Tintin in the Heart of Darkness

After 80+ years, the boyish reporter-adventurer, Tintin, has finally broken through into American mass culture thanks to the Steven Spielberg movie, The Adventures of Tintin. Almost everywhere outside the U.S., Tintin comic books--synonymous with global adventure and intrigue--have captivated children and their parents for decades. Inside the U.S., however, interest in Tintin and his 23 graphic adventures, deftly rendered by the Belgian author/illustrator, Hergé (George Remi), have been limited to a passionate cult following. With the success of the movie and its promised sequel, that will now change. So expect  those books to fly off the shelves of American booksellers. That is, with one exception--the hard-to-get Tintin Au Congo (Tintin in the Congo).

In Chinese, Farsi, and English (the last easier to find in the UK and Canada than in the U.S.)

In the United States, Congo plays hard to get for a  good reason--its gleeful depiction of the natives as lazy, bufoonish, and, of course, clueless in math. (see the illustration below) First serialized in 1930-31 in the Belgian conservative Catholic newspaper supplement for children, Le Petit Vingtième, Congo--Hergé's second Tintin adventure--didn't find its way into English until 1991. I've never seen the English translation for sale in U.S. shops, although I have seen it in French. In contrast, both English and French versions are easy to come by in the UK and Canada. Why is the English edition so scarce in the planet’s biggest English-speaking market?

  

My best guess is that America's racial legacy, played out almost entirely on American soil, touches a rawer nerve than Europe's shame toward its own colonialism, carried on from a distance.

In any event, the Congo was a big deal for Belgium, an also-ran among what Randy Newman parodies as  the Great Nations of Europe. For the schizoid Walloons and Flemish, the Congo (their sole colony) was a  font of  riches (rubber, copper, diamonds, cobalt) and national puffery--a chip at the table of Europe for a nation made-to-order as a corridor for the French and German armies.

In truth,  Hergé's celebration of Belgian superiority and its mission to civilize was perfectly in step with his times. And  while he eventually came to publicly regret having authored Congo, there's no denying his panache with caricatures of ethnic groups, including American Indians, Arabs, Jews, and Japanese. With that said, his virtues--vibrant, memorable characters; an infectious spirit of adventure; clean, vividly rendered drawings; and--yes--a strong moral center--make most of his work rewarding. Still, if you ever chance upon Tintin in the Congo in the presence of your kids, consider this blog post a warning label!

The Doh of Homer; The Doh of Jimmy

Jimmy Finlayson,left, with America's exemplar of fatherhood

Thanks to the majesty of Homer Simpson, the interjection doh has become a phenomenon--even a cause célèbre. It is the cat's pajamas among interjections, which remain the poorest of poor relations among the parts of speech. Two weeks ago, with leverage from the web site Laughing Squid, a Simpsons enthusiast   launched an amusing, annoying YouTube compilation of nearly every  Homeric doh that aired during the first 20 years of The Simpsons. The post, which went viral within a week, currently has 617,000+ hits.

It is common knowledge that Homer was understudy to the Scottish comic actor Jimmy Finlayson, an often  cartoony foil in Laurel & Hardy classics. For your convenience, Wig & Pen offers a snippet of Homer's staccato dohs chased by Finlayson's more elastic, keening doh. The latter comes from the immortal soda scene in Laurel & Hardy's 1929 two-reeler, Men O' War. These examples aim to right a tragedy in comedy:  Homer and Finlayson have rarely been heard in tandem.

Doh made it into the Oxford English Dictionary  in 2001. Here's hoping that Homer's gift to the Queen's English will elevate the Simpson name to a better station in the UK. That remains a tall order in the 75-year wake of Wallis Simpson's seduction in 1930s of the Brit who would not be king.

