New Year’s Eve 1925

[“New Year Greeted by Joyous Growds Despite Buckner: Prosperous New York Insists on Having a Good Time as 1926 Comes In.” The New York Times, January 1, 1926.]

Happy New Year to all.

[Buckner: United States Attorney Emory R. Buckner, who issued injunctions to midtown supper clubs and restaurants prohibiting the sale or gift of alcohol to patrons.]

Stranger thing

[Click for a larger view.]

Some neighbors have some chickens. The chickens need warmth. But I kinda sorta see one of those “wounds or ruptures in the fabric of space-time” that make life in Hawkins, Indiana, so exciting.

The final episode of Stranger Things arrives tonight (Netflix).

HCR on 2025

In the most recent installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson looks at the American year. An excerpt:

As we reach the end of 2025, it appears the law is catching up to an administration that began the year by acting as if the law and the Constitution didn’t exist.

More than that, though, over the course of 2025, the administration’s refusal to recognize the tenets of American democracy has roused the American people to defend that democracy.

It appears that as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when British colonists on the North American continent took the radical step of rejecting the idea not just of King George III but of all kings, and launched the experiment of government based on the rule of law created by the people themselves, the American people are reclaiming that history.

From The Cookers

From The Cookers’ statement on why they’re not playing a New Year’s Eve engagement at the Kennedy Center:

Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us. We are not turning away from our audience, and do want to make sure that when we do return to the bandstand, the room is able to celebrate the full presence of the music and everyone in it.

Our hope is that this moment will leave space for reflection, not resentment.

To everyone who is disappointed or upset, we understand and share your sadness. We remain committed to playing music that reaches across divisions rather than deepening them.

Farewell to Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy

[Nancy  December 31, 2025.]

Nancy wonders: “What’s kept me going all these years? The smiling faces I’ve had supporting me along the way.” Yes, folks, she’s stuck in the mirror stage. (Thanks, Jacques!)

After an almost-eight-year run, Olivia Jaimes is saying goodbye to Nancy. Today’s strip is her last. Caroline Cash takes over tomorrow.

This Sunday strip might be my favorite Jaimes Nancy. Pushing the metaphorical envelope.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Sluggo, zippy

[Nancy, ?, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

Synchronicity at work: in today’s Zippy , God is reading Nancy . In today’s Nancy , Sluggo is trying to look zippy. (Lowercase zippy : no topknot.)

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

Play money, real robbery

“Police are asking the public to help identify a robbery suspect accused of forcibly taking ‘play money’ from a 10-year-old in Borough Park”: a news item from the world of my childhood, the Brooklyn neighborhood known to locals as Boro Park.

Why time limits for apps don’t work

[At least not if you’re me.]

I am happily addicted to the iOS game Flow Free, with an 863-day streak. I’m so addicted that I added a fifteen-minute daily limit on my phone (Settings > Screen Time > App Limits) . But it didn’t work.

Flow Free offers daily puzzles (that take a couple of minutes), a weekly set of thirty puzzles (that take more minutes), and Free Play, a category that offers virtually unlimited play, with thousands of puzzles of ever-greater complexity. Here’s the problem: with a fifteen-minute daily limit for Flow Free, I used those minutes, mostly in Free Play, and when the choice popped up to stop, take another minute, or take another fifteen minutes, I took the fifteen. Why not? I mean, the phone was offering. I didn’t even have to put another quarter in.

But with the fifteen-minute limit turned off, I feel no impetus to try Free Play. I don’t think about it, and it doesn’t occur to me that I have minutes waiting to be used (and then more minutes after those minutes have gone by). So I’m happy doing daily puzzles and weekly puzzles. As one of my granddaughters would say, that’s about it.

When is a time limit for an app not a time limit? For me, it’s when it’s turned on. I would be interested to know if anyone reading has had the same lack of success with time limits for apps.

Ending up with a .txt file

“One day my phone died and I couldn’t check my tasks. I grabbed a sticky note and scribbled”: Alireza Bashiri explains why, after trying at least eight productivity apps, he ended up with a .txt file. Useful reading perhaps when thinking about organizing a new year.

[Me, it’s a planner, one page per day, with a homemade wall calendar and a sparing use of Apple’s Calendar and Reminders apps.]

Apple EarPods discoveries

I bought a new pair, looked at the tiny manual, and discovered two options for the remote and mic that I never knew about:

A short press followed by a long press of the center button: fast-forward.

Two short presses followed by a long press: rewind.

Useful when listening to podcasts and moving to the end of a commercial. Are these options common knowledge?

[Everyone should already know that two short presses skip forward in an increment of your choosing. Three short presses skip backward.]

Hand cream

Purple right and left: I think it may be time for the current occupant to come out with his own brand of hand cream. “We call it The Bruiser — and it’s for people who shake a lotta hands, and I mean A LOT!”

