Fabulous paperback cover: "The Word for World is Forest"

We don't get paperback covers like this much anymore! Search through the Papergreat archives for more artwork by Richard M. Powers. ... Also, apologies if some of the excerpts and review quotes are leaning into my depression regarding the state of everything.

• Title: The Word for World is Forest
• Additional cover text: "The mind-stunning science fiction masterpiece"
• Author: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
• Cover illustration: Richard M. Powers (1921-1996), though he is not credited anywhere in the book
• Publisher: Berkley Medallion
• Year of this edition: December 1976 (fifth printing)
• Original publication date: 1972
• Pages: 169
• Format: Paperback
• Cover price: $1.75 (in very small sideways type)
• Back cover excerpt: "The planet Athshe was a paradise whose people were blessed with a mystical awareness of existence. Then the conquerors arrived and began to rape, enslave and kill humans without a flicker of humanity. The Athsheans were unskilled in the ways of war, and without weapons. But the gentle tribesmen possessed strange powers over their dreams. And the alien conquerors had taught them how to hate..."
• Dedication: "FOR JEAN Who Went Ahead"
• Excerpt #1: It was unbelievable. They'd all gone insane. This damned alien world had sent them all right round the bend, into byebye dreamland, along with the creechies.
• Excerpt #2: With a promise of peace they would withdraw all their outposts and live in one area, the region they had forested in Middle Sornol: about 1700 square miles of rolling land, well watered.
• Excerpt #3: "When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.5 stars (out of 5). 
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2024, Royce wrote: "If we find life on other worlds, we will inevitably enslave its inhabitants, kill its inhabitants, or if they are superior, go to war with them. It’s just who we are. I hope we never find life elsewhere because I know us and it will end badly."
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.06 stars (out of 5). 
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2020, Sean Barrs wrote: "I argue that it is an extremely important work of science-fiction because we could learn from it as a society. And this is why art is so radically essential. We have a distant future, and a distant alien world, we are dealing with intergalactic politics and racism across humanoid species, but the allegory is not too far from today. And that's truly terrifying."
• Blunt thoughts from Lawrence Burton, author of Crappy 1970s Paperbacks with Airbrushed Spacecraft on the Covers: "I realise that James Cameron's Avatar borrows from a great variety of sources — Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dances with Wolves, and the Smurfs to name but three — but it really feels like a massive [bleeping] chunk of it came from this novella, albeit with a few other bits bolted on so as to save the effects guy being stood around all day twiddling his thumbs and looking bored."

Graffiti on a secluded stairway in Catalina, Arizona

To change world takes one random act of kindness

Be kind!

Postcard from my great-grandfather to my grandmother*

*I think

This postcard was mailed from Hotel Ruiz Galindo in Fortín de las Flores, Veracruz, Mexico, to Bushnell General Hospital in Brigham City, Utah, sometime in the early to mid 1940s. (The six-cent Mexican stamp used was issued in 1940.)

The card was mailed to Mrs. J.G. Ingham. That would be my grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003), who worked at the hospital during World War II. She was married at the time to Jack G. Ingham. 

I'm pretty sure that the short note ("This is a gorgeous place. Expect to return home shortly.") was written by my great-grandfather, Howard Horsey Adams (1892-1985), who signed as "Poppa." But I'm not 100% on that. 

One of these days I need to see what I can find out about Jack Ingham. He and my grandmother had divorced by the early 1950s. I have a fair number of photos of him, but not much in the way of biographical information, and he was never discussed much when I was a child. 

Setsuko Hara's sketch of Toshiro Mifune in "Tokyo Sweetheart"

I finally came across the perfect companion to the 2021 post Hideko Takamine caricature from "Kita no san-nin." Maybe I'll start a subcategory of drawings shown in mid-century Japanese dramas.