From the OED:

             doh, int.

truetruedone

Pronunciation: Brit. /dəʊ/ , U.S. /doʊ/

Forms: 19– d'oh, 19– doh, 19– dooh. (Show Less)

Etymology: Imitative. Compare oh int., duh int.Popularized by the American actor Dan Castellaneta who provides the voice for the character Homer Simpson in the U.S. cartoon series The Simpsons. The quotation below is his own description of its origin:

1998 Daily Variety (Nexis) 28 Apr., The D'oh came from character actor James Finlayson's “Do-o-o-o” in Laurel & Hardy pictures. You can tell it was intended as a euphemism for “Damn”. I just speeded it up.

Although the word appears (in the form D'oh ) in numerous publications based on The Simpsons, the scripts themselves simply specify annoyed grunt (as did the very earliest). Unofficial transcripts of the programme suggest the first spoken use was in a short episode, Punching Bag, broadcast on 27 Nov. 1988 as part of The Tracey Ullman Show. Its earliest occurrence in the full-length series was in the first episode Simpsons roasting on an Open Fire, broadcast on 17 Dec. 1989.... (Show More)

colloq.

Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also (usu. mildly derogatory): implying that another person has said or done something foolish (cf. duh int.).

Coda: The Laurel & Hardy Soda Scene:

 

Bagel Mood Swings

When I chance upon a seductively kickable rock on a walk, it’s usually good for two or three kicks before it squibs away. Often, I blame my own ineptness rather than the rock’s idiosyncrasies. Which is why discovering (and launching) a bagel on the sidewalk during an evening stroll in December proved so therapeutic. With zero practice, I instantly achieved mastery over the bagel’s speed and trajectory. For the first time since marriage and parenthood, I had achieved total control—until I punted the bagel with so much spin that it flipped onto its side and scurried off  like a tire on the lam.

The bagel—a symmetric torus—distributes weight and force evenly, not unlike a hockey puck.  Also like a  puck, my bagel was largely frictionless. Temperatures that night were in the low thirties; that hardened the bagel and created a uniform glaze over much of its surface area. In other words, it slid like a puck.

It was the Jews who introduced the bagel to much of North America. As a reluctant Hebrew School student, I discovered my status as one of the Chosen People—the first monotheists; the special recipients of the Ten Commandments. Underwhelmed by it all, a friend in college assigned such self-importance to the excesses of Jewbris (no relation to the Jewish circumcision ritual). Fortunately, Jewbris was scarce in my own family, but there were exceptions.

My father, a dentist who handled sharp objects with glee, never tired of stories about non-Jews who had landed in hospital emergency rooms due to self-inflicted bagel-induced knife wounds. I had always thought these to be Jewish urban myths, until I read this data-rich post in The New York Times via the Freakonomics blog. Now I know better. According to bagel economist Paul Feldman, 1,979 bagel fanciers wound up in emergency rooms in 2008 (presumably no moels under age 90 among them). Unlike many social science screeds, the Freakonomics blog does more than document the problem; it offers prevention via an instructive Wall Street Journal video. View that one via the Freakonomics site or get a different take on the alternative video below.

 



Capital Steps

Built in the late 1960s in the collegiate "bunker" architecture of the Vietnam War Era, the administration building on my campus has weathered decades of anti-war and other student protests.  Inside the building, however, several of the original polymer-based staircases betray 50+ years of continuous footfalls. Notice that the "swayback" steps in the above photos are predominantly on the right side as you're looking down the staircase (on the left side as you're looking up). You keep to your right when descending or ascending. The disproportionate sway on one side, then, must reflect your greater foot impact on steps as you descend. The difference in impact is a factor of two, observes a professor of civil engineering at my university. (See the footnote below for his explanation, which I could not fathom.)*

Resilient scholastic bunker architecture

Staircase design is serious business. The height of risers and depth of treads are standardized in state and local building codes. Nothing jolts your hard-wired sensory-motor expectations like missing a step, or on the upside, encountering one that is unexpectedly high or diminutive. Thirty years ago, arriving in the dark from Canada at the two-story rental where my partner and I occupied the second floor, my suitcase and I went flying when my foot encountered an unexpected supersized first-step riser on the stoop of my building. While I was out of town a handyman had replaced the old stoop with a one-piece modular version. Unfortunately for me, he had failed to sufficiently sink the bottom riser, which was twice the height of the others, into the ground.

