100 Years Ago - Felix the Cat

Almost since the first moving pictures thrilled audiences, we've enjoyed cartoons. Digging through the internet archives I came across this little gem from 1919. One hundred years ago, maybe not to the day, but close enough to qualify. Enjoy a bit of ragtime piano and the antics of Felix the Cat.

The Funnies - First Lap of 2019 (1919)

Starting on the first lap of the year.

A combination of the funnies and a 100 years ago post today, the beginning of 1919 in kitten terms. From Life magazine's, January 1919 issue.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone, may your frog-opened bottles of hooch contain horse shoes and magic mushrooms!

Fletcherizing - Considerations for Your New Year's Resolutions

Whatever your opinion of modern medicine, you can always find something crazier in the past. Take this little comic from an August 1909 issue of Punch Magazine.

Fletcherism
The Disciple - Now, waiter, you may bring me the fish.

Fletcherism or "The Chewing Diet" got its name not from a doctor, but from a San Francisco art dealer who purportedly lost more than 40 pounds through chewing his food until it became liquefied and the spitting out what was left. He also advised chewing not only solids, but liquids...so masticate that coffee, fella. And he believed you should only eat (if that's what you call chewing stuff up and spitting it out) when "good and hungry", angry, or sad...personally, being made to chew my tea only to spit it out would make me both angry and sad.

Fletcher saw the machine as an analog for the human body. He compared food to fuel, blood to steam, the pulse to a steam gauge, the heart to an engine, and waste to ash. It was the ash that seemed to fascinate him most, though. He advocated teaching children to examine their own waste, claiming if they were healthy it wouldn't smell and would have no evidence of bacteria.

Nine years after this cartoon ran, Fletcher died of bronchitis, or as he might see it a bad air filter. By that time calorie counting had already started replacing Fletcherizing. I never thought I'd be glad to count calories.

The Funnies Special Edition - New Years Then and Now (1917)

A Happy New Year - 1867

A Happy New Year - 1917

Happy New Year

With all the politics and discontent, the coming year is likely to be about as ugly as a potato in a hat carrying an umbrella. So why not begin 2017 with a card featuring...well...a potato wearing a hat, carrying an umbrella? Here's wishing you and yours the happiest and most prosperous of years, may all the blemishes be superficial and your potatoes be sweet ones.

For New Years - The Merry Widow

Something for the New Years Ball?

Happy New Years!

Here's wishing you a great 2016!

January Full Moon - In the Glory of the Moonlight (1915)

Here's a little recording to celebrate the full moon. In the Glory of the Moonlight was released in 1915, a time when World War I was just getting wound up and it'd become clear that the boys weren't going to march in, kick the kaiser's butt, and march home again. The music-buying public had turned to sappy sentimental strolling songs that depicted a simpler time, a time when a fellow could walk along the canal with his best girl in the moonlight.

Percy Wenrich composed ragtime and pop music at the turn of the last century. He was a native of Joplin, MO and came to New York to work the Tin Pan Alley scene in 1907. Unless you're a ragtime or vintage music enthusiast you probably wouldn't recognize many of Wenrich's compositions. The two exceptions might be Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet (1909) and When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose (1914). My personal connection with Wenrich? In 1911 he wrote his hit Red Rose Rag for his wife, Dolly Connolly, the lyrics to which were penned by Edward Madden. Now, I'm sure Ed and I aren't really related, but you never know.

Wenrich and other stars of the ragtime era had a bit of a comeback in the late 30's with the release of The Songwriter's Parade, a review that toured the eastern seaboard on the Loew's and Keith circuits. Eventually, Percy faded from the scene and he died in 1952 at the early age of sixty five.

In the Glory of the Moonlight is a nice slow ditty for a walk in the park. Of course if you'd probably need a parka tonight, but the sentiment is there. Here's the recording from the Library of Congress. The volume leaves something to be desired and the player's nothing to look at, but you get to hear the song none the less.

Quote for January

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Poem for January

Here's to thee, old apple tree
Whence thou mayest bud
Whence thou mayest blow
Whence thou mayest bear apples enow.

