Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Laura Levine Prolific Photographer Proprietor Artist and Renaissance Woman

Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash, NY, 1981 © Laura Levine - All Rights Reserved

I was all set to profile my friend Laura Levine a few months ago, but the Museum of Modern Art selected her work for the Looking at Music 3.0 exhibition currently on view (running though June 2011) and she became impossible!

Not really. But the Museum does start off their video for the show with her image of Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash!

I love Laura Levine but mostly I admire her. Laura brings back the tradition of the "renaissance man" but she's a woman. A renaissance man is "one whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas" and it is hard to find a better example today. As you can see above, Laura is a photographer of great, great talent and skill. These are extraordinary photographs by any standard, but that they are all of musicians I personally admire is a bonus. She let me pick them. I was a kid in a rock star store.

Laura has more. She was Chief Photographer for the New York Rocker, a tabloid which was largely responsible for me packing my bags and moving to the city decades ago. They were lucky to have her as the photos above testify.

Despite the work above (and in some limited cases, available for purchase from the artist) photography is hardly Laura's only skill.

You have likely seen her paintings as well. As this post is an excuse for me to show the photos, I'm not posting any paintings here, but Laura, self-taught, works in a most appealing naive style and has created some of the most endearing portraits of musicians you will ever see. Her portfolio is a trip through American music history, and I can't think of an artist who has done as much except R. Crumb. Just take a few minutes to browse HERE.

A published author. Not just published, but with a blurb from GEORGE JONES. I don't have to say any more. Among her books are Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music, and Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll. Her first picture book was Wig!, a collaboration with the B-52's. I expect many more.

Shall I go on? Okay...Documentary filmmaker who has been screened at Sundance. Need more?

Laura also handles Homer and Langley's Mystery Spot. I know it sounds like a place you read billboards for two hundred miles then stop to pee at, but it is in fact one of the greatest junk stores in the world. Vintage fashions, books, records, what-nots and what-have-yous. Take a look at the folks who have shopped there. Somehow, Laura even finds time to take THEIR pictures. I'm only telling you about the shop because since I moved, it is too far for me to drive to. They even have porch parties you wouldn't believe.

Gawd...I HATE Laura Levine. But I also love her like a sister.

The artist Laura Levine owns all rights to the photographs above, and she deserves them. She also didn't have to share them here, so respect her artistic contributions and don't crib them. It would be an insult to me, the artist and you! However, Laura does from time to time sell limited editions of the work and you can see the catalog HERE. Homer and Langley's Mystery Spot is HERE. The Artist's official website (which dances and moves) is HERE.

Above Photographs courtesy of the photographer© Laura Levine - All Rights Reserved

Canadian Vaudeville Performer with Snake and Monkey RPPC 1939 Paguin Pequin Paguin Canada Moose Jaw Saskatchewan

A member of the Paguin vaudeville family active in the Saskatchewan Province of Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. I purchased a photo archive of the group and am seeking information. The multi-talented group (musicians, contortionists and more) performed on the prairie circuit of Canada. If you have information, please write me at j.winkel4@gmail.com. If you know family members, please forward? Thanks!

Edward Paguin(?) 1939 Real Photo Postcard Paramount Film Service Collection Jim Linderman

UPDATE! Brian Busby, friend, writer and manager of the beautiful site The Dusty Bookcase was kind enough to get me started with the note below. I will do a proper thank you post one day, but for now please note Brian's latest book A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer was just published by McGill Queens University Press and looks fantastic. You MUST see this link. THANKS BRIAN!

"Though not a betting man, I'd be willing to wager a few dollars on Paquin over Paguin. The former is a fairly common French Canadian surname. The 1911 Canadian census (the most recent open and available online), doesn't list more than a few dozen Paquins on the Prairies... and none are named Edward. In fact, the only Edward Paquin I could find was then a 32 year-old plumber living in Quebec. My thought - and here I won't place a wager - is that the Paquins likely came from Quebec, moving west to the new provinces. Edward might actually be one of several young Edouard Paquins listed in the census."

Genealogy DNA Roots Family History Hand-painted Lithographs and Buffalo Bill

I am not into genealogy, though the doctor did take a DNA test today...scientists are learning how genetics influences disease. I have always been more interested in moving ahead than looking back, but those who do the family history are to be much admired, and if it weren't for my uncle I would not know I was related to Buffalo Bill. (True) When I was young, that was really cool, but now that I know he was a "showman" and big-time hunter, I have had second thoughts.