Stooping to be conquered?

Post haste I phoned my landlord--an aging curmudgeon--who questioned my sobriety and told me that he'd "look into it." The next morning, I glanced out my 2nd floor window to see the landlord pull up to the house, approach the stoop, and launch face-first over the stoop and onto the porch. He had been forewarned. No doubt, the stoop was his very own Invisible Gorilla.
 ___________________________________________
*Descending, think of sudden loading: use a dynamic load factor of  two (on the  weight only independent of any  factors of safety,etc.). Ascending : first thought  is to consider  a ramp loading. However, since we might run up the stairs, think of sudden loading again and use DLF of 2 again.  So  I would use 2 times as the factor.

 

36 Views of North Korean Grieving

AP photo from The Wall Street Journal

Two weeks ago, while gazing at photos of North Koreans in mourning--including grown men chewing the scenery--I recalled head shots depicting emotional states in the books and training materials of Paul Ekman. What, I wondered, would Professor Ekman, our leading authority on "reading" emotions from facial expressions, make of that frenzy of facial contortions from the Hermit Kingdom? In its obit of Kim Jong Il, a.k.a. The Guiding Star of the 21st Century and 200 other nifty appellations, The Economist speculated:

Mr. Kim knew exactly how the [his] population lined up: loyal core, 5-25%; wavering, 50-75%; hostile, 8-27%. But those who dissented--even in a whisper, even by hanging his portrait askew--ended in prison camps, subjected to forced labor and starvation.

How might Dr. Ekman audit the “grief cred” of our North Korean subjects? He’d certainly have us look for any upward angling of the eyebrows’ inner corners. It’s a high-probability marker of grief, he writes, that few can turn on voluntarily. He might also recommend that we look for slight or partial expressions; they might reveal other emotions—especially, in this case, fear. (Tensed lower and raised upper eyelids together are a high-percentage signal of fear--whether it stems from totalitarian disapproval or leering clowns.)  And he might have us sleuth out micro expressions (1/5 a second or less in duration), which can reveal fleeting emotional “tells.”

But buyer beware--trained actors and some sociopaths can beat the system. And there’s also temporary emotional contagion in numbers. Whatever the underlying mechanism of collective mimicry—mirror neurons, an intensified, rhythmically repetitive activity level—the herd makes it easier to feel the love, feel the grief. Professional mourners, you should note, typically gig as an ensemble. Check out these Rajasthani pros below who have traveled south to Bangalore to collectively wail not for mahatmas lost but for the callous termination of trees.

Professional mourners from Rajasthan

▼ यवन ▼  | Myspace Video

A Man, A Woman, & Their Trophies

With my own marriage in the rear view mirror, I felt vicarious joy viewing recent photos of an old friend, now in his mid-sixties and his much younger wife. A naysayer might sniff: What unmitigated trophyism--even the enchantress has one to display.  I say, why spite an honest celebration of fitness (in a Darwinian sense)? After all, we're likely witnessing DNA that will keep on giving in the domains of  huntin', rappellin' or whatever for generations to come.

The blogger's genetic legacy:
 DNA for angling, DNA for taxidermy

My own genetic legacy might well involve angling. That, however, got off to a shaky start.  I remember when Dad and I (at age eight) tried our luck on shore from an unyielding bluff on the Cape. Two hours into it and without so much as a bite, I went for the fences with a mighty cast that disappeared into a swirl of wind. After my consummately bald father extracted the hook from his pate, we called it a day. He and I never again fished together, but I soldiered on over the years, hooking a variety of less complaining trophies. 

For 2012, then, Happy New Years from Wig & Pen and best wishes for the dissemination of DNA for huntin', fishin', and, of course, humorous self-deprecation.

