Notes on yesterday's post:

The confusions in Vanzetti's statement exist in the official record, yet they are subtle enough to ignore if one is in the mood to convict a man.

Antheil's noisy ballet was apparently a shock. So why didn't the traffic sounds in Gershwin's 1928 American in Paris also upset contemporaneous listeners?

Barbara Kulbacki was my great-grandmother. My grandmother was one of the five hungry children. My mother went to her senior prom with the son of one of the girls next door. He grew up to be the foremost proponent of Middle Eastern dance in the United States, and he and his mother are the subjects of another poem in the manuscript.

I have an intense image of Chiang Kai-Shek "rub[bing] the top of his head with both hands."