The document here lasted one hundred years. Not a long time when tracing your roots or relatives. And yet to me it seems ancient. The entries begin in 1826, and the last entry is dated 1927. One hundred years before the family lost interest and stopped keeping track. The latest death recorded was 1880 and it is still sad. The country was young when this record was started, but in the span of life on earth, this entire familial package doesn't even qualify as a freakin' blip.

I am sorry the entire document doesn't fit on the scanner, but we should be glad it remains at all. It has been in a flood or two and has been repaired, but at some point it was passed over or weeded out, and I found it abandoned in an antique mall.

The document itself was printed by Kellogg and Comstock, lithographers who churned them out and underpaid women to add the color by hand. They were second only to Currier and Ives in sales.

As the world shrinks, we will actually have to rely on science even more for our records. Travel and the growing population have put one tribe in touch with another to the extent that culture, language and heritage are even harder to trace and record. When one married the "girl next door" it was easy to know where she came from (of "good stock" probably) but now who knows?

I have been doing this blog a few years. It is surprising how many relatives of those I have mentioned or profiled have gotten in touch. I'm not too polite or delicate, but in all that time not one family member has written to criticize. Every single mail I have received from a surviving member, be their ancestors scoundrel or saint, has been to thank me. I am including the folks I put on old time religion and vintage sleaze as well...not one critical letter from a family member. I think we have lost so much of our roots, we are grateful for whatever we find. I have had former strippers, children of musicians, great grandchildren of artists, family members of postcard makers and more write to say "Thanks..."I didn't know that!"

(I try to generate heat, but the only complaints I have received came from a post where I made fun of Glenn Beck (which I ignored) and from a post where I roasted the "science" of chiropractic. I ignored them as well for the most part, but did refer a few to the Wiki article. I also got one or two angry notes from folks who didn't like my profile of scam artist Charles Jessup...so let's bring it up again HERE. Facts is facts.)

The important categories are Family, Born, Married and Died. Not died HOW, but died when and where. Although the family here came all the way from England, it looks like most of them never got out of Michigan after that. Having gotten out and returned, I know one could do both better and worse.

I won't be making any deathbed confessions (or having a deathbed conversion.) I am an open book for the most part, and now even my Deoxyribonucleic acid will be in digital form I guess. Medical confidentiality is sacred, but how many of you read the forms you sign? Eh...if whoever replaced J. Edgar wants my DNA, let him have it. At least I don't have to worry about some crime from decades ago coming up when they sort through my strands of genetic material. When I was ten, I was fingerprinted during a boy scout tour through a police station. That has never haunted me either!

Kellogg and Comstock Lithograph, embellished by hand circa 1825. Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

Graphic Design of the Awning Kind The WHEEL of AWNINGS Salesman Sample Pamphlet

There will be no yawnings when you have new awnings from MacKenzie! Magic rotating wheel allows one to select the perfect shade of shade making shades!

MacKenzie Awning Salesman Sample Booklet with wheel and die-cut window. No Date Collection Jim Linderman

See Dull Tool Dim Bulb Book Catalog HERE

Pretend Scrapbook Folk Art Project Miniature!

Some time and place in the 1940s or so, a child created a tiny Pretend Scrapbook. With cast away wallpaper scraps for a cover, bound in yarn. There was a mother, father, doctor and nurse. Not the child's caretakers, but close enough approximations to do the job. School years and His First Sweetheart followed quickly.

Pages from a "Pretend Scrapbook" with pencil labels. Circa 1935? Collection Jim Linderman

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS

Miracle Fotos Pic-Tease "Fingers"Game YOU DEVELOP THEM Hollywood Lovelies

As Kodachrome fades into fuzzy, unfocused memory, I present here just about the only thing left to develop. MIRACLE FOTO! The "Fingers" Game with photographs you develop at home. Presented by Pic-Tease, one of the finest providers of Hollywood Lovelies. But it isn't enough for you to create actual photographs at home, there is a game involved too! As you see on the reverse, one must "guess the fingers" As you can see in the only "developed" card in the set, our lovely here has a full set of ten digits AND two "bonus" nubs I had to black out. But you get the point, and the have indicated a "10" on the card. That is for her fingers, not a sexist scale rating her beauty. The instructions ask one to wet the crepe paper which comes with each card, and press it against the reverse until the miracle foto appears!

Being a collector, I am saving them all in the original box, as I hope the Kinsey Institute will bid high for the set on day. I find nothing on the web about these miracle fotos, the manufacturer did also produce "Miracle Derby Cards" so they clearly did intend the placing of bets. As such, and given the risque images, I suspect these were, at the time they were made, Illegal and that is why they are scarce.

