Author: DOuG pRATt

Keeping the Cartoons Moving

Tommy José Stathes is an animation film collector, curator and historian. A few months before the panic of pandemic lockdown, I attended a very enjoyable and entertaining presentation by Stathes. The event was sponsored by Paul Howley’s comics and collectibles store, That’s Entertainment in Worcester, MA. The New York Times has this profile of Tommy.

I think [“Somewhere in Dreamland”] helped me to better understand and connect with the inner children in my own grandparents, all of whom were born right around the time of the 1929 stock market crash and grew up during the Great Depression.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/nyregion/stathes-vintage-cartoons.html

Tommy has posted “Somewhere in Dreamland” on his YouTube channel.

Fun fact about my friend Paul Howley. We were introduced almost 50 years ago at a Christian youth gathering that was held at Freedom Farm, in Bolton, MA. My girlfriend Karen thought I’d like to meet him because of our mutual interest in comic books. After many years as a Christian fellowship ministry, the Freedom Farm property was sold and it’s now a commercial operation.

My all-time best story about troubleshooting a problem at work involved Karen. I’ll have to tell it sometime.

Judy’s Living Bra

When “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” was released on November 25, 1967, everybody knew it was a play on the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”. Rather than being a novelty record, it’s a Psychedelic Blue-Eyed Soul masterpiece that took on a life of its own. The single stayed on the Billboard Hit chart for 16 weeks, compared to 11 weeks for “Hello, Goodbye”, knocking the Beatles out of the #1 spot in January.

The song is on John Fred & His Playboy Band’s second album, Agnes English, that was quickly given a new sleeve with the single’s title. I have an LP with the redone sleeve and, whaddaya know, the album is another creative musical gem from 1967.

Released only a few weeks after “Judy” was another perfect Psychedelic Pop record, “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers. These two singles are permanently linked in my mind, and when I hear one of them I always think of the other.

The “Living Bra” reference in “Judy in Disguise” came from Playtex, the company came up with the winning design for the spacesuits used in NASA’s Apollo missions.

There’s No Stopping Progress

Nobel Prize economist Robert Solow has died. Solow was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama. It’s an honor that was subsequently tarnished by Trump giving one to Rush Limbaugh.

As [Solow’s] work shows, technological advances, broadly defined, are responsible for the bulk of modern economic growth

https://news.mit.edu/2023/institute-professor-emeritus-robert-solow-dies-1222

Solow’s obituary in The New York Times has this amusing quote about John Kenneth Galbraith.

Mr. Galbraith “mingles with Beautiful People; for all I know, he may actually be a Beautiful Person himself.” But the book, he said, “is for the dinner table, not for the desk.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/business/robert-solow-dead.html

I think Solow’s “beautiful person” crack may have revealed a bit of the old M.I.T. vs. Harvard rivalry. Meeting the very tall Galbraith was a pivotal event for me in deciding to make Economics my college major.

Coincidental with Solow’s passing, last night’s PBS Newshour has this segment on AI’s potential effects on employment. It was mostly recorded at Boston’s Museum of Science (which is actually in Cambridge), where one of my sisters works developing educational materials.

For a deeper dive into the work of Robert Solow, there is this interview from just six months ago. It was conducted by his former student, economist Steven Levitt.

Sumpy Lives!

Sumpy, my trusty basement sump pump, has had it easy for more than ten years. He hasn’t needed to run since my next door neighbors installed sump pumps in their house.

Monday’s storm was so bad that it woke up Sumpy. He’s been running every few minutes for the past 24 hours. I’m glad he was able to hold his water until after the electricity came back on. Otherwise, if I hadn’t caught it in time to get the generator running, there would have been a mess to clean up in the basement.

I used to have a couple of PVC drain pipes that fit together to extend the outside outlet and take the water away from the house. I still have them, but as mentioned here a while ago, they were used by the landscaping contractor for the downspout drain project, so I had to improvise.

In the garage I had a long, plastic shipping tube from a video projector screen project. The tube seemed like a perfect replacement for the pipes that are now buried underground, but when I dropped it on the ground it broke in two! Despite being much thicker than the other pipes, it’s actually much more fragile.

Forced to improvise again, I knew that duct tape wouldn’t be good enough to hold the two pieces together. Then I remembered the roll of aluminum tape I bought when replacing the dryer vent.

It worked! And I was wondering if I would ever have another use for that expensive roll of aluminum tape.

I’m going to reward myself for a successful hack with an Elvis Special — a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I won’t fry it the Elvis way, but I’ll toast the bread.