Chautauqua, revisited….

The 19^th century successes of the Chautauqua Institution of New York have always appealed to me. I believe I would have been thrilled to attend the profoundly educational lectures of the itinerant speakers who followed the Chautauqua circuit. For some Americans—and for many middle-class women—the Chautauqua offerings were the closest thing they could get to a higher education.

The Chautauqua Institution was founded in 1874 as a teaching camp for Sunday school teachers. The concept spread through the United States. At its peak in the 1920s the movement offered a broad range of lectures and music on both religious and nondenominational topics, in more than 10,000 communities. By 1940 the network of originally Victorian-style centers of learning and culture had lost their mass appeal, after enriching the lives of more than 45 million men and women. Today, the Chautauqua Institution on the original site is alive and well, and still attracting many thousands of participants annually.

In the late 19^th century, the notion of family vacations was becoming popular, partly as a result of increasing affluence and the expansion of rail travel. In a recent issue of The Massachusetts Historical Review, Anita C. Danker wrote:

“…a significant number of largely middle-class Americans chose to make constructive use of their increased leisure time, a by-product of industrialization, in ways consistent with their values and religious beliefs.”

Framingham train station

The Chautauqua centers were attractive destinations. One such place was the New England Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly at Mount Wayte in Framingham, MA. From 1880-1918 it offered a steadily diversifying assortment of lectures and performances, drawing a dedicated audience from the area that would become MetroWest Boston. Those folks wanted to vacation in comfort and style, and they also were committed to a high-quality experience. Rail service to Mount Wayte was busy.

Danker explains:

“One form of vacation consistent with middle-class values and the moral climate of the New England region was the religious retreat…A critical mass of ordinary Americans displayed another powerful need, compatible with the ideal of a Christian vacation: the purposeful employment of leisure time for education and individual self-improvement.”

A reliable corps of attendees was “middle-class women, whose access to higher education was restricted by tradition and circumstance […they] formed the bedrock of the institution.”

Think of TED Talks without the clip-on microphone.

Source:

Anita C. Danker, “Redeeming the Time: Learning Vacations at the New England Chautauqua Assembly,” The Massachusetts Historical Review, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 17, 2015, 67-97.

Women who pioneered electronic music

The times they are a-changin'....

....another 3rd grade tour

Gee willikers, six miles an hour!

"Blood-and-thunder" for only 10 cents

"...the peregrines..."

Global climate change: ka-ching!

Before comic books there were....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Gee willikers, six miles an hour!

Roller coasters have been a hit since the early 1800s in France.

The first roller coaster in America opened in 1884 on Coney Island in Brooklyn.

Hold that thought.

First roller coaster - Coney Island

LaMarcus Thompson built that wooden wonder and called it the “Switchback Railway.” Basically, the cars started at one end of a slightly elevated track, rolled 600 feet to the other end, and then rolled back to the starting point. The ticket price was a nickel. That baby traveled at 6 mph. Ladies, beware!

Nevertheless, it was a big hit and by 1900 there were hundreds of bigger and faster coasters in operation around the country.

Today, the highest roller coaster in the U. S. is Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. It’s 456 feet high and top speed is 128 mph. Gee willikers.

Blame the men!

Kids will be kids -- update

Software upload

The old blanket fort

Chautauqua, revisited

Too many PhDs

Women who pioneered electronic music

The times they are a-changin'....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

The women who pioneered electronic music

Electronic music doesn’t talk to me in a real loud voice, but this piece from OpenCulture.com rings a few bells.

It’s intriguing because it mentions the not too surprising fact that women were involved in the earliest incarnations of electronic music, back in the 1950s and even earlier.

Didja ever hear of Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros?

I think it’s a good bet I can say “Of course you didn’t.”

OpenCulture explains that these women “represent a small sampling of too-often-overlooked electronic composers, musicians, engineers, and theorists whose work deserves wider appreciation, not because it’s made by women, but because it’s innovative, technically brilliant, and beautiful music made by people who happen to be women.”

Laurie Spiegel

Read a little bit about them and hear their ethereal music here.

Amen, sister.

I’m sticking with Odetta and Joan Baez (her early work), but this was a tantalizing interlude.

The times they are a-changin'....

Blame the men!

Kids will be kids -- update

Speed!

That tolerance thing

The cod in "Cape Cod"

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

“Mannish Boy”….hold that thought

When McKinley Morganfield was born 103 years ago, nobody knew that he would become “the father of modern Chicago blues.”

That’s because nobody knew he was Muddy Waters. That didn’t come out right away.

