George Tooker (1920 – 2011)

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One of my favorite (if not my #1 favorite) American painters has left us. George Tooker, whose painstaking egg temperas showed us a sterile world of isolation and anxiety, lasted to the age of 90, somewhat secluded. A few years ago I knew he was still alive. For a while, I didn't know one way or the other: Schrödinger's Artist! He died today, March 29, 2011.



I first saw his painting, "The Subway" (top example) in the 70s and was fascinated by his creepy vision of a nightmare populated by strangers who didn't look happy about it either. On my first visit to New York City, I made a special trip to the Whitney to see it and was disappointed to learn that they didn't keep it on display most of the time. I bought a poster, though.



People in his paintings seem haunted. Like strangers on the street, they look at you (perhaps momentarily) with no joy or flicker of recognition. Each is isolated in his or her concerns. I wrote a paper on him for art history, almost thirty years ago, drawing on images from Raymond Chandler and dissecting "The Subway" on layers of clear plastic like animation cels.



He painted in the difficult medium of egg tempera, mixing his paints as he went along. He could make a mix last another day by putting it in the refrigerator. He was influenced by Reginald Marsh and Paul Cadmus. He and his lifetime partner, William Christopher, were active in the Civil Rights movement. I have a book about him, but I don't know an awful lot about him. Here is his self-portrait, from 1947:



More pictures can be found here..

for Family Day (March 24)

On March 24, 2003, in China's Anhui Province, Cathy and I stood in a conference room at the Hefei Holiday Inn. Late in the morning, somebody handed us a thirteen-month-old girl named Xi Huan, who we renamed Sarah.

In honor of the occasion, here are some reprints from my Live Journal.

@ 2006-02-07 18:04:00

questions

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I waited at the door with the camera tonight, to get a picture of the last time my three-year-old daughter came in after school. Tomorrow she'll be a big four year old. I took a couple of shots. Sarah demanded a tuna sandwich. I managed to get a word in, to tell Cathy I'd finally heard back from the insurance people, and we weren't covered for vandalism. "Angie's grandpa died," announced Sarah.

I expressed sympathy. She asked why he died. "Probably because he was old," I said carefully. We proceeded into the den.

She asked me what other reasons people die. "Well," I ventured, "sometimes if they're in a really bad accident, or if they get really, really sick." I didn't want her to think you die from just any sickness. "I hope you don't die," she said. "Give me a tuna fish sandwich!"

I parried the sandwich gambit. We were having supper soon. She wanted me to accompany her to the bathroom. She continued her inquiries. "Why do people die when they get old?" I tried to explain without scaring her, which she so far wasn't. This was a matter of curiosity. "Well. When we get really old, our bodies wear out."

"Why?" "Everything wears out if it gets old enough," I suggested.

"Like what?" "Well, cars..."

"And trucks!" "Yes..."

"And fire trucks." She was on a roll. "Yes, and..."

"And cars!" "That's right." "Why do they wear out?"

I tried to explain that our bodies repair themselves, but when they get really, really old, they can't do that any more. I still wasn't telling her that everybody dies, everything dies. Like my dad's cousin Marilyn, who lost her battle with cancer this past weekend; but Sarah never knew her, and now she never will. It's too bad, because she was a good relative -- she had been a real support for my sister Martha years ago, when Martha was diagnosed with colitis.

My answers seemed to satisfy Sarah, who was now more interested in something to eat. I told her it was too close to dinner for a tuna sandwich, but she "couldn't wait!" We settled on some more of the orange she'd started yesterday, as long as I removed the yucky parts. I turned my attention to making food. Cathy came downstairs. Death talk, for now, was over.

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@ 2006-02-15 18:56:00

the other shoe drops

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Tonight at dinner, Cathy remarked that Andreas Katsulis had died. I said I'd heard that. Sarah chimed in: "Angie's grandpa died." We said we were sorry.

"Why did he die?" Sarah asked, still looking for information. This time Cathy fielded it. "People die when they get very, very old," she said. "Their body can't repair itself any more."

"I don't want to die," said Sarah in a small voice. Uh-oh. It had hit home this time.

"Oh, honey, you won't die! Not for a long, long, Long time!" Cathy assured her.

"And you won't die?" She looked at Cathy, and then me. She seemed to see us, maybe for the first time, as people who could die.

"No, honey. Not for a long, long time," said Cathy.

"We have to take care of you!" I added, "And we love you."

I looked at her beautiful, dark eyes. She was very quiet, and I couldn't tell where she was looking. I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned closer. "Ow," she said, half-heartedly.

We told her again that we loved her. Then the conversation somehow changed to other topics. The room felt a little colder as we finished our mac & cheese.

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@ 2006-04-30 21:43:00

bedtime lines

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"Sarah, take these dead flowers off your bed. They don't belong there." Referring to some wild flowers (aka weeds) she picked out of the yard just before I mowed it.

"They're not dead. They're alive."

"They were alive when you picked them, and now they're dead."

"Well, they're not dead to me!"

* * *

"I have tattoos on my toes. You can't see them because they're under the skin, but I can feel them."

@ 2006-04-08 13:40:00

boxes

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Sarah and I were on our way to get a bagel (for her) and a souffle (for me) at Panera's. As we passed the cemetery on King's Highway, a backhoe was digging a new grave. Sarah said something about people in boxes that I didn't quite catch. I asked her what she said.

"That's where there's people in boxes in the ground that are dead." she told me.

So she knew. I hadn't ever volunteered the information that the cemetery was full of deceased people in boxes, but she had learned it somewhere. I confirmed the accuracy of what she had said. "There's a whole bunch of them by my school," she went on. Indeed there were. Her pre-school is across the street from a very large graveyard. I have a photo I took of it while I was backing out of my parking space there -- I took it in the rear-view mirror, with the words "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY LOOK" showing. It seems that she picked up the information about cemeteries at school. Lucky me! The stuff I'm leery of telling her, she picks up on the street, as it were. We drove past another one, and she said, "There's some more people in boxes."

Then we went to Panera's, and she had a plain bagel with plain cream cheese, and our morning continued.

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@ 2006-05-23 22:19:00

sensations

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The fact, as of today, that Sarah has a couple of caterpillers in a cup with a vented top on it, and a stick and some leaves, fills me with a strange feeling. I don't know what it is. Is it that I remember doing this? That she's now old enough that she's doing things I remember doing? I just don't know. She's such a kid, you know?

