Humdrum (adj.) 

"routine, monotonous, dull, commonplace," 1550s, probably a reduplication of hum.   As a noun, "monotony, tediousness," from 1727; earlier it meant "dull person" (1590s).  https://www.etymonline.com/word/humdrum    

Ray Bolger (Raymond Wallace Bulcao) (1904-1987) was an American entertainer of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz.  Ray Bolger was born and grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a middle-class neighborhood.  His father was a house-painter, his mother a homemaker.  He was inspired by the vaudeville shows he attended when he was young to become an entertainer himself.  He began his career as a dancer. His limber body and ability to ad lib movement won him many starring roles on Broadway in the 1930s.  His film career began when he signed a $3,000 a week contract with MGM in 1936.  His best-known film prior to The Wizard of Oz was The Great Ziegfeld (1936).   Bolger's studio contract stipulated that he would play any part the studio chose; however, he was unhappy when he was cast as Tin Man in Oz.  The part had already been assigned to another lean and limber dancing studio contract player, Buddy Ebsen.  In time the roles were switched.  While Bolger was pleased with his role as the Scarecrow, Ebsen was struck ill by the powdered aluminum make-up used to complete the Tin Man costume.  (The powdered aluminum had been inhaled and coated Ebsen's lungs, leaving him near death.)  Ebsen's illness paved the way for the role to be filled by Jack Haley.  Bolger's performance in Oz was a tour de force.  He displayed the full range of his physical, comedic, and dramatic talents playing the character searching for the brain that he's always had.  Bolger's sympathy for Dorothy's plight, his cleverness and bravery in her rescue from the Wicked Witch of the West and his deep affection for her shone through, endearing the character--and Bolger--in the public mind forever.  Following Oz, Bolger moved to RKO.  He starred in several more films and had a sitcom called Where's Raymond?  He also made frequent guest appearances on television. In 1985 he and Liza Minnelli, the daughter of his Oz co-star Judy Garland, starred in That's Dancing!--a film also written Jack Haley, Jr., the son of Tin Man actor Jack Haley.  http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Bolger_Ray.html   

The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, the parent corporation of the National Broadcasting Company especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini.  The NBC Symphony Orchestra performed weekly radio broadcast concerts with Toscanini and other conductors and several of its players served in the house orchestra for the NBC Radio Network.  NBC encouraged the public’s perception of the Orchestra as a full-time organization exclusively at Toscanini’s beck and call, but Fortune disclosed in 1938 that these instrumentalists played other radio—and, later, television—broadcasts:  “the Toscanini concerts have been allocated only fifteen of the thirty hours a week each man works, including rehearsals.”   The orchestra's first broadcast was on November 13, 1937, and it continued until disbanded in April 1954.  A new ensemble, independent of the network, called the Symphony of the Air, followed.  It was made up of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performed from 1954 to 1963, particularly under Leopold Stokowski.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Symphony_Orchestra    

Between 1820 and 1849, during the last thirty years of his life, the Quaker sign painter-turned-preacher Edward Hicks created more than one hundred versions of The Peaceable Kingdom, an allegory of spiritual and earthly harmony based on Isaiah 11:6-9:  "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.  And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den."  In the multiple versions of his composition, Hicks both closely followed the scriptural description and also added imagery symbolic of Quaker belief and Pennsylvania history.  In the background at left, William Penn enacts his treaty with the commonwealth's native inhabitants in a composition appropriated from Benjamin West's painting of the scene.  While originally produced as visual sermons for Hick's family and friends, the painting's technical simplicity and deep-felt message of unity have charmed generations of viewers of all ages since the painter's rediscovery during the early twentieth century.   See photo of the picture at https://www.pafa.org/museum/collection/item/peaceable-kingdom    

December 12, 2025