Set of Miracle Fotos Pic Tease cards. Collection Jim Linderman Date Unknown (1935?)

See DULL TOOL DIM BULB / VINTAGE SLEAZE BOOK CATALOG HERE

Folk Art Frame 19th Century Wallpaper Tintype of Baby

Circa 1870 Tintype within a homemade folk art wallpaper frame Collection Jim Linderman

How Old is that Folk Art in the Window? "Let's make an ANTIQUE"

Not long ago, I wrote a post pointing pointing out that plywood is now officially an antique. Need a hobby?

All the above ads come from one issue of Home Craftsman, the August 1952 issue.

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books Catalog HERE

Fishing Women who Fish Fish Jim Linderman Collection

What can I say? Women who fish.

Collection of Vernacular Photographs 1927-1954 Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books

BUMP ME "Card in Motion" for Dull Tool Dim Bulb (Business Cards of TODAY)

This is my Digital Card. My "Business" card. I made it dance. The reverse has my personals, and though it might not seem like it, I value my privacy. But here they are.

Manufacturers are now making hand held phones and devices which will allow you to "BUMP" them to share information. That's right...just like you can wave a card at the gas pump or to pay for your $6.00 cup of coffee, you can now exchange messages, emails, private information and more by simply rubbing it against another's phone. The bump. An information bump.

To that purpose, I can only presume we will all need a Digital business card. Mine was created using gif technology widely available anywhere online.

"Bump ME"

Birdhouse Pre-loaded! Whittled Bird Carvings Perched Forever Folk Art

Anonymous snapshot "around 1940 Albert Lowenblum's daughter's house West of Big Rapids" Collection Jim Linderman

Victorian Paper Momento Folk Art 19th Century Forget Me Not

Dated (in pencil) 1887 Handmade folded Love Token with applied decoration.
Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

Spider Woman! Victorian Woman Caught in a Web (Bob Dylan Expecting Rain Basement Tapes Reid Miles)

I really do not know why early photographers thought it chic to use this web protective overlay, but several did.

Short post today...I've been working on a piece about Bob Dylan and the designer Reid Miles who did the Basement Tapes album jacket (as well as most of those beautiful and classic Blue Note Jazz covers)...if interested, see HERE.

I am really pleased that it was picked up by Expecting Rain, the primary source for all things Bob Dylan and more...one of the best music sites on the web, and a daily stop for me without fail.

Less than exceptional victorian photograph with web overlay no date collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

The Wrong Card Drawn

Evidence

Texting the Dull Tool Dim Bulb Way Stenography Shorthand Eubonics Steganography and those Damn Kids

Stenography is not Shorthand, but they are closely related, I guess. Children can learn anything...just imagine the complexity of human text and how it is acquired by the young. We are able to recognize wrinkled little characters on a page (or screen) and translate them in our brain to understanding, knowledge and emotion. It is beyond me. Squibbles which can make one cry, aroused...it is amazing.

I could increase my dexterity on a handheld (or a courtroom device using the layout of one of these goofy looking things) if I took the time, but I'm already too comfy with a keyboard where each key is as large as my fingerprints and each one creates what I am typing here. But if my parents had given me a typewriter as large as a postage stamp and a stylus the size of a needle when I was four years old, I bet I could poke it like a woodpecker and write poetry.

There is no reason at all that the stenography keyboard didn't become the standard for our devices today. If you put the card above in a baby's hand, it would make just as much sense as a typical keyboard...probably even more so, as it was developed to be even faster than regular typing. To the child the gibberish which results could eventually be read just like anything else. Steno even has it's own shortened language which appears tailor-make for tiny text. Check out the abbreviations here. OMG! WTF!!!

Remember back during the big right wing hub-bub over eubonics? Why, they're teaching BAD ENGLISH to our KIDS. Idiots. They've been teaching Shorthand to exploited women stenographers for a hundred years. In the deaf world, it was once controversial to teach sign language...as it supposedly would encourage deaf folks not to practice their lip-reading. Pffft. I think it was just jealousy from those who were too old to learn it and felt they were missing something.

The biggest use of stenography today is not stenography at all, it is SteGAnography, which is technique of hiding data in undecipherable wiggles. Just like shorthand. It is related to cryptography, which remarkably is ILLEGAL in some countries! (It makes it hard to read your mail.)

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
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