Glen Morley (1912-1996) had a busy career as a composer, conductor, and arranger, particularly in Canadian broadcasting.  In the ’50s, he worked for the Rochester Philharmonic as ‘cellist and music librarian; in his younger years he also worked as a cartographer and newspaper cartoonist.

Throughout his life, he produced a series of cartoons about music, as well as the vagaries of life as a ‘cellist and music librarian, all under the title “Symphoniphobias.”  A bit of research tells me that he published his last batch in 1980; this portrait of a conductor is from a 1953 portfolio.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

We have another “Old Maid” deck, old, worn, and incomplete.  It features imitations of comic strip characters, such as this approximation of Buster Brown.  Other personalities include Old Foxy (Foxy Grandpa) and Katz’s Kid (Katzenjammer Kids).  The Old Maid seems peevish in their company, but she does have a nice hat.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

transparent venetian blinds

As finance and communication become exclusively digital, two unexpected casualties: stamps and coins.

ice in the shape of flames

suits with two pairs of pants; shirts with three sleeves?

smorgasmortgage

Why plastic wood, but no wooden plastic?

a globe aquarium, with opaque land and clear oceans, so tiny fish will seem like sea monsters

Is that glass 1/16 full, or 15/16 empty?

What a nasty little aye-aye!
Why’d he have to target my eye?

a Gideon Bible that contains a picture of Darwin on a spring, that pops up when the book is opened

aspirin in muted colors, for those times when white is too bright

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“ABC Educational Cards” was published by Ed-U-Cards in 1956.  The deck contained both number and letter cards, all in this breezy, colorful style.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Doug Skinner will be performing at the Fabulous Jalopy Theatre, in Brooklyn, on March 12 at 9 pm.  I’ll sing mostly Skinner songs, with perhaps a couple of covers.  I’ll be on uke and cuatro; David Gold will join me on viola.

I’ve asked the incomparable Brian Dewan to share the evening with me.  He’ll hold down the fort at 10:30, with both original and historical songs on accordion and autoharp.

Admission is $10.  Directions to Jalopy can be found here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The good doctor is shown here extolling Cow & Gate’s “Milk Food,” in the “Cow & Gate Happy Family Game.”  The other families — Allsmiles, Carr, Pill, Cowangate, Churn, Cheerful, Dunkley, Giles, Feedus, Nice, and Allwise — also seem to enjoy the company’s line of dairy products.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  Thanks to Angela Alverson.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The U.S. Playing Card Company published these “Nation’s Capitol Souvenir Playing Cards” in 1909.  Photos of places of interest were overlaid with pastel tints: blue for hearts, green for diamonds, and pink for spades and clubs.  The Joker was Dupont Circle.

The backs are unusually lovely:

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The “King James Version” of the Bible gives every indication of a garbled text.  Some words are omitted (for example, that curious hapax legomenon, επιουσιος, in the Pater Noster); some words seem to be approximations or guesswork (particularly the names of animals and musical instruments).  Much of it simply makes little sense.

We encounter similar problems in the Shackspearian canon, the other great literary corpus of the period.  Some passages, especially in the earlier quartos, appear to be faulty transcriptions of an oral source.  We now know that Shakspeare was more of a producer and director than writer; and that he generated playscripts by engaging a scribe to notate the improvisations of the actors (still the preferred method of theatrical creation).  If we predicate a similar procedure for James I’s team of scholars, we can produce a speculative restoration of a section of the text, interpreting it as a faulty transcription of a dictation.  I’ve chosen Psalm 23 for this attempt.

The version that I give below differs in many respects from the KJV.  In particular, it presents a subtly different relationship between the narrator and the “Lord.”

I must emphasize that, although this restoration is speculative, its homophony is significant.  Jung, in his studies on word association, affirmed that phonic associations were the most basic.  And his great precursor, Jean-Pierre Brisset, elaborated this principle:  “There exists in the word a number of Laws, previously unknown, of which the most important is that a sound, or a succession of identical, intelligible, and lucid sounds, can express different things, by a modification in the way these names or words are written or understood.  All ideas that are enunciated with similar sounds have the same origin, and all refer, in essence, to the same object…  This is the key that opens the books of the word.”  (From La Science de Dieu, 1900, my translation.)  Brisset emphasized the theological importance of this method of exegesis in his revised edition of 1913, Les Origines Humaines (again, in my translation):  “The sword of fire that guarded the path to the tree of life is called the pun, the play on words…  God chose those things in the world that are the most foolish, and the most despised, to annihilate those things that are.”

Readers of Raymond Roussel will recognize the theoretical rationale for the famous procédé.  Sound and sense are linked; words with similar sounds have similar meanings, often revealing fresh, sometimes surprising, interpretations.

The Lord is my jester; he’s full of taunt.
He mocketh me with low clownish impostures: he seateth me astride the spilled water.
He ignoreth my calls: he leadeth me to inspire derisiveness, for a jape’s sake.
Say, I could waltz down the alleyway unshaken by doubt, like a paralegal: but thou art witty; thy rudeness and chaff they target me.
Thou preparest me troubles to foil me for the pleasance of mine enemies: thou anointest my rug with oil; I slip, falleth over.
Surely goads without mercy shall swallow up all the joys of my life, and I am drenched by the hose of the Lord forever.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Kilimanjaro Productions published this African-themed deck in 1979.  I like its lush, formal illustrations.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)