the sevenn or eight figure range where I would consider doing a crime and escaping to a country without an extradition treaty. Also, the payouts seem to have varied quite a bit:
Ray, 59, was indicted on a first-degree felony of Securing the Execution of a Document by Deception, for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $300,000.
Bradford, who was an original member of the Houston Texans in 2002 and played four seasons for the team, was indicted on a second-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $150,000 and less than $300,000.
Orr, who played linebacker for the Texans from 2003 to 2007, was indicted for a third-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $30,000 and less than $150,000. Fabian Washington, James Adkisson, Rex Hadnot, Clint Ingram and Chad Slaughter were indicted for the same.
Derrick Pope, who graduated from Galveston Ball High School and played linebacker for the Dolphins for four seasons, was indicted for a state-jail felony for allegedly taking checks worth more than $2,500 and less than $30,000.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#66 in a series)
September 28th, 2020
Whoa.
(Previous background on the case in question from WCD.)
…
But here’s something interesting.
The contract between Williamson County and “Live PD” producers in place at the time of Ambler’s death allowed the show to destroy unaired footage within 30 days unless a court order or other state or federal law required it to be retained.
“Live PD” host Dan Abrams said in television interviews and in a post on his web site that sheriff’s officials initially asked producers to preserve the video. Two months after Ambler’s death, Chody told them the investigation was completed. At that point, Abrams said, producers destroyed the video.
If I understand the story correctly, though, both the WillCo and Travis County DAs offices were still investigating this as a death in custody.
Yadda yadda presumption of innocence yadda yadda “growing scrutiny” of the sheriff’s office.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 182
September 28th, 2020Today’s historical video is dedicated to Iowahawk and his fans. Iowahawk may already be aware of this one.
“Wonderful World Of Wheels”. According to the YouTube notes, this is a cut-down version of a longer documentary about car culture in the 1960s. Among other things: Fabian racing go-karts, “Big Daddy” Roth and George Barris, John Derek, and narration by Lloyd Bridges (whose lungs were apparently not bursting for air).
Bonus:
Okay, not really. I just threw that in for giggles.
“Rubber For Industry”, a Firestone propaganda film from the 1940s. After all, you can’t have wheels without rubber, can you? (Well, technically, you can, but they have limitations.)
Obit watch: September 28, 2020.
September 28th, 2020A quick round-up of obits I’ve been meaning to make note of over the past few days.
Michael Lonsdale, actor. He was “Hugo Drax” in “Moonraker”, but he did a whole bunch of other work. Some of it was in “avant-garde” films, but he also played “Lebel” in the original “Day of the Jackel”, “Jean-Pierre” in “Ronin”, and a long list of other work “with a Who’s Who of directors, including Mr. Spielberg, François Truffaut, Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Jacques Annaud, and James Ivory”.
Pierre Troisgros, famous French chef.
The Troisgros brothers eventually took charge of their parent’s restaurant and transformed it into a gastronomic destination, at the cutting edge of the culinary revolution known as la nouvelle cuisine. That style was influenced by the austere finesse of Japanese cooking and known, at its extreme, for tiny portions on huge white plates, a caricature in which the Troisgros brothers never indulged.
Their contribution was to showcase the innate flavors of seasonal ingredients, and to pare down some of the overblown creations buried in thick sauces that had come to represent French haute-cuisine.
It earned them Michelin stars and top ratings from other guides. And it put the restaurant high on the list for tourists starting in the 1970s, many of whom, like safari-goers ticking off the “big five,” went to France mainly to experience its top restaurants, collecting souvenir menus along the way.
…
The restaurant’s most famous dish was salmon with sorrel sauce (saumon à l’oseille). In the Troisgros kitchen the sauce was not thickened with starch but depended on well-reduced sauce ingredients and a touch of cream. Mr. Boulud pointed out that the dish was cooked in a nonstick pan, noting that Mr. Troisgros was among the first chefs to use one.
Alain Ducasse, the chef and restaurateur who is part of a generation that followed in the footsteps of Mr. Troisgros, Mr. Bocuse and others, said in a statement that the Troisgros brothers had developed the basis for nouvelle cuisine, but that their food was never austere or posed.
Robert Gore, inventor of Gore-Tex.
Mr. Gore’s billion-dollar invention was born out of failure and frustration. In 1969, as head of research and development for W.L. Gore & Associates, the manufacturing company founded by his parents, he was tasked with creating an inexpensive form of plumber’s tape for a client. The tape was made from polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE, known commonly by the brand name Teflon.
