rudimentary multiple nipples on a hydroplane

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Horn of Plenty. Digital montage (©2021). 

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Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, pp. 257-258—

[This is Browne’s account of time spent at the home of the parents of his friend and associate Robert Bell, whose] father, an eminent banker, terrified me, but I sat rapturously at his mother's feet; she had as many laughter-wrinkles round her eyes as there are waves in a field of corn.

One evening her famous brother-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell—Telephone Bell, as we younger folk inevitably nicknamed him—brought his charming deaf-mute wife [née Mabel Hubbard] to dinner as it was her disability which had first led him to the study of sound. During dinner he talked of a new hydroplane which he was building, the intensive breeding of sheep and rudimentary multiple nipples on human beings. Not one of us had an elementary acquaintance with one of his subjects, yet he held us all spellbound. After dinner his nephew and I steered him carefully into a corner: “How on earth did you keep us so interested in things of which we knew nothing?” For two memorable hours the old man thought aloud. Finally he reached a conclusion. “It is not primarily what a speaker says which interests his hearers—be he conversationalist, preacher, lecturer, actor or even writer—nor the words in which he says it, nor his manner of delivery, nor his personality; these things help or hinder but are secondary. The primary cause of sustained interest, I believe, is this. Each time that a speaker—or writer—pauses, for however infinitesimally brief a moment, he builds a bridge in his own mind over the silence between the word which he has last uttered and the word which he will utter next. If his hearers cross that bridge before him, he bores them; if they fail to cross it, or cross it too late, he loses them; if they cross it with him, he holds and keeps them.”

Eccentricity | When being blunt doth not sit well

digital montage © Roy R. Behrens 2020

Wilfred Scawen Blunt, diary entry dated June 17, 1893—

The party was to meet at the pier of the House of Commons and go up the river in two steamers. As we did not know precisely where the pier was we stopped outside the House of Lords [aka House of Peers] to ask a policeman.

Dialogue:

I: “Can you tell me where I shall find the pier of the House of Commons?”

Policeman: “No, sir, indeed, we have plenty of peers in the House of Lords, but I have never yet heard of a peer in the House of Commons.”

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Osbert Sitwell (brother of Edith Sitwell and Sacheverell Sitwell) whose father was Sir George Sitwell (1860-1943) (British writer, politician, and notorious eccentric), in The Scarlet Tree (Book IV of his Osbert's autobiography)—

When younger he [his father] had invented many other things; at Eton, for example, a musical toothbrush while played Annie Laurie as you brushed your teeth and a small revolver for killing wasps.

According to a Wikipedia biography of Sir George Sitwell—

He banned electricity in his household well into the 1940s and made his guests use candles. He deliberately mislabelled his self-medication to stop anyone else using it. Sitwell lived on an exclusive diet of roasted chicken.

William Blake Poster (2011) Roy R. Behrens

CD Portfolio Package | Bailey Higgins

© Bailey Higgins (2015)

Above Design for a CD portfolio package (covers and interior spread), designed by Bailey Higgins, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Leonard Woolf [British writer, husband of Virginia Woolf] in Sowing: An Autobiography of the Years 1880 to 1904. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960, pp. 145-146—

[Cambridge University philosopher J.M.E.] McTaggart was one of the strangest men, an eccentric with a powerful mind which, when I knew him, seemed to have entirely left the earth for the inextricably complicated cobwebs and O altidudos of Hegelianism. He had the most astonishing capacity for profound silence that I have ever known. He lived out of college, but he had an "evening" once a week on Thursdays when, if invited or taken by an invitee, you could go and see him in his rooms in Great Court. The chosen were very few, and Lytton [Strachey], Saxon and I, who were among them, every now and again nerved ourselves to the ordeal. McTaggart always seemed glad to see us, but, having said good evening, he lay back on his sofa, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, in profound silence. Every five minutes he would roll his head from side to side, to stare with his rather protuberant, rolling eyes round the circle of visitors, and then relapse into immobility. One of us would occasionally manage to think of something banal and halting to say, but I doubt whether I ever heard McTaggart initiate a conversation, and when he did say something it was usually calculated to bring to a sudden end any conversation initiated by one of us. Yet he did not seem to wish us not to be there; indeed, he appeared to be quite content that we should come and see him and sit for an hour in silence.

Bicycle Poster | Austin Montelius

Poster by Austin Montelius © 2016

Above Italian bicycle poster by Austin Montelius (©2016), graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Nicholas Fox Weber, The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 132—

The painter Balthus once described an occasion when he and Alberto Giacometti met to call on [Paul] Klee, with whom they had made an appointment, only to become so enraptured talking with each other that they failed to walk the short distance to Klee's studio and simply stood him up. Neither felt guilty about the broken date because, much as they respected his work, they considered him unexciting as a conversationalist.

Schedule Posted for UNI Design Conference

Click here for complete schedule

Available online is the complete schedule of events for ENVISIONING DESIGN: Education, Culture, Practice, a two-day series of presentations, panels, films and exhibits for design professionals, design educators, students and alumni. Events begin late Friday afternoon and evening, April 26, and continue throughout the day until 4:00 pm on Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Keynote speakers include designer Sang-Duck Seo, graphic design professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who will focus on various aspects of his experiences in design and design education (7:00 pm on Friday), and Claudia Covert, research scholar and librarian at the Fleet Library, Rhode Island School of Design, who will discuss that school's collection of 455 WWI dazzle camouflage plans, made by designers and artists (11:00 am on Saturday).

All events will be held in the Kamerick Art Building on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls. The conference is open to the public. Everyone is invited, and there is no charge for attendance. For complete information click here.

Packin' Cats for the Army | Geraldine Schwarz

US aviator John B. Moisant and his cat (1910)

PICTURED ABOVE are American pioneer aviator John B. Moisant (1868-1910) and his tabby cat companion (who often flew with him), variously known as Mademoiselle Fifi, Paree or Spark Plug. Moisant died in a fatal crash in 1910, but the cat lived on and, in the bottom photo, is dressed in appropriate mourning attire and poised in a basket at his funeral.

This reminds me of a new book by Iowa author Geraldine Schwarz, titled Packin' Cats for the Arrr-mee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, a delightfully rich and vivid memoir about growing up with her brother (John Robert Fromm) on a farm near Mason City, Iowa, during World War II. Here's how it opens—

We were very-very good to our cats—always thinking what we could do to make them more comfortable, to make them happy, to keep them entertained. On cold winter mornings, we liked to have "cat warmings" because we knew the cats would be warmer if they curled up together. We got them all in the woodhouse and made a good spot in the corncobs where they could all sleep. But they didn't stay together very well. The tomcats fought with each other, and most of the others had better things to do. So we tried stuffing them in a cardboard box and folding the lid closed. 

Our work always had to be accompanied with a slogan or a song, so pretty soon we were singing, "We're PACK-in' cats for the ARRR-mee." The cats didn't have the same commitment to the war effort as we did—they were not as patriotic. After they had been crammed in the box and escaped a couple times, they really didn't want to stay there no matter how cozy it was. It was kind of hard to catch them again. If they got over the wall between the wood-and-cob part to the coal bin, we gave up on them and settled for any cats we could push in and closed the lid. Then one skinny head would come poking through the little opening and we'd have to start "PACK-in' cats for the ARRR-mee" all over again!

It's a wonderful book, replete with snapshots ("you-are-there") and scans of actual remnants from her childhood (including, for example, an account ledger of all the cats on the property), Schwarz's narrative is so fluid and so disarmingly conversational that, once you begin reading, it's hard to take a break—for fear of possibly missing out.

Here is the author's synopsis, as quoted from the dust jacket—

Packin' cats was never easy. They didn't like to be pushed into boxes even if it was for their own good. But if it had been easy, it wouldn't have been fun. It would have been "play," and that was what city kids did. We always thought of everything we did around the farm as "work." We liked to be useful, to be helpful…especially to cats and all our other livestock.

We had a great life on the farm—and that's not from the perspective of a grown-up looking back on a distant childhood. We knew it was great even while we were kids. And we were never bored—we found hundreds of ways to have fun.

Our folks loved the farm, so we did, too. The farm belonged to us and we belonged to it. We depended on each other and took care of each other. It was sometimes tough, but it was such a good life.

Jacquie Colvin, jacket and book design

Here are the bibliographic details: Packin' Cats for the Arrr-meee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, by Deanie and Johnnie, also known as Geraldine Fromm Schwarz and John Robert Fromm. Book design by Jacquie Colvin. Decorah IA: South Bear Press, 2011. 167 pp. 52 black and white photos. 29 color photos. Clothbound. First edition $25.00. ISBN 978-0-9761381-9-8. Library of Congress Control Number 2011909978. Available from South Bear Press, 2248 South Bear Road, Decorah IA 52101. Website www.southbearpress.org.

Henry Moore on Shut-Eye Golf

Eric Ravilious, May. Woodcut, 1925. Public domain image.

British sculptor Henry Moore, in a conversation about his friend Ben Nicholson (who was very good at shut-eye golf) in Maurice de Sausmarez, ed., Ben Nicholson: A Studio International Special (London: Studio International, 1969), p. 24—

Ah yes, shut-eye golf. That was introduced and I think invented by [British artist] Eric Ravilious. On this large sheet of paper you drew an imaginary golf course with a variety of obstacles—e.g., a dog, a tree, a cow, a bandstand, a duck pond and so on—and then you'd put a few extra bunkers in; it was a golf course in plan. Then you put the point of pencil in hole 1, had a good look at the course and where hole 2 was, and what obstacles lay between, then you had to close your eyes and attempt to draw a line to hole 2, without the line touching any drawn obstacle. Sometimes you did it in one, but more often at ones first shot ones line touched a tree, or bunker, or ended up far away from the hole—one had to play a second, a third and so on until the pencil rested plumb in the hole. You could play a nine-hole course, or eighteen holes, and as in real golf the least score was the winner.

James Watson: Avoid Dumb People

Dust jacket of Mastery, designed by Bill Stanton

From an interview with Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist James D. Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) in Joan Evelyn Ames, Mastery: Interviews with Thirty Remarkable People (Portland OR: Rudra Press, 1997), p. 69—

My chief piece of advice to a young person is go to a place where people are bright. That is, avoid dumb people—those people who can't give anything to you—and turn to people who are brighter than yourself.

What Company Is For

From Mark Van Doren (recalling his friendship with Joseph Wood Krutch), The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968—

The important thing was that we had a great deal to say to each other, and that each was really interested in what the other said; also, that each was eager to speak when it came to his turn, and was confident that what he said would be worth hearing. We like those who inspire us to talk well, to talk indeed our best, which in their presence becomes something better than it ever was before, so that it surprises and delights us too. We like least those persons in whose presence we are dull. For we can be either, and company brings it out; this is what company is for.