Duct Tape for the Holidays!

If your family, like mine, walks on the dysfunctional side of the street, you value distractions—any distraction—during holiday gatherings.  Why not, then, in the interest of family harmony, ponder this question?:

What were the first movies and TV shows where duct tape first replaced rope, cloth, etc. as a sinister restraint of choice?

My own recollections are fuzzy—the great migration seems to have emerged sometime in the mid-1990s.  As a point of departure, view the movie list by the self-appointed “Duct Tape Guys,” on their expansive duct tape web pages. Unfortunately, the list lacks dates.

Duct tape has been around since World War II and highly visible in consumer markets since the 1960s. (WD-40—the yin to Duct Tape’s yang and one of the few substances that can remove it from sticky situations—also has military provenance. It dates from 1953.)

Why then, if I’m right, did it take three decades  for Duct Tape to penetrate the silver and television screens? Perhaps the cinema and TV police refused to allow it. After all, you don’t need to be an Eagle Scout with a black belt in top knots to secure your friends and loved ones to the furniture.  With duct tape in hand, every American young’in with motive and opportunity might become a Houdini in reverse.

With that said, consider the above concerns.  In the spirit of the holidays, bond with your family and friends and share your revelations with fellow Wig & Pen readers. And let us know if the distraction aids and abets the family ties that bind.

Steal this Blog!: Abbie Hoffman Revisited

Abbie Hoffman would have been 75 on November 30. I grew up two streets away from the Hoffmans on Worcester’s predominantly Jewish west side.  Although Abbie was 15 years my senior, his footprint in the neighborhood was sticky. My father, a dentist, did business with  Abbie’s father,  who owned a medical supply store.  “Abbie has once again given Johnny a heart attack,” my father announced one night in 1968  at the dinner table.

Two years earlier, my closest friend—a world class rock musician—had boasted at age 16 that it was Abbie who had first turned him on (to marijuana). [Getting neophytes stoned was like scoring with a virgin; Abbie had many notches on his hemp belt.]

My first exposure to Abbie was as an 11-year-old, in my Saturday morning 6^th grade class at Temple Emmanuel.  High-minded educators at the temple had asked Abbie to energize us with tales of his civil rights work in the South.  For a finale, Abbie urged us to grow up and marry both outside the fold of Zion and the Caucasian race. This was way too much culture shock for 11-year-olds in 1961, not to mention the  Jewish liberals who had invited him.

Abbie to his minions: "Cradle the Rock!"

Nine years later on April 14 in Boston I learned first-hand about the power of chiasmus. You know, it’s that figure of speech where in a sentence you flip-flop one of two parallel clauses/phrases  with the other: e.g.,  Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country! or You can take Abbie out of the revolution, but you can’t take the revolution out of Abbie. On that date in 1970 Abbie helped prime a largely peaceful gathering of antiwar sympathizers on the Boston Common for mayhem later in the day in Harvard Square. His call to action: The time to rock the cradle is over; It’s time to cradle the Rock!  Follow-up  damages included  200 injured  and nearly every street-level window in the square shattered.

Abbie’s way with words (and shtick)  helped fuel his high-profile books, Revolution for the Hell of It (1968) and  Woodstock Nation (1969). Their successor, Steal This Book (1971), was a nightmare for booksellers, especially in Worcester.  After it had been picked clean by "consumers" who had taken its title to heart, booksellers refused to stock it. It also vanished from the shelves of Worcester’s libraries.  At the Worcester State College Library, where my late friend Dan Dick was head reference librarian, the book was stolen and reordered; stolen and reordered. . . Finally, noted Dan, the library reordered the book and secured it on reserve. Can you guess how long it stayed secure?  smirked Dan, a veteran Abbie watcher.

Welch & Rawlings Wow Northampton

Welch & Rawlings:  Spiritual-Musical Heirs of John Dowland?