Mr. Gore sought to make more efficient use of the material by stretching it, not unlike Silly Putty. But each time he heated and stretched a rod of PTFE in his lab, it broke in two.
“Everything I seemed to do worked worse than what we were already doing,” he told the Science History Institute in a short film. “So I decided to give one of these rods a huge stretch, fast — a jerk. I gave it a huge jerk and it stretched 1,000 percent. I was stunned.”
…
Mr. Gore became president and chief executive of W.L. Gore & Associates in 1976 and pursued new applications for his invention. He would stand in a rainstorm to check garments and footwear for waterproofness, and he filled his home with prototypes. He called the company’s 800 numbers to make sure the customer service was up to par.
“Bob was the guy who made things happen,” Bret Snyder, the chairman of W.L. Gore & Associates and Mr. Gore’s nephew, said in a phone interview. “He had a passion not just for the theoretical, but how the products worked in customers’ hands.”
Your loser update: week 3, 2020.
September 28th, 2020Cincinnati and Philadelphia tied, so both come off the list this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
Minnesota
New York Football Giants
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 181
September 27th, 2020Science Sunday!
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has a YouTube channel. (The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was formerly known as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, so I guess this is now the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center National Accelerator Laboratory, unless SLAC is now one of those acryonyms that doesn’t stand for anything.)
“Here Be Monsters: Tales of the Hot Universe”.
Bonus: Here’s a lost art: “The Slide Rule (The “C” and “D” Scales)”.
The Internet of Stupid Things.
September 26th, 2020…
“hardly any encryption, authorization or authentication”. I bet you can guess what happens next. Yes! Hilarity ensues!
The write-up is much, much longer and more detailed: I’m just trying to hit the high points here.
Bonus:
(Hattip: Hacker News on the Twitter.)
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 180
September 26th, 2020This one had me at “Narrated by Burgess Meredith”. I think this is just called “Copper!” From Kennecott Copper, intended to promote their Bingham Mine.
Bonus: how could I pass this up? “They Make Zinc At Swansea”.
Somebody ought to write a book. (Part 2)
September 25th, 2020Book ideas, free for the taking! My only ask is: if you end up writing this book, please send me one autographed copy.
I have a half-baked idea for a book about people and their relationship with their tools: how they chose their tools, how they use their tools, how they bond with their tools, and how their tools are changed over time to meet their needs. (And possibly how people change over time because of their tools: not in an evolutionary biology sense, but in the sense of “when I started using this tool, I found myself doing these things”.)
My vision of this book is a sort of sequel to Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn (affiliate link) but for tools: How Tools Learn if you will.
Some examples of the sort of things I’m thinking about:
- A Romance on Three Legs (affiliate link) obviously got me thinking in this direction, so you could spend some time talking about Gould and CD318. (There’s also some interesting stuff about Verne Edquist and the evolution of his piano tuning toolbox.) But what about other musicians: Horowitz and his piano, Louis Armstrong and his trumpets, Clapton’s guitars, Wendy Carlos’s Moog, Zappa’s Synclavier, and the list goes on.
- You could probably get a chapter out of prominent computer folks and their setups. Followers of TJIC know what he uses for his work, and I’m pretty sure information about Linus Torvalds and esr is easy to come by. But why do they set them up the way they do? What are their motivating factors beyond “make my work as easy as possible”? Maybe bring in some writers and their setups, like Roddenberry’s custom CP/M system or Jerry Pournelle’s computers?
- Photographers, their cameras, and their camera bags. I’ve written a little about this before.
- Old-time African big-game hunters and their guns?
- Writers and their typewriters, like Cormac McCarthy’s Lettera 32 Olivetti. (“Twain had his customized, though, by replacing the treadle with a handle.“)
- Woodworkers and machinists, and their tool chests. Something like The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, maybe.
- NASCAR/Formula 1 mechanics and high-end car tuners? Maybe this guy?
I don’t know what the conclusions would be: I figure those would evolve as the book takes form. I do think it’d be a interesting book to read, and a fun book to write.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 179
September 25th, 2020Some real history today. According to my calendars, Monday is Yom Kippur, and I think this is the last appropriate time to get this in before the holiday.
“Never Again To Be Denied”, a 1968 film (according to YouTube, made for the United Jewish Appeal) about the 1967 Six Day War.
Slightly longer bonus: I think this is an episode of something called “Line Of Fire”, also covering the Six Day War.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 178
September 24th, 2020Travel Thursday!