In the 1952 film Tokyo Sweetheart, directed by Yasuki Chiba, actress Setsuko Hara portrays Yuki, a street sketch artist who has a meet-cute with Kurokawa, a good-hearted man portrayed by Toshiro Mifune. Yuki does the sketch of Kurokawa that's shown above. It's a pretty good sketch, though it only gets about three seconds of screen time; some artist definitely did their job well behind the scenes.

Tokyo Sweetheart is a fun film overall. It's full of misunderstandings, machinations and switcheroos, mostly involving a valuable ring and its less valuable replica. It's not all screwball comedy, though. This is devastated post-war Japan, so there are money troubles, the reemergence of the Yakuza (though they're comically portrayed) and a storyline involving a dying sex worker who wants only to reunite with her mother.

The scenes involving Hara and Mifune are the most enjoyable. They didn't appear in many movies together and this might be the film in which they have the most shared screen time. (I haven't seen Kurosawa's The Idiot, though.) It's fun to imagine an alternate timeline in which Hara and Mifune co-starred in a series of Thin Man-like films, or had their own Bogart-Bacall or Grant-Hepburn energy. 

A review of Tokyo Sweetheart on Japanonfilm notes: "Neither Hara nor Mifune were known for romantic comedies, so the arrival of this is a welcome extension of our understanding of both those stars. ... One extra layer of interest is the way it adapts the tried and true romantic comedy formula of western film into the context of Japanese society." 

Here are a few more images from the sketching scene in Tokyo Sweetheart:

Find someone who looks at you

the way Setsuko Hara looks at Toshire Mifune here.

Mifune does not enjoy behind laughed at.

And there are a few more images here.

Thursday shelfies

BONUS (Snugs, looking a bit evil, a few days ago)

Old ad for "The Black Cat" on WBKB's Shock Theatre in Chicago

This nifty old advertisement for 1934's The Black Cat popped up in one of my Facebook groups. Channel 7 in Chicago was known as WBKB from 1953 to 1968. Its "Shock Theatre" was one of many such shows that launched around the nation when Universal sold its syndication package of 52 classic horror films — called Shock! — to local television stations in 1957 (through Screen Gems). 

Thus was spawned the phenomenon of local TV horror hosts. WBKB's version ran from 1957 to 1959 and featured Marvin, his companion Dear and hunchback Orville, along with a band called the Deadbeats. Dear's face was never seen until the final episode, according to Wikipedia. "Shock Theatre" was remembered fondly by one commenter in IMDb.com in 2014:

"For early television played late at night, this show was the best. The goofy music and the scary things on the show scared a little kid like me half to death but I loved it. Especially Marvin's humor. The movies were old time horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, etc. I wish I could get some of the episodes. I don't know if WBKB in Chicago kept any of them or not. Any show named Shock Theater in any other town just copied what was already done in Chicago. Marvin even took some of the show on the road to local ballparks like Comiskey. His band was great also. It even had a guy playing accordion in the band. I would love to see episodes of Shock Theater, even online somewhere."

Here are a couple stills from The Black Cat, including Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff playing chess, and Karloff leading a pre-Code satanic ritual in a German Expressionist setting.

From the readers: Toys of yesteryear, Earle Cook Jr. and liminal spaces

It's ridiculously already 100 degrees outside, so it's a good day to try to type up a post while Bandit sleeps between my arms and Mommy Orange gives my right arm a bath. Here are some reader comments that have come in since early February:

Can we have a national discussion about this vintage toy advertisement? Anonymous writes: "The floor is lava. This is why the guy needs rescuing by a lift cage. Big Josh has pecs. But so did my Big Jim's roommate, GI Joe, with a taped-on leg. He was a Vietnam vet, but still highly deadly and capable."

Never underestimate the capabilities of an action figure and an awesome imagination.

A long-gone motor inn, longer-gone ancestors and a sketch: Anonymous writes: "I remember [Framingham Motor Inn in Framingham, Massachusetts] fondly. My now hubby of 50+ years and I had our 1st upscale date there."