Gillian Welch in Concert—In reality, it’s a shorthand for Gillian Welch & David Rawlings in Concert. Welch without Rawlings is yin without yang; Laurel without Hardy. Three standing ovations at the end of their November 28^th two-hour concert at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts celebrated the musical beast with two fronts & two backs--Welch & Rawlings. (Still, their website and my Calvin ticket cast their brand as “Gillian Welch.”)

Throughout the evening, Welch’s distinctive, nuanced alto and phrasings embodied the constancy of a mature yet ominous river of song. Midway through each number, Rawlings responded with guitar improvisations that consistently surprised while adding crepuscular shadings.  They cut odd harmonic channels and at times added intensity through wanderings on the outskirts of dissonance.

Flow gently their tears

Above all, Welch & Rawlings excelled in material from The Harrow and the Harvest, their  first new cd in seven years. On the disc and on stage, they have embraced an aesthetic that holds melancholy to be most sacred (and thoroughly profane). Together, they’ve donned melancholia’s dark musical vestments, enshrouding themselves and their audience in somber songs like “Scarlet Town,” a “Dark Turn of Mind,” and “The Way It Goes.”  For up-tempo irony at the Calvin, they turned to “Six White Horses,” a thigh-slapping, shoe clomping reverie about a proto-hearse that comes for mama and by the song’s end for the singer/narrator herself. It brought down the house.

In their glass-is-half-empty aesthetic, Welch &Rawlings prove worthy descendants of John Dowland, the post-Elizabethan composer-singer-lutenist whose art exemplified his own dictum: “The Dark Is My Delight.” For him and other practitioners of the genre, melancholia was a good thing—a low-risk musical dwelling place for exploring and embracing dark emotional waters.  As fellow travelers, Welch and Rawlings follow suit but with (at least)  one notable difference—they explore those depths through a woman’s lens. That take on darkness is their delight—and ours.

Videos:

Dark Turn of Mind:

Flow My Tears (Dowland):

Bonus Track: The Sick Rose (Benjamin Britten/William Blake)

Country Music in the White House

Last Wednesday’s PBS special Country Music: In Performance at the White House offered exceptional performers, exceptional songs, exceptional musicianship. For anyone who sniffs at country music, it underscored that we only cheat ourselves by ignoring the best in a musical genre—any genre. The performers—Dierks Bentley, Alison Krauss, Lyle Lovett, the Band Perry, James Taylor, and others—captivated a packed East Room, including Barak and Michelle, who sat front-row center and frequently appeared  on camera enthralled by the music.

Steve Earle (Not Invited); Lauren Alaina (Invited)

Those images may have resonated with a viewer demographic of independent voters who might make a difference at the polls next November. As the concert rolled out, this blogger fantasized: Wouldn’t it be the cat’s pajamas if Steve Earle and the Dixie Chicks appeared among the invited musicians? Both, after all, were fellow travelers with Mr. Obama in their opposition to the run-up and wonder years of the Iraq War. Both received death threats and hate mail; Dixie Chick records fueled hefty bonfires.

Lyle Lovett (Invited); The Dixie Chicks (Not Invited)

 Don’t blame Obama, though, for leaving them off the performers list during an election year. Steve and the Chicks may exemplify Profiles in Courage, but they’ve been preternaturally divisive with voters from the heartland. Still, if you have any hopes of seeing them play the East Room by 2016, electing a Republican offers no prospect. In the spirit of the greatest American Yogi, a second Obama term with its political flexibility is the only fork that you should take.

Steve Earle in The Wire (a Barak Obama favorite)

Is There No Horizontal in NoHo?

For several months, benches alongside Northampton, Massachusetts' Hampshire County courthouse and the upscale Hotel Northampton have sported bolt-reinforced wooden dividers. With all the sophistication of a middle school shop project and evocative of urinal partitions, these contrivances—in one of America’s most avowedly liberal small cities—have one underlying purpose: to keep the homeless and other consumers from embracing horizontality. There’s a warm air grate near the Hotel Northampton; combine that with benches that allow for stretching out, and you’ve got a magnet for the homeless, observes a life-long Northampton townie and student of the city’s infrastructure.