I thought we’d go back to France this week. But this time, in English, and on one of our favorite defunct airlines, Pan Am.
“Voici La France”.
Bonus: since I’ve kind of been neglecting my responsibilities to the United States, “The First and the Small”. This is a 1960s episode of a TV series called “America!” and covers Delaware and Rhode Island. (I think that’s four states down, 46 to go.)
Somebody ought to write a book. (Part 1)
September 23rd, 2020Book ideas, free for the taking! My only ask is: if you end up writing this book, please send me one autographed copy.
Somebody should do a really nice coffee table type book with lots of color photos about Steinway pianos. Especially the custom ones.
Now, I have no discernible musical talent (as confirmed by highly sensitive instruments placed in orbit by NASA) and my photography skills are questionable. But I was struck by this when I read it:
Steinway had made many beautiful instruments over the years—not just the classic ebonized concert grands, but also a number of art-case pianos. Among the best known are an elaborate white-and-gilt decorative piano mode for Cornelius Vanderbilt, with paintings of Apollo surrounded by cherubs, and a piano created for the White House, with legs formed of carved eagles. For the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, Steinway had built a tortoiseshell decoration surmounted by a candelabrum. For the oil magnate E.L. Doheny, the company designed a gilded piano in a Louis XV style with carved legs and elaborate moldings. Even Steinway’s standard-issue polished-ebony concert grands were stately and handsome, if also austere.
—Katie Hafner, A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano (affiliate link)
Those were not the only folks to commission art-case Steinways. “The Steinway firm received orders for “fancy pianos” from America’s illustrious and wealthy citizens: F. W. Woolworth, E. L. Doheny, Sen. Thomas F. Walsh, Henry G. Marquand, George J. Gould, Stanford White, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc. They also produced decorated instruments for the crowned heads of European countries and influential and wealthy people throughout the world.”
It seems like someone could put together a really nice photo book with these, plus some of the more famous non-art-case Steinway piano (Glen Gould’s, obviously, but also Vladimir Horowitz’s, and I’m sure there are more artists that I’m not aware of yet). Accompany that with documents from the Steinway archives (I wonder if they have photos as well)…I’m certain you can get a book out of this.
That book may already exist, to be honest, but I can’t tell. There’s a book called Steinway that was published in 2002, “with more than 200 photos, designs, sketches, and paintings”, but I don’t have it (and don’t want to spend $70 to get it from Amazon) so I’m not sure if it covers this territory.
(I did do some research. I found an auction listing from 2018 for what may be the Vanderbilt Steinway. The White House Steinway is currently in the White House Museum. I can’t find anything on the Waldorf’s Steinway, though they do still have Cole Porter’s Steinway. I found a reference to a reproduction of the Doheny piano, and a LAT story about an auction of the Doheny collection in 1987.)
(One way to know if a book is really good: it gives you ideas for a different book. One way to know if a book is really bad: it gives you ideas for a better book on the same subject.)
(Final side note: it’s kind of fun to see E.L Doheny pop up again. The Doheny family and their scandals are a large part of Richard Rayner’s A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age (affiliate link) which I read a couple of months ago at the recommendation of friend Dave, and heartily recommend. The family was also a large influence on Chandler’s work.)
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 177
September 23rd, 2020The other day, ASM826 posted an appreciation of “Zulu”. The Saturday Night Movie Group watched it not too long ago, and I believe we are all in agreement that it is a swell movie. (I recommend the 50th Anniversary bluray, which is available from Amazon at an eminently reasonable price. Yes, that is an affiliate link.)
I thought it might be fun to post some “Zulu” related history.
The British Museum has a YouTube channel.
“Rorke’s Drift to the British Museum: The story of Henry Hook”. Henry Hook was one of the men who received the Victoria Cross for valor in the face of the enemy as a result of his actions at Rorke’s Drift. You may remember Hook:
Bonus: “A tour of Rorke’s Drift”.
Bonus #2: this is a reading of a transcript of an interview with Frank Bourne. The man reading it is his grandson. There’s really no video to this, so you can put it on in the background while you work.
He received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (which, according to Wikipedia, was second only to the Victoria Cross at the time).
Frank Bourne passed away on May 9, 1945 at the age of 90. He was the last survivor of Rorke’s Drift.
Bonus #3: “The Making of Zulu”.
Obit watch: September 23, 2020.
September 23rd, 2020Gale Sayers, one of the great NFL players.
