Recently updated

Words of the year Now with demure and kakistocracy.

An interview with Wyna Liu

From The Atlantic, an interview with Wyna Liu, editor of the New York Times puzzle Connections: “The Most Controversial Game on the Internet.” (Talk about hype). An excerpt, explaining the puzzle’s color categories:

Purple is the wordplay category. The four words in that group are not defined by their literal meanings. It’s words that end with ___ or homophones or something. Blue is trivia that is maybe a bit more specialized, not just definitions. Maybe it’s all movies or certain bands. Sometimes that’s the hardest one. Yellow and green are other category types: They might be four things you bring to the beach, or sometimes they’re all synonyms for the same word. I would say that yellow is the most straightforward.

Another way to define the purple category: it’s the words that are left over after you get the yellow, green, and blue.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, using an alias that signals an easier Stumper of his making. Ehh, not that easy — half an hour for me, with the bottom half of the puzzle considerably more difficult than the top. The puzzle’s distinctive feature: two stacks of thirteen-, thirteen-, and fifteen-letter answers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, six letters, “Talk related to ‘gargle.’” Etymologically? Maybe close, but I don’t think so. As slang? I have no idea.

3-D, five letters, “Name on the cover of I Dissent (2016).” And if only —

6-D, three letters, “Broth with tái lan.” I bet more solvers will be familiar with the broth than with this ingredient that can go with it.

14-A, thirteen letters, “The stripes of its American flag represent the Medicines of Life.” There are so many things I haven’t learned yet.

21-D, six letters, “Surname derived from oven operators.” A surprising factoid.

30-A, seven letters, “Prepares for sale, as related products.” Strange to see the present-tense verb.

31-D, eight letters, “Whom Du Bois called ‘scholar and knight.’” I don’t know how I pulled the name from my memory vault, but I did.

34-A, seven letters, “What John Appleseed promoted early on.” Read the clue carefully.

40-D, four letters, “Nickname with a despotic homonym.” Good Lord. This seems like an awful way to clue the nickname.

42-A, four letters, “Is aimless.” A verb looking odd on its own. 43-A, four letters, “Soil or schmo.” Ha!

46-A, five letters, “Nine-year-old on Swedish kronor.” Huh? What?

47-A, fifteen letters, “‘May I have more?’” My favorite of the long answers.

My favorite in this puzzle: 29-A, seven letters, “Stuffed street food.” Represent.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Separated at birth

Fresca at Noodletoon wrote a bit about George Caleb Bingham’s painting The Jolly Flatboat Men. I thought I’d seen it, but no, it’s in the National Gallery, and the painting I know is in the St. Louis Art Museum, with a different fiddler. The painting in St. Louis is Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen in Port, and I’ve had it in mind for years as a good item for a post, because the fiddler, to my eye, is John Hartford.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

I looked up John Hartford in the same old place and was both surprised and not surprised to find this detail:

He spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was exposed to the influence that shaped much of his career and music: the Mississippi River. From the time he got his first job on the river, at age 16, Hartford was on, around, or singing about the river.

I think it’s unlikely that John Hartford did not know and love this painting.

Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)

[I found and cropped a photograph of John Hartford from his official Facebook page — no photographer credited. The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

A third law

From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

If there was one law for the poor, who have neither money nor influence, and another law for the rich, who have both, there is still a third law for the public official with real power, who has more of both. After the Taylor Estate fight, Robert Moses must have known — he proved it by his actions — that he could, with far more impunity than any private citizen, defy the law. He gloried in the knowledge; he boasted and bragged about it. For the rest of his life, when a friend, an enemy — or one of his own lawyers — would protest that something he was doing or was proposing to do was illegal, Moses would throw back his head and say, with a broad grin, a touch of exaggeration and much more than a touch of bravado: “Nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality.”

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

[The Taylor Estate: property that Moses wanted, and got, for a state park.]

Talking about contingency

Calbert Graham (Stephen McKinley Henderson) in “From Russian Hill with Love,” an episode of the Netflix series A Man on the Inside (2024):

“Every great thing in your life, when you look back on it, feels like a miracle.”

If you watch, you’ll see that he’s talking about contingency.

A related post
Fluke life

[The eight-episode series is worth seeking out.]

Thanksgiving 1924

[“Jails and Hospitals Gay with Feasting: From Ludlow Street To Sing Sing Death House, Thanksgiving Is Celebrated.” The New York Times, November 28, 1924. Click for a larger view.]

Wikipedia provides some background:

The first book of crossword puzzles was published by Simon & Schuster in 1924, after a suggestion from co-founder Richard Simon’s aunt. The publisher was initially skeptical that the book would succeed, and only printed a small run at first. The book ... was an instant hit, leading crossword puzzles to become a craze of 1924.

Crosswords or no crosswords, Keiths or no Keiths, Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Nick Cave’s advice

Nick Cave offers advice to a thirteen-year-old correspondent asking how, in a world of hatred and disconnection, to live life to the fullest and not waste one’s potential. Cave’s reply begins: “Read.”

Wonderful stuff: read the full response.

See also Nick Cave’s explanation of the point in life.

A pocket notebook sighting

[From 13 West Street (dir. Philip Leacock, 1962. Click for a larger view.]

That’s Rod Steiger as Detective Sergeant Pete Koleski. Don’t mistake him for a contemptuous waiter.

Related reading
All OCA notebook sightings (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

Wittgenstein’s Private Notebooks 1914–1916

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Private Notebooks 1914–1916. Edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff (New York: Liveright, 2022). xiv + 217 pages. $24.95.

Three notebooks survive of the six that Ludwig Wittgenstein kept during his time as an infantryman in the Great War. He enlisted, immediately and improbably, on August 7, 1914, leaving England to serve with the Austrian army on the war’s Eastern Front, operating a searchlight on a patrol ship, laboring in an artillery workshop, directing fire from an observation tower, and, later, seeing battle in Russia and Italy. All the while, he was writing in notebooks.

The recto pages of the three surviving notebooks, containing material that became the stuff of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, were published in German with English translation as Notebooks 1914–1916 (1961), with no indication that anything was omitted. The verso pages, written in a simple code (a = z ), were long unavailable in German or in translation, likely because of executors’ unease about Wittgenstein’s occasional references to masturbation, unnamed “sins,” and his love of David Pinsent, the Cambridge student who was the first of Wittgenstein’s three significant attachments. The verso pages — the private pages — appear in this volume in German and, for the first time, in English translation.

The title Private Notebooks promises much in the way of personal revelation. Wittgenstein writes (briefly) of his brother Paul, a pianist, losing his right arm in battle; of David Pinsent’s brother, killed in action; of joy in receiving letters from Pinsent (he kisses one). He writes repeatedly about his fellow soldiers as rowdies, ruffians, boorish “swine” who tease him unmercifully. He writes at greater length about his service as “a test of fire” and about his fear of death, wondering how he’ll behave when he’s fired upon, even as he acknowledges that he’s “intoxicated” by gunfire. He sees the fact of death as redemptive: “Only death gives life meaning”; “Perhaps the proximity of death will bring me the light of life!” But he desperately wants to live. He carries with him Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief, calling it a talisman. He repeats to himself words from Tolstoy: “Man is helpless in the flesh but free in the spirit!” In a letter, he was to say that Tolstoy’s book kept him alive.

All through his military service, Wittgenstein is doing or trying to do what he calls his “work” — the work of philosophy. In quiet times, his duties become the setting for that work:

15.9.14.
I can think best right now when I am peeling potatoes. Always volunteer for it. It is for me what grinding lenses was for Spinoza.

Thus a paring knife, like a pen or pencil, becomes a tool of thinking.

Many of the entries are terse notations:

29.11.14.
Worked pretty hard.—.

3.12.14.
Didn’t work but experienced a great deal, but I’m too tired to write about it right now.—

25.12.14.
Ate dinner in the officers’ mess. Worked a little.

And there are long dry spells, with entry after entry beginning “Did no work,” as Wittgenstein seeks “the redeeming thought” that would pull his efforts together.

Marjorie Perloff, a major critic of modern and postmodern poetry, sees a breakthrough in the merging of recto and verso in the final surviving notebook:

As I was editing the notebooks, it occurred to me that the short Notebook 3 would make much more sense if I included some of the most striking and beautiful passages from the philosophical side (the recto); indeed, as I argue throughout, verso and recto, at first quite disconnected, gradually come together so that, by the end, they often correspond. This does not mean neat pairing of any sort, but a close and uncanny chronological correspondence between the left-hand and right-hand pages.

Perloff begins juxtaposing passages with Notebook 2. Here is one instance, with a recto passage (in italics) added between verso entries:

22.5.15.
Lovely letter from Russell!

23.5.15
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

24.5.15.
Made the acquaintance today of the old logician Dziewicki, whom Russell mentioned in his letter. A nice old man.

Perloff has chosen to interpolate a striking sentence that would find its way into the Tractatus (as 5.6), but I’m hard pressed to see a connection to the verso passages that frame it here.

Another example. The numbers in brackets refer to sections of the Tractatus:

24.7.16.
We’re being shelled. And at every shot my soul contracts. I would like so much to keep on living!

24.7.16.
The world and life are one. [5.621]

The physiological life is naturally not “life.” And neither is the psychological life. Life is the world.

Ethics does not deal with the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.

Ethics and aesthetics are one. [See 6.421]

Here, too, it’s difficult to see anything “close and uncanny” between verso and recto. If anything, the two seem markedly distinct: a passionate plea to stay alive on one page, a series of abstract pronouncements on the other. I can imagine someone speaking these italicized passages and being met with a rejoinder: Hey! We’re being shelled!

But sometimes entries do jibe:

11.8.16.
I am living in sin, hence unhappy. I’m morose, joyless. I’m at strife with my entire company.

11.8.16
I can objectively confront every object. But not the “I.”

So there really is an art and method by which philosophy can and must come to terms with the “I” in a non-psychological sense. [Cf. 5.641]

Now that’s a provocative pairing.

And recto excerpts that prefigure the enigmatic final sections of the Tractatus seem to have baffled Wittgenstein himself:

6.7.16.
Colossal exertions this last month. Have thought a great deal about all sorts of things, but curiously enough cannot establish their connection to my mathematical train of thought.

The humanity on view in the Private Notebooks makes them worth reading, but if you haven’t read Wittgenstein, there are better places to start: The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations. I’d liken the Notebooks to a multiple-CD set with a recording session’s every false start, breakdown, and alternate take: for completists only.

Related reading
All OCA Wittgenstein posts (Pinboard)

[It’s not clear what Wittgenstein’s dashes signify. Perloff cites without further explanation a hypothesis that they represent forms of prayer. Russell: Bertrand Russell. Dziewicki: M.H. Dziewicki, a logician.]

Gibson sues

Good news: “Trump Guitars hit with cease and desist from Gibson over use of Les Paul body shape” (Guitar World ).

I can imagine the excuse-making: “But we didn’t know — we bought them from China.”

*

December 9: “Trump Guitars backtracks after Gibson cease and desist and takes Les Paul-style guitars off the market” (Guitar World ).

A related post
These guitars are those guitars

Rural education shrinking

From The Washington Post, “Rural students’ options shrink as colleges slash majors”:

Many of the majors affected by cuts are in the humanities and languages, making those disciplines less available to rural students than they are to people who live in urban and suburban areas.

Two-tier education, for sure.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with enshittification.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with manifest.

In the can

[Beetle Bailey, November 25, 2014. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Beetle Bailey, art imitates life. From a post about my part-time job in college, at a Two Guys discount department store:

I remember just one Two Guys co-worker who spoke of “break” as her own: not “I’m going on break” but “I’m taking my break.” We found her one Saturday in the garbage can aisle, hiding in a plastic garbage can, where, it seemed, she had been taking her break for several hours.

Vickie: are you out there somewhere? Or in there?

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Here’s a hint: look closely at both views. I think this actor’s identity is gettable if you consider both.

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

*

Lunchtime. Here’s a clue: You may have seen her carrying an animal in a basket. But she’s not Judy Garland.

*

The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Hulu, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Terror on a Train (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1953). In Birmingham, England, a saboteur plants a bomb on a train that carries sea mines. An engineer (Glenn Ford, playing a Canadian abroad) is called in to help. There’s little real suspense here: we can be confident that Ford isn’t going to be killed and that he and his wife (Anne Vernon) will be back together when the movie ends (neither of those statements will prove a spoiler for anyone who’s watched movies). The fun here comes from local color — a pub, a refreshment room, a train-loving eccentric (Herbert C. Walton) — and mid-century tech, with telephones and train machinery galore. ★★★ (TCM)

*

High Wall (dir. Curtis Bernhardt, 1947). Starring Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, and Amnesia. A WWII veteran (Taylor) is accused of his wife’s murder, and he doesn’t remember a thing. In a psychiatric hospital, he bonds with a doctor (Totter), and with the help of sodium pentothal, he begins to piece together a narrative featuring a sinister publishing executive (Marshall). The story is thin, but Paul Vogel’s cinematography makes this movie another good old good one from our household’s favorite year in movies. ★★★ (TCM)

*

A Lady Without Passport (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). Hedy Lamaar is a Buchenwald survivor awaiting permission to emigrate to the United States from Cuba. John Hodiak is an immigration agent. George Macready is the head of a human-smuggling group. Many interesting on-location shots of metropolitan Cuba, a great score by David Raksin, and closing atmospherics straight out of Gun Crazy (also by Lewis), but a drearily glamorous and at times highly confusing story. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Man with a Cloak (dir. Fletcher Markle, 1951). Joseph Cotten is the man, a mysterious New Yorker known as Dupin, enmeshed in the affairs of a dysfunctional household: a wealthy old French expatriate (Louis Calhern), a housekeeper and mistress (Barabra Stanwyck), a butler, a cook — all of whom are waiting for the old man to die — and his grandson’s lover (Leslie Caron), who has traveled from France to plead with the old man to give money to aid the cause of revolution. There’s a mystery to be solved — a missing will — and, lo, Dupin solves it. Sheer hokum, with clues abounding, and I’m not going to spoil the fun. With another great score by David Raksin. ★★★ (TCM)

*

13 West Street (dir. Philip Leacock, 1962). “I felt like an animal”: mild-mannered engineer Walt Sherill (Alan Ladd in his last starring role) is beaten by a gang of teenagers, and when the police (in the form of Rod Steiger) do little about it, Walt takes matters into his own hands. The interesting thing about this Death Wish-like story is that the gang members are from what are called “fine familes,” though maybe not so fine after all. (When Margaret Hayes plays the gang leader’s mother, drinking the day away by her pool, you know there’s trouble). The most compelling character here is the gang leader himself (Michael Callan), a budding psychopath whose unwillingness to step away from a confrontation brings about disastrous consequences. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Common Law (dir. Paul L. Stein, 1931). Constance Bennett again, as Valerie West, a beautiful free spirit in Paris who leaves her much older lover (Lew Cody) to work as a model for the thoroughly respectable painter John Neville (Joel McCrea). Alas, John’s sister has ideas about the kind of woman her brother should marry, and Valerie ain’t it. A surprisingly grim story of gossip, rigid mores, and the need for dissembling: Valerie cannot even let John’s family know that they sailed to the States on the same ship. A strange surprise: Hedda Hopper. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016). I watched for a second time, with friends, after visiting the Great Falls, and I found myself warming to the movie’s depiction of dailiness: small bright spots (cupcakes for sale), adversities small and large (a crooked mailbox, a destroyed notebook), and routines (walking the dog, getting a beer). Poetry is everywhere in the city: a man in a laundromat, a schoolgirl waiting for her mom, a visitor from Japan. And I loved the absolutely non-condescending depiction of a city with pride in its hometown heroes (Lou Costello, Uncle Floyd). But Paterson (Adam Driver), the bus driver and poet at the center of things, is still a cipher. ★★★ (AP)