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@ 2006-05-29 23:23:00

she wants

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Sarah's wants are simple. She wants the bed we looked at today, with a ladder up to the top and a desk and dresser underneath (and some shelves). And she wants a slide that goes around three times (actually two), like the one at Stanley Park. We explained that these things are very expensive. She counters that the slide costs a couple of dollars, and she is willing to contribute her own money (that is, the change she picks up here and there in the house). Whichever parent she is talking to, she cites the other parent as an authority who has okayed the whole deal.

Anybody want to buy some of our old furniture? Cheap.

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@ 2006-06-10 08:53:00

in the car

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Sarah and I were driving home from the playground yesterday.

Sarah: I want to take a bike ride when I get home!

Me: Well, I'm kind of tired from the playground right now.

Sarah: Can I take a bike ride with Mommy?

Me: I don't know. We'll have to ask her.

Sarah: (hideously loud) MOMMY! CAN I TAKE A BIKE RIDE WITH YOU WHEN I GET HOME? I CAN? THANKS!

Sarah: She said yes.

Me: Really? I didn't hear her.

Sarah: (again loud) MOMMY! CAN I --

Me: Shhh.

Sarah: Okay.

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@ 2006-06-11 21:22:00

motherhood

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It was so touching when Sarah put two caterpillars in a cup, with a stick, and leaves for them to eat. It brought back a lot of memories somehow, and the feeling of innocence that the bugs will eat the food you give them, and prosper. I was encouraged when one of them spun a cocoon (the other one apparently didn't make the grade -- or perhaps it was more successful in its escape attempts -- in which case it didn't meet any enviable fate anyway).

Then as time went on, I started to wonder just how long a thing like that is supposed to take. Were we peering in, every couple of days, on a sarcophagus instead of a cocoon? Just today we went to try and look up the information online, but we didn't know exactly what kind of caterpillar we had anyway.

Tonight as I was helping Sarah get to sleep, Cathy came in with news. The cocoon was now empty. A moth had emerged, so recently it still hadn't gotten around to flexing its wings. Sarah and I took it out on the porch and watched it continue to sit on the edge of the cup for a while. "I'm cold," Sarah said, so we went inside.

I'm hoping the moth will get it together and be gone by morning, off to a life of success. At least it made it farther than those poor butterfly wannabees I saw in sixth grade -- the younger sibling of a classmate had disturbed the chrysali early, and there were these wretched insects that weren't what they were supposed to be, vainly trying to ready their wings for the flight they'd never have. I've never forgotten those poor things, and I'm glad Sarah's caterpillar didn't share their fate. "I wanted it to be a butterfly," she said sadly, little realizing her accomplishment.

Thanks, moth, for making it.

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@ 2006-07-04 18:58:00

sarah on relatives

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We're driving to the McDonald's in Holyoke.

"Grampaw is your daddy."

"That's right, sweetheart."

"Your daddy is my grampaw."

"Right."

"Grampaw loves you."

"Yes, he does."

"Grampaw loves me."

"That's right."

"He loves me more than you. He told me so."

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@ 2006-07-06 18:34:00

bye bye flowers

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Sarah picked some fluffy blossoms -- tiny thistles, maybe? -- at the Fourth of July celebrations. The next day at school, she picked a bunch more and brought them home. We let her bring these "flowers" in and left them on the counter.

Tonight she noticed them again. "Oh no, they're dying!" she said. Then I think she wanted to water them. I told her they were dying already, because flowers don't live a whole long time after you pick them. While I continued to get supper ready, she decided she would take them outside, "so they can live."

"Honey, they're already dead. They..." Never mind. I stopped with the explanation. She was already on the move. I helped her open the back door, and she tossed them out onto the back steps. "Bye bye, flowers," I said, respectfully.

She turned back to me, sadly. "I let them go," she said.

I picked her up and hugged her and patted her on the back, remembering as I did those early days in China. Picking up our daughter -- literally, a little stranger -- and holding her and patting her gently, rhythmically on the back. And then I felt something: one of those unbelievably tiny hands was patting me on the back.

"I'll never let you go, honey," I said.

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@ 2006-07-23 12:32:00

morning of a child

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Last night, for some reason, Sarah just wouldn't go to sleep peacefully. She finally surrendered to Morpheus between 11:30 and midnight. But she seems to have gotten up around her normal time today.

She and I got in the car to go have our biscuit -- actually, to go to Panera's. About four blocks from home, she was singing part of the theme from one of the Disney channel shows.

"Everybody knows it when push comes to shove

Nothing feels better than FEELING THE LOVE.

"Everybody knows it when push comes a shove

Nothing feels better than FEELING THE LOVE.

"Everybody knows at when push a push shove

Nothing feels better than FEELING THE LOVE.

Everybody knows it when (very carefully here) push, comes, to, shove

Nothing feels better than FEELING THE LOVE!"

"Sarah, please don't sing the same thing over and over."

"I have to practice! I'm going to be in a band and I have to practice over and over to learn the song right!"

"Yeah, but..." She was using my words against me. I hate it when she does that. I tried to get her to do it more quietly, and she went on singing. I turned up the music. So did she.

We had a pretty normal time at Panera's. She got a cup of fruit to eat. Then she wanted to go to the bathroom, and when we got there, after elaborate preparations, decided she didn't have to go after all. We washed and went back to finish our breakfast. After that, we decided to go up to Holyoke and see if the merry-go-round was running. The Children's Museum doesn't open on Sunday any more -- apparently, not enough people were coming, so they decided to make it even harder to find the place open. That's sure to increase attendance. The merry-go-round was running, and we took a ride together. After that, I had two tickets left, and Sarah wanted to ride some more. I said she could ride by herself, and she did, both times on the carriage/bench seats. I ran back to the car to take pictures and a movie of the historic occasion. Big girl!

Next we played in the playground there in Heritage State Park. Mostly, she played while I took photos. I tried out the ultra-big picture mode of the camera. I haven't looked at the pictures yet. Sarah noticed some weeds with little clusters of white flowers on them, and bent down to grasp one. "I'm picking..." she started, then let go of it. "I'm leaving it in the ground," she said. I wanted to hug her.

Then she wanted to take some pictures, so I told her she had to put the camera strap on her neck to keep from dropping the camera, and she took pictures of the pretty buildings -- brick factories and mills that line the upper canal.

Holyoke actually has three canals. I never have noticed the third one, though I saw what looked like the start of a third. I learned by browsing some local history books at Barnes & Noble that the reason for the upper and lower canals was to provide energy for water wheels. That means the arch-like openings on the upper side of the lower canal weren't entryways, but places for mill water to exit. This all fascinates me, as do the somewhat timeworn brick buildings and the virtually deserted streets they sit on. I need to go back during the week some time and take several hundred pictures.