A consensus all-American at the University of Kansas — where he was called “the Kansas Comet” — Sayers chose to play for the Bears of the established N.F.L. over the Kansas City Chiefs of the upstart American Football League in 1965. He went on to have one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.
He led the league in all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving and runbacks) with 2,272 yards, scored 22 touchdowns, six of them in one game, and was named to the all-league team for the first of five consecutive years.
He was injured in 1968, went through knee surgery, and came back in 1969.
But 1969 became a somber season. For two years the Bears had matched players by position when they shared hotel rooms on the road. Sayers, who was Black, was paired with his backup, Brian Piccolo, who was white — apparently the first time a Black and white player had shared a hotel room for an N.F.L. team. The two men bonded, partly through racial jokes.
But in November that year Piccolo was found to have embryonic cell carcinoma of the lungs. Sent to the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor, but doctors found that the disease had spread to other organs.
The following May, Sayers was given the George S. Halas Award for the Most Courageous Player. In his acceptance speech, he said: “I love Brian Piccolo. I might have received this award tonight, but tomorrow I will take it to Brian Piccolo at Sloan Kettering. When you hit your knees tonight, please pray for Brian Piccolo.”
Piccolo died on June 16, 1970, at 26. Sayers was a pallbearer at his funeral.
…
An injury to his left knee held Sayers to only two games in both 1970 and 1971. After fumbling twice in three carries in an exhibition game in 1972, he retired. He had scored 39 touchdowns in only 68 pro games and compiled a career average of 5.0 yards per carry.
In 1977, Sayers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 34; he remains the youngest person to receive the honor. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame the same year.
Tommy DeVito, one of the original members of the Four Seasons. Interesting fact:
Ron Cobb, noted production designer and artist for SF films.
He created some creatures that appeared in the cantina scene of “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” in 1977. He was also asked to help with spaceship illustrations for a movie pitch that would eventually become the 1979 blockbuster “Alien,” starring Sigourney Weaver.
Mr. Cobb’s work has appeared in several movies that have become classics of science fiction and fantasy. He designed scenes and costumes for the 1982 movie “Conan the Barbarian.” And he was a consultant for “Back to the Future” in 1985, helping to design the famous DeLorean time machine that transported Marty McFly, the character played by Michael J. Fox, back and forth through time.
…
“He was passionate about making the science correct,” Ms. Love said. “He wanted accurate science, and he wanted great design.”
Mr. Bissell said Mr. Cobb devoured knowledge wherever he could find it and shared books on subjects including philosophy, technology and evolution. “Here’s a guy who actually just never cared about money,” Mr. Bissell said. “He always just cared about his work.”
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 176
September 22nd, 2020I’m still a little behind the curve today (but improving). So what’s in the bucket? Well…we could fly a helicopter. Nothing left to talk about.
(So, it has come to this. I am literally posting Garbage.)
(But I do like that song. Though my preferred version is actually an a cappella cover by Stanford Mixed Company.)
Today’s video: “A New Star in the Sky…The UH-60A”, a promo film for the Blackhawk.
Bonus, because I don’t know where else I can fit it: “Fields of the Future”. This is a promo film for North American Aviation, I guess to encourage kids to go into aerospace related careers.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 175
September 21st, 2020I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I’m being a little lazy. However, this is something that’s been on my mind for a few days.
Today, a public service announcement. Actually, a few of them. I like having the morning airing of “Perry Mason” on ME TV on as background while I work. We’re at the point in the current run where William Talman, who played District Attorney Hamilton Burger, was fired from the series (about midway through season 3).
In spite of the charges being dropped, Talman was fired by CBS because of the morals clause in his contract. Gail Patrick Jackson, who produced “Perry Mason” and Raymond Burr both campaigned for Talman’s reinstatement, and he was rehired in December of 1960.
(Another interesting side note, unrelated to the theme of today’s post: William Hopper, who played “Paul Drake”, Mason’s private detective, served as both a member of the OSS and as a UDT guy during the war. Yeah, the guy who played Perry Mason’s private eye was a SEAL before there were SEALs.)
Talman only lived to the age of 53. He died in 1968 of lung cancer, and was one of the first people in Hollywood to do an anti-smoking commercial.
Bonus: Ladies and gentlemen, the late Yul Brynner.
Bonus #2 and #3: The Duke.
Smoking’s bad, m’kay, kids? Don’t do it.
Obit watch: September 21, 2020.
