The backs of these cards identify them as “The Inka Culture.”  Each card carries some motif from the Andes.  There is no date or publisher on my copy.  I don’t know if the Incan designs are genuine, but they’re bold and stylish.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I’m a great fan of Tony Sarg.  He’s perhaps best known today for his work on the first Macy’s Thanksgiving balloons; but he also made animated silhouette films, designed children’s books (often with elaborate inserts and paper engineering), mounted a memorable sea serpent hoax, and pioneered puppet theater in the US.  There’s not much about him on the Internet; a revival is in order.

I was delighted to find this film on YouTube, documenting one of his marionette shows from 1929.  It’s a charming piece, typical of the naive orientalism then in vogue.  To my surprise, it opens with a song (uncredited) by Bobby Edwards — one of his signature numbers, “The Sultan’s Wives Have Got the Hives (From Eating Anchovies and Chives).”  I’ve often seen it quoted, but never heard it.  Well, here it is, sung by a puppet character to his two donkeys.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  Sarg’s self-portrait is from Tony Sarg’s Treasure Book, 1942.)

Ask me no questions, I’ll punch you no mouth.

the caregiver and the caretaker

a musket that shoots musk

Not the courage of our convictions, but the courage of our doubts.

Minicheckers: the opposite of Charles Fort’s “Supercheckers” — each player has four game pieces

a radio flub: the marriage was “uncomplicated,” for “unconsummated”

the psychologist’s psychiatrist

an iceberg made of lettuce

pull-pins

a rising tide floats all sewage

What to do with the gods?  Kill them all, and let man sort them out.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  Frank C. Papé drew the owl.)

“Wizard Problem Solvers,” a 1993 offering from Playmore, provided “36 fun-to-do challenges,” all in this casual cartoony style.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Ullage Group has long been fascinated by changing customs in diet. Foods go in and out of fashion; what we eat is telling.

I have here two menus from meetings of the Order of the Eastern Star, both from September 1950, both from Connecticut. The Eastern Star was founded as an order for wives and sisters of Freemasons, and later developed into a more independent organization, with co-ed membership, although still geared to women. And what did they eat when they gathered?

Our first menu is from the Official Visitation of Mrs. Eleanor K. Lewis, Associate Grand Matron, and her Associate Grand Officers, to the Evergreen Chapter No. 22. The event took place September 21, 1950, at the Masonic Temple in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

Our second menu is from a week later, September 28, 1950. This event marked the Official Visit of Mrs. Martha P. Williams, Worthy Grand Matron, and her Associate Grand Officers, to the Good Will Chapter No. 112, of Waterbury, Connecticut. There was also a reception in honor of Mrs. Mildred R. Wright, Grand Organist; the proceedings again took place in the local Masonic Hall.

(Parenthetically, I’ll note that Miss Alice Drescher played marimba selections. I wish I attended dinners with marimba selections.)

The menus are staunchly Anglo-American, with no influence from Continental Europe (and certainly nothing Mediterranean), South America, Asia, or Africa. The only exotic touch is the pineapple, here combined with cabbage, which is a combination I’ve never tried.  The only beverages mentioned are coffee and “tomato juice cocktail.” I suspect the latter contained no alcohol, but that’s just a guess. I also guess there was no wine.

There’s nothing about the selections that seems particularly suitable to a “secret society”; in fact, they’re probably typical of the regular diet of middle-class white Connecticut in 1950. Which is, of course, what interests me. Would such a gathering today include more “ethnic” food? Would it include pasta, guacamole, spinach pie?

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

There were many decks around 1900 that promoted the different states; each card had a different picture, usually black and white photos with pastel overlays.  This Floridian sample offers a handsome razor back hog as Joker.  The backs were quite decorative as well.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

In dog math, 2 + 1 makes 4: further evidence that anthropomorphic systems are not objective.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Piatnik, in Vienna, was responsible for this “Black Peter” deck.  Black Peter accompanies St. Nicholas at Christmas; the card game is similar to “Old Maid,” with Peter as the jinx.  He was once represented as an African in colorful silk, but is now usually seen as a chimney sweep.  In this animal themed deck, he’s a black cat.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Benjamin De Casseres wrote books on Shaw and Emerson, contributed copiously to magazines, played Super-Checkers with Charles Fort, went on drinking sprees with Don Marquis. He summed up his attitude like this: “Hope the whore and Knowledge her pimp were not motived profoundly enough in my nature to save me from death. Only thee, Alcohol, Debauchery, and Crazy Laughter were my saviors, my Rock, my Gates Ajar.”

He kept a sort of diary and/or workbook, from 1925 until his death in 1945. He called it “Fantasia Impromptu: The Adventures of an Intellectual Faun,” and described it as “an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual autobiography.” It contains his daily accumulation of notes on people, thoughts while shaving, records of parties and nights on the town, epigrams, and squibs. The manuscript now slumbers in the New York Public Library, undisturbed by its intended readers, “the thinkers, poets, satirists, individualists, dare-devils, egoists, satanists and godolepts of posterity.”

He did, however, privately publish six booklets of excerpts. Here are some samples.

***********

An artist who has not venom in his nature is like Prometheus without his curses.

What is progress? — the victory of humor over dogma.

I have friends who buy and read every current book about which the publishers and reviewers make a noise. It is just as if I bought the whole cart of vegetables from our Billy the Huckster every time I heard his bawling under the window.

Perfect, unruffled love can only exist between two imbeciles.

We live two lives; the one we live and the one we missed.

Children of accident may be excused, but to plan deliberately to bring children into the world has always seemed to me a form of murder.

You will notice that in the phrase “petty thief,” the word that is stressed with contempt is “petty,” not “thief.”

Man is always in the attitude of raising his hands toward heaven in prayer because he instinctively feels the need of handcuffs.

Why is Wisdom always conceived as being calm, poised? Why do sculptors always make Wisdom and Wise Men beings that are aloof, serene, old? Wisdom is tragic. Wisdom is disillusion. Wisdom is hell! Wisdom is not Minerva. It is Gorgon.

I laugh at my certainties. I laugh at my uncertainties. Therefore I weep.

Dear Ben: We both peeped over your shoulder as you wrote the above paragraphs on time, space, and existence. You are not quite right, but to tell you the truth would cause an explosion in your brain and kill you, and we do not wish that as yet, for reasons best known to us both. But, my dear boy, you are so nearly right, you are so clearly on the right track, that we are both admiringly fearful. God & Satan.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Captain Turtle cuts a dashing figure in this early edition of “Old Maid.”  His colleagues include Ching Chang Chung (a Chinese citizen), Billy Bat (a baseball player), 15th Amendment (a freed slave), Dicky Fop (a fashion plate), Fast Horse (a boy on a rocking horse), and Corporal March (a soldier).

The Old Maid is, atypically, androgynous:

(Posted by Doug Skinner)