We walked along the canal toward Dwight Street, then crossed the street so she could get a picture of the bridge-like construction that carried a water pipe across the canal. Viaduct? Then I wanted to take a couple more pictures, since I hadn't been at that vantage point before. I clicked a few, including Open Square, where I once applied for a job in vain, and where Gary Hallgren, one of my personal favorite underground cartoonists, has a shop/studio, which I keep intending to go see during the week some time. The camera beeped that the card was full, so we went back to the car. I took a different route back to the highway to see more shuttered factories, and then we reached home and told Cathy about Sarah riding the horses by herself.

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ps: There's a certain amount of morbidity in the selections. It reflects that particular time in our life when she was figuring that stuff out. And here's a recent pic from last month or so:

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in which we leave our hero

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He sat at his table, dregs of Victory Hunny unlicked on his cheeks. He sat very still, not even brushing away a fat fly that came to inspect the glistening stickiness on his face. He tried to hum a hum, but all he could think of was “Three fours are fifteen.” And sometimes it came out “Three fours is fifteen,” and he didn’t know which was which. Owl came by with a Very Important Message about the Progress in the War Against Heffalumps and he listened attentively to it.

It didn’t matter. He knew that the Heffalumps would be defeated, just as he knew they would always be fighting them. It did not bother him a bit to hold both these thoughts fervently. He smiled slightly and hummed, “Three fours are fifteen.” He would do anything for Christopher Robin. He would give Eeyore over, just as Piglet had given him over, and for the same reason: love. The love of wonderful Christopher Robin, from whom all goodness flowed.

A tear twinkled from one eye and slowly tickled its way down his cheek. Winston Pooh was happy, happier than he’d ever thought possible. He was a Silly Old Bear.


[reprinted from Chunga 18]
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pane chant . 

Near the town's only graveyard, the dark mansion sits
Surrounded by wild-growing grass
And facing the street there are thirty-two windows
But one alone still has its glass.
It beams with warm pride at its less lucky mates
As it twinkles and shines all alone
And a sensitive soul might fancy it speaks
In a thin and self-satisfied tone: 

"I made the right choices
I took the right steps
My present success is my own.
I've no one to thank
But my foresight and brains
For the fruits that my planning has grown.
I rely on no man
For my unbroken face
I earned what I have; I'm self-made!
I've nothing to mourn,
And I've nothing but scorn
For the ones who go whining for aid:

(snidely)
"'Someone should do something
Someone should step in
If only somebody would see
I did as I should
I helped where I could
And now someone else should help me!
I hereby declare
That this world is not fair
And it's wrong that the innocent pay.
Somebody must bail
They can't let me fail
We're in this together, I say!'" 

With the winter approaching, a gang of young boys
Came biking by just before dark
And spying the window, they stopped where they were
And picked up some rocks for a lark.
"Watch my aim!" one boy shouted, as straight flew a stone
From a slingshot he kept in his coat
And it shattered the glass that sparkled alone
So no more did the last window gloat. 

"No one could predict this!
I did all I could
And in justice,
I should be okay.
This murderous clod
Was a sheer act of God
And that's nothing for which I should pay.
It's a sad day indeed
When the innocent bleed
For something no one could foresee.
I need help, and soon!
I've not changed my tune
For heaven's sake, listen to me! 

(plaintively)
"Someone should do something!
Someone should step in!
If only somebody would see
I did as I should
I helped where I could
And now someone else should help me!
I hereby declare
That this world is not fair
And it's wrong that the innocent pay!
Somebody must bail
They can't let me fail
We're in this together, I say!" 

(It seemed thus to sing, by the light of the moon,
On the night that the fortunate pane changed his tune.) 

--- ©2011 by Kip Williams No tune assigned
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While the twelve days of Christmas are still going on, here's a long-overdue omission from the site. It's our very own perennial holiday special, saluting the happy days of winter with some verses I wrote for Apatoons, back in the 1990s:

FREDDY THE SNOWMAN

Freddy the Snowman,

With his scarf of red and green

Didn't look too spry, but my oh my,

What a stone-cold death machine!

Freddy the Snowman

Murdered all the gang but me

With his eyes of coal and his evil soul

On a chilly killing spree!

There must have been a curse upon that rusty kitchen knife;

When Suzy put it in his hand, the snowman took her life.

(Ow!)

Freddy the Snowman

Was a child molester too,

And we heard him say, being dragged away,

"I'll be back, next year, for you!"

(Hackity hack hack, hackity hack hack,

Hacking hard and deep.

Stabbity stab stab, stabbity stab stab,

Kills you in your sleep!)

TTTO: Frosty the Snowman by Rollins and Nelson

New Lyrics ©2011 by Kip Williams

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Radio

It's decades ago; I still recall this dream:

I'm standing at a picture window in the night

Across miles of snow, even and white

Bright pinpoints alternately fade and gleam.

Each one — I know this — is a radio station

Sending signals out through chilly air.

Every one a voice that asks "Who's there?"

Piercing darkness in my imagination.

My signal, too, flies on its way

I won't know where or if its journey ends

But hopefully its words will reach my friends

And if I'm lucky bring, to night, some day.

Signals wax and wane through winter night.

I can't see you, but I'm warmed by your light.

©2011 by Kip Williams

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Toon River Anthology
part 6

JULIUS DITHERS
Even though Cora was friends with Blondie,
She used to ask me why I didn't just fire him
And let him stay fired. He didn't get much done,
And he took long lunches and he goofed off
At his desk all day long. Oh, he was honest
But I couldn't trust him with any important work,
So I fobbed off the clients I didn't care about on him,
And let him reorganize the stock room from time to time.
Some of the board members mentioned him in meetings,
With pointed references to 'Dead Wood' and such,
And one even hinted that those little bits of hair that stuck out
Bore some kind of resemblance to my own. He didn't last.
A man can stand for just so much. No, he wasn't my son,
But I made a promise to J.B. when he disinherited the boy
That he'd always have a job at J.C. Dithers and Company
As long as he lived. I kept that promise, hard as it was.
But I never promised I wouldn't kill him, and one day I did.
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Toon River Anthology
part 5

