Rediscovered a great Evernote keyboard combo that v10 recently added back in: press Ctrl+Alt+v to create a new note from the clipboard.
Whenever I read a sentence that begins “Don’t get me wrong…” I want to scream and mark through it with a thick Sharpie. PLEASE add this phrase to your exclusion dictionary! Replace it with “Although” or – better! – don’t use it at all! If your writing is good enough, I won’t misunderstand you.
Oscar Levant
Good overview of Oscar Levant, one of those minor performers of a Time Gone By who appealed to what the writer calls the “midcult” audience of the ’40s and ’50s, but who was capable of much more had manic-depression not wrecked his life.
A pianist who idolized his friend George Gershwin, Levant played second and third leads in movies and became a radio “personality” that boosted his concert career while freezing him in the public mind as a wisecracking cynic.
Later on, he became known less for his musicianship and more for his cutting wit, which he turned more and more on himself.
I remember reading a couple of his memoirs, which were straightforwardly written but not memorable. One detail stuck with me: Levant playing piano in New Orleans at a site below sea level. The humidity slowed the keys’ action so much they rose up slowly instead of snapping back.
Levant’s self-deprecating quotes in the article are chilling, particularly this one: “It’s not what you are, but what you don’t become that hurts.”
YouTube has lots of videos of Levant on panel and interview shows of the ’50s. Here’s something a little quieter, that ends rather sadly:
The Strange Things I’ve Found Inside Books
i.e., [Confessions of a Basement Book Cleaner] (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/27/the-strange-things-ive-found-inside-books/)
by Jane Stern, via The Paris Review
I remember seeing these “Fear of God” cards now and then growing up in a Southern Baptist melieu.
via Alan Jacobs’ Snake & Ladders newsletter
A fun article: We Almost Forgot About the Moon Trees - The Atlantic
via today’s Recomendo newsletter
Some days, my banjo lesson feels like I’m playing music. Other days (like this morning), it feels like I’m doing math and my mind won’t settle down.
Weird Old Book Finder
From today’s Recomendo newsletter:
Weird Old Book Finder
Clive Thompson created this search tool for weird old books in an attempt to rewild our attention. It only finds books one at a time and in the public domain, which you can download. I found this 1901 copy of Studies of Trees in Winter, which is actually a book I came across in a Berkeley library years ago and have been searching for. I also discovered this — definitely weird — rare manuscript titled The Complex Vision by poet/philosopher John Cowper Powys. I love tools like these that help me break free from the same old internet loop. — Claudia Dawson