-  Wassailing Song

Philosophy for Dieting by Sophie Tucker

With all the resolving going on today, much of it revolving around self-loathing, losing weight, toning up, and going on a this or that diet, I figured I'd offer you a look at the other side of the coin. Here's I Don't Want to Get Thin from red-hot Sophie Tucker.

Happy New Year

My pals and I would like to wish you the happiest of New Years, may 2015 bring you health, wealth, and prosperity!

The Words of Martin Luther King Jr.

Jet Magazine, April 18, 1968

The man speaks best for himself, nothing I could add would do him justice.

January Full Moon - Indiana Moon (1923)

If you're a frequent visitor to my blog you'll know that I spent the last year sharing the names of each month's full moon. It was a fun jaunt through the Old Farmer's Almanac, but one that left me searching for a second act. Well, for better or worse, the decision I came to for 2014 was to feature one moon-related song a month through the year and, where possible, one that included the name of the month in which it was being featured.

Though I didn't have any luck finding a January moon song, I figured I'd start things off with something that directly links to the name of this blog. Indiana Moon with music by Irving Berlin and words by Isham Jones. Take a listen and see what you think of this Vocalion version from 1923.

Quote for January

"There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues."

~ Hal Borland

In Case the Hair of the Dog Doesn't Work...

Just in case yesterday's post about the proverbial hair of the dog doesn't do the trick and you're too hungover to enjoy today's bowl games, here are a few possible solutions.

Genuine Aspirin, and you better say Bayer or God only knows what kind of quackery you'll wind up swallowing! This 1922 ad from Cosmopolitan (back when they did more than sex quizzes) gives the list of conditions for which you should pop an aspirin. Not too many people complain of lumbago any more and, for the most part, "rheumatism" has been replaced with good ol' arthritis. I'm guessing that a hangover would fall into the "pain, pain" category though no magazine of this era would expressly mention overindulgence in alcohol. In 1922 the insanity of Prohibition was in full force with federal agents and hatchet-wielding vigilantes like Carry Nation prowling the streets. Better to say you have a bad case of pain-pain than admit to buying bootleg hooch and face jail time or worse.

But what if we want to get right down to the source of our pain? What if we're interested in literally rooting out the cause and eliminating it all together? Well, we could reference this 1911 article from Pearson's Magazine entitled The Cure for Headaches. In it the author proposes that there are seven causes of headaches:

• Headaches from constipation
• The gluttonous headache
• The alcoholic headache
• The eye strain headache
• The catarrhal headache
• The sick headache
• The headache from chronic syphilis

Quite a list. We're concerned with the alcoholic headache in this post, but if you're interested catarrhal refers to inflammation of the mucous membranes. I guess old doc Maris wouldn't have felt he'd earned his white lab coat and stethoscope if he hadn't thrown in a few three-dollar words. I love the phrasing, "...more than one third of all headaches is the result of chemical embarrassments of some part of the digestive tract." The doctor goes on to compare headaches to disease caused by clogged sewers...and assuming your in the middle of a digestive embarrassment right now, I'll leave it at that. Dr. Maris' prescription - diet, exercise, and castor oil.

I think I'd go with the aspirin and a snooze on the couch, if I were you.

Poem for January - The Snow Man

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter 
To regard the frost and the boughs 
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; 

And have been cold a long time 
To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 
The spruces rough in the distant glitter 

Of the January sun; and not to think 
Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 
In the sound of a few leaves, 

Which is the sound of the land 
Full of the same wind 
That is blowing in the same bare place 

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 
And, nothing himself, beholds 
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Funnies - Welcome to the New Year

An extra funny page to welcome the New Year, 1919 marked the beginning of a year without the open warfare of World War I, but it also heralded a time of reckoning with the chaos and ugliness left in the wake of combat. Soon the false bravado of the 20's would obscure the memories of combat, the champagne and money would flow, Wall Street would fill one of its perennial bubbles with the hot air of impossible dreams, and humanity would Charleston into the abyss of World War II.

Here's to a year without war, a year when we are governed by wise and compassionate leaders, to a year of reasoned optimism undergirded by hard work and a strong conscience. Here's to 2014 and to hoping she will be a better year than her predecessor.

Rose Parade - 1904

I found this picture in the 1904 issue of Sunset Magazine, 110 years ago the Rose Parade had nothing to do with football.