TRIXIE FLAGSTON
It was a static life. I went from bed to bath to floor
And was carried places, sometimes crawling,
Sitting and staring. I watched my family stay the same
For year after year, decade after decade
Stuck in infancy, unable to talk, or walk
My only friend was the dog, and after a while,
He found somewhere else to be.
Mom was the only one who ever changed. Once.
She went from staying home to showing homes,
And didn't even hire a sitter or get my siblings
To pay any attention to me. So I stewed
In my filthy diapers, which led to a rash, which led to infection
And that led to a welcome demise.
My stone is under some trees. I stare at other stones
And never see anybody, and they don't come to see me,
Not even the damn sunbeam!
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S1K - 026 to 033 [15 songs] (40 so far)
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Continuing our methodical walk through The Book of a Thousand Songs [Wier, 1918]

p 26: "Ah! I Have Sighed To Rest Me (Il Trovatore)" [G. Verdi], "All Glory, Laud, And Honor" [M. Teschner]. (note: it's their idea to capitalize every word, not mine)
This is the second part of the "Miserere" from Act III of Verdi's "Il Trovatore," and it appears to be a translation of what actually happens here, making for a nice change from a tendency of the editors to employ instead a nice little song about chirpy birds or a moral lesson about honesty or posture. The orchestra accompaniment is absent, and in its place we have the song expanded to four-part harmony.
I'm not sure what's up with "All Glory." The first part is something I've heard in a Christmas carol, and then the second part goes somewhere else entirely. Where's the Hosannah in Excelsis? I can't think of the title now, and am too lazy to search through all my books of carols.

p 27: "Am I Not Fondly Thine Own?", "At Evening-Time" [E.M. Steadman]
note: "All Glory" spills over into this page. I'm mostly not going to bother mentioning when that happens.
"Am I Not" is a semi-translation of "Du, Du, liegst mir in Herzen," which we used to sing in grade school. My fifth-grade teacher taught us little bits of German. This version loses the part where the object of affection makes the singer unhappy even though singer is so good to object and just makes it a sappy little love ditty.
"At Evening-Time" is a straightforward 6/8 Allegretto with no surprises in its pastoral imagery of dusk.

p 28: "Ah, For Wings To Soar", "Away With Melancholy" [W.A. Mozart], "Annie Lisle" [H.S. Thompson].
"Ah, For Wings" is a straightforward 6/8 Andante with no surprises in its lyrical whining to an unresponsive love.
"Away With Melancholy" is a tune from "The Magic Flute." The lyrics here don't correspond with what's in the opera (surprise!), which had a lot of "la la la" going on. Apparently the tune had quite a busy life both as an adaptation from the opera and as a song, and existed in multiple arrangements for all sorts of instruments. J. Pierpont, original writer of Jingle Bells, set one for his glee club with lyrics that apparently started to vary with the second line. Fernando Sor wrote an utterly charming set of variations for guitar on the theme, which I play on keyboard, because why not? The Great Song Thesaurus says the lyrics are anonymous, and I believe it. I browsed a rather substantial article online to learn more about the piece, and one of the scanned musical examples in it was right out of the Book of a Thousand Songs.
"Annie Lisle" is a pleasant Scots tune from 1860, with rhythms that snap (especially on the unexpected short-long pairs) and some nice variation in the accompaniment. It may sound familiar to Cornell grads, as it was adapted in 1872 to become "High Above Cayuga's Waters." I learned recently that Cayuga is a lake. I suppose everybody else already knew that.

p 29: "All Hail The Power Of Jesus' Name!" [Oliver Holden], "Ah, Tell Me Why" [A. Warlamoff].
This is a hymn we used to sing at Northside Baptist. One week our friend Nancy announced it and it sounded a little like she said "All hell," and we kids laughed and laughed. What boring lives we must have led.
"Ah! Tell Me Why" is another misunderstood lover song. Warlamoff would appear to have been a Russian who wrote vocal and choral music. No idea if the lyrics belong to the song. Wieniawski and Kullak both made arrangements of some of his tunes for their respective instruments.

p 30: "Adieu! 'Tis Love's Last Greeting" [Fr. Schubert], "Amici".
The Schubert seems to be well-known as a song and a choral song. No idea where the English lyrics come from. It's a graveside love song, so it could well be a translation from the original (presumably German). No trace of Schubert's piano style can be found in the four-part setting.
"Amici" is another borrowing from "Annie Lisle" (see p 28), so I pencilled Thompson's name in on the score.

p 31: "All Quiet Along The Potomac" [Mrs. Ethel Beers, J. Dayton], "Angels Ever Bright And Fair" [Handel].
Seems like it should be called "All Quiet Along The Potomac Tonight," as this was the form in which it was published in the 1860s. It was first a poem called "The Picket Guard," written by Mrs. Beers (bylined just E.B. at first) based on telegrams by Maj-Gen McClellan following the First Battle of Bull Run. The song was set to music by John Hill Hewitt, but that's not the version in this book. It's similar, but not identical. And some creep named Lamar Fontaine seems to have tried to grab credit for the lyrics. He must not get away with it.
"Angels" is from a Handel opera, "Theodora." The arrangement starts out with one voice, adding more to end up with four at the end.

p 32: "All Souls' Day" [Edward Lassen], "Angry Words".
A light arrangement of an art song from a past master — possibly somewhat neglected now, but I could be wrong. It occupies the middle ground between a love song and a memento mori.
"Angry Words" is another little life lesson, presumably for the kids. The melody doesn't remind me of anything in particular.

p 33: "Angel's Serenade" [G Braga].
This once-popular song can be found in arrangements for many instruments, including a piano version that's in a lot of older collections and was apparently adapted as a theme for some incarnation of "Amos & Andy." The Child hears the sound of angels, The Mother hears nothing, and the angels end up taking The Child. It's somewhat less dramatic and menacing than Schubert's "Erlking," but it's the same plot: Child hears supernatural entity who takes it away. The arrangement follows the narrative, and may be thinner than some versions but still carries it all, putting some of the accompaniment into the right hand along with the melody to do it. There are even a couple of four-note chords in the right hand. One of the more challenging pieces in the book so far.

also posted to my LiveJournal
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S1K - 019 to 025 [13 songs] (25 so far)

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In which I continue my traversal of The Book of a Thousand Songs [Wier, 1918]

p 19: "Angel Gabriel" [J.E. Stewart], "A, B, C, Tumble Down D" [no credits].
The latter is a puddin' and the former is a fake. "Angel G" is a 'gwine' song with a credited writer, so it would seem to have been intended for a minstrel show or perhaps a book of sentimental songs of the south. Dotted rhythms, but very little syncopation.
"ABC" is in 6/8, which isn't the way I heard it on a kiddie LP we had in the house when I was a kiddie. I recall thinking it was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, but I guess I hadn't heard a lot of things at that time, because it's been topped repeatedly since then. Is this the first song in the book that has no writer credited at all? It's far from the last. A perfunctory Google offers no hints.

