Or, the trouble with Myrtle Malloy, anyway. What is Brad’s trouble, indeed?
This is an educational film with a surprisingly feminist twist, when the supervisor asks Brad, “[a]ll these things you’ve been talking about–marriage, absenteeism, personality problems–aren’t they really just a part of life?” (So long as there isn’t a man available for the job, anyway.)
It’s back to school for me this week. I can’t wait to open my new box of 128 perfectly sharpened Crayolas and just *sniff* them!
Historiann 
Brad looked like he was about to become hysterical. That’s an actual 1950s training film?!? I bet it wasn’t Bettye or Myrtle who came up with the idea of changing an educational publishing firm’s name from an actual NAME-name to something like “Cengage,” a phony-neme so irksome to the ear that I probably wouldn’t even adopt my own book if it was acquired for that platform.
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Our classes start Thursday… Have a good first day of class. Do you have new shoes, along with the crayons?
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No new shoes bought specifically for the purpose. A new outfit I bought in Quebec last spring, though!
It’s going to be 98 degrees here today–I’m thinking that “sundresses” are the appropriate choice for teaching for the next few weeks, anyway.
Mmmmmmmm. . . fresh crayons!
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Heard about that Big ‘Quake down south of you overnight. Did that rattle its way upstate? (Does every state even *have* an “upstate” and a “downstate?”) Anyway, hope everything’s going well and have a great skool year!
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The semester started for us on Monday. My only regret is a thwarted baking agenda. I never got that crate of peaches from the Wholesale Fruit market, so I did not have a chance to make a fruit pie this summer or to test out the Cooks Illustrated vodka pie dough recipe.
On Sunday made a chocolate hazelnut tart with a pasta frola crust. It uses egg yolks, so it kind of turns out like a cookie.
Cheers and have a fantastic semester everyone!
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Having unwittingly inserted a reference to an earthquake here yesterday, and being bored blind with syllabizing, will I hope be a sufficient warrant for thinking it’s not too much of a thread-jack to say we had a pretty interesting temblor here on the East Coast yesterday afternoon. Although our Pacific Rim friends are having a jolly time mocking the evacuations, the airport shut-downs, cell phone failures, and other such panicky.
But to go back on-thread: I was wondering about this film–what did it take to get this particular project and script green-lighted at the company to which McGraw-Hill outsourced its training films; how many script re-writes they went through getting just the right “tone”; what the various actors said about their roles when they washed up for the day and went to hang with friends; what kind of sales calls their reps had when they tried to “place” this baby in various companies’ H-R program; what it was about the Aluminum Company of America that got them involved with it; and generally that kind of mid-20th Century history stuff? I’d like to “adapt” this script around General Braddock’s disastrous business trip to Pittsburgh in 1755, when some hapless captain had to transfer somebody from the washing and baking division to the tree-felling and road building squad. Or maybe just back to that syllabus for HI-614?
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