Telephone line, give me some time: I'm living in twilight
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”― Virginia Woolf
We are on day three without internet up here in the mountains…using our phones to hot-spot some connectivity….with everything going reallllll slllowww… Even the words I am writing now are not as quickly saved onto the digital page (with pop-up messages saying that there might be “conflicts” around what is “synced”)…and I have lost some sentences over the past hour….
It is ironic to me that on this day when I am struggling with a truly modern problem stemming from this new expectation of being on-line all the time…on this day in 1915 the first transcontinental call was made. Alexander Graham Bell, from a building on 15 Dey Street, New York City called Thomas A. Watson sitting at 333 Grant Ave in San Francisco, CA….2905 miles away (43 hours travel time by car, 40 days of continuous motion by foot). It was an instantaneous connection, with a conversation that began:
Bell: "Ahoy! Ahoy! Mr. Watson, are you there? Do you hear me?"
Watson: "Yes, Mr. Bell, I hear you perfectly. Do you hear me well?"
It was AT&T that laid the 3400 miles of phone line to make the call possible with an interesting detail reported by James Martin in 2015:
“The completion of the transcontinental line in advance of the 1915 World's Fair was a significant engineering accomplishment. The stretch from Denver to San Francisco, in particular, was difficult to traverse and posed unique engineering challenges as the lines crossed the Rocky Mountains and vast undeveloped stretches of Nevada and Utah.1”
Given that Bell’s first-ever phone call was in the year 1876, it is interesting to think how slow these types of advancements were made back in the day. That being said, once the 1915 call was made…a whole new business was opened up, with the first commercial call made later that evening with a man from San Francisco calling his mother.
107 years later and I am sitting here using my smart phone to give me the ability to connect with the world…more slowly than what I am now used to…but fairly instantaneously given the somewhat recent history of telephone line technology. It definitely makes me feel better about having conflicts with my synched information inputs!
Seeing Music: Gnomus and Baba Yaga from Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”
I am unfamiliar with the work of Modest Mussorgsky, but this piece based on the art of Viktor Aleksandrovich Gartman (who I am also unfamiliar with) is just beautiful….and who can deny giving a listen to any composition that pays homage to ghouls and other creatures of folklore?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Personal Library Is Up for Auction
It would be nice to have a few hours to look through RBG’s library.
Donna Barba Higuera Wins Newbery Medal for ‘The Last Cuentista’
The Newbery Medal is 100 years old this year. Abe Books has put together a comprehensive list of the last century’s winners…which includes very few books I know (alas, not versed in young adult fiction…but revving up since I parent a “tween”). I just ordered The Last Cuentista for Kaya who is almost finished reading another dystopian novel…
We almost lost ‘Nosferatu’—and other tales of Murnau
“…the original Nosferatu almost vanished into celluloid history, because its screenplay was an unauthorized blatant rip of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. That author’s estate successfully sued for copyright infringement, with the result that the producers declared bankruptcy. All copies of the film were destroyed by court order—all save one that somehow escaped the pyre”
Tompkins Square Releases Posthumous Michael Chapman Record
English guitar virtuoso/classic 70s singer-songwriter Michael Chapman recorded these tracks soon before he passed. Tompkins Square, the label he collaborated with several times during the last chapter of his career, has released it on bandcamp. The guitar playing featured is what you would expect from him…playing difficult passages with ease and flair…using his affected electric guitar as his means of inter-universal transportation. A very sweet release.
To a Louse
By: Robert Burns
Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho’, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Swith! in some beggar’s haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.
Now haud you there, ye’re out o’ sight,
Below the fatt’rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right,
Till ye’ve got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow’rin height
O’ Miss’ bonnet.
My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an’ grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t,
Wad dress your droddum.
I wad na been surpris’d to spy
You on an auld wife’s flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On’s wyliecoat;
But Miss’ fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do’t?
O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An’ set your beauties a’ abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie’s makin:
Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
****FUTURE SIGNALS: An interview with Turkish sound-sculpturist Ekin Fil (done by Kaya Katznelson) and an excerpt from a new book by the Grandfather of rock journalism, Gene Sculatti.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/at-t-makes-the-call-100-years-ago/