No magistrates at the bench.

The partitioned benches also offer a behavioral nudge, enticing the horizontally disposed to real deal benches across Main Street in Pulaski Park. Chez Pulaski captures Northampton at its win-win giddiest, with its warren of benches in an enclave set back from the city’s frolicsome and commercial pursuits.

 Pulaski Park: A safer haven?
(photo: wmshc_kiwi's photostream)

Town Hall Northampton, October 2011
Photo by Garson Fields

On the Grid?/Off the Grid?

On November 1—36 hours after the electrical grid went dark for  90%+  of the Pioneer Valley—this blogger—ensconced in Amherst, Massachusetts—pledged to begin all conversations with the greeting: “Are you on the grid or off?” As the week progressed and the grid played hard-to-get for 50% of the Valley’s captives, the salutation grew terser with “On the gird or off?” and finally the skeletal “On or off?”

“On the gird or off?” almost always evoked private revelations from friends, strangers, and everyone in between.  “We’ve substituted one network for another--a face-to-face network grounded in community for the grid,” observed a friend.  “Losing it has been harrowing, but we’ve connected on a deeper, communal level.”

Above all, “On or Off? elicited stories—tales of tree branches penetrating bathroom walls and bedroom ceilings; sagas of  resentment and grid envy by homeowners who looked out their  windows to view well-lighted homes a street away.

During lunch at my university’s Campus Center, I met a retired professor and his wife who had moved into the center’s hotel when the grid went down. Still without juice five days later, they vented frustration toward the town manager, who lived a street away from their home. Known for his integrity, he had by all appearances exerted no leverage to move his neighborhood up Western Mass Electric’s grid restoration chain. “You should see the pot holes on his street,” they complained. “No special treatment if you live in his neighborhood.”

On Wig & Pen’s own street, two neighbors—both liberal and self-reliant—took different approaches to the challenge. The first (with a wood-burning stove) welcomed it as a camping opportunity. Not to be outdone, his next-door neighbor rigged up a gas generator to his furnace and outlets. Regrettably,  neighbor #1  had little patience with the generator’s incessant clatter.  Climate change from fossil fuels, he griped, had probably been the underlying cause of the storm. Now, he lamented, his neighbor was powering his generator by burning gas and causing noise pollution to boot.

Finally, the story of a friend, who after three days without heat, threw himself upon the mercy of his ex-wife, who had just regained the grid. “For two days, I slept okay on her couch, which had once been our couch,” he confessed. “But after day one, her superiority became insufferable.” Determined to make good without her help, he resolved to find a warm companion at the Moan & Dove, a local bar. After two swift rejections, he struck up a more promising conversation.  “Everything was clicking. We were both fans of Anne Rice and  Dave  Matthews. And we didn’t like camping. But then the bottom fell out--She wasn't on the grid."

Is Yankee Police Lineup a Feather in Red Sox Caps?

Yankee Police Lineup--1 through 5

Ben Cherington’s enlightened appointment as Red Sox GM on October 25 was the beginning of  onwards  and upwards for Red Sox Nation. Here’s another positive development. Last week, the New York Times revealed a winsome Yankee lineup.  It’s a police lineup—all beneath the shelter of Yankee caps. Like L.A. (nee Oakland) Raiders apparel, Yankee-branded threads have a perp-friendly cachet that announces, “I’m fashionably bad.” Why does the NYPD periodically assemble lineups in Yankee caps? Answer: The department’s overnight house  guests frequently get nabbed wearing them.  Would someone from Boston’s Finest weigh in on best haberdasherial practices in Beantown lineups?

