Saturday Stuff

6 thoughts on “Saturday Stuff”

2. from the Philly Inquirer The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia’s born-and-bred magazine, will stop printing next year
   After 205 years, the Saturday Evening Post, the famed magazine that printed its first issues on Ben Franklin’s Old City printing press and whose Norman Rockwell covers defined the optics of quintessential 20th-century Americana, will print its last issue early next year.
   Subscribers received a letter in the September issue, which arrives in mailboxes this week, stating that the January/February 2027 issue will be the publication’s last printed edition. It will continue to publish online.
   […]
   ThePost may have been based in Indianapolis for more than a half a century, but its media roots are in colonial Philadelphia’s cobblestoned streets.
   In 1728, Benjamin Franklin took over the publication of the Pennsylvania Gazette, a general-interest magazine that covered politics, science, and government out of his print shop at No. 53 Market St. By the 1740s, it was the most popular publication in the colonies. Franklin retired in 1748 and the Gazette continued to publish until 1800, 10 years after his death.
   By the early 1820s, Franklin’s print shop was owned by Samuel Atkinson. He, along with Charles Alexander, started a newspaper that would carry on the tone of Franklin’s Gazette but print in time to be delivered to Philadelphians in the Saturday evening mail. The Post carried news, but readers liked it because it reported on the drama — including letters — between ex-presidents and political enemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The death of Napoleon was also a big story.
   The Post also printed essays, stories, and poems written by major American writers: Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Washington Irving, and Mark Twain. Circulation ebbed more than it flowed until 1897 when Cyrus Curtis — who transformed a farming magazine into Ladies’ Home Journal, the first magazine to reach a circulation of one million — purchased it from publisher A.W. Smythe for $1,000, about $40,000 in today’s money.
   Curtis wanted the Post to be for men what Ladies’ Home Journal was for women: cutting edge, insightful, and of the moment.
   In 1899, Curtis hired 32-year-old literary editor George Horace Lorimer, ushering the magazine into its 20th-century heyday.
   Lorimer would be one of the first editors to print the work of Joseph Conrad, O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, and Jack London. And in 1916, when he was just 22, Rockwell received his first commission at the Post, beginning a 47-year relationship that produced 322 original cover illustrations.
   Rockwell — whose most iconic paintings include the 1943 Freedom of Want of a family celebrating Thanksgiving dinner; the quirky 1953 Triple Self Portrait, and the 1963 memorial image of image of John F. Kennedy — was just one of many artists who got their break in the art world at the Post.
   The Post helped fuel a community of illustrative artists most of whom lived in Philadelphia support themselves for more than 150 years, said William R. Valerio, executive director of Woodmere, the Chestnut Hill museum whose collection includes several Saturday Evening Post covers.
   Rockwell’s Santa on a Train, and his Preparatory Drawing for Plumbers have both been exhibited in Woodmere’s Frances M. Maguire second floor gallery, an homage to Philadelphia-based illustrative artists. Many of whose work has graced the cover of the Post.
   “Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Robert Riggs, Benton Spruance, their work has all been in the Post,” Valerio said. “No artist works without community, and the Post helped create a vibrant community of artists in Philadelphia.”

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4. Here’s our new Saturday opener for the Digital Diner, inspired by Jack and Sophie Tucker 👇
   

5. Saturday Night Live 9 years ago when our national nightmare began
   

6. This needs to be run to ground. Cruz should be asked if he heard these threats, and whether he condemns them.

   Ted Cruz Silent After GOP Rallygoer Shouts That Dems ‘Should Be Shot’ During Speech
   During the same speech, Cruz tied Democrats’ rhetoric to the 9/11 attacks, the murder of Charlie Kirk, and assassination attempts against Trump. — Read More

   Let’s go to the videotape 👇