Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Wait — is that? (Checks IMDb.) It is.

Leave your guess(es) in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

No need for a hint: the answer is in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA mystery actor posts (Pinboard)

Why students can’t read

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tyler Jagt says that his students cannot read — read well enough, that is, to do the work of a rhetoric and comp class:

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

And Chronicle readers responded.

I’ll say again what I’ve often said: the crisis in the humanities is a crisis of reading.

A few related posts
Reading or not : Struggling to read : “The End of the English Major” : To Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell : “Warning from the Trenches”

Librarians rehired

From The Chronicle of Higher Education : Western Illinois University, the state school that fired its nine librarians in 2024, now must hire them back.

Related posts
Firing librarians : University library, or storage room?

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

There’s now a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Harlem, a film by William Greaves and David Greaves that documents a 1972 gathering of Harlem Renaissance artists and intellectuals at Duke Ellington’s townhouse.

Eubie Blake: “Being here with all these intelligentsia, I’m afraid to open my mouth.” [Was Duke present? He doesn’t appear in the trailer.]

Ham n Eggery

[100-05 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Right across from Ex-Lax/Cosmetics/Luncheon, we have, or had, Ham n Eggery, “Glorifying the American Dish.” That motto is a takeoff on the name of the 1929 Florenz Ziegfeld extravaganza Glorifying the American Girl . Which reminds me that our friend Margie King Barab was friends with Dorothy Wegman Raphaelson, one of the last two surviving Ziegfeld girls.

But back to the restaurant. The magazine Men’s Wear made brief mention of Ham n Eggery in 1940:

there’s a new place on Queens Boulevard called the “Ham’n Eggery” which does a sensational job with Va. ham and a couple of eggs.

If you click for the much larger view, you’ll notice many details: the lone patron rehearsing for an Edward Hopper painting, the sign announcing a closing (WILL BE CLOSED    OM: for vacation?) “Air Cooled,” the candy-store signage, Bell Telephone, Bilt-Rite (which explains Parson T’s: tires), the subway entrance and bus stop sign, and best of all, those eggs running joyfully to the pan. Whee!

Today the Ham n Eggery building houses a Dunkin’.

Thanks, Brian.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

How to improve writing (no. 133)

Benjamin Dreyer posted a sentence published in The New York Times (title: “oh dear”) and invited readers to have at it. The subject is David Hockney:

And then his wordly peregrinations, culminating in his arrival in Los Angeles, when he quickly helped we longtime residents to start seeing again, as if for the first time: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the building facades, the sky and that light !

“Oh dear” is right. Here’s a possible revision, letting the sentence fragment stand:

And then his wide-ranging travels, which brought him to Los Angeles, where his work showed longtime residents their city anew: the pools, the palms, the sprinklers, the buildings, the sky, the light.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 133 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. As of this morning, “wordly” stands uncorrected in the Times article. If the writer insists on putting himself in the sentence, add “like me” after “residents.”]

David Plowden (1932–2026)

“I have been beset with a sense of urgency to record those parts of our heritage which seem to be receding as quickly as the view from the rear of a speeding train”: from the New York Times obituary (gift link) for the photographer David Plowden.

Related reading and viewing
David Plowden’s website : David Plowden: Light, Shadow and Form (A 1999 documentary)

Knicks FTW!

I am relieved that the Knicks won tonight, because I'm not sure I could have taken the stress of watching a sixth or seventh game.

And I was thrilled to see Walt Frazier (eighty-one!) in the audience.

If I were a snarkier person, I’d be repurposing a Doc Pomus song: “Wemby, Wemby, what went wrong?”

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by David P. Williams. Let’s see: 1-A, seven letters, “Changing places”? Easy. 3-D, six letters, “Goes for competitively”? Easy with the first letter now there. 19-A, three letters, “Start to squirm”? Also easy with the last letter now there. And then the puzzle got much more difficult. I drew some kind of line at 44-D, six letters, “More that lessens.” But I did finish the puzzle before drawing the line. (I goofed — explanation in the comments.)

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-D, five letters, “Zee-surrounded getaway.” Sometimes I understand a baffling clue as I type it out, but I just typed out this clue, and I still do not understand it. (Now I do.)

11-D, eight letters, “Small tie.” A new direction in menswear?

14-A, eight letters, “Industry leader.” Ick.

15-D, thirteen letters, “Disorderly.” The answer could have been clued in a more obscure way.

16-A, six letters, “Trip starter.” So many tricky clues in this puzzle.

21-D, three letters, “Informal extension.” My first thought was ISH.

33-A, six letters, “Job with net income.” I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that I got this answer from reading Lorine Niedecker’s poetry.

34-A, fifteen letters, “Little lightweights.” Just wow.

35-D, eight letters, “Recession indicator.” Oof.

45-D, six letters, “Noise maker.” See 16-A.

48-D, five letters, “He’s enthralled by Cartier.” JAYZ doesn’t fit.

My favorite in this puzzle: 26-D, seven letters, “Party regular.” Because I saw the fifth letter but couldn’t believe my first thought could be the answer, and then realized that it had to be the answer.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Critical patriotism

Bruce Springsteen, interviewed by Jeffrey Brown on the PBS News Hour tonight:

I believe in critical patriotism. I believe that’s the definition of a patriot, you know, that you love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place, and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.

[My transcription.]