God and comics

God reads Zippy : “What do you think inspired me to come up with Donald Trump?” Also Nancy.

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

Mental acuity

My transcription from Aaron Rupar’s clip:

“On the renovation of — as an example, I’m doing a magnificent big beautiful ballroom that the country has wanted, that the White House has wanted, for a hundred and fifty years. It’s a massive job and it’s a tiny fraction of that number. And we’re under budget and ahead of schedule. Now it’s, it’s bigger than I told you. I, it’s, you know — after realizing we’re gonna do the inauguration in that building. It’s got all bulletproof glass, it’s got all drone, they call it drone-free roof. It’s so drones won’t touch it. It’s a big, eh, it’s a big, beautiful, safe building. But it’s, you know, it’s a big project, for a tiny fraction of that. We’re under budget and ahead of schedule. And they wanted it for a hundred and fifty years. Think of it. The Federal Reserve Building, two buildings here, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Related reading
All OCA mental acuity posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

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

Oy to the World (dir. Paula Elle, 2025). When a water pipe in a synagogue bursts, old school rivals — a rabbi’s son, now in a rock band, and an Episcopal priest’s daughter, now her church’s choral director — join to lead an ecumenical children’s choir, and love blooms. One problem with this movie: there’s no chemistry between the leads. Another: the movie presents Episcopalians as the unmarked case (no talk of, say, their post-service coffee hour, known as “the eighth sacrament”) while playing to ridiculous lengths on tropes of Jewish food and culture. Think of the Frasier episode “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz,” in which the Cranes pretend to be Jewish, and Frasier laments, “By the time my brisket’s done my kugel will be dry as the Sinai.” ★ (H)

*

Just Another Girl on the IRT (dir. Leslie Harris, 1992). Chantel Mitchell (Ariyan A. Johnson) is young, gifted, and Black: she wants to finish high school in three years, head off to college, become a doctor, and not end up living, like her parents, in a Brooklyn housing project. Chantel addresses the camera with the same smarts and impatience with which she addresses her obstinate history teacher and school principal: you root for her at every turn. And then unforeseen circumstances upend her life. An indie movie that’s something like an Afterschool Special for young adults and grown-ups, and one of the best movies about adolescence I’ve seen. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Return to Glennascaul (dir. Hilton Edwards, 1951). Orson Welles made movies everyone knows, or should know, and he participated in all manner of projects that remain obscure, or obscure, at least, to me. The premise of this short: while filming Othello (which was not made in Ireland), Welles goes for a nighttime drive in the Irish countryside and gives a ride to a man whose car has broken down. One of the world’s many variations on the trope of the vanishing hitchhiker. A comic touch: Welles is recognized by other characters in the story: “Aren’t you …?” ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Princess Bride (dir. Rob Reiner, 1987). I realize now that Rob Reiner resembled Billy Wilder in directing such varied movies: This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery, and so on: somehow I never got that. This movie is a sweet story of swashbucklers, a princess, and true love, set in a frame story with a grandfather (Peter Falk, looking like Kurt Vonnegut) reading to a skeptical grandson (Fred Savage). The cast includes André the Giant, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Carol Kane, and Wallace Shawn. My favorite bit: the cups of poison. ★★★★ (H)

*

Christmas in Connecticut (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1945). Barbara Stanwyck is Elizabeth Lane, unmarried and living in a New York City apartment, where she writes a magazine column about her purported life as a wife and mother on a Connecticut farm. When her publisher (Sydney Greenstreet) devises a publicity scheme to have a seaman who survived a U-boat attack (Dennis Morgan) visit the farm for Christmas, Elizabeth must come up with a farm, a husband, a baby, and flapjacks. Wonderfully funny and transgressive stuff: Elizabeth, who’s supposed to be married (to a friend, played by Reginald Gardiner, who lends his farm and seems at least a tad gay), falls instantly for her guest, and they soon end up in bed — a bed of snow — together. With S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall and Una O’Connor as great supporting players in the kitchen. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Fun to think once again about the mythic Connecticut where almost everyone gets around by sleigh. And strange to remember that this movie begins with two seamen adrift on a raft for eighteen days. And sad to think that this movie is likely the distant inspiration for the dreadful 2022 movie Christmas in Pine Valley .]

