Welcome the the weekend,
This week has been in overdrive as we prepare for a big move next month. I’ll give more updates as things fall into place, but in the meantime, I’ve been packing up keepsakes and books in spare moments.
Here is the best from around the Internet:
More than a century after the ruling establishing “separate but equal,” Louisiana’s governor has pardoned Homer Plessy. In 1892, Plessy was ordered to leave a whites-only railroad car he had purchased a ticket on. Four years later, Plessy lost a Supreme Court appeal in the case and this ruling established whites-only spaces in public areas. This ushered in the “separate but equal” doctrine, which allowed businesses to discriminate their services as available to only whites or Blacks (“colored” at the time), and which was determined not to be a violation of the 14th Amendment so long as the services were equal. Essentially the ruling made legal the “Jim Crow” laws of the Reconstruction era, which would remain in effect until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I loved this piece on the observant Joan Didion and the new-to-me writing of Eve Babitz, two influential writers whose work combined to lay out definitive views of life in Los Angeles.
Landmark works by Ernest Hemingway, H.L. Mencken, Langston Hughes, and others have entered the public domain.
“The Wild and Wonderful World of Estate Sales”. As a collector of antique glass and serving ware (which I’ve been packing all week) yes to all of this. You meet the most interesting characters at estate sales and auctions, hear stories you’d never otherwise come across. While they might have started as an American hobby, it’s certainly been exported, as well.
Did you know? A word that blends parts of multiple other words is called a ‘portmanteau’. Some of my favorites are “rockabilly”, “disturbia,” and “newscast”.
Currently reading: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Currently reading:
