Tag: Smiles

Oh, for the tart wit of the Algonquin Round Table   

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Whatever happened to the art of witty retorts? For that matter, the cozy gathering places of sophisticated regulars in urban centers, where at least one of the participants slyly made note of the ongoings?

Does this have anyone else evoking a picture of the New Yorker crowd at their daily luncheons at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel, where Noel Coward, Harpo Marx, and Dorothy Parker, among others, held forth. I’m surprised to see that cartoonist James Thurber wasn’t among them, especially since he resided in the hotel, nor was Cole Porter diddling away at a piano. Well, Thurber didn’t enjoy their penchant for practical jokes.

Still, on other occasions, the Algonks delighted in charades and the “I can give you a sentence” game, which spawned Parker’s memorable sentence using the word horticulture: “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.”

I’m assuming you groaned there.

Now, let’s consider ten more caustic wisecracks from Dorothy herself:

  1. “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
  2. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
  3. “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
  4. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”
  5. “I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it.”
  6. “Tell him I was too fucking busy – or vice versa.”
  7. “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
  8. “Brevity is the soul of lingerie,” along with, “I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”
  9. “I hate writing, I love having written.”
  10. “That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

Let’s not overlook her classic verse:

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table,
after four I’m under my host.

If you’re speaking of dances, for me, it’s New England 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My definition: contra, English country, squares, and rounds, or folk rather than ballroom or rock – though a tango fascinates, I do the Swedish  hambo, when a partner appears at one of our contradances.

~*~

This note came from before I discovered the line dances at Dover’s annual Greek Festival and then the “secret” of dancing them. The event took place every Labor Day weekend, though I did come to find other opportunities to dance in Greek circles.

All of them to date, though, have been in New England.

George Bernard Shaw wasn’t shy in sounding off on classical music

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The famed English playwright was also an esteemed music critic, though he wrote under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, 1888 to 1889, before moving on to a more respectable newspaper for four years. There, he signed his reviews G.B.S.

For perspective, he was an ardent advocate of Richard Wagner, which put him in opposition to Johannes Brahms.

Here are some sharp notes.

  1. “Hell is full of musical amateurs.”
  2. “A man who can tolerate Bach and Scarlatti on a modern piano can tolerate anything.” (He was the first converts to the original instruments camp of early music.)
  3. “Nine times out of ten, when a prima donna thinks that I am being thrilled by her vibrant tones, I am simply wrestling with an impulse to spring on stage and say ‘My dear young lady, pray don’t. Your voice is not a nail, to be driven into my head.’”
  4. “There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.”
  5. He did concede some points. “Mind, I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of music manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker.”
  6. He redefined the scope of the job, saying “I purposely vulgarized musical criticism, which was refined and academic to the point of being unreadable and often nonsensical,” or more to the point, “I believed that I could make musical criticism readable even by the deaf.” To wit:
  7. “Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution. What is more, he is a sacred institution. … Every three years there is a Handel Festival, at which his oratorios are performed by four thousand executants, collected from all the choirs in England. The effect is horrible; and everyone declares it sublime. … If I were a member of the House of Commons, I would propose a law making it a capital offence to perform an oratorio by Handel with more than 80 performers in the chorus and orchestra, allowing 48 singers and 32 instrumentalists.” He was way ahead of his time on the size issue.
  8. Many of the musical affectations of the time drew his fire. Regarding one imposed on a Mozart aria, he commented, “The effect of this suburban grace can be realized by anyone who will take the trouble to whistle ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ with the last note displaced an octave.”
  9. To him, a “poor performance was a personal insult to be treated accordingly.”
  10. Still, stridently avoiding pale cliché, he did praise those who surpassed his standards. Describing one singer, he wrote, “I was consoled by a human caress after an angelic discourse.”

We do have some striking place names around the Bold Coast

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you haven’t noticed, I can be entranced by place names. So for ten around here, let’s go.

  1. Bailey’s Mistake. Did they really land and then settle in the wrong spot?
  2. Boot Head. Try picturing that.
  3. Cutler. It even has a song about drilling into the bottom of barrels of wine confiscated during the Prohibition. And there’s a plank of wood as evidence.
  4. Destiny Bay. Also at Cutler, but what a name.
  5. Machias. Even as something-or-other disgusting kind of falls in the Native name.
  6. Magurrewock Mountain in the Moosehorn National Wildlife Preserve. At a modest 377-elevation, it still deserves attention, even if you can’t pronounce it.
  7. Meddybemps. It’s a town and a huge lake, but still, try repeating it three times.
  8. Moosehorn National Wildlife Preservation. Moose don’t have horns but antlers, despite the naming of a small river.
  9. Pope’s Folly. The small island just off the Old Friar monolith of Campobello Island, New Brunswick, seems to elude historic explanation. I’m not convinced it’s entirely religious.
  10. Treat Island. Named for an early settler, no matter the consequences, it’s still part of Eastport. And a fine IPA brew exists in its honor.

Ten things Baskerville, so do come along

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As I’ve related in other posts here, ours is widely known around town as the Anna M. Baskerville house.

For a writer and editor like me, though, Baskerville was also an important typeface in the advancement of printing.

It was the body type of the first newspaper I edited, the Belmont Hilltopper. Yup, back in high school. Our headlines were mostly Bodoni, another classic that’s mostly vanished in the internet era.

Here’s an introduction to its founder and a bit more.

So here goes for this week’s dive into arcane wonders.

  1. The typeface was designed in the mid-1750s by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England, as an intermediary between older styles, including one of my favorites by William Caslon.
  2. Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serif faces sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. Maybe you take that for granted, but it does enhance readability. Trust me.
  3. He was a wealthy industrialist who started his career as a teacher of calligraphy and a carver of gravestones before making a fortune as a manufacturer of varnished lacquer goods. You never know where you’ll encounter a true inventor or artist.
  4. In 1758, he was appointed University Printer to the Cambridge University Press, where in 1763 he published his master work, a folio-size Bible. Glory be!
  5. On his death his widow Sarah eventually sold his material to a Paris literary society, placing them out of reach of British printing, not that the move stopped imitations. The French, on the other hand, seem to have loved his openings.
  6. Oh, my, the technical discussions lead to a true rabbit hole of fine distinctions. I’m not going there, though some of you readers definitely should.
  7. John Baskerville is also noted for inventing a wove paper, smoother than laid paper that allowed for better printing impressions. One advance can definitely lead to another.
  8. Even as an avowed atheist, he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge where he printed The Book of Common Prayer in in 1762 and a splendid Bible in 1763.
  9. By the way, you won’t find a town named Baskerville on a map. There is, though, a Baskerville Hall in Wales.
  10. A more likely place to find Baskerville is in the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most popular novels ever.