*

It Ain’t Over (dir Sean Mullin, 2022). A documentary about the life of Yogi Berra, with numerous interviews and great archival footage (I count ninety names in the IMDb credits). I knew something of Yogi Berra as a speaker of Zen-like sentience, but I didn’t know what a great baseball player he was, nor did I know that his appearance made him a subject of mockery on and off the field, nor did I know that in retirement he supported LGBTQ inclusion in sports. There’s a lot I didn’t know about Yogi Berra. The most exciting moments herein: Don Larsen’s perfect game and the Berra-Jackie Robinson dispute over a call at home plate. ★★★★ (N)

[I say he was safe.]

*

Plan 9 from Outer Space (dir. Edward D. Wood Jr., 1957). Everyone should see Plan 9 once. The first time through, its absurdities are guaranteed to amuse: the deadly serious Criswell, the laughable special effects, the incoherent plot, Tor Johnson’s “acting,” Bela Lugosi’s “double,” Vampira’s waist, the alien visitor’s passionate denunciation of humankind: “Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” Repeated viewings tend to make the movie feel longer and longer and longer. Which makes me wonder: is there any great bad movie that rewards repeated viewing? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Mysterious Intruder (dir. William Castle, 1946). “Have we seen this?” “It doesn’t look familiar.” “Wait — this part does.” Yeah, and it’s still a dud, albeit a stylish dud. ★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noirvember Essentials

The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941). I’ve watched it many times, but never with as much appreciation for Mary Astor or with less appreciation for Humphrey Bogart. Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a quick-thinking manipulator, trying out lies, one after another, to get Sam Spade in her corner, and the viewer realizes, at some point, that Astor is playing — brilliantly — a character who’s acting. As Sam Spade, Bogart is just acting, woodenly, I’m afraid. A detail I’ve never noticed before: Spade’s bed, visible when he gets the news of Miles Archer’s death at the story’s start, appears to disappear once Miss O’Shaughnessy enters his apartment: the Code at work? ★★★★

*

Road Diary (dir. Thom Zinny, 2024). Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (and E Street Choir), preparing for and going on a world tour after a long hiatus. I’ve never taken to Springsteen’s music, but I found this documentary exciting and solemnly moving by turns. Mortality hangs over everything for a band that’s been together for fifty years: in the deaths of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, in Patti Scialfa’s cancer, in Springsteen’s awareness that he is the “Last Man Standing,” as a song says (the last living member of his early band the Castiles), in Springsteen’s comment that he’ll keep playing “until the wheels come off,” and in the set list created for the tour. The musical highlights, for me: “Letter to You,” “Mary’s Place,” “Nightshift,” “Last Man Standing,” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” ★★★★ (H)

[As I wrote to a friend who is a (huge) Springsteen fan, “It’ll rip your heart out. Mine’s on the floor.”]

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Clarkson Diner

[152 Leroy Street or 586 Washington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The employees of T SIDE and WEST SID, otherwise known as the West Side Iron Works, would have had an easy time of it when the lunch half-hour came around: they were just a short walk away from the Clarkson Diner.

The 1940s.nyc website shows this diner facing Washington Street, with Leroy Street to the north, Clarkson Street to the south, and West Street to — that‘s right — the west. The site has three photos, with this outtake showing the diner to best advantage. If you click for the larger view, you can see a Bell Telephone sign, a Schaefer Beer sign, the name Clarkson, and several blurry pedestrians.

In the Municipal Archives the diner’s address is 152 Leroy Street. The 1940 telephone directory has the address as 586 Washington Street. But the diner itself (listen closely) whispers, “Call me Clarkson!”

[Click for a larger view.]

Today there’s a FedEx warehouse.

Related reading
All OCA More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I began Matthew Sewell’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper with 1-D, five letters, “Back with bucks,” which crossed with 19-A, three letters, “Feng shui favorite with fins.” A fierce struggle ensued. When I finally read 35-A, thirteen letters, correctly — “What many football fans flourish,” not where, much of the puzzle fell together quickly. Note to self: read clues carefully.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, five letters, “Hustled.” Tricky.

10-D, six letters, “Particle accelerator?” Good grief.

13-D, seven letters, “Misters do it.” A weirdly good clue.

14-A, eleven letters, “Couldn't be better!” Sounds like self-deception to me.

24-D, eight letters, “Mexican rice milk.” It’s delicious, but I didn’t know it was rice milk.

27-A, letters, “Name on the cover of the history Broadcast Hysteria.” I think it’s easy to guess. Is it?

28-D, four letters, “Its seeds make caffeine-free coffee.” I had no idea. This puzzle is increasing my beverage knowledge.

32-A, four letters, “Paradoxical posing.” Oh!

33-D, four letters, “‘Justice Is Served’ utensil set seller.” Would that it had been served and we weren’t facing a four-or-more-year hellscape.

45-A, seven letters, “Court figures, formerly.” What sort of court? What sort of figures?