p 20: "Afterwards" [Mary Mark Lemon, J.W. Mullen].
Unless otherwise noted, the lyricist's name precedes the composer's.
A sentimental song with nothing that strikes me as remarkable in the lyrics. The arrangement, which I expect reflects the composer's work, though it adheres to the general rule of the book in having no chord thicker than three notes in either hand, varies the figures used and seems to be competent and craftsmanlike, if not stunning.

p. 21: "Ave Maria" [Bach-Gounod], "Ah, 'Tis a Dream" [E. Lassen].
Bach's most famous prelude, the first from Book 1 of "The Well-Tempered Clavier," was used by Charles Gounod (best known for his opera "Faust" and for "Funeral March of a Marionette," which was used as the theme for Alfred Hitchcock's TV show) as an accompaniment to the melody of an Ave Maria. The view that this was a wonderful achievement is undercut by George Bernard Shaw's claim that all Gounod did was pull out the underlying harmony Bach put in. Still, it's popular to this day in all sorts of arrangements. This one leaves out the Bach prelude completely and gives a choral setting (SATB) of the Gounod part. You could play this and have a friend play the Bach on another keyboard, but you'll have to transpose the prelude up to G to match the key, and be sure and use the version of the prelude with the extra measure Schwenke inserted, which is most of the versions you'd have found before modern scholarship started asserting itself on the matter.
Lassen's song is a nostalgic wish for home, written in 9/8 with some duplets for emphasis. Wier let this one go on for three verses. Maybe he liked it.

p. 22: "Araby's Daughter" [Thomas Moore, E. Kiallmark], "Annie Laurie" [Lady John Scott].
Here's Moore again, going for the exotic this time. He had a lot of songs on the hit parade, and a number of them still ring a bell today. Kiallmark doesn't ring a bell, and unlike Haydn, we don't see his name and wonder which of his many works was used in the creation of this song. The 6/8 rhythm is dotted and snappy, but not unrelievedly so.
"Annie Laurie" was a real person, erstwhile sweetie of William Douglas, who wrote the poem Alicia Scott modified and added a tune to, modified from one she had written for another Scottish setting. Douglas's own authorship is sometimes questioned because of the original poem's similarity (altered by Scott in her setting) to "Jon Anderson, My Jo." However, the first and third verses aren't questioned, and he really did go out with Annie Laurie before marrying someone else.

p. 23: "Angels Meet Me at de Cross-roads" [W.S. Hays], "Alma Mater, O"
I looked up Hays to see if it was the Will Hays who wrote some other songs. His full name was William Shakespeare Hays, and titles I seem to remember include "Who Cares?" "Keep in de Middle ob de Road" and "Sweet Violets." Not that one, I'm sure. I found a book of his Poems and Songs at Google Books (scanned from an autographed copy), and it has this touchingly humble note at the front of the book:

"To My Friends: If I have done wrong in publishing this book, forgive me."

The song itself is nothing much special. He also wrote "Irish" songs.
"Alma Mater, O" is a run-of-the-mill toast to the college one is about to leave, and the tune seems to be nothing more than the first strain of "The Wearin' of the Green" sung twice. Four times, if you sing both verses.

p. 24: "Angelina Baker" [Stephen C. Foster], "A-Roving"
Angelina's another sweet dead chick that the blackfaced narrator misses. For a sad song, it's rather sprightly in a 2/4 Allegretto, and ends with an incongruously catchy rhythm on the line "She left me here to weep a tear, and beat on de old jaw-bone."
"A-Roving" shows the folk process at work, circa 1918. The version of this that I always hear has more snappy rhythms than the comparatively square setting here. Needless to say, this version is also cleaner than I generally hear, too.

p. 25: "Among the Lilies" [H.B. Farnie, Alphons Czibulka], "All Through The Night" [Old Welsh Song]
I suspect Farnie simply showed up uninvited one day and imposed his lyrics on this to make a song, as the melody is Czibulka's gavotte "Stephanie." The composer was a bandmaster who wrote a lot of Viennese trifles. "Love's Dream After the Ball" turns up in old collections, as does "Stephanie." He may be best known for "Hearts and Flowers," a song for which Tobani took full credit, but which seems to be lifted wholesale from "An Old Winter's Tale." The theme can be heard during many pathetic moments in silent movies and old cartoons.
"All Through the Night" is a lullaby everybody should know. My favorite arrangement to play is not this one, but rather the one in Gems of the Universe, a smaller collection that's jam-packed with great songs (I played all the way through it over a few days when I lived in Virginia, so this project is not entirely unprecedented).

Also posted to my Live Journal.
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S1K - pp012 to 018 [12 songs]

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In which I begin my traversal of The Book of a Thousand Songs [Wier, 1918].

The music follows a lengthy (as you might imagine) table of contents which somewhat mirrors the organization of the book. Alphabetical order guides but does not dictate placement -- Wier, or whoever did these things for him, was sensitive to layout and convenience. As a result, there are very few places where I need to turn a page once I'm playing a piece. I noticed one the other day and was almost shocked by it.

So the book is roughly alphabetic, but not fanatically so, with the same relaxed sort of organization as my two comb-bound books of photocopied music (almost entirely stuff I own or which is out of copyright), only they're on a vague chronological scheme. The first page forsakes even rough order in order to be patriotic.

p 12: "America" [Samuel F. Smith], "The Star-Spangled Banner" [John Stafford Smith, Francis Scott Key].
The editor relaxes his usual method of presenting no more than two verses and gives four for "America." The Book of World-Famous Music [Fuld], a valuable reference on such matters, says that nobody's sure whose tune it is. The Great Song Thesaurus credits a Mr. Harris.
I penciled in John Stafford Smith for "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's not that I'm tentative; it's just that a pencil is what I keep by the piano. The melody varies a little from the standard version we hear. There's a little less martial snap to it. The song didn't become our national anthem until 1931, but it was already popular in 1918 so its inclusion isn't surprising.

p 13: "At Pierrot's Door" [French folk song].
I played this way back in the first time I tried (and failed) to take piano lessons from my Dad, as "Au Clair de la Lune."

p 14: "Alice, Where Art Thou?" [J. Ascher], "Abide with Me" [H.F. Lyte, W.H. Monk].
The former would seem to be the source of a snippet Dad used to pop out with at odd moments, "Al-ice, where are you go-ing?" (To which the answer was "Down the drain.") Neither lyric is actually in the song.
"Abide with Me" is one of those hymns I've heard over and over, over the years.

