(Roughly) Daily

From the Spring, 2010 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly (“Arts and Letters”), “Friends, Lovers, and Family,” a plot of the “degrees of separation” among the creatives who have, among them, done so much to define the canon of English arts and letters…

An excerpt from the chart:

See the whole thing here…  and rest assured that it does, finally, resolve to Kevin Bacon.

As we revisit our Facebook friends lists, we might recall that it was on this date in 1939 that the Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated and opened in Cooperstown, NY.

Stephen C. Clark, a local hotel owner, was the champion of the effort to build the Hall in Cooperstown.  He was anxious to boost the local economy, which was suffering economically, as the Great Depression had significantly reduced the local tourist trade, and Prohibition had devastated the local hops industry. He played heavily on the erroneous assertion that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday had invented baseball in Cooperstown, a claim made by former National League president Abraham G. Mills and his 1905 Mills Commission.  His grand-daughter, Jane Forbes Clark, currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hall of Fame.

(Readers should note that Cooperstown is by no means a one trick pony:  it is also home to The Farmers’ Museum, The Fenimore Art Museum, Glimmerglass Opera, and the New York State Historical Association.)

Plaques honoring Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, the first class of Inductees (named before the Hall itself was complete)