January 2011

by Dan Cupper , Great Eastern Publishing, 184 pages .

In 1925 the Pennsylvania, the mightiest railroad in a country built by railroads, celebrated its pre-eminence by issuing a wall calendar featuring a painting called Speed and Security that showed the crack Broadway Limited pounding toward Chicago. Every year thereafter until 1958 the calendars appeared, each bearing a vigorous painting of the machines that incarnated the Pennsy’s—and, at that time, the nation’s—power. Because they were also reproduced on timetables by the million, these visions of transport triumphant made Grif Teller one of the country’s best-known painters. But he was by no means the only artist in the railroad’s employ, and his work and that of his colleagues are here sumptuously presented in a highly engaging book that illuminates two of the most American of all industries: railroads and advertising.

Water no longer flows from Portland, Oregon’s Skidmore Fountain for the convenience of horses, men, and dogs, as its benefactor intended. Otherwise things are pretty much as they should be. The triangular crossroads at S.W. First Avenue, S.W. Ankeny Street, and S.W. Vine Street remains the heart of a vibrant public space, an urban drawing room where the 107-year-old landmark fountain in the oldest part of the city is still the place at which people arrange to meet.

The fountain was the gift of a local businessman, Stephen Skidmore, who, after a visit to the 1878 Paris Exposition, returned to Portland determined to replicate, as best the young city could, the spirited life of a European plaza. He added a bequest of five thousand dollars in his will for this purpose and died not long after.

For general information on the Grand Canyon area, call the Arizona Office of Tourism (1-800-842-8257). The Fred Harvey Company, happy in its motto “Traditional Hospitality Since 1876,” still operates the now-landmarked Colter buildings, which function today as they always did, as refreshment stops and retail establishments. Call the company at (520-638-2401) to find out about hours or to make reservations at the stately El Tovar Hotel, Colter’s pioneer-style Bright Angel Lodge, or Phantom Ranch, at the canyon’s floor. The Harvey Company offers guided bus trips along the canyon rim that include stops at the Hermit’s Rest, Hopi House, Watchtower, and other Colter landmarks.

Fascinatingly as your interview with Wynton Marsalis unfolded, his view of so-called classical music—“Classical music doesn’t prize improvisation. It doesn’t place a premium on individuality”—is somewhat misleading. If Marsalis is referring to the classicalized music and performance of about 1825 to 1900,1 would agree that they don’t prize improvisation.

But slavish devotion to the written note is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of music. Beethoven, Mozart, and J. S. Bach were among the greatest improvisers and extemporaneous performers ever. Since its invention musical notation has served as a memory device, to organize several parts playing at once, but, with the exception of the nineteenth century, was never more than a recipe for sound. Performers were expected to add their own spice to the final product. The emergence of jazz can be seen as a return to the heart and soul of music performance for centuries: improvisation.

If you drive West as far as you can along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, you will come to a bowl-shaped building of logs and boulders nestled into the canyon’s side. Its picture windows give out on one of the great views in the world: over Yuma Point, then across the Colorado River to alluringly named landforms like Confucius Temple and the Tower of Ra that rise from the canyon floor. The structure is called Hermit’s Rest, and that’s just what it looks like—an elaborate shelter built stone by stone by some hoary recluse according to the dictates of his own eccentric vision.

It was refreshing to read a historical point of view on jazz as America’s musical voice (“What Is Jazz?,” October 1995), and as always Wynton Marsalis proved an articulate spokesman for the art form when he made parallels between its history and the history of our nation: “Jazz is a music of conversation, and that’s what you need in a democracy. You have to be willing to hear another person’s point of view. … The connection between jazz and the American experience is profound.”

I much enjoyed James Callaghan’s recounting of the tragedy of the San Patricios (November 1995), but was surprised—and not for the first time—that a fine historian should fall for the folkloric etymology that links gringo as a derogatory epithet for Americans to a Mexican mispronunciation of Green go (the Lilacs) .

There is no mystery about the etymology of gringo : it is a deformation of Spanish griego , meaning Greek—but “Greek” in a particular way, with the connotation of someone who speaks an unintelligible language—as in our expression “It’s Greek to me.”

John Steele Gordon replies: Mr. Drewer makes four points. I’ll take them in order.

1. I very much doubt that a President Mondale would have pushed for Star Wars. The Mondale wing of the Democratic party has an apparently undying belief that if you talk with your enemies long enough they will surrender through the force of reason (or maybe boredom). Reagan believed that power was a more efficacious persuader. During the previous administration (in which Mondale served as Vice President), the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. During the Reagan administration it collapsed.

2. The supply-siders argued that if you cut the marginal tax rates on income, a great boom would result and federal tax revenues would soar. This is a testable hypothesis, and in the 1980s we tested it. What happened? The United States added an economy the size of West Germany’s to the one we already had, and federal revenues increased by nearly 25 percent in real terms over the decade.