*

The Phenix City Story (dir. Phil Karlson, 1955). Drawn from the real-life story of Phenix City, Alabama, known for marked cards, crooked dice, slot machines, prostitution, and the murder of Albert Patterson, a local attorney who dared to run for attorney general. The story is told in semi-documentary style, with a lengthy preface in which a reporter interviews (white) townspeople. When the story kicks in, it’s with immense brutality and something of the flavor of On the Waterfront. John McIntire, Richard Kiley, and Kathryn Grant (later Kathryn Crosby) star, and look for Jean Carson (known for “Hello, doll” on The Andy Griffith Show ) in the Poppy Club. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! (dir. Jason Borque, 2025). Okay, one more Christmas movie, as recommended by my daughter. It’s a genuinely funny story of Ted Cooper (Robert Buckley), a resolutely cheerful and optimistic TV weatherman (think Ted Lasso) who’s beset by mishaps every Christmas season (his co-workers even have a betting pool on what’ll happen to him). When he travels back to his hometown to cover a fundraiser for the local hospital, he runs into his high-school crush (Kimberly Sustad), now a doctor at — can you believe it? — that same hospital. Could Ted just maybe, maybe break his streak of Christmas mishaps? ★★★ (H)

*

Close to You (dir. Dominic Savage, 2023). Elliot Page is Sam, a trans man who travels from Toronto to his small home town for his father’s birthday after several years away. It’s not easy, and there are moments of great tension, mostly brought about by a sister’s boyfriend. There’s further emotional complexity in Sam’s highly charged encounters with high-school friend Katherine (Hillary Baack). The weakness in this movie: an overreliance on improv (I sensed it while watching and confirmed it afterwards), with scenes that end up sputtering out, but the story is nevertheless compelling in its depiction of what it might be like to show your true self to people who thought they knew you all along. ★★★★ (N)

*

The Door with Seven Locks‌ (dir. Norman Lee, 1940). It’s identified as horror, but in truth it’s a dull thriller. A dying nobleman, a treasure hidden behind a door with seven locks, an heiress (Lilli Palmer), an evil doctor (Leslie Banks), and seventy-nine long minutes. Some fireworks at the end with the the evil doctor, but they seem almost farcical after the dreariness that precedes them. I must add: in her 1950s secretarial days, my mom once saw Lilli Palmer and her then-husband Rex Harrison on a Manhattan street, by which point Lilli Palmer had likely long forgotten this movie. ★ (YT)

*

Stranger on the Prowl (dir. Joseph Losey, 1952). Wikipedia tells me that this movie is the first by a blacklisted American director working abroad. Deeply reminiscent of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), with a not-father and not-son fleeing the police in Livorno, Italy. Paul Muni is the homeless, penniless stranger; Vittorio Manunta, the boy, whose only crime is stealing a bottle of milk. This movie, which I’d never heard of, is, I’d say, one of the treasures of YouTube: watch it before it disappears. ★★★★

*

Meet John Doe (dir. Frank Capra, 1941). It’s a Wonderful Life wasn’t the first Capra movie to put suicide and Christmas together. It’s especially eerie to watch Meet John Doe in the time of AI and so-called influencers: “John Doe” is a media creation, a persona created not by AI but by AM — Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), a crafty newspaper columnist who dreams up a circulation stunt about a “common man” planning to take his own life as a protest against the state of civilization. Ann hires a man to play the role, a hobo named Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper); a populist movement (funded by the newspaper’s publisher) is born; and soon things turn very troubling. It’s always remarkable to see Capra swerve from Norman Rockwell territory into absolute darkness. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

A Christmas Carol (Edward L. Marin, 1938). I’m partial to Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (dir. Abe Levitow, 1962), but this one works well. Atmospherics are perfect: the dim, narrow, snowy streets, Scrooge’s barren rooms; the Cratchits’ warm, joyful house. Reginald Owen makes a fine Scrooge – a curmudgeon whose bitterness is so profound as to be farcical. Gene and Kathleen Lockhart are the genial Bob and Mrs. Cratchit; daughter June appears as one of their children; and the actor who plays Tiny Tim, Terry Kilburn, is still with us, having turned ninety-nine last month: God bless us every one! ★★★★ (TCM)

[Here’s Terry Kilburn in a 2016 interview.]

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

Yamandu Costa coming to the States

Seventeen concerts, April 11 to May 2, 2026. Details here.

I had the good fortune to hear Yamandu Costa in 2023, when his appearances in the United States were rare. If he’ll be playing near you, seek him out. He’s the most extraordinary guitarist I’ve ever heard.

A possible source for “asylums”

The common wisdom about the current occupant’s frequent references to countries emptying their prisons and asylums into the United States is that he doesn’t understand the difference between an asylum and a request for asylum. Maybe. But a passing reference in a The New York Times article (gift link) makes me wonder if that’s the case:

By the turn of the 20th century, anti-immigrant sentiment was rampant. The lawyer and eugenicist Madison Grant wrote in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, that foreign countries were taking advantage of America’s openness by unloading “the sweepings of their jails and asylums” and that the “whole tone of American life, social, moral and political has been lowered and vulgarized by them.”

I doubt the current occupant has the patience to make it to page 89 of that book. But I can guess who in the White House does, and who might be feeding talk of prisons and asylums to the current occupant: Stephen Miller.