Lucky for us, folklorist Alan Lomax “discovered” Muddy Waters” in 1941 and made the first recordings of the unshackled voice of the blues that would make such an enduring, personal statement in such fully dimensioned classics as “Rollin’ Stone,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Got My Mojo Workin,’” and “Mannish Boy.”

If you’ve never heard Muddy’s voice, listen to him here, singing

“…I spell mmm, aaa child, nnn
That represents man
No B, O child, Y…”

Waters can make you a believer about the good qualities of a mannish boy, in a Delta blues kind of way.

He was one of the genuine musicians who seriously influenced the likes of Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones—who took their name from the classic Muddy Waters song.

Waters didn’t have to wrap his lips around the microphone to sing his full-throated songs that invoke zest, and longing, and desperately earnest immersion in life, always up to the hilt….

His mojo never stopped working.

Okay, it’s “O. K.”—OK?

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Johnny says "drink up!"

Book review: Dead Wake

Hatred is now legal in North Carolina

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Alexander’s Ragtime Band!

If there had been a Super Bowl in 1912, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” probably would have been the biggie in the halftime show.

This old favorite by Irving Berlin was the top tune of 1911, selling many millions of copies of….the sheet music. Most people heard the song when someone in the family sat down at the piano to tickle the ivories. The iconic Victrola phonograph was just starting to get up some steam in the consumer market, and radio didn’t go commercial until 1920.

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” is a simple version of ragtime—Scott Joplin could have played it with one hand tied behind his back, more or less. So more or less anybody could easily learn it and play it when it was a new release before World War I.

Scott Joplin

Here’s a link to a 1911 recording made a few months after the song hit the market….and here's a linkto The Andrews Sisters (their career spanned 1925-1967) doing their version.

You can sing along too, you already know some of the words:

“Come on and hear, come on and hear

Alexander’s Ragtime Band…

The best band in the land

They can play a bugle call

Like you never heard before…”

Johnny says "drink up!"

Lest we forget

A dark corner of history....

Bryson on Shakespeare

Okay, it’s “O. K.”—OK?

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Lest we forget….

Maybe it was mentioned in the recent “too white” Oscar flub-a-dub, but I’ll just rack ‘em up one more time for Hattie McDaniel.

If you’re asking “Who’s Hattie McDaniel?” you’re not a Gone With The Wind fan.

Hattie McDaniel (1895-1957) was “Mammy” in that remarkably durable romantic swashbuckler.

She also was the first black thespian to earn an Oscar. She took Best Supporting Actress in 1940, one of the eight Oscars awarded to Gone With The Wind.

Hattie had many talents. She sang in traveling minstrel groups as a teenager, and was one of the first black women to be a radio singer in the U. S.

She started doing films in 1932, and played the roles of maids and cooks in almost 40 films in the 1930s, capping that run with her memorable role as a house slave, opposite Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

Hattie’s portrayal of stereotypical black servants was criticized in some quarters, but she shrugged that off, saying she’d rather play a maid than be one.

Too bad it’s too late to say “You go, girl!”

p.s. my trusted personal advisor notes that Hattie—the only black person who was sitting down at the Oscar awards ceremony—wasn’t seated at one of the banquet tables with the white folks, she sat with her escort at a small round table near the kitchen door. Oh yeah, another thing: Clark Gable had intended to escort Hattie to the premiere of Gone With The Wind in Atlanta, but he was waved off—neither Hattie nor any other black person was allowed to attend the film showing.

A dark corner of history....

"Mama!"

"...ain't no protest song."

Writing: I can tell you this....

Crimestoppers

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

“Mama!”

Alexander Graham Bell patented his “electrical speech machine” 140 years ago. A few months later he tried unsuccessfully to sell the patent to Western Union. Apparently the company didn’t think the invention had much promise. 

I think Bell would have bet the ranch that it was plain crazy to imagine that people would someday be able to walk down the street while they were talking to a friend on the other side of the world. One story has it that Bell thought folks would use the telephone primarily to listen to distant musical performances.

In his youth Bell was a dedicated tinkerer, with a steady penchant for inventing gadgets and stuff. Before the telephone became a reality, he and his brothers “built a working model of a mouth, throat, nose, and movable tongue, and attached a set of bellows for lungs. They were so successful in getting the model to wail ‘MaMa’ that the neighbors began to search for a child in distress.”

What are your kids inventing these days?

"...ain't no protest song."

"A Man of Feeling..."

The boob tube....

Your great-grandmother didn't have a teddy bear

"A majority of life's errors..."

"...surely it will"

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

“…ain’t no protest song.”

Maybe it’s been a while since you said to yourself “Oh gosh, I’m getting old.”

