A nice picture of ponies from Iceland, where they used to have a Lawspeaker.

Had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed I was driving on a superhighway, approaching a wide bridge or overpass. There had been some kind of accident or disaster, and the entire wall on the right-hand side—what do you call it, a balustrade—had fallen off. So if you drove in the right-hand lane and swerved a little, you ran the risk of running off the edge and plunging to your death.

In the dream, I was terrified of getting on that bridge. Although there were three lanes to the left, where you could feel reasonably safe in driving, I was convinced that once I got on the bridge I’d somehow be forced into the right-hand lane, and go off the edge.

Not sure what it meant. I can relate it to my personality, though. The way I tend to run away from things I’ve identified as dangerous, even when that danger is fairly remote.

Which relates not at all to the subject of this post.

One of the things I learned from Prof. Torgrim Titlestad’s Viking Norway concerned law and literacy. It surprised and intrigued me. Here’s how it works. Continue reading Ambivalent progress →

Frances Rose Shore (born February 29, 1916), better known as Dinah Shore, loved to sing as a child. At times, her father encouraged her to sing to the customers of his dry goods store.

But by the time she was college age, her father thought she should pursue an education over singing. Apparently he didn’t believe she had much talent. She went to Vanderbilt in Nashville and graduated with a sociology degree. During her senior year and the following year, she went to New York to audition wherever she could. According to Michael Sims, she struggled to gain attention.

[A] producer at NBC summoned her to Rockefeller Center. As the accompanist played the piano, Shore opened her mouth and produced no sound–not one note. She fled in tears. . . . In auditions she was turned down by Tommy Dorsey, who didn’t like her bobby socks and sloppy joe sweater, and by a pastrami-chomping Benny Goodman, who would only listen during his lunch break. In January 1939 she was hired to sing for Leo Reisman’s orchestra at Brooklyn’s popular Strand Theater—for a princely $75 per week. Xavier Cugat heard her and asked her to record one of his songs, paying her $20.

She signed a recording contract with RCA Victor in the summer of 1939. After she sang at the New York World’s Fair, the Daily News described her voice as “smooth as silk.”

Listen to a recording from 1941 of Dinah singing “Stardust.”

Dinah Shore became the first woman to host a prime-time TV show, and she stayed on TV in different ways for decades. She was a household face, voice, and name. She has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, several Emmys, and other awards.