Odd Bits
Pianos for Victory
This story has been brought to my attention twice in the last 48 hours from two different sources.* Sometimes the universe says “You need to write a blog post about this!” in a very clear voice. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, raw materials of all sorts were diverted to the…
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Talkies, or “You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet”
Recently I’ve been dipping into the early days of talking pictures. As usual, a very specific question led me down unexpected rabbit holes. For once, I wasn’t surprised by the depth of my ignorance. Everything I knew about the first “talkies” came from the film Singin’ in the Rain—a movie that I love but that…
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Helena of Egypt, whose story looks mighty familiar
Roughly a year ago, I wrote a post about Tamaris, a woman in the fifth century BCE who was the daughter of a painter and an acclaimed artist in her own right. Recently I learned of a similar story, courtesy of novelist Joanne Harris, who is running occasional posts titled “Women You Deserve to Know”…
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