46-D, five letters, “Swung around.” Just a strange word, and not nearly as old as I would have guessed.

47-A, six letters, “Tweeted self-publishing.” Is it still happening?

54-A, four letters, “Place cited in Broadcast Hysteria.” Another easy guess, I think.

57-A, eleven letters, “Classy?” Groan.

58-D, three letters, “Half a kid’s meal.” Cute, and I just saw it spoken — caution, spoiler — by a cat.

My favorite in this puzzle: 50-D, five letters, “Email ancestor.” For sentimental reasons.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A nice Englishman

[Nancy, November 21, 1955.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, Sluggo spies a pedestrian: “Here comes that nice Englishman we met yesterday.” And Nancy, from her chair, reading: “Say hello to him
--- make him feel at home.”

Did this Englishman wander in from Moon Mullins ? I see a strong resemblance to that strip’s Lord Plushbottom.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

Lyonel Feininger, at last

From a 2018 post:

Lyonel Feininger, German-American artist, haunts me. I see a painting of his in a museum, write down his name, plan to look him up, don’t look him up, then see another painting, upon which the process repeats.

Okay, finally: here are some samples of this painter’s work, from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Leicester Museums, the National Gallery, and the Whitney Museum.

Feininger was also a photographer (Harvard Art Museums), and he had a career in comics (MoMA). And lo: this photograph of a photographer holding a camera to his face is by Feininger’s son Andreas Feininger.

Sentimental sap that I am, I especially like this Feininger work in painted wood.

Flooding

From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

By building his highways, Moses flooded the city with cars. By systematically starving the subways and the suburban commuter railroads, he swelled that flood to city-destroying dimensions. By making sure that the vast suburbs, rural and empty when he came to power, were filled on a sprawling, low-density development pattern relying primarily on roads instead of mass transportation, he insured that that flood would continue for generations if not centuries, that the New York metropolitan area would be — perhaps forever — an area in which transportation — getting from one place to another — would be an irritating, life-consuming concern for its 14,000,000 residents.

Everyone calls the book The Power Broker, of course, but I think the subtitle deserves emphasis.

And the population today: 23,500,000.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

S-O

I was today years old when I reailzed — not learned, just realized — that the name Esso comes from Standard Oil.

These guitars are those guitars

He’s selling guitars. Quelle tromperie!

Lacking the patience to spell out the details, I’ll leave these guitars to your careful eye. I’d wager that this American Eagle electric guitar and its Presidential cousins are versions of this Chinese Les Paul knockoff. The American Eagle and Presidential guitars are going for $1500 each. The Chinese guitar: $144 each if you buy two from Alibaba. And the price goes down from there, down to $115 each if you buy a hundred or more.

I haven’t spotted ringers for the American Eagle and God Bless the USA acoustic guitars, but my guess is that these too are sourced from China.

The website offers fun disclaimers:

In-Stock Guitars:
We respectfully ask that you allow up to a few weeks for shipping due to a high volume of orders and the extra time it takes to ensure each guitar is carefully packed for successful delivery.

Pre-Order Guitars:
Please allow 5-6 months for manufacturing and delivery.

Somehow I get the idea that they’re aiming for that bulk-purchase price.

And as with those watches, what you see might not be what you get:

The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.

So these guitars might turn out to be some other guitars after all. But as the song says, you can’t always get what you want from a website bearing his name.

[The URL for the Alibaba guitar is valid, but the company wants you to see it in their app. If you’re on a mobile device, just stay in your browser and you’ll be able to see it.]

“Built on a lie”

Robert Caro knows how to use the occasional short paragraph to advantage. From The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

The official records of most public agencies are public records, but not those of public authorities, since courts have held that they may be regarded as the records of private corporations, closed to scrutiny by the interested citizen or reporter.

This was very important to Robert Moses. It was very important to him that no one be able to find out how it was that he was able to build.

Because what Robert Moses built on was a lie.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

Leonardo, no

I’ve never been much of a Ken Burns fan, and whatever affection I might have had for his work evaporated with Jazz. But I wanted to like his Leonardo da Vinci.

And I didn’t. It’s far too busy: split screens, with art on one side, nature on the other; unidentified artworks, by any number of artists, split-screen or full-, appearing and disappearing rapidly; art historians speaking as music plays behind them, or over them. The presentation defies any contemplation of art and makes it impossible, at least for me, to grasp the chronology of the life. The truly false note: yellow subtitles translate the abundant commentary of French and Italian art historians, but Leonardo’s own words are spoken, without attribution, in a deeply accented English by the Italian actor Adriano Giannini. It’s like listening to a commercial for an upscale fragrance.

And if the e-mails from my PBS affiliate are to be trusted, the fragrance would be called da Vinci. Not Leonardo.

It would be a good thing if this documentary were to bring about in its viewers a greater respect for the work of human intelligence: the eye, the hand, the mind.

[I’ve been grateful for many years now to the unknown hand at the British Journal of Aesthetics who changed my da Vinci to Leonardo, thus in a small way making me look smarter than I had any right to look. Post title with apologies to “Caroline, No.”]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll be on and off one device or another this morning and will drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

*

No hint necessary: the answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Domestic comedy

“Proprioception — it's the sense of the body in space. I know about it from Charles Olson.”

