“Very little has been published about Richard Potter for whom the village of Potter Place, N. H., was named”.  Ventriloquism and magic shows weren’t always the amusing distractions they are today.  As religion scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt explains, until the eighteenth century, they were “deeply embedded in Christian discourses about demon possession, necromancy, and pagan idolatry,” but much of this discussion was largely confined to America.  In Europe, and specifically in London where Richard Potter wandered alone, magic was a part of daily life for some.  The city was full of “displaced persons of many kinds,” historian Paul E. Johnson writes, some of whom turned to magic performances on the streets and fairs to earn money.  Others used those same techniques to pick pockets and cheat at cards.  Some of the more industrious performers did both and “performed in the streets by day and robbed travelers by night.”  Potter would have found a home with one of these groups, as he claims that he first learned magic while working at a circus.  Richard Potter was a performer—the first American-born ventriloquist and stage magician.  His act was thrilling.  He passed coins through glasses and plates, did card tricks, and “broke eggs into a gentleman’s hat and turned them into hot pancakes.”  His ventriloquism saw him throwing his voice so that it appeared that he was speaking from “trunks, a lady’s coin purse, and a gentleman’s pocket,” Johnson writes.  https://daily.jstor.org/americas-first-ventriloquist/   

First published in 1981, Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic was the first children’s book to reach the New York Times bestseller list, where it appeared a total of 182 weeks.   https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/8214-new-edition-and-content-for-light-in-the-attic.html   

The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest (WikiCU) is The Philolexian Society of Columbia University’s  flagship annual event, drawing crowds in the hundreds.  At evening's end, attendees join in reciting Joyce Kilmer's famous poem "Trees."  http://www.columbia.edu/cu/philo/kilmer/    

American poet and painter who first attracted attention for his eccentric punctuation, but the commonly held belief that E.E. Cummings had his name legally changed to lowercase letters is erroneous–he preferred to capitalize the initials of his name on book covers and in other material.  Despite typographical eccentricity and devotion to the avant-garde, Cummings's themes are in many respects quite traditional.  He often dealt with the antagonism between an individual and the masses, but his style brought into his poems lightness and satirical tones.  As an artist Cummings painted still-life pictures and landscapes at a professional level.  Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  His father, Edward, was a Harvard teacher and later a Unitarian minister.  Rebecca Haswell Clarke, his mother, enjoyed reading poetry to her children, and encouraged him to write poetry every day.  Edward Cummings died in an 1926 accident, when his car was hit by a steam locomotive.  His first poem Cummings wrote when he was only three.  He was educated at Cambridge High and Latin School, and from 1911 to 1916 he attended Harvard, where he met John Dos Passos.  Cummings became an aesthete, he began dress unconventionally, and dedicated himself to painting and literature.  He graduated in 1915 with a major in classics.  http://authorscalendar.info/cummings.htm   

According to Grammarist, “face the music” could have been a phrase told to actors before they went onstage to face the orchestra pit, thus literally “facing the music” and overcoming any stage fright.  Alternately, it could also stem from soldiers marching into battle during the 19th century since many armies once had musicians going into battle with them—the soldiers would be literally facing their enemy’s music.  Today, the idiom has shifted from its literal meaning to a more figurative one, often used more in situations of consequence.  Still, even with its uncertain origins, the idiom has cemented its place in American pop culture.  The 1993 film “Face the Music,” starring Molly Ringwald and Patrick Dempsey, incorporated the phrase into its title.  The idiom is also part of the song “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” which was introduced by Fred Astaire and written by Irving Berlin for the classic 1936 film “Follow the Fleet.”   https://dailycal.org/2019/12/04/face-the-music-a-look-into-the-idiom   

TRIVIA  “He’s honest, he’s strong and he’s steady, a chip off the block that gave us Teddy …”  Row, Row, Row With Roosevelt (On the Good Ship U.S.A.), 1932 campaign song  *  Picasso’s 1937 Guernica painting was hung in New York’s City’s Museum of Modern Art, then moved to Spain in 1981. *  Released March 13, 1956, Elvis Presley’s first album, became the first album in history to sell one million copies.   The Century by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2722  September 22, 2023