p 15: "Ave Maria" [fr Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni], "Auld Lang Syne" [Traditional, and Robert Burns].
Instrumental opera intermezzo with (religious) words attached. Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, the librettists, had nothing to do with this, so I won't be writing their names in on it.
I added "Trad" to "Auld Lang Syne" because Burns didn't write the first verse. The melody first showed up as a germ of its present self in one of Playford's dance tune collections and was modified in subsequent appearances. The folk process at work.

p 16: "As Down in the Sunless Retreats" [Thomas Moore, Joseph Haydn], "As a Little Child" [C.M. Von Weber].
Thomas Moore gave us songs and lyrics that are still remembered. Some may have been original, many were taken from Irish and other folk sources. We'll run into him later, with "Believe Me, if All those Endearing Young Charms," "The Minstrel Boy," "The Last Rose of Summer" and, well, more. I'm not sure how he got together with Haydn, but it seems he wrote a poem and used something Haydn had left sitting around for a tune.
I don't know enough Weber to say if this is a translation of something he really set or if it's one of those didactic little bromides some educator cobbled together.

p 17: "Away Down Souf" [Stephen C. Foster], "Aura Lee" [W.W. Fosdick, Geo. R. Poulton].
Foster wins the previously unannounced prize for first use of the N-word in this collection. Seemed to me at one time that minstrel songs were an opportunity for uptight whites to express emotions that were too real for other songs, but I may have been wrong. Anyway, this is one of the happy ones, and that's an emotion I don't see as much of in white songs of the time -- they were more into sweethearts dying young and like that.
I had to write in both writers' names for "Aura Lee," courtesy of The Book of World-Famous Music. Elvis Presley covered this in the 50s as "Love Me Tender," with lyrics mainly by Ken Darby.

p 18: "Ah! So Pure" [F. von Flotow; w: W Friedrich].
A memorable air from a somewhat forgotten opera. I added in the writer of the lyrics, though the translation is anonymous. I like to play the version of this that's in Gems of the Universe, and tend to imagine it being sung by Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.

Now I'm worried. I didn't plan to write about every song. Maybe these were just special or something. I'm sure I'll have nothing much to say about "Angel Gabriel" on page 19. But it's late now, so I'm off to prepare for bed. Night, all.

Mirrored at my Live Journal. Edited slightly for format and words out.
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ps: If somebody out there can tell me how to pad the picture so it doesn't crash into the text, please clue me in. I've tried all sorts of permutations of "padding" "cellpadding" and "border" with values in and out of quote marks, with and without px after, and using equal sign or colon. Guh.
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S1K - intro

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The Book of a Thousand Songs. I first saw it on a shelf at Southern Music in San Antonio, TX, and a quick look convinced me I didn't need it. After returning home to Georgia, I suddenly decided I needed it after all, ordered it over the phone, and found that it's a trove of slightly shopworn treasures. The songs go from being as short as one line to taking a couple of pages, divided between ones that look like choral settings, ones that have a melody in one hand and the accompaniment in the other, and ones where the melody is woven into a rich enough piano part.

When we lived in Virginia, I found a second copy of this book. My first is a large volume, a little over half the thickness of a ream of paper and about the same size otherwise. The second copy was printed during wartime, so it's more petite and the paper is thinner. I rigged a cardboard slipcase for it and carried it in my backpack for years. I'm glad to have the lighter copy, as the somewhat improvised music stand on my electrical piano is not at its best with large, heavy volumes. When I get that messed-up hammer wire fixed on the other piano this won't be a problem.

The book is copyright 1918, edited by the once-ubiquitous Albert E(rnest) Wier, who is also responsible for Masterpieces of Piano Music, a glorious brick of sheet music covering everything from Bach to some formerly fashionable flashes in the pan who wrote painfully figurative little tone poems for the parlor player. It was part of the Music for the Millions series that brought so darn much culture to so many, and which have brought much joy to me personally. The older edition bore a MUMIL imprint, which first looked like a dignified Roman numeral. I eventually figured out its true meaning. (Can you figure it out, Dear Reader? The clue is in this paragraph!)

Sentimental songs! Operatic songs! Sacred songs! Hymns! Children's songs! Southern songs! College songs! Sea songs! Rounds! Patriotic songs! National and Folk songs! This book was put together back in the dim, forgotten days when it was actually possible for a song to come out of copyright (that's right, kids!), so it has snappy pop numbers from a couple of decades before 1918 and on back. It has classical tunes with sappy bromides fitted in place of the original dramatic intent (along with ones bearing apparent translations that are at least intended to be faithful) such as school children probably suffered to while developing a solid loathing for any and all forms of culture and uplift.

The book's most endearing feature is that it lets me make connections. I play this one, and realize where that tune comes from that I used to hear in the background of a cartoon, or where the lyric that Krazy Kat sings to himself is from. I play that one and it dawns on me that it was parodied in a Lewis Carroll book. I find more songs by Septimus Winner, a particular favorite, who wrote "Listen to the Mocking-Bird" and "Whispering Hope" under a pseudonym, as well as "Ten Little Indians" and "Der Deitscher's Dog" -- which we seem to know now as "Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone," and which is as often as not generously credited to the prolific "Anonymous" in these lazy times.

I showed this to my musician father, and he now has a copy of his own. He also likes to do what I do, which is to play through it aimlessly, annotating when a light bulb goes off; writing in a missing composer or lyric source (Claribel! Dekker!) or other trivium ("It's possible that The Old Grey Goose is a parody of this"). I recently mentioned to Dad that I was playing through some pages in the book, and he asked how far I'd gotten. Oh no, I said, I meant I'd just started in the middle and had played a half dozen or so pages… but it got me thinking. Why not, I thought, start from the beginning (like I did once with Gems of the Universe) and play every song at least one time through, repeats optional?

So I did. Updates to follow. I'm up to about page 32 now. I don't intend to write about every song, just to hit the interesting spots. If the book interests you, it's still available, and probably not more than about 100% more than I paid for my first copy, which was ten bucks. There are also scans of it online, or there have been. If I come across it again, I'll post a URL. I have my own set of scans that I made for my own use, so even though I'm not carrying the book in my backpack these days (it's getting fragile, and I gave in and taped a couple of pages that wanted to be free), it still goes a lot of the same places I go.
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two wheels bad, four wheels good

Of nearly hypnotic interest is this monthly archive of cycling paths and such kept by the Warrington Cycle Campaign (UK). These are the most amazingly perfunctory and ill-considered so-called accomodations imaginable. Month after month of them, with understated comments pointing out the "benefits" of each facility.

This bull trap can be found Sustrans route number 53 from the North coast of the Wirral to Chester. It is to protect cyclists from being trampled by the herds of migrating wildebeast common in this corner of Cheshire.

