FOR SALE

[169 Lombardy Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

This is the fourth WPA tax photograph I’ve posted from East Williamsburg. Next Sunday I’m going to get back to tax photographs with genuine sidewalks. Click for the much larger view and you might be surprised to see what was for sale in industrial Brooklyn. Today the address is occupied by Rich’s Skylights & Roof Hatches.

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

[“Well rotted,” the ads said.]

On James Baldwin’s birthday

Heber Taylor reminds his readers that today is James Baldwin’s birthday. It must be no coincidence that the Criterion Channel’s August offerings include James Baldwin On-Screen, five films about him. Missing: the 1965 Cambridge University debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley, readily available at YouTube.

Last night we watched I Heard It Through the Grapevine (dir. Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, 1982), a documentary in which Baldwin revisits the American south (with a sidetrip to Newark, New Jersey) and talks with veterans of the fight for human rights. The sad conclusion: everything had changed, and nothing had changed. Baldwin: “Twenty years later, and the same old piano playing the blues.”

The emperor’s new pool

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson writes about the travesty of the botched effort to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the current occupant’s insistence, nonetheless, that vandals were to blame for the damage.

The utter absurdity of this story would make it a fitting representation of the lunacy of this regime, save that the human costs are fairly negligible. Cutting off foreign aid, promulgating medical quackery, killing protestors and boat crews, demonizing those who are not white and those who are transgender, seizing and imprisoning and deporting people without due process, beginning an ill-considered war of choice: there the human costs are much higher.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, composing as Anna Stiga (Stan Again). It’s a tough one. There is sports trivia: 43-A, six letters, “First State school mascot, appropriately.” There is sports trivia that I do not understand: 25-D, seven letters, “Three NFL nicknames.” There are non-sports answers I do not understand: 15-A, nine letters, “Verbal matter of fact.” There is obscurity: 2-D, eight letters, “About 27,000 gallons on the farm.” There is at least one answer that doesn’t ring true (or ring at all): 40-D, eight letters, “Fashion rebel.” But there are still moments of 44-D, six letters, “Flash.”

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

21-A, three letters, “Quick lunch.” Short and snappy.

27-D, seven letters, “Having bills.” In debt? Or flush with cash?

37-A, fifteen letters, “Discussion agreement.” Given the effort it took me to solve this puzzle, I’m happy to accept this plain-ish spanner.

50-A, four letters, “Gobi Desert’s day.” Nice.

59-A, five letters, “Toon swimmer saying ‘If I become human....’” It helps to have grandchildren.

65-A, letters, “Didn’t write off too quickly.” I like the weirdness of the word that is the answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 52-D, five letters, “Irish first name.” Because even after I got it, it took me a while to get it.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Dusty Baker digs Hooker ’n Heat

From an interview: Dusty Baker digs Hooker ’n Heat .

That 1970 collaboration between John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat, is, still, one of my favorite recordings. I think it’s the best album Hooker ever made, and with the possible exception of Future Blues, the best album Canned Heat ever made. I wrote a long post about Hooker ’n Heat in 2011 to mark the double-album’s fortieth anniversary.

Dusty Baker also talks about his memories of Monterey Pop, where he would have heard Canned Heat. And there’s also stuff about baseball.

Related reading
All OCA Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker posts (Pinboard)

Emily Wilson slams adaptation

In the news:

In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” adaptation. “The first line of my translation is ‘Tell me about a kooky Minion,’ but the Minions in director Pierre Coffin’s film — who has said in at least one interview he was directly inspired by my work — aren’t kooky at all,” said the University of Pennsylvania classic scholar, who published a popular and highly praised translation of the 2,700-year-old Minions And Monsters poem in 2017.

[Context: Wilson’s review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 31, 2026.]

I would have added “Click for a larger view,” but the Flagstons appear to be living in a field that’s large enough already. Poor Chip.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Notebook carousel

At Oscar’s Portrait, Geo-B (or someone suspiciously like him) buys yet another notebook. I can identify.

Which do you prefer? A? B? Neither?

In The New York Times, Karan Manjahar presents two different openings for his new novel, one from the galley, one from the novel as published, and asks readers (gift link) which they prefer. The novel begins with a telephone call from a lawyer announcing that the narrator’s father is being released from prison.

What I see in both passages: too much overwriting. A sample from the galley:

I could distinguish individual squirrels shrieking on the balconies of the gulmohar tree outside my dusty window. I could hear brisk ropes of water being let down onto the bottoms of plastic buckets, the swell and the music and the chaos of the family complex in which I lived with 20 other relatives — relatives I rarely saw but whose dramas gave shape to my dreams.

The family, in its tentacular way, must have had its own connections to Tihar Jail because the news got around quickly, and my Nokia began to jump and glow with texts.

And from the novel as published:

I ended the call with the lawyer and sat back in my scaly-walled flat, blinking against the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves outside the window.

In the tall days of summer, family members began to ring my bell.

The Times asks its readers to choose between the two. In these tall days of summer, I’d choose neither. “Individual squirrels shrieking,” “brisk ropes of water,” a family’s “tentacular way,” a phone that jumps and glows, a “scaly-walled flat,” “the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves”? No, no thanks. Another way to begin: “The lawyer said my father was getting out of prison.”

The invitation to compare began with a question from an audience member at a reading. And then: “As my book tour progressed, the dueling readings of the openings became a shtick I repurposed for other events.” And now further repurposed in The New York Times — and, lo, gaining publicity! Shtick we must.

*

My son Ben, inspired by a recent adaptation of an old poem, has a suggestion: “Dad’s coming home.” Ha!

[The paragraph breaks in the samples I’ve chosen are in the original texts. Telemachus, in Christopher Nolan’s film: “My dad is coming home.”]

Zippy and company

[“Ernie Sees All.” Zippy, July 30, 2026. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy, our hero is visited by the heads of Nancy, Sluggo, Phil Fumble, and Fritzi Ritz. It’s Aunt Fritzi who finally spurs Zippy to action. There are also “some rocks.”

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)