September 21st, 2020There were some obits that got kind of buried in the shuffle of events over the weekend. Here’s a round-up:
Winston Groom, noted author. He is perhaps most famous for Forrest Gump, but he did a lot of other work:
“‘Forrest Gump’ is not the only reason to celebrate him as a great writer,” P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who knew Mr. Groom for decades, wrote in an email.
In Mr. O’Rourke’s view, Mr. Groom’s debut novel, “Better Times Than These” (1978), “was the best novel written about the Vietnam War.”
“And this is not even to mention Winston’s extraordinary historical and nonfiction works,” he added.
Those books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist (for general nonfiction), “Conversations With the Enemy” (1983), an account of a Vietnam-era prisoner of war written with Duncan Spencer; “Shrouds of Glory” (1995), about the Civil War; and “Patriotic Fire” (2006), about the Battle of New Orleans.
At his death, Mr. Groom was awaiting the publication of “The Patriots,” a combined biography of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; it is to be published in November by National Geographic.
I have not seen, and have no interest in seeing, “Forrest Gump”. However, I recall reading some years back that the book is much more vicious and satirical than the movie, and that Mr. Groom somewhat resented how the movie watered down his work. I might have to seek out some of his non-fiction, especially if P.J. O’Rourke endorses it.
Anne Stevenson, poet. She was also famous, perhaps more so, as the author of a biography of Sylvia Plath.
Ms. Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, and many of her admirers blamed her husband, Mr. Hughes, who was having an affair with a woman named Assia Wevill (who herself would commit suicide in 1969). But Ms. Stevenson’s book painted a different picture, portraying Ms. Plath as “a wall of unrelenting rage” prone to outrageous behavior, while depicting Mr. Hughes as generous and caring.
The book was written with the cooperation of Ms. Plath’s literary estate, which was controlled by Mr. Hughes and his sister, Olwyn Hughes. Ms. Stevenson wrote in the preface that she “received a great deal of help from Olwyn Hughes,” so much so that “Ms. Hughes’s contributions to the text have made it almost a work of dual authorship.”
That did not give “Bitter Fame” much credibility in some critics’ eyes. The poet Robert Pinsky, reviewing it in The New York Times, called out a bias in the presentation.
“Since Ms. Stevenson’s book is, as it had to be, largely about a marriage, the tilting of viewpoint toward one side is a difficult problem for the biographer,” he wrote. “Marriages are complex and mysterious stories, each with a minimum of two sides. Writing about a marriage demands tact, respect for the unknowable and more acknowledgment of a limited viewpoint than I think Ms. Stevenson provides.”
In the British newspaper The Independent, Ronald Hayman was even harsher, calling “Bitter Fame” a “vindictive book” that sought not only to blame Ms. Plath for the failed marriage but also “to undermine her poetic achievement by representing her verse as negative, sick, death-oriented, and comparing it unfavorably with his.”
Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Long Cat (aka Nobiko) the subject of Internet memes.
yes, it’s true. long cat, known as nobiko in japan, has left us. https://t.co/Alk76dB98h pic.twitter.com/8MOSnWYH60
— isabella steger (@stegersaurus) September 20, 2020
Your loser update: week 2, 2020.
September 21st, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Carolina
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
Philadelphia
New York Football Giants
Cincinnati
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
Miami
(Saints and Raiders are the Monday night game. Both are 1-0 at the moment.)
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 174
September 20th, 2020Science Sunday!
I thought I’d do another assortment today, instead of a single theme.
First up: “Shaping Things to Come”, with Professor Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College London. Professor Laithwaite sounds like an interesting guy: he was one of the pioneers of maglev technology, did a lot of work on electric motors (specifically linear induction motors)…and had some rather eccentric ideas about gyroscopes and moths.
I just love the way this video opens. I don’t know how you could get more British than this.
Bonus: for something a little different, Alan Holden of Bell Labs explains crystals.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 173
September 19th, 2020I’m kind of hungry right now.
What was WWI trench cooking like?
Would you like some tea with that? (Okay, technically, this is WWII, not WWI, but I don’t think the process of making a cuppa was that different.)
Bonus: WWII field kitchen cooking.
Bonus #2: Another WWII field kitchen – a German field kitchen, “known as a Gulaschkanone (Goulash Cannon)”.
Bonus #3, and a bit longer: “The Royal Family’s Favourite Meals From The Empire”.
Obit watch: September 19, 2020.
September 19th, 2020For the historical record: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. NYT. The Washington Post has made their website basically unlinkable.
I don’t have much I can say: I am not a lawyer or a Supreme Court watcher, and the politics are best left to others better equipped to cover that.