See foot-wide paths squished between pedestrians and opening car doors, fourth-dimensional hops, embedded obstacles, and dead ends. Every one of them is, seemingly, designed to fail by bureaucratic hires attempting to fulfill some sort of mandate they don't give a tinker's dam about.

Have you ever noticed how cycle paths accumulate litter, or that there is never anywhere to get rid of your sweetpapers? Well this could be the solution of the future.

The facility has been carefully placed in the middle of the cycle path so that it can be used by cyclists passing in either direction. Note the precision engineered tilt to accomodate cyclists leaning into the curve.

It may be of comfort to U.S. bicyclists to know that officials in other countries care just as much as those in our own.

visitor

My window here opens out at ground level, and through the slats I could see an animal's legs on the porch. A cat perhaps? I went back to getting Sarah ready for school and the bus. Snow on the ground this morning. Must remember to get my car out of the garage so Cathy can park there when she comes in from Boston this afternoon. As usual, Sarah was outside first. "Dad! Matty's here."

Matty was the dog next door, friendly enough but still puppy-rambunctions. Sarah encountered her a couple of times a day when coming or going to Zach's house. Our back yards join at the property line under the utility wires, and our front doors are 2/3 of a mile apart by car. Sarah said she scratched her one time, probably from trying to jump up -- sometimes she was too friendly.

This morning, she was polite but skittish. She came when I called her, and she was willing to come with me to the back yard, but making eye contact and then looking at where I wanted her to go (a trick that had worked to perfection once in Virginia when a neighbor dog had escaped their wooden fence) didn't get me anywhere.

I went in to get my phone. "Don't let her go in the house!" Sarah cautioned, but Matty didn't seem inclined to follow me in anyway. Frances was on the stairs, as usual, rubbing her sides on the rails and angling for some pets. I came out with the phone and called over. Their number was the most recent on my list. I'd used it a day or two ago when Sarah had kicked off a boot that proceeded to hit Zach in the face.

"Hello?" Zach's mom sounded sleepy. Perhaps she'd worked late at the ER last night.

"This is Kip. Matty's over here. I tried to get her to go back, but she's just hanging around here."

Deb thought about it. "The battery in the invisible fence thing might be low. She probably doesn't want to cross it. You could take her collar off." I wasn't keen on that, because Matty was acting pretty nervous. "I'll come over there and get her in a couple of minutes." I said I'd stay with her until then.

Sarah petted Matty. "She likes getting pets on her tummy," she told me.

"She should lie on the porch instead of on the cold snow," I said.

"She likes to be a snow dog." Sarah explained. "Where's that dumb bus?" I suggested that the snow might be slowing it down, though it was a pretty light snow. A minute later, it showed up. "Don't let her get on the bus!" she said. She petted Matty one last time and then dashed to me for a kiss before going down the driveway to stand ten feet away from the arriving bus. Sonali ran across our yard to get on with her (Sarah's friend from two houses away tended to make the bus just in time, more or less). I tried to get Matty to follow me to the back again, but she opted to stay by the corner of the house and watch as I whistled. This time I saw something I hadn't noticed before -- a small pile of what seemed like they could be deer droppings. I saw that the sleeve over one of Sarah's tiny apple tree seedlings had fallen partway and straightened it back up. Then I could see Deb coming over, and then she started calling to Matty.

"Matty! Silly dog. What are you doing over here?"

"She might have followed a deer. I just saw a pile of droppings -- it's a miracle nobody stepped in it." Everybody had walked within a foot of the footprint-sized pile. If there were any hoof prints in the snow, we'd wiped them out. Deb removed the electronic collar so it wouldn't keep Matty from entering her yard, and escorted her back to her own side.

"Oh yeah, she's a lot more comfortable now," said Deb as Matty went into full happy mode. "Thanks for calling us!"

I thought about poor Matty as I went in. A deer, perhaps, lured her across the invisible fence, but nothing could lure her back across the electronic barrier, so she picked our front porch as a sort of haven. It was lucky for her (maybe she smelled us here) that she'd found friends. A fence works both ways.

slide show

I've been slaving over a hot keyboard today. I actually put in something on the order of six hours organizing and selecting photos, putting them on my flickr page, finding that half of them were already there, blasting away duplicates, deciding on an order, captioning, and mostly, waiting for flickr to wake up. That was the fun part.

Anyway, the magnum opus is finished. I have made a new photoset of the pictures I took in 2006 and 2007 of the derelict amusement venue, Holyoke's Mountain Park, and the nearby derelict (and somewhat newer) water park. Mountain Park closed in 1987 after 80 years, and the wooden coaster was torn down in 1990.

In the course of looking up older photos to put names on some of my pictures, I learned that Jay Ducharme (whose pictures and sound files I linked to) finished a book on the park's history. He was one of the last carousel operators. The book, fittingly, is being sold at the carousel, which is now in Heritage Park, by the Children's Museum. It came out about four months after we moved out of town.

I also found out that bulldozers have finished obliterating the place, and a new owner hopes to make a concert venue of it.



Having found the access road, we have driven up and parked just off the bridge over I-91. The animated clown sign that invited drivers to visit Holyoke's Mountain Park for years is long gone, but the sign for the water park farther up Mt. Tom (which closed more recently) is still visible and peeling away. Let's go on in!



One of the overpasses that allowed pedestrians to cross paths with the little Zephyr train that ran around the park and also marks the location of the mini golf course, whose carpeted greens are among the more recognizable features of the park.



For a real treat, check out Jay's page. He was a carousel operator before the park closed, and he saved the recorded sound tracks from the Pirate's Den and Zoltan, the robot fortune teller.

www.karenandjay.com/mtpark/mpsounds/mpsounds.html

Sadly, Thurl Ravenscroft doesn't seem to be among the pirate voices. Anyway, this seems to be the roof of the Dolly Pitch, where you pitched dolls at baseballs to win wooden bottles. Or something.

www.karenandjay.com/mtpark/mphotos/2006pan.jpg



A three-dimensional view of a hill of poles. This is freeview 3D, because cross-eyed 3D gives me a headache and won't hold still. I took some other 3D pairs as well and might do something with them some day. More information about freeviewing can be found on the internet.

Seriously, go have a look if you can. I hiked in the hot sun to get these because I thought it was interesting, and I put a couple dozen of them up two and three years ago, respectively, and they've been looked at between zero and three times, ever. Be the first on your side of the Mississippi!.

Ahhhhh, Yes!

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Before it vanishes, as it has other times, do yourself a favor and spend some entertaining time immersed in the scholarly pages of The Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion by Eric Costello.