(And who in 2025 speaks of “asylums” anyway?)

Irony of ironies: Madison Grant was writing about immigrants, in his words,

drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos.

He was writing about people like Stephen Miller’s great-grandparents, Ashkenazi Jews who fled to the United States from Belarus in 1903. And Grant was writing about people like Dean Martin’s and Frank Sinatra’s ancestors. Miller recently praised a Martin/Sinatra Christmas special in these terms: “Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.” The very people Miller celebrates are people whom Madison Grant would have preferred to keep out of the country.

The New Republic has a recent long piece about Stephen Miller’s worldview and aspirations: “Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State.” It includes a link to an unpublished family history written by Miller’s maternal grandmother, Ruth Glosser.

And here’s some commentary from Miller’s uncle, David S. Glosser.

[I don’t have the stomach to make it through more than a page of Madison Grant’s book. I searched its contents in Google Books and found the relevant passages on page 89.]

Woof

[362 Columbia Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

As Elaine asked: how much is that doggie in the window?

G. De Gennaro at no. 360 will won’t remain a mystery meat-purveyor. The 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory has a couple of close calls: Ciro De Gennaro, “meats,” at 6815 14th Avenue, and DeGennaro Bros, “fruits&veg” at 163 Kingston Avenue. I checked the 1940 census: whoever G. De Gennaro was, he (or she?) didn’t live at this address.

A correction: I didn’t realize that I was looking at the 1950 census. A more careful reader found Gaetano and Rose Degennaro at no. 360 in the 1940 census.

On the 1940 census page, seven of the nine residents of nos. 360 and 362 are identified as having been born in Italy (one in New York, one in Ohio). On the 1950 census page, three of the twenty residents of nos. 360 and 362 are identified as having been born in Italy, with nine born in New York and eight born in Puerto Rico, or “Pourto Rico,” as the census-taker spelled it.

It turns out that Columbia Street looms large in the story of Puerto Rican life in New York City.

The buildings still stand.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Rafael Musa. It’s his second, and it’s a good one. I’d call it just plain hard rather than tricky. I scanned the clues and found three (easy) starting points: 16-A, seven letters, “Canadian contemporary of Alice Munro”; 26-D, five letters, “Spread awkwardly”; and 50-A, four letters, “Source of American arabica.” And then I began to fill in the blanks.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

5-D, five letters, “Supporting cast member.” Okay, this one’s tricky.

15-A, fifteen letters, “Merger precursor.” Nice.

20-A, four letters, “Live the wrong way.” I knew it had to be.

24-D, five letters, “Fair housing.” See 20-A.

27-D, ten letters, “Wedding wheel-out.” Is this clue the giveaway I think it is?

33-D, five letters, “Word from Latin for ‘sandy place.’” I did not know that.

34-A, six letters, “What might say GRANDMA WAS HERE.” My first thought: COOKIES?

51-A, four letters, “Hands or feet.” Hmm — I think this answer should be clued with singular nouns.

53-D, four letters, “Author inspired by Zora.” There’s an obvious answer, but it’s difficult to see right away how 54-A might mesh with it.

54-A, fifteen letters, “Evidence of a loving relationship.” I’m taking his word on this.

57-D, three letters, “Chambre d’______ (guest bedroom).” I guessed right.

60-A, eight letters, “Crescent shape.” Here’s what I mean by just plain hard.

61-A, six letters, “The first Eisenhower jackets.” I think I just learned about these jackets from the podcast Gear. But that didn’t give me the answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 14-A, eight letters, “Yellow pages, historically.” Remember the Yellow Pages? Not them, or it.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

William Shawn, Mongol user

[From The New Yorker at 100 (dir. Marshall Curry, 2025). Click for a much larger view.]

William Shawn edited The New Yorker from 1952 to 1987.

How do I know they’re Mongols? The ferrules are the giveaway.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

Coffee and immortality

Richard Brody, film critic for The New Yorker, in The New Yorker at 100 (dir. Marshall Curry, 2025):

“They say that people who drink three cups of coffee a day prolong their lives by a decade. I think I’m verging on immortality with the amount of coffee I drink. Without coffee, nothing gets done.”

Related reading
All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)

A strange thing

Wonderfully strange to find John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme showing up as Stranger Things nears its end.

Christmas 1925

[“Santa to Find Way into Every Chimney: Thousands of Poor Children Will Be Made Merry at Scores of Parties.” The New York Times, December 24, 1925.]

In 2025, Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.

A Christmas song

“Here is a beautiful Christmas spiritual that will gladden the hearts of all”: so said the advertisement.

From 1929, it’s “Christ Was Born on Christmas Morn,” by the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers: Frankie “Half-Pint” Jaxon (vocal), Ernest “Punch” Miller (trumpet), and unidentified others.

Hi Mom

I