It’s been 54 years since Bob Dylan introduced “Blowin’ In The Wind” in Greenwich Village. He recorded this iconic song a couple weeks later, and it was released in 1963. Dylan claimed he wrote the song in 10 minutes. The Beatles claimed it was one of the songs that altered their early musical development.

I can mention my personal experience of hearing “Blowin’ In The Wind” sung by just about every band that played for the troops in Vietnam, more or less at the same time they were belting out “Leaving On A Jet Plane.”

Dylan blandly claimed “this here ain’t no protest song.” Of course it was.

Maybe you forget some of the words. Here they are:

How many roads must a man walk down
before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
that too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

"A Man of Feeling..."

The boob tube....

Your great-grandmother didn't have a teddy bear

How many are enough?

Homework....think again....

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

The boob tube….

My parents were early adopters in the early 1950s: they bought a television set. How they rationalized that expenditure I do not know. I think it was a portable, maybe with a 7-inch screen.

They were among millions who were putting down the cash to acquire technology with rabbit ears.

TV in its infancy was the fastest blooming technology in the history of humankind.

At the end of World War II there were only a few tens of thousands of privately owned television sets. Within 10 years, two-thirds of American households had one. By the early 1960s more than 90 percent of homes had a boob tube.

In the early years, when few households had a set, the neighborhood tended to gather at the house with a TV for a social evening, watching whatever was on one of the (maximum 3) available channels. I was a kid when the family drove into Philadelphia to watch The Wizard of Oz on my uncle’s brand-new color TV.

I don’t watch TV now—stopped channel checking almost seven years ago. OK, I make exceptions for the Super Bowl and the State of the Union address and election returns in early November.

I’m bound to say I don’t think I’m missing much.

The news media industry, particularly TV, has become a beast with no scruples. I think it is deranging our society.

At least, in the old days, we had the Milton Berle Show.

Your great-grandmother didn't have a teddy bear

When safety standards were more interesting....

"...led by donkeys..."

Fahrenheit 451, anyone?

Maybe your kid shouldn't go to college

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

When safety standards were more interesting….

In 1912, testing the ruggedness and protective features of a football helmet was a fairly straightforward process:

1912 helmet safety test

Find someone who knew how to simulate diving through the defensive line, strap the helmet on him and do the test.

William "Pudge" Heffelfinger

Football already was starting to hit the big time in 1912. You might say that professional football got started on November 12, 1892, when the Allegheny Athletic Association paid William “Pudge” Heffelfinger $500 under the table to help the AAA team beat the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, 4-0 (touchdowns were worth 4 points at that time). Nobody worried too much about head or brain injuries back then.

The thing that bothers me most about the safety test picture is that the three safety consultants appear to be enjoying themselves a bit overmuch. Of course, they didn’t have TV back then.

"...led by donkeys..."

Technology 'R" Us

What it doesn't say....

Book review: Classic Writings on Poetry

Populism: just say no

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

Amos ‘n’ Andy: good stuff

Just taking a moment here to give a nod to the legendary “Amos ‘n’ Andy” show, a perennial radio/TV show from 1926 to 1966. It was the highest-rated radio comedy in history.

Gosden and Correll

I watched the syndicated reruns on the tube in the 1960s. Listen to an early radio segment here.

Amos and Andy were two genial characters who dabbled in most of life’s experiences. Amos Jones and Andrew Hogg Brown were black characters, although the creators of the series were two white radio personalities: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. They started broadcasting the “Sam ‘n’ Henry” show from Chicago in January 1926, and shifted to the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” format two years later.

Ultimately the show was carried by 70 radio stations nationwide, and attracted 40 million listeners—roughly 1 out of 3 Americans.

Childress and Williams

Gosden and Correll were skilled entertainers in the established vaudevillian “blackface” tradition. By the time the show moved to television in 1951, “blackface” had lost its credibility and black actors played the roles. Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams play the two main roles.

The TV version of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was the first television production with black actors and would remain the only opportunity for black acting talent for 20 years.

Of course, Gosden and Correll—and even Childress and Williams—gratuitously portrayed the racial stereotypes that were commonly accepted in white society at the time. The show was a spectacular comedic success.

I tried without much success to ascertain the popularity of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” among black audiences. I found one reference to a poll (no details on validity) that reported “77 percent of black New Yorkers” liked the TV show.

Think for a moment about what entertainment was like before cell phones, iTunes and social media.

Mr. Kite et al.

Social Security....not for everyone

"See the [segregated] USA, in your Chevrolet..."

Book review: The End of Greatness

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.