WILT: Neighborhood Cross Street's Namesake

One of my favorite apps is called Daily Art. If you like art even a little, and if you like the stories behind the art, then the free Daily Art is all you. Each day a new painting or sculpture is delivered with a snippet about its context. It's pretty rad.

A few days ago the offer was the following painting, "Winter Scene of Brooklyn" by Francis Guy:

The story talked about how the studio that Guy painted in looked out on this intersection, where Fulton, Front and a third street come together. In today's Brooklyn, the intersection exists, but the buttresses for the Brooklyn bridge are closeby.

We used to live very close to Fulton, but not this exact iteration, as this section is known as Old Fulton today.

In the lower left corner there's a couple with a kid, and directly above the kid is a gentleman walking to the left, carrying a parcel of some kind.

The parcel is a leg of lamb, and the man was the butcher. The butcher was actually named in the app's anecdote, as the interesting part of the painting's history is that many people from the neighborhood were placed in the painting by Guy. The butcher's name: Jacob Patchen.

WHAT?!?!? I said to myself when I read that.

The following picture is one I took from the top of our building in Bed Stuy, and it has probably graced this website before. The trailer we packed our belongings in and drove from California is seen at the bottom in the center:

The street we lived on was Halsey, and the near cross street at the corner was Patchen.

We lived on Halsey between Patchen and Malcolm X, but much closer to Patchen. And while I've of course heard of Malcolm X, this app's story was the first time I ever heard any reference to Patchen's namesake.

Finally Watched "Solo"

My brother told me his feelings about Solo around the holidays, and I think I was surprised. Having heard the mostly negative din coming from the web, I didn't make it a priority to see it. Dan, though, said, "People compain too much. I liked the hell out of it. It's a western...like Rogue One was basically a war movie, like a WWII movie, Solo is a western, and it's fucking good. Yeah, it's not Harrison Ford, but, whatever. It's good."

Heady praise from Dan.

So we watched it and I have to agree. It was a nifty little sci-fi movie, that happens to be about a beloved American character. So, it was generally destined to fail in the realm of public opinion.

Some things I wanted to say about it, that are mostly original to the conversation Corrie and I had about it:

1. It seems to me that the kid playing Han is playing the character not as was included in Star Wars, and the subsequent sequels starring Harrison Ford, but rather playing the character whom Americans have gone on to make legend---the kid is playing our idea of what Han Solo is or should be. He's not playing Solo from Tatooine in 1977, he's playing (or the role was written as) "What America Believes Han Solo to Be."
2. The kid playing Solo is doing a characterization of "an American." I'll come back to this one

Harrison Ford played Han as an updated Rick Blaine: what seemed like an American only interested in money for himself, and not much else. The "Cause" wasn't his, until it was. He never seems interested in helping until after you've given up hope (or pretend that the film isn't predictable enough to understand he's not going away).

This Han is different, but so what? It's fun, unless you take Harrison Ford's role as a sacred cow.

Tatooine in 1977 was filmed in Tunis, and the only Americans on screen at the time were Luke, Leia, and Han; most everybody else was British. So Han as Rick Blaine would have made sense to European viewers.

I had this whole "American" archetype, or American caricature in film, thesis bouncing around my head for some time now. It comes back to Jiminy Cricket.

The main audience for Pinocchio, like Snow White before, was the European market, and Jiminy Cricket, while a natural character for American viewers, was profoundly American to European audiences: he's resourceful, positive--even cheery--and nearly a smart alec. The street-smart wise-cracker is American to Europeans.

Check out The Third Man for this representation as well: an Austrian, a Brit, and American...

Han, in this new movie, is an updated version of this idea. He's cheery, street-smart, puts himself into conversations he wouldn't otherwise be part of, and openly questions the wisdom of authorities.

One Timline Point Concerning Chewbacca

Chewie is around to help Yoda survive Order 66, the order that all Jedis were to be executed. How many years does it take for him to go from helping rescue Yoda to being imprisoned and fed other prisoners in the muck?

In anycase, the Han that we get in this movie seems like he would have needed less prodding to join the rebellion. But again, so what? It was entertaining enough.

Hot Stuff

It's weird when you may learn something new.

Imagine, for a moment, a chili pepper. Jalapeno, bell, habanero, ghost...there are a large variety. Chilis are what the aboriginal Americans named them (Aztecs?), and the "pepper" was thrown on the end by Columbus. Having taken a lot of money to go on a sailing voyage to find black pepper---and other spices---Columbus noticed that many chilis are spicy, some as hot as holy hell, and claimed that he found a version of what he was looking for.

Anyway, the active ingredient in chilis that makes them hot is called capsaicin, and there's a naming connection to the genus Capsicum, the nightshade family of plants that are the chilis themselves.

This is what I learned about the hot stuff:

Capsaicin, in mammals, produces the sensation that your mouth is actually on fire, rather, it tells the brain that your mouth is actively burning.

Birds, contrarily, suffer no such sensation, and enjoy the botanical fruits just like us, but without all the mouth burning.

The reason makes sense and is obvious once you hear why: mammals, ones that eat vegetation anyway, have grinding teeth, and the chewing action destroys the seeds; birds don't have the grinding teeth, and apparently the gizzards don't threaten the seeds, and so they pass through mostly intact.

Mouth on fire, people!

Strike's Over, and Other News

I've been formulating a long written piece about our strike, the power of strikes, the power collective bargaining, and educational topics on a whole, but that will wait.

Our strike lasted six work days and a seventh day of holiday pay. We marched in the rain and stood in the rain. We took drives to a local drug store soaking wet just to use the bathroom.We marched in downtown LA and in our own school's neighborhoods. We shouted so loud outside of City Hall, more than 60k of us, that we rattled their windows and were heard through the walls inside the negotiating room.

And we won.

Strikes work, people! They really do!

Now Cass is sick, or at least over the worst part and on the mend-ish, with two illnesses that I thought only appeared in novels like Little Women. He has BOTH scarlet fever and hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Corrie's birthday was last Monday and I stayed home from work to take care of both her and Cass, as the ravages of fever swept through our apartment like wildfire. How I've lucked out is beyond me...maybe my job is finally helping with immunities.

I have some other stuff to put up here today, and we'll see how much I can get through, depending on naps and Incredible 2 viewings.