book shop after hours slide money under the door good deed weary world
The Old Bay Marketplace is an arcade or covered outdoor walkway through the middle of a building that is lined with shops on either side of the walkway located on Bay Street in downtown Beaufort, South Carolina.
On the corner of the entrance to the arcade on Bay Street is a used bookstore named the McIntosh Book Shoppe.
The McIntosh Book Shoppe is situated there on the corner of the entrance into the arcade so that there is a door facing Bay Street and another back door that opens out into the covered walkway.
The space outside this back door under the covered walkway is crowded with book carts and tables that are filled with books for sale.
The back door to the McIntosh Book Shoppe
So many carts, tables and books are crowded into this space that moving all these carts, tables and books would be a lot of work to bring in at night and put back out the next day.
So the books, carts and tables are not brought in at night.
The books, carts and tables stay outside in the covered arcade.
On the arcade wall, next to the door, is a metal rack stuffed full of envelopes.
Next to the metal rack stuffed full of envelopes is a small, hand lettered sign.
The sign reads:
After hours – put money in envelope and slide under the door.
It is altogether appropriate at this point to quote Big Bill’s, “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world” (Merchant of Venice – Act V, Scene I)
But, somehow, it is better to quote Gene Wilder in the role of Willy Wonka.
So shines a good deed in a weary world.
PS: Admit it – this made you smile and feel a little bit of a warm bump inside – maybe a small kick of hope in your soul.
people are trapped in impossible, yet still strangely plausible problems
Perspective.
It’s all about perspective.
In the old TV Show, Barney Miller, NYPD Police Captain Barney Miller’s reoccurring lecture to the people who passed through the police station focused on “not losing one’s perspective.”
The theme was so familiar that it led to this exchange …
Detective Ron Harris : Barney, his wife has decided not to press charges, so I let him go after giving him that spiel you always give about “not losing one’s perspective.” Captain Barney Miller : I’m … flattered that you chose to use it. Detective Ron Harris : Well, I thought it oughta be in the public domain by now …
The article is a review of the just-released Kaleidocycles, a book that according to the review, lets you make paper cut outs of MC Escher paintings.
Mr. Jones wrote:
You are walking up a staircase that winds up to the top of a tall square tower.
It ascends one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started.
This is the kind of problem people who are trapped in the geometrically impossible, yet still strangely plausible, worlds of MC Escher have to deal with all the time. ‘
In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Somewhere in the years at Crestview Elementary school in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, one of our text books had the MC Escher painting, Which way up?
Maybe it wasn’t in a text book but in a book from our library.
I remember looking at this picture over and over again.
I would trace the steps with my finger tips.
I would think this is so cool.
I would think this is so nutz!
In my mind I can remember standing at someone’s desk, looking down at the book along with both hands on the pages of the book to hold it as flat as possible.
What I was looking at wasn’t possible?
Was it?
I understood perspective a little.
I covered most of my school work and the margins of my textbooks with doodles of a 3D cube.
Did the cube go up and to the left or go down to the right?
Both impossible, yet still strangely plausible
Perspective.
Keep ones’ perspective.
Don’t lose your perspective.
But from where I stand … so many problems today are a problem of perspective and most of these problems are both impossible, yet still strangely plausible.
On the one hand, (saying this without judgment either way okay?) we have a feller who ran for the office of President of the United States and by all accounts this feller lost.
But this feller will not accept this and many people cannot understand his perspective.
If one reads, and it seems like I have read them all, the ‘inside’ accounts of the election, no one and I MEAN NO ONE, dared tell this feller he was losing.
Throughout election night and the next days as votes were counted, no one, and I MEAN NO ONE, dared this feller he did not win.
To this day, this feller cannot admit the he did not win.
Other feelings aside, at this point, I find it hard to blame him as his reasonings, from his perspective, are strangely plausible.
I cannot say that had I been in the his place, based on the information he received, that I would feel any different.
AGAIN, and this is important, I am treating this as a laboratory case to examine the perspective of one individual and to comment on that individuals’ perspective based on the information received by that individual ASIDE from the body of work produced by this individual.
All I am saying is I can see his point, as it were.
This world’s history is filled, littered, with folks who only got the information they wanted to hear from their entourage and most likely never did accept that their information was wrong.
Often I come back to John F. Kennedy and the criticism he got for appointing his little brother Bobby, Attorney General of the Untitled States.
RFK was 35 without much experience to which JFK said, “I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.“
Such was the predicted furor over the appointment that JFK said he felt like opening his door at 3AM and whispering, ‘It’s Bobby’ to the street and going back to bed.
Here is the point, when he made the appointment, JFK said something along the lines that what he needed was someone in the Cabinet that would tell him when they thought he, the President, was wrong.
JFK trusted that RFK would do that.
If you read the history of JFK’s and RFK’s discussions over the the LBJ pick for VP, I think JFK got what he wanted from RFK.
Maybe this should be made a Cabinet position.
A lifetime appointment for someone designated to tell the President when he is wrong.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sure.
But again, I can understand, with the team this feller had in place, this fellers perspective.
And, by the way, who wants to be the bearer of bad news?
With that in mind, if you were this feller, how cannot you want to quote Joe Jacobs out loud and say, WE WUZ ROBBED?
Richard Nixon yelled ‘WE WUZ ROBBED’ back in 1960.
The Republican Party called for a recount of votes in Chicago and Cook County, Illinois where Mr. Nixon lost by around 8,000 votes.
If I remember it correctly, it was in the book, BOSS, about Chicago’s Mayor Daley by Mike Royko, that explained how the Cook County Board of Elections managed the recount.
Mr. Royko explained that all the ballots were thrown at the ceiling.
Any ballot that stuck was considered a Republican vote.
Guess how the report came out?
Can’t you see today’s Twitter videos of this?
Mr. Nixon didn’t like it but he accepted the report.
But I digress.
Perspective.
So much of what is presented in the news today are impossible problems.
Impossible problems that are still strangely plausible.
They are mind-boggling creations where dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Try to maintain one’s perspetive.
Try to follow the arguements without losing one’s perspective.
You go up one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started.
MC Escher and his paintings.
In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Normality dissolves.
And, just for fun, remember what was said in the book Godel, Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. (At least I think this is where is was said.)
“All Escher paintings,” wrote Hofstadter, “are connected from the back.”
To convict the parents of involuntary manslaughter, the state will have to prove that the parents were “grossly negligent” in allowing their son access to a firearm, and that their gross negligence caused the deaths of the students.
Gross negligence means more than just carelessness. It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thursday night in the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys beat the New Orleans Saints without their head coach due to Covid 19 Protocols.
Defensive Coach and one time Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Dan Quinn took over for the game.
Asked about the win, Coach Quinn said this.
“I think it’s really an example of leadership from Mike and to say what happens when the leader is not here.”
“Everybody had to chip it in and say, ‘No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.'”
Thinking back to the legal analyst and the sentence, It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act, I want to say, “No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.”
tireless pointillist people often say show me picture with the dots
I opened up my computer this morning and my mind went back in time.
This was weird because I went back to a time before everyone had a computer.
I had opened the Google and the google logo was all in dots.
Small points of color.
I knew it had to have something to do with Georges Seurat and when I hovered over the logo the embedded alt information for the graphic displayed the text, “Georges Seurat’s 162nd Birthday.”
If you grew up in the midwest at some time in your life you visited Chicago.
If you visited Chicago at some time in your life you had a good chance of going to the Art Institue.
If you went to the Art Institute of Chicago, you most likely saw La Grande Jatte or A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.
Sometimes known as Sunday Afternoon in the Park and maybe the inspiration for the song, “Saturday in the Park” by the band, Chicago.
Sometime known as the painting with the dots.
I hear two general reactions from folks who see this painting.
One is HOW BRIGHT IT IS.
Colors just cannot be captured in any form of reproduction.
I remember walking down the main hall of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and through an open entry way, I was faced, unexpectedly, with A Girl with a Watering Can by Renoir.
The color flared out from the painting so bright that I tripped.
No, I am not kidding, fell flat out on the marble floor.
Guard looked at me and shrugged like this happened a lot.
The second thing I hear from folks is HOW BIG IT IS.
Neither, here nor there, but look at this photgraph.
I feel it could have been painted by any one the great impressionists and entitled, ‘A visit to Chicago’.
This is what took me back in time when I thought of Seurat.
For me, I cannot think of this painting without thinking of a documentary on the City of Chicago by Studs Terkel.
Mr. Terkel was the American version of Alistair Cooke.
Where Mr. Cooke wrote and later, read, a weekly column, ‘Letter from America’ for the Manchester Guardian and later the BBC, tried to explain America to Brits, Studs Terkel tried to explain America to Americans.
In my mind was a quote of Mr. Terkel from that documentary on La Grande Jatte and I plugged Studs Terkel Suerat into the Google to try and find it.
It is in this documentary that Mr. Terkel talks about La Grande Jatte and says, “people often say, show me the picture with the dots.“
The bit about La Grande Jatte is at 30:00 into the but go to about 28:00 into the video to catch Mr. Terkel’s comments about Night Hawks as well.
Or, if you have the time, watch the whole show.
Overwhelming in nostalgia for a city and a place that no longer exists.
This is the Chicago I grew up with.
Still a city close to the city of Carl Sandburg.
Still the city of Daley.
You remember the old story.
Richard Daley and two guys are in boat that is sinking and there are only two life jackets.
Daley says they should vote on who got a life jacket and Daley won 9 to 2.
This is the Chicago I loved to visit.
One memorable visit, I had talked my Friend Doug into an overnight trip to the city.
The plan was to drive to Comiskey Park and see the Thursday night baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers.
Then drive to my sister’s apartment on the northside and stay overnight.
Spend the next day in the Chicago museums, back to the ball park for another baseball game and drive home after the game finished out the plan.
I was going through a period of being a Chicago White Sox fan when I was really following their owner, Bill Veeck.
How many people today will say they were fans of an owner?
The deal got a little sweeter when it was announced that the first game was going to be a double header due to an earlier rained out game.
Doug and I knew something was up when we drove up to Comiskey Park on 34th St., and everyone in the crowd seemed to be carrying 45rpm records or singles as they called.
We didn’t know.
Maybe that’s what you did in Chicago.
What it was was a promotion by the White Sox.
You got into the game for 99 cents if you brought a record to the game.
A DISCO record.
All the records where then going to be put into a big box and blown up between games.
This was the famous DISCO DEMOLITON PROMOTION and we had box seats.
The first game was played okay more or less.
Records starting be thrown out of the upper deck late in the game.
Both the left and right fielders were wearing batting helmets IN THE FIELD.
Between games the big box was trucked in and as planned, blown up.
Then, as wasn’t planned, all the fans ran out and took over the field.
In fairness, what else was going to happen when you get 57,000 people in a stadium designed to hold 47,000.
I mean they had to go somewhere.
So Doug and I had box seats for a riot.
In a goofy way, it was kinda cool.
Disco Demolition has gone down in baseball history as the worst thought out promotional stunt in history since the dedication fireworks of the New York City Hall set the new city hall on fire and burned it down back in 1852.
But, as the organizers say, how can it be a promotional failure if we are still talking about it?
But I digress.
In the video, Studs Terkel quotes french filmaker, René Clair as saying, “Everytime I go to America I must stop off at your city to see La Grande Jatte. It refreshes me. I need it.”
Mr. Terkel ends the little bit on with the words, “Hurrah Seurat.”
And, Happy Birthday.
Will you help him change the world? Can you dig it? (Yes, I can) And I’ve been waiting such a long time For today
*The first American Letter was broadcast on 24 March 1946 (Cooke said this was at the request of Lindsey Wellington, the BBC’s New York Controller); the series was initially commissioned for only 13 instalments. The series came to an end 58 years later in March 2004, after 2,869 instalments and less than a month before Cooke’s death. (wikipedia)
**His well-known radio program, titled The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday during those forty-five years. (wikipedia)
testing that nation so conceived dedicated how long can endure?
Mr. Thomas Jefferson, explaining the reasoning behind the Declaration of Independence, wrote that all men are created equal.
I feel that Mr. Jefferson really meant what he said.
But I also feel that Mr. Jefferson accepted that all men are created equal in the abstract, he could not figure a way of how it might be achieved in reality.
Mr. Jefferson saw that the wieght of human history and the current lifestyle of most Americans was proving his statement that all men are created equal to be, if not wrong, at least wistful thinking.
A fire bell in the night, Mr. Jefferson called it.
When the bell rang and the United States was called on for an answer, their answer was to fight the Civil War.
Review the history of that war and you can understand why Mr. Jefferson was reluctant to even look for an answer of how to achieve a country where all men are created equal.
It was left to Abraham Lincoln to try and explain why the Civil War was being fought.
It was 158 years ago today that Mr. Lincoln, in a short, short, short 272 word speech explained, “. . . our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.“
Mr. Lincoln was speaking at the dedication ceremony of a vast cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg.
Mr. Lincoln recognized that great as the battle, the struggle that the country was in at that moment, that there was more to do.
Somehow back in 1863, Mr. Lincoln spoke to us.
Mr. Lincoln said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.“
The unfinished work.
This country is a work in progress.
No kidding.
The testing, every day, the testing goes on.
Here is the full text, all 272 words of Mr. Lincoln’s Remarks at Gettysburg.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