Book cover: "The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus" (1967): Anonymous writes: "Five shillings was a pretty high price for a paperback in the UK in 1967. You could buy new paperbacks for 2/6, half that price. Probably first publication, royalties to Hammer and film script-writers, and Burke's own fees helped put the price up."

Thanks for the insight! 

Old postcard: "The World's Most Famous Chicken Dish": Anonymous writes: "My family dined frequently at MD's Chicken in the Rough in New Market, Virginia. As a child, the warm rolls and honey were my favorite. The chicken platters were generous and mounded high with shoestring potatoes. I believe MD's burned in the early 1980s. It is sorely missed!!"

Thank you for sharing that memory, and I'm very sorry to hear about the restaurant's fate.

Unfortunate apparel of 1980: The official Star Trek duty jacket: Anonymous writes: "I still have the LED jacket. The silver is flaking off but the LEDs still work."

Realms of the uncanny: Dreamcore, backrooms & liminal spaces: Anonymous writes: "Hmmm, it seems like this dreamcore and liminal space isn't ... imaginal enough. But I appreciate the pictures you already have. Keep doing what you're doing!!!"

Thanks! I'll have to wrangle up another post of my photos this summer.

Luckyday buttons — the talk of the town: Two replies on this 2015 post!

Anonymous #1 writes: "I have a half a card with a red head in a yellow sun hat and red ribbon around it. They must have been known for putting different models on the cards!"

And Anonymous #2 writes: "I have a 2.5" x 3.75" card with 3 of 6 remaining white baby buttons 1/4-inch wide, states size 12. Baby sitting in left upper corner wearing a blue hooded cape over white dress, shoes and socks. Card color is pale pink. Price imprinted in right lower corner is 5 cents."

A postcard of Earle W. Cook's house, for some reason: Anonymous writes: "Earle W. Cook Sr., the senator, was my great uncle. My grandmother had this postcard and I saw it in the mid 1960s. This house was torn down later in the 1960s to make way for the construction of Interstate 40 through Kingman, Arizona. Earle Cook Jr. died May 12, 1981, in northern California. The family, including me, to this day still believe Earle Jr. was innocent."

I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment and for providing these additional details. It's was certainly a strange, strange case, involving a bomb on a jetliner.

1938 holiday postcard from Leinhardt Bros. of York: Anonymous writes: "I have a dresser made by Thomasville Chair Company in NC (the name changed in 1961 to Thomasville Furniture). The paper tag stapled on the back of this beautiful mahogany chest of 4 drawers had 'Leinhardt Bros York, Pennsylvania' typed on it. The piece was probably manufactured in the 40's. Just guessing by the style. Anyway, it ended up in Florida!"

Postcard of vanished attraction:

Ed's Ghost Town in Indiana: Beth Michael-Chasse writes: "Ed’s was an awesome place and we loved stopping there when we were kids. Dad would usually stop on our way from Shelbyville to Chrisney to visit our grandparents. Ed’s was located about halfway between the two towns, making it a great place for a break. The time or two he didn’t stop saw us crying with disappointment and in dire need of a restroom stop. My favorite things to look at were the shells and rocks, the puzzles in the toy section and of course we had to get some of their stick candy. The many signs along the road informing us we were getting closer to Ed’s were each read aloud with growing excitement. We were so ready to get out of the hot car and hunt through souvenirs and interesting odds and ends. When the interstate was finished, we never saw Ed’s again. That was such a huge disappointment for us. We sometimes talk about Ed’s and we enjoy those nostalgic trips down our memory’s lane. I wish I could go back just once more."

Thanks for sharing these wonderful memories, Beth! And thanks again to everyone who commented.

If only we knew then what we know now...

On November 3, 1990 — 34 years and 5 months ago — I was a second-year student at Penn State University, learning the ropes of journalism and calling all of my sources via landlines. 

Also on that date, the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal published this short editorial about AT&T's new SmartPhone. Looking back, it's quite the curiosity...