I can't mention it without bragging that I -- yes, I! -- once had the privilege of serializing this groundbreaking reference in the pages of a monthly cartoon APA (private magazine that went out to the contributors). Once I learned that Costello was doing this, and having seen it, I got his permission to run a few pages of it each issue, with the intention of turning the text files over to him afterward, so that he wouldn't have to type the thing over another time, and could get it published somewhere reputable. My term of office expired before it was completely finished, but by then (or soon after) he took the show to the net where it could be appreciated by a wider audience.

So. You might ask what this wonderful thing is? (I pause while you ask.) It's a guide to all the puzzling references, in-jokes, catch-phrases and ad jingles that enlivened the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, and which now confuse and confound audiences, even as their kids are shouting "TURN OUT THAT LIGHT!" or asking "Was this trip really necessary?" Radio jokes, ration coupons, opaque slang, Texas trivia, aspects of Hollywood stars, and other detritus of the collective unconscious are aired and explicated herein.

A note of caution: It comes and goes. It seems that no sooner has Mr. Costello found a home for this indispensable repository of knowledge than something happens leading to a 404 NOT FOUND message. A Google search will show you all manner of no-longer-viable WBCC locations. We recommend saving the whole thing to your hard drive, and maybe converting it to some format in which you can carry it with you wherever you go. It's that good. Samples:

SOPHIE TURKEY

The Last of the Red-hot Gobblers. A caricature in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Tashlin, 1937) of Sophie Tucker.

“SO ROUND, SO FIRM, SO FULLY PACKED -- SO SMOOTH AND EASY ON THE DRAW”

One of the many advertising slogans for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Daffy-Duck-as-Danny-Kaye mentions the slogan in Book Revue (Clampett, 1946). The Christopher Columbus character in Hare We Go (McKimson, 1951) yells the phrase in exasperation at King Ferdinand while attempting to prove the Earth is round. Henery Hawk also used the expression when confronted with a fine specimen of alleged chicken tail.

SPARKS, NED
(1883-1957)

Cigar-smoking character actor with a dour face who was well-known and often imitated. His movie appearances include 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933 in which he played the producer, the live-action Alice in Wonderland as the Caterpillar, and Wake Up and Live.

Caricatures of Sparks appear in:

• Hollywood Steps Out (Avery, 1941) greeting the table of stonefaces
• Malibu Beach Party (Freleng, 1940) being buried in sand by Baby Snooks/Fanny Brice
• Slap-Happy Pappy (Clampett, 1940) indicating his joy (?) at the news that Eddie Cackler (caricature of Eddie Cantor) is going to be the father of a boy
• Fresh Fish (Avery, 1939) as an old crab

It is quite possible that the Rip Van Winkle character in Have You Got Any Castles? (Tashlin, 1938) is a Sparks caricature as well, given the character’s voice.

These are three successive entries, taken from the page I had it open to when I started this. I can't promise that the internal links work, but it gives you the names and the meanings -- there's enough there to satisfy your curiosity and make you want to watch all the cartoons again.
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re: re-re-re-re-reading

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Every day, I read just a few more pages of Jules Feiffer's America. This is the 25th anniversary collection of his comic strips. Inimitable, though often imitated, they are amazingly concentrated and powerful stuff.

Feiffer was already an experienced professional who had worked for Will Eisner by the time he hit the ground running during the Eisenhower administration. His drawings shimmered from one style to another briefly before settling into a style so direct and unvarnished it sometimes seems like no style at all. Though famous for his talking heads, his action drawings are full of life, especially his dancers (male and female), caught at moments of poise and release, like key drawings by a great animator.

Typically existing for about eight panels, his characters breathe nervous life. He sets up small slices of them speaking to us, panel leading to panel, until they have unwittingly revealed their hearts. Sometimes they are us, and the recognition is not always comfortable. Sometimes they are the evil others, only they look and sound a bit more like us than we would like.

They are history lessons for moderns who think the 50s were a sitcom, the 60s were a love-in, and our current problems are something entirely new and novel. His Eisenhower-era strips are insightful, and I'd read many of them so often before that I can't recall them being a revelation. His Kennedy strips are a jolt of cold water to Camelot fantasists. His JFK was vital, sharp, alive, and also shallow and poll-driven. Feiffer stuck it to him mercilessly, depicting him as a choreographed dancer "doin' the Frontier drag." LBJ was a shining knight until he revealed too much of himself; then he was a particularly disappointing political hack. Nixon -- well, we all know Nixon. So did he. Jerry Ford? "Shut up and ski, Jerry." Carter was Jimmy the Cloud.

I haven't been quoting (except for Jerry) because if I start, I won't stop. It's all too good.

I can't recommend this 25th-anniversary collection too highly. It's been more than 25 years since it came out, and I wish he'd do a follow-up. I don't know if reading all his strips in order without the filter of the creator choosing what to include would match the impact of this set, but I'd be willing to find out. Fantagraphics has started the ball rolling, and the volume they've done calls to me from the store shelves. Would that I were wealthier.
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family day

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Six years ago, on the other side of the planet, they handed us a baby. I am still awed that such a thing could happen, no matter how many forms we filled out, biographies we wrote, pictures we took, fingerprints we allowed, interviews we underwent, and months we waited. They gave us Sarah. Thanks, China. Thanks, everybody.



Thanks, Cathy, for your diligent and committed work on getting it all done right. Thanks, Sarah, for being a great kid. Thanks, Frances, for being such a kid-tolerant cat.

My heart, as they say, is full.
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a billion and one blistering barnacles

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Georges "Herge" Remi passed away with one last Tintin book loosely sketched out. It has been finished by others. Canadian fan Yves Rodier made the art, and it has been scripted, colored, and translated into English.

The first time I found this online, it was still in French, and only the first few pages had been colored. This is a pleasant pastiche, complete with covers and end pages. I've often said that the trouble with some fan fiction is that they can get the characters properly dressed and standing around, but don't know how to plot for them. Luckily, in this case, the plotting has been done for them by the sole and singular creator of the entire milieu (no relation to Snowy). I still haven't purchased the published volume of the very loose version of this left by Herge, so I can't be sure whose idea it was to have various secondary characters pass through. I'm not complaining, though.

I wonder if the other completion of this, the one signed as being by "Ramo Nash" (a character in this tale), has been fully finished now. There were interesting differences between them, owing to the vagueness of the outline both started from.

Anyway, please enjoy this. It's a valedictory curtain call -- and a sort of gift to a Tintin fan who thought they already had everything.
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