“I know about it from Simone Biles.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard) : Charles Olson’s Proprioception : Simone Biles’s proprioception

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

A 2025 calendar, free

Free: a 2025 calendar, in large legible Gill Sans, licorice and cayenne (as Apple would have it), three months per page. The calendar includes all the days, weeks, and months of the year, with days painstakingly distributed across weeks and weeks painstakingly distributed across months. It’s artisanal!

Minimal holiday markings: New Year’s Day, MLK Day, Juneteenth, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

I’ve been making calendars with the Mac app Pages and tables since late 2009, when the cost of outfitting the house with Field Notes calendars felt unjustifiable.

You can download here (via Google Drive): a 2025 calendar.

[Link now fixed.]

More about Calkins

Two responses to Helen Lewis’s Atlantic article, “How Lucy Calkins Became the Face of America’s Reading Crisis”:

From Mark Seindenberg, cognitive scientist, neuroscientist, and psycholinguist, “Calkins Redux.” An excerpt:

Calkins is not the “scapegoat” for America’s failure to adequately teach reading. As the author of a popular but deeply flawed curriculum and a “thought leader” who cultivated a large, uncritical following, she contributed to those failures. She wasn’t alone, but she was enormously influential and an obstacle to change.

(With a link to an earlier piece: “This Is Why We Don't Have Better Readers: Response to Lucy Calkins.”)

And from Natalie Wexler, education writer, “Is Lucy Calkins a ‘Scapegoat’ for America's Reading Crisis?” An excerpt:

It’s hard — maybe impossible — to acknowledge that your life’s work, which you’ve seen as an idealistic endeavor on behalf of children, has actually prevented untold numbers of kids from realizing their true potential.

A related post
The (Lucy Calkins) empire strikes back

T SIDE and WEST SID

[591-593, 610-12 Something, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

I chose these photographs for the signage and for the fellow who appears to be iceskating his way into the frame. The 1940s.nyc website shows both locations on West Street, with nothing nearby that would make them identifiable. The Municipal Archives have nothing for these street numbers. The 1940 Manhattan telephone directory has nothing. Several sources in Google Books from the later 1940s give 801 Greenwich Street as an address for West Side Iron Works — perhaps that was a later address. Without placards showing block and lot numbers for these locations, I give up. As did, it would seem, the keepers of the signage.

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

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

No TV news, then and now

I just rediscovered a post that I wrote on December 13, 2016: No TV news. At that point our household had gone thirty-five days with no TV news, save for one PBS NewsHour episode that paid tribute to Gewn Ifill. Now it’s been ten days with no TV news, save for one episode of the NBC Nightly News, when the whale-cutter’s nomination drew me back. Did I learn anything more from that “half-hour” than I already knew from reading words? No.

[Minus the commercials, I think it’s about twenty-two minutes. I’m watching The Late Show for comic relief, but I don’t consider that show to be “news.”]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, constructing as Lester Ruff. A very satisfying Stumper, and even if less rough, it still took me half an hour. Starting point: 9-D, three letters, “Coleridge’s ‘Poor little foal of an oppressed race.’” For me, a giveaway. The toughest part of the puzzle: the upper left corner.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Bowling center facility.” I’m amused by center — where I come from it was alley. And I’m amused by the answer, which I hadn’t thought of or heard, in any context, in a long time. It takes me back to my life as a part-time housewares-department employee during college.

2-D, five letters, “Middle of anything.” Weird but dictionarily accurate. And speaking of weird, I’ve decided to regard dictionarily as a word, even if the OED doesn’t.

4-D, four letters, “Schedule fillers.” ETAS? TBAS?

13-D, nine letters, “Brady-era image.” For me, a novel answer.

24-A, seven letters, “Goddess on the Medal of Honor.” Huh.

31-A, seven letters, “’What makes human progress possible,’ per FDR.” I like that, though reading The Power Broker makes me more disappointed in FDR than I would have expected.

33-D, nine letters, “In which krucvorto is ‘crossword.’” That word looks so unlikely — I thought it had to be what it turned out to be.

44-A, eight letters, “Pair of bumblers.” Silly.

47-A, seven letters, “They buy nasal dilators.” And sometimes even use them.

54-D, four letters, “What Meet the Beatles could be bought in.” Yes!

55-A, six letters, “Male name with two male name anagrams.” Just strange.

58-A, eight letters, “Poker variety named for its sinuous card shifting.” No idea yet what this means.

60-D, three letters, “Beverage or bus alternative.” I’m getting used to this kind of thing.

My favorite in this puzzle: 7-D, seven letters, “DMV, somewhat controversially.” It’s been years since I last entered a bowling center, but this clue is right up my alley.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Burton Fine (1930–2024)

Elaine’s father Burton Fine died last night in Newton, Massachusetts. She wrote about him this morning.

“Turning Off the News”

From The Borowitz Report, “Turning Off the News”:

I’m not a neuroscientist like George Santos, but in my experience, turning off the news is good for your mental health. And you’ll have more time for things you actually enjoy. Read a novel. See a friend. Walk your dog. Which is what I’m going to do right now.

I don’t have a dog. But I’m still going to go for a walk. Now.

Andy Borowitz recommends news via BBC Sounds.

A pocket notebook sighting

[From Kansas City Confidential (dir. Phil Karlson, 1952). Click any image for a larger view, and notice the ghost letters.]

