"No coincidences"? Really?

Last night, I was listening to a YouTube recording of the August 1, 1936 game between the Red Sox and the White Sox. About 14 minutes in, the announcer reported the following: The Brooklyn Dodgers have just purchased outfielder Jack Winsett from the Columbus Redbirds of the American Association. 

All well and good. After an inning, I clicked off the ballgame and looked over my Feedly updates. The Public Domain Review had posted "The Kept and the Killed", about photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, but which were rejected. The rejection was done by using a hole punch to put a hole in the negative.

According to the Library of Congress, one of the photos was taken in April 1936. The description reads, "...possibly related to: Interior of rehabilitation client's cabin, Jackson, Ohio." The shabby cabin has newspapers on the wall for insulation, and while most of them are impossible to read, one headline stands out: "Outfielder John Winsett Added to Red Bird Roster".

And the funny thing is that Baseball Reference lists him as Tom Winsett.

My Evening

After supper, I sat down in my rocker-recliner (here should go a tangent on picking out the chair in 2008 or 2009 at Royal Furniture in Emmaus, and how it's served so well that when a bolt broke under stress a few years ago, I gladly paid a repairman more than $100 to come over and fix it; he admired the workmanship and said that nowadays chairs are made with plastic instead of wood like this one).

- 6:00 - 6:30  A chapter of October 1964.  The Phil Linz part of the story.

- 6:30 - 7:00  Kaleidoscope from WMKV, Cincinnati.  Topic:  Jesse Owens.  Inevitably, I nap during part of it.  

- 7:00 - 7:20  Listened to Chapter 7, "Jeeves and Kid Clementina" from "Very Good, Jeeves".

- 7:30 - 8:15  New Yorker/Audm reading of the Books article about two new biographies of Buster Keaton.  During the article I learned about Robert E. Sherwood, original member of the Algonquin Round Table; speechwriter for FDR; author of three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays; author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Roosevelt and Hopkins"; Oscar-winning screenplay writer of "The Best Years of Our Lives."  How did I never hear of him before now?

- 8:15 - now   Taking a crash course on the full life of Robert E. Sherwood.  "On the other hand, a chapter on Robert Sherwood and Keaton is genuinely illuminating. Sherwood, now forgotten despite four Pulitzers and an Oscar..."  That got my attention.

Somewhere in there, Good Queen Swirly (TM), my Widdle Baby Durl (TM), got on my lap and stayed until after 9:30.  

Never did get around to watching the rest of Ball of Fire.  Tomorrow night, probably.

I don't always guzzle pop culture history the way I did this evening, but I should do it more often.  Way better than doomscrolling Twitter.

Oh, My

 Source:  Motion Picture Classic magazine, June 1923.

Is Everybody Here? Good.

 - Yesterday, I wrote around 200 words for Nyla the tux, and today it was posted on the Tabby's Place website.

- I looked through the nearly 200 photos I took on Sunday and found about a dozen that were worth cropping and touching up for posting to Flickr.  

- I did my job for a full 8 hours.

- I put together notes for Fenek's February letter to supporters.

- I read another chapter of October 1964.

- I listened to Mike Whorf's Kaleidoscope, the subject Oliver Wendell Holmes.

- Read some of "Hollywood Undressed."  Learned about it from You Must Remember This, or technically, Make Me Over.  Madame Sylvia knew how to push herself over and impose herself.  

- I need to get up and prepare fresh pizza dough for tomorrow, but first...

- TCM showed I Am Curious (Yellow) and being a child of that time, I remembered the reaction and Tivo'd it.  Oh, those Swedes and their liberal attitude toward sex.  Now, 53 years later, I'll be the judge of that. 

- Until I remembered the pizza dough, I looked at the clock and saw 7:30 and wondered how I was going to fill the hours until bedtime.  I'm going to be an awful retiree.  

A day off with pay

Lemon sugar cookies: here's the recipe.

Other things:  The Defenders, "The Broken Barrelhead"

    Kaleidoscope:  "The Clipper"

    A YouTube Music playlist with multiple Arkenstones and similar music, rather Farish-ish.

What I really need to do is write Fenek's correspondent's letter.

Cletus and Nyla's description, too.

In Another Time

It occurs to me that if I really wanted to do a blog now, I know what I'd do it about.   All I have to do is open up an old magazine or newspaper, read about someone I've never heard of, and let Google take its course.  

It's a natural:  I listen to pop-culture history podcasts like You Must Remember This and Cocaine and Rhinestones.  This afternoon, I loaded a bound volume of Cosmopolitan from the second half of 1922 and found some full-page portraits of women whose names were unknown to me.  I looked up one of them, Helen Lee Worthing, and learned that she'd been a pariah due to her marriage to a Black doctor.  

Of course, everything prior to 1926 is public domain, so there'd be no cost except for my time and my enthusiasm.  But for every good reason, there's one on the other side of the ledger.  I like the idea, but I'm not on fire for it.  Lacking the want-to is the big negative.  I already have a hobby right now, and loving on cats, learning about writing for cats, and doing my own writing for cats is plenty interesting enough.  (Maybe in retirement, though.)  

Anyway, other people have already beaten me to the idea.  This blog, for instance.