Archive for April 2016
“If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing”*…
… one of hundreds of evocative entries in Greg Borenstein‘s wonderful Dictionary of Fantastic Vocabulary.
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As we contemplate coinage, we might spare a thought for George Joseph Herriman; he died on this date in 1944. A cartoonist best remembered for Krazy Kat, which ran from 1913 until his death, he was never a commercial success; his strip survived via the admiration (and support) of his publisher, William Randolph Hearst. But Herriman was enormously influential, a primary influence on cartoonists like Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware… and no mean wrangler of language himself.
1922 self-portrait
“Ain’t you heard/ The boogie-woogie rumble/Of a dream deferred?”*…
Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library just acquired this original pen-and-brush version of E. Simms Campbell’s nightlife map of Harlem, from 1932. The map, drawn by an illustrator who frequented many of the establishments he depicted, exudes an insider’s pride in the robust music scene in full swing during the Harlem Renaissance.
When he made this map, cartoonist Elmer Simms Campbell was at the beginning of a decades-long career in illustration and commercial art. (Here’s some of his other work, for advertisers and magazines.) Campbell was “one of first commercially successful African-American cartoonists,” writes Rebecca Rego Barry. “He steadily produced artwork for Esquire upon its launch in 1933, and his work was also published in Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and Playboy.” This map first appeared in Manhattan magazine, as a centerfold, and later showed up in Esquire.
Campbell was friends with Cab Calloway, whose band appears at the bottom left-hand corner of this map. Swann Auction Galleries’ Kir Jordan links to this clip from a 2012 PBS documentary, in which Calloway walks viewers through Campbell’s map, remembering how he “bombed” with his first band at the Savoy Ballroom, and how much he always liked to say the name of the club that called itself “The Yeah, Man.”
More– and a zoomable version of the map– at “An Affectionate 1932 Illustrated Map of Harlem Nightlife.”
* Langston Hughes
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As we tap our toes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Miles Davis made his first studio recording. Working with his then-boss Charlie Parker and the other members of his octet, Davis backed singer Rubberlegs Williams. Two years later Davis led the same group of musicians in recording music released as from the “Miles Davis All-Stars.”
The young Miles Davis
“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since”*…
Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, published in 1744 and now in the collection of the British Library, is the oldest surviving published collection in the genre. Some of its rhymes are still familiar; others, like “Piss a Bed” (above), have faded away.
While the mid-18th-century Tommy Thumb’s represents the oldest collection of nursery rhymes on paper, the oral tradition is, of course, much older. In a preface to his 1843 collection of English nursery rhymes, scholar James Halliwell-Phillips could pinpoint the origins of some verses in his collection to the 16th century but believed that some could be “ancient.” Later studies have dated most of today’s familiar rhymes to the 16th through 18th centuries, with some earlier outliers coming from the medieval period.
Tommy Thumb’s is a milestone for another reason; as the British Library writes, it “represents one of the very first attempts to make books in which children would delight.” It’s small—3 by 1 ¾ inches—and has an engraved illustration on every page; the library suggests that the scheme of alternating ink colors (red, black, red, black) may have been intended to add even more interest for young readers…
More at “Some Delightfully Scatological and Cruel Nursery Rhymes, From the Oldest Surviving Book of Them.”
* G.K. Chesterton
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As we count to three bags full, we might recall that this date each year is UNESCO’s “World Book and Copyright Day.”
23 April is a symbolic date for world literature. It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla, and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
It was a natural choice for UNESCO’s General Conference, held in Paris in 1995, to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those, who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity. In this regard, UNESCO created the World Book and Copyright Day.
“Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy”*…
Walter Rothschild with a member of his menagerie
Some men shoot tigers. Some men love bears. Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Major in the Yeomanry, Conservative MP for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, heir to one of the greatest banking fortunes in history, and collector of the largest zoological collection ever amassed in private hands, had a specific and incurable addiction to cassowaries. He bred them. He stuffed them. He gathered living representatives of every known species and sub-species at his parents’ manor house in Hertfordshire. Bewitched by their beautiful and highly variable neck wattles, he identified new species where there were none. He wrote a book, A Monograph of the Genus Casuarius, about them and made excuses for them, and he could never get enough…
From A Monograph of the Genus Casuarius. London: 1900.
More on the curious connection between cassowaries and their champion at “A Natural History Of Walter Rothschild.”
* Marquis de Sade
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As we ponder passion, we might recall that this date in 1970 was the first Earth Day. First suggested by John McConnell for March 21 (the Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, a day of natural equipoise), Secretary General U Thant signed a UN Proclamation to that effect. But Earth Day as we know it was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (who was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award for his work) as an environmental teach-in to be held on on this date. The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. Later that year, President Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into being. Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by the first Earth Day 1970 organizer Denis Hayes– according to whom Earth Day is now “the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year.”
Earth Day Flag created by John McConnell
“Surely if God had meant us to do yoga, he would have put our heads behind our knees”*…
Wish your vinyasa flow practice came with beer, cursing, and heavy metal music? Rage Yoga might be for you. The more casual yoga practice involves stretching, swearing, and a killer soundtrack. Currently, founder Lindsay Istace offers classes at a pub in Calgary, Canada, on Mondays and Wednesdays—but the phenomenon is gaining traction worldwide, and classes may soon be able available online…
Details at “Rage Yoga Is Here To Make You ‘Zen As F**k’.”
* Rod Stewart
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As we walk that downward dog, we might recall that it was on this date in 1891 that Swami Vivekananda reached Bombay on a two year pilgrimage. A Hindu monk and chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna, Vivekananda announced his plans to go abroad. In 1893, he sailed for Chicago, where he began a tour on which he was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world.
Vivekananda in 1891
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