Look: he’s Mr. Big (Preston Foster), criminal mastermind, schemer of a surefire thing, and he can use that address book however he wants, see? He can write last names beginning with H, R, and K all on the tabbed A page, and he can write them out of alphabetical order if he wants. Who cares about tabs and alphabets? He can even erase the first of those names if he don’t like the way it came out, and then he can write it again — in block capitals. He’s Mr. Big, and what you call an address book — that’s just a notebook in his hands.

*

As a reader points out, there’s also an EXchange name. I should have called attention to it. Thanks, Joe.

Related reading
All OCA notebook sightings : EXchange name sightings (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

"Think good thoughts"

[Mutts, November 15, 2024.]

Thank you, Earl.

Today’s Mutts goes well with these words from Ana Marie Cox:

The work of the anti-Trump coalition now is to expand our ability to take in data — especially data that’s uncomfortable — and to broaden our emotional range beyond pain, sorrow, regret, and fear. If we don’t seek out pleasure, comfort, companionship, and laughter, numbness becomes our only protection. And fascism thrives when we are dead inside.

And like Earl, Cox suggests that we think.

Spinning

From the news: “another head-turning personnel pick.”

No. Make that “another head-spinning personnel pick.”

That would be RFK Jr. He got me back to televised news, which I hadn’t watched since election night.

A related post
Curb your introductions

The (Lucy Calkins) empire strikes back

From The Atlantic : “How Lucy Calkins Became the Face of America’s Reading Crisis,” in which Helen Lewis wonders how Calkins can reclaim her good name. A recent e-mail from the magazine refers to Calkins as “the scapegoat” for the reading crisis.

I see so much self-mystification and evasion of fact in Calkins’s response to her fall from favor. Just one example: Emily Hanford, who produced the podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong, noted a passage in Calkins’s The Art of Teaching Writing (1994) that assumes a world of privilege:

They [student writers] will ask about the monogram letters on their bath towels and the words on their sweatshirts.

Now Lewis reports that Calkins had a “financially comfortable but psychologically tough” childhood:

That is why, Calkins told me, “nothing that Emily Hanford has said grates on me more than the damn monogrammed towels.” But she knows that the charge of being privileged and out of touch has stuck.

Privileged? Well, yes. Affluence and parental cruelty can of course go together. (Lewis notes that Calkins’s parents were both doctors.) And who was it who mentioned monogrammed towels to begin with? Not Emily Hanford.

If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the crisis in reading, this post would be the one to read: To: Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell, with the text of an e-mail that I wrote to Calkins and two other prominient promulgators of “balanced literacy” and guessing at words — I mean “hypothesizing.”

Helen Lewis’s article makes really strange reading coming after a recent Atlantic article by Rose Horowitch, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.”

Related posts
All OCA Lucy Calkins posts and Sold a Story posts

On the 166

We walked down the hill to wait for the 166 bus to the Port Authority, but the bus stop had been removed, so we had to walk several blocks down the avenue to another stop. The bus showed up and we asked for two round-trip tickets to New York.

That’s standard procedure, or used to be: you would get a long printed receipt, give the first half to the driver at the end of the ride, and give the other half to the driver when you boarded a bus back to New Jersey. But this driver looked at us as if we were making an unusual request.

The bus had very few seats — it looked as if many had been removed. Some of the remaining seats were single seats facing the center aisle; others were facing front in twos, with so little space to sit that trying to get into a seat would be like trying to squeeze into a chair that’s pushed in under a table.

I thought this dream was about the passing of time: you can’t go home again, as everything has changed. Elaine thinks I’m already dreaming about deportations.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).

Domestic comedy

“Matt Gaetz is going to be the attorney general!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard) posts

[He may not become attorney general. Still, reality is trumping satire daily.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll be on and off one device or another this morning and will drop a hint when I can if one is needed.

*

Here’s a hint: Many moviegoers would have first seen him in a refreshment room.

Another hint: Many moviegoers would recognize him as a military policeman fond of pulp fiction.

I’ll give the name at 4:00 Central if no one’s gotten it.


*

Oh well. The answer’s in the comments. And in the refreshment room, the sugar is in the spoon.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

“Give me the peaceful train”

From The Palm Beach Story (1942), written and directed by Preston Sturges. J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee) and Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) are aboard J.D.’s yacht. A steward has a question: “Will you dine on deck, Mr. Hackensacker, or in the saloon?”

J.D. to Gerry:

“We can have it on deck if you like, but it blows everything all over the place. There are a lot of inconveniences to yachting that people don’t know anything about. Give me the peaceful train.”

[Saloon : “the living area on a yacht” (Merriam-Webster).]

Old heads

Roy Haynes, drummer (1925-2024).

Lou Donaldson, alto saxophonist (1926–2024).

Marshall Allen, alto saxophonist and leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, turned 100 earlier this year.

Warren and Apple Intelligence

Adam Engst excoriates Apple for its new Apple Intelligence ads, and rightly so. One is about business writing:

In the first ad, Apple Intelligence enables a goof-off who wastes time and annoys his colleagues to surprise his boss with an unexpectedly well-written email. It’s not clear that the boss is impressed; he just can’t believe the guy would have written a professional message.

Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy? Where’s the positive ad with a dyslexic child using Writing Tools to proofread a school essay or a businessperson using it to understand a complex report dumped on them minutes before a meeting?

What Adam doesn’t comment on is the writing itself. Here’s the before message:

Hey J,

Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you're the big enchilada.

Holler back,
Warren

I’ve omitted the flexed arms that frame Warren’s name — I cannot get that solid grey emoji on my Mac.

Warren has five Apple Intelligence options to choose from: Professional, Rewrite, Friendly, Proofread, and Concise (odd sequence there, Apple). He chooses Professional. Here’s the after message:

Hey J,

Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best regards,
Warren

“Write smarter,” sez the ad. But is this revised e-mail an example of smart writing? I don’t think so. The language here is stilted and ponderous in the extreme: upon further consideration, may require, the introductory however, individual, undertake. And it’s all addressed to a boss, suggesting that the boss do the work. The smarter response to a boss might be to say “On it” — or to explain that you’re swamped and wonder whether someone else (who’s not the boss) might take on the task.

But wait, there’s more: Warren’s e-mail bears the (dumb) subject line “Project Stuff” (unchanged in the revision). There’s no “Re:” — it doesn’t appear that Warren is replying to an e-mail asking that he take on a new task, though he could be replying to a spoken request. But look again at the original e-mail: Warren was suggesting the need for further work on a project while acknowledging that the decision rests with the big enchilada. Warren was having second thoughts. Apple Intelligence appears not to have understood his words.

What might real human intelligence look like here? Maybe something like this:

Hi J,

I think that this project still needs improvement, and I’d be happy to talk about it with you. But I know that’s your decision to make. Let me know what you think,

Warren

The scary question: is the “Upon further consideration” e-mail an example of what Apple thinks good writing looks like, or is it an example of what someone at Apple thinks its customers think good writing looks like? I’m not sure which answer is scarier.

You can see the ad (and another one) at Adam Engst’s TidBITS post.

A related post
ChatGPT e-mails a professor

Background Sounds bug zapped?

The release notes for macOS Sequoia 15.1 make no mention of it, but according to a Reddit user, the update fixes the Background Sounds bug. It sure sounds like it.

Related posts
Noisy macOS, noisy iOS : ColorNoise

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, November 11, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

“Ug! My back hurts this morning”: I don’t get it. Just yesterday, Hi was capable of complete exclamations: “Unhh!” “Arrgh!” And a complete grawlix. If you’re going to talk like a caveman this morning, Hi, you'll need to do better than this. Maybe: “Ug. Bak.”

Seeing ug for ugh reminds me of seeing pros for prose in student writing. What a difference one letter makes. Ugh.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Tips for reading The Power Broker

Elaine and I began reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (1974) a couple of weeks ago. It’s a daunting book. I don’t mind long — not at all — but The Power Broker isn’t Joyce or Proust. I was ambivalent about devoting so much time and energy to the life of Robert Moses. But Elaine already had a copy and had made a start. I bought a copy on impulse in New Jersey. Elaine was happy to go back to page one, and here we are, with the Four Seasons Reading Club (our household’s two-person reading project) not having to think about what to read next for quite some time.

Two hundred-odd pages in, I can offer some suggestions to a prospective reader:

~ Decide on a set number of pages per day. We decided on fifteen and have added a bit here and there. Having a page count lets us know that we should be finishing the book in mid-to-late January.

~ Place a sturdy throw pillow on your lap to support the book. Yes, book. It seems wrong to fly in the face of fifty years’ worth of hardcovers and paperbacks by reading The Power Broker as an e-book.¹

~ Do not be tempted to lift the book from its pillow and support it with one hand, with one finger pressing into the book’s upper rear corner. Rapt in reading, you won’t realize that you’re going to end up with a weird little bruise on that finger, looking as if someone has pushed a pencil point into it. The dent will last for some time. I speak from experience.

~ Recognize that everything will develop slowly. It’s like listening to a storyteller who stops to say “But first I have to tell you about —.” You’re along for the ride, so to speak, and there are many stops to make along the way.

~ Marvel at the depth of research that’s gone into the book. As Caro says, it’s the research that makes his books take so long. He’s done his homework — as well as the homework for every kid in the school district. On every page you’ll find details, mentioned in passing, that are occasions for wonder. No spoilers here.

As you may suspect, I think The Power Broker is a great reading experience, all about the acquisition and use of power to reshape — and deform, really — the life of a city. What a time to be reading a book about reshaping and deforming things. The Power Broker is so intensely readable that I could kick myself for ever doubting.

Robert Caro, in Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (dir. Lizzie Gottlieb, 2022):

“I’ve always felt that if a nonfiction book is going to endure, the level of the prose in it, the narrative, the rhythm, et cetera, the setting of scenes, has to be at the same level as a great work of fiction that endures.”

We have 917 pages to go.

Related posts
Caro on facts and truth : “Is there desperation on this page?” : Longhand and a Smith-Corona _____

¹ But if circumstances make an e-book the right choice, choose the e-book.

Veterans Day

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations, Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. In the United States, Armistice Day is now Veterans Day.

In 1924 Armistice Day fell on a Tuesday.

[“Broadcasters to Celebrate Armistice Day: Special Programs Arranged for Tuesday — Bugler to Sound Taps at WEAF.” The New York Times, November 9, 1924.]