Yankee Batting Order Lineup--1 through 5

Unmasked & Anonymous at the Woodstar Cafe

I must have passed by the above photo at the Woodstar Cafe in Northampton, Massachusetts  a dozen times without recognizing its famous subject(s). The photograph is on the wall opposite the café’s entrance; it’s the centerpiece in a mini exhibit (including arresting shots of  Woodstar baristas) by the New Hampshire/Berkshires photographer Edward Acker. Fortunately, on Sunday morning, I  found myself seated in a corner by the front door—the only seat in the house that directly faces the photograph. Having difficulty with the Times crossword, I raised my head  and found myself staring at the photograph and its inhabitants--James Taylor and his extraordinary partner  Kim Smedvig. It was a eureka moment for sure, which I shared with perhaps a dozen folks in the vicinity, including several Woodstar employees. And had any of them recognized JT and Kim before I spilled the beans? Not a one. How about you? To be sure, their secret is unsafe with this paparazzo of a blog.

Mohawk Trail Blues

The frisson of unforeseen consequences! Who’da thunk that the posturings of Hurricane Irene in August would lock down the annual Mohawk Trail (Route 2) hegira of  leaf peepers in October?  At the beginning of the month, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation announced that a six-mile mountainous stretch on the trail between western Charlemont and the evocatively named township of Florida would remain closed until mid-December. So much for Route 2 completists! To salvage a modicum of that tourist trade, Mass DOT offered the alternative below—a long, forbidding route with few amenities and its own Irenic souvenirs.

The Mohawk Trail Impasse in Red; The Serpentine Diversion in Green

On Columbus Day, Wig & Pen set out from Amherst to experience the end of the beginning (EOB) on the Mohawk Trail. The EOB is just east of a bridge after which Charlemont yields to the town of Savoy—the eastern gateway to the Mohawk Trail’s high country. In spite of electronic signage to the east announcing Route 2 Closed Westbound Savoy, an intermittent stream of motorists, observed by this blogger, drove up to the EOB, winced, and turned around.

Irene in Florida

The End of the Beginning 

East of Charlemont on Route 2 in Greenfield and Shelburne, tourist traffic had been moderate-to almost heavy. Roadside business—minus the motels—seemed brisk. But west of Charlemont center, traffic thinned. The shop at Indian Plaza—a destination for intertribal powwows—was shuttered for the season. (the powwows have continued on higher ground) During Irene, two feet of muck had washed onto the premises after the Deerfield River had overflowed its banks, noted the establishment’s owner. A week before, he and others had implored town officials to drain water via a nearby canal and dam. The town, he said, turned them down, because it would have damaged what was left of the summer rafting season. 

Did any of the local shopkeepers have weather insurance? “Way too small for that,” responded the proprietor, doing his best to mask his amusement over an outsider’s absurd notion.

Wig & Pen Powwow at the Plaza

Better Days at Indian Plaza

Was Ken Burns’ Prohibition Good for the Spirits?

Half a lifetime ago, an older woman in my graduate program cattily inquired, “Are you a serious drinker?”  My patented response: “Not at all.  .  . I’m a ridiculous drinker!” That’s because the Wig & Pen liquid-seeking machine (a.k.a. this blogger) comes with a  homeostatic metabolism that makes more than a couple of drinks more trouble than they’re worth.

That includes drinking while watching TV—even during the most malicious sporting events. But last week offered a notable exception. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Prohibition—their latest and often brilliant social history—served up among many, many things a 5-hour hammering in generic product placement. For 5+ hours, the yang of  WCTU, Anti-Saloon League, and Carrie Nation alternated with the yin of toasting in bars,  partying in speakeasies, and--above all--the sensuous, aesthetically captivating flow of spirits from bottles into glasses. Given the unrelenting cadences and heavenly lengths of Burns and Novick’s production, who (besides the great granddaughters of the WCTU) would spite me for dispatching a beer with each episode?

The greater question, of course, is--was there a national spike in alcohol consumption during the airing?  And if you lack the will and resources to settle that matter, what transpired in front of your  own TV during the nights of October 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd?

Sample the preview: