Phew! Where did this week go?
I kind of slacked over here, for which I apologize, but trust it’s for the greater good – I think; maybe; I hope…. Anyway, to make up for it, here are Debbie Harry and Kermit the Frog singing “Rainbow Connection.”
I hope you find yours this weekend.
….Don’t forget WW Norton/Countryman Press recently published my first endeavor, The Log Cabin: An Illustrated History, in which I use humor and cultural analysis to show how this seemingly simple structure shaped the complex American identity, for better and for worse.
Remember a few weeks ago, typewriters in unique situations? Well, this typewriter here is in a bookstore, and it wrote a book. Or, rather, a bunch of Michigan-based or traversing strangers used it to write a book. Read all about it @ LitHub.
I gotta keep this week’s Tomorrow Tuesday short, but wanted to share a bit about Avant Garde, the font Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase designed for Avant Garde, the future-thinking culture magazine Ralph Ginzburg edited from years 1968-1971.
In honor of “National Day of Unplugging,” the apparently annual 24-hour period in which we’re all encouraged to disconnect and detox from our devices and internets [advice many of us don’t take], here is perhaps the greatest MTV Unplugged performances of all time: Nirvana covering David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World.”
Have great weekends y’all! And tune in next week for pieces on the Girl Scouts, White House press briefings and a very timely, perhaps prescient “Etymological Adventure.”
I wrote a piece on the immersive queer artist Jon Wang for my old colleagues at Out magazine. Please check it out!
I wrote a brief history of the word “pioneer” for The Millions; I really hope you’ll read it!
Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding, would be 101 today.
In honor of her unparalleled work and life, here’s McCuller’s theory on immortality:
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”
Word.
I’m going a slightly different route with this week’s “Found in the LOC.” Rather than feature an artist or particular aesthetic or theme, as I did with old bike adverts and Gordon Parks and animals acting human, this week’s entry is organized an object, which, as the headline suggests, is a typewriter.
The Library of Congress’ online archive has just over 400 images of the computer’s forbearer. Some are udoandard fair: secretaries typing away, an author musing over the keys, but below are some of the more unique images in the collection: doctors examining typewriters being sent off to war, the machine being delivered on camelback and, the most bizarre by far, a woman using a typewriter in the shower, being watched by other women, one of whom appears almost to be coaching here. It’s very strange. Don’t worry, though, there are a few famous faces in the mix… Well, famous to some, at least. Not, you know, like Taylor Swift-famous.
Anyway, check them all out, after the break.
[And click here for more Found in the LOC.]
On the occasion of the 133rd birthday of Sinclair Lewis, Nobel-winning novelist of works like Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, It Can’t Happen Here and Arrowsmith, all of which deal with the tension between rote-loving mainstream society and unique thinking, here is an excerpt from Main Street, which I originally cited in 2011 at the LGBTQ news site Towleroad.
This blurb deals with a small town reaction to a man who doesn’t fit gender norms:
“Mrs. Dyer was bubbling, ‘Oh, have you folks heard about this young fellow that’s just come to town that the boys call ‘Elizabeth’? He’s working in Nat Hicks’s tailor shop. I bet he doesn’t make eighteen a week, but my! isn’t he the perfect lady though! He talks so refined, and oh, the lugs he puts on–belted coat, and pique collar with a gold pin, and socks to match his necktie, and honest–you won’t believe this, but I got it straight–this fellow, you know he’s staying at Mrs. Gurrey’s punk old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs. Gurrey if he ought to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine! Can you beat that?
‘And him nothing but a Swede tailor–Erik Valborg his name is. But he used to be in a tailor shop in Minneapolis (they do say he’s a smart needle-pusher, at that) and he tries to let on that he’s a regular city fellow. They say he tries to make people think he’s a poet–carries books around and pretends to read ’em. Myrtle Cass says she met him at a dance, and he was mooning around all over the place, and he asked her did she like flowers and poetry and music and everything; he spieled like he was a regular United States Senator; and Myrtle–she’s a devil, that girl, ha! ha!–she kidded him along, and got him going, and honest, what d’you think he said?
‘He said he didn’t find any intellectual companionship in this town. Can you BEAT it? Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And they say he’s the most awful mollycoddle–looks just like a girl. The boys call him ‘Elizabeth,’ and they stop him and ask about the books he lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them, and they take it all in and jolly him terribly, and he never gets onto the fact they’re kidding him. Oh, I think it’s just TOO funny!'”
If you haven’t read this work, or anything by Lewis, I really suggest that you do.
In Case You're Interested 