EALING TIDBITS PART 1
IN 1950S’ CLEVELAND, a TV station not showing the Browns game would entertain us on Sunday afternoons with British cinema. Given it was before frozen TV dinners, my dad would … Continue reading
L’EBÉ’S VIEWS PART 2
ETTORE BUGATTI’S LIFE and cars have been oft documented, but seldom in as charming a fashion as in his daughter L’Ebé’s account in The Bugatti Story. Here in Part 2 … Continue reading
L’EBÉ’S VIEWS PART 1
DAUGHTERS ARE GOOD as biographers, especially if you’re the biographee. (Suz and Beth, take note.) Assuming they leave the hagiography to others, daughters certainly have first-hand knowledge of their subject’s … Continue reading
BIOFUELS—ASSESSED HOLISTICALLY
BLENDING CORN-BASED ETHANOL into gasoline has been seen as a means of reducing anthropomorphic carbon dioxide emissions. However, “Environmental Outcomes of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., … Continue reading
THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 we sang in solidarity for picket lines, against dodgers, and most definitely against Hitler. Today, we continue through The People’s Song Book with songs about congressmen … Continue reading
THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK, 1948 PART 1
EXAMINING THE PEOPLE’S Song Book, 1948, I’m half expecting an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The book’s Foreward was written by eminent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who got caught … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, Yvonne Brunhammer discussed 1920s’ ballet, travel, and architecture. Today in Part 2, her focus is on a smaller scale: tableware and furniture, two genres of which … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 1
DESIGN OF THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES soared. Artists and artisans, weary of World War I, responded with new perceptions of reality, some of them outright bizarre. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 … Continue reading
DECODING THE HIGHWAY CODE (FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD)
FOR US ’MERICANS, AFTER ALL, it is the wrong side of the road. In any event, the British book You Have Been Warned treats its Highway Code with an anatomically … Continue reading
ARCHITECTURE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR
ROADSIDE VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE is architecture with a sense of humor, as described in the book California Crazy. Actually, my edition of this book is the original California Crazy, published in … Continue reading
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