Our Tote Bags, Ourselves

In the 1880s, a newspaper owner named Jasper Meek was looking out the window of his print shop in Coshocton, Ohio, when he saw a young girl drop her school books. As the story now goes, the sight inspired him to fashion a burlap bag in which people could carry books. But Meek also had an entrepreneurial mind, and he figured out a way to maximize his profit: he’d charge local businesses to print their names on the bags, which then served as tiny billboards as they were carried across town. ...

Malcolm Gaskill: Quick with a Stiletto

On​ 23 March 1944 Italian resistance fighters ambushed an SS company marching up via Rasella, a quiet street in central Rome. At 3.45 p.m. Rosario Bentivegna, a 21-year-old medical student, lit the fuse on a bomb hidden in a dustcart, then walked away. Fifty seconds later the bomb exploded. Bentivegna’s comrades opened fire and hurled grenades, then fled through the backstreets. More than thirty SS men were killed and dozens were injured.In no other Nazi-occupied city had partisans succeeded ...

Dick Powell’s Radio Detectives

I don’t know about you, but I get into classic star moods. Lately my obsession is Dick Powell’s voice on the radio. It’s much easier for me to work listening to old-time radio programs than it is to try to watch movies and so here I am to share a collection of Dick Powell radio detectives. I say this often when I pay tribute to a star whose voice is smooth as silk…it is made for radio. That is true of Dick Powell who brings a sharp delivery and a wonderful deep noir lilt I cannot get en...

Cry of the Werewolf (review) by JD - Everything2.com

Cry of the Werewolf (review) See all of Cry of the Werewolf, no other writeups in this node. Universal ruled the horror genre during Hollywood's Golden Age, but other film companies crept onto Gothic grounds. In 1935, MGM borrowed Bela Lugosi and made Mark of the Vampire. Columbia put out this low-budget lycanthropic offering in ’44. We're in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the old Latour Mansion has been transformed into a museum of the supernatural. It also apparently has drawn unw...

Terezin Diary and what I did not write about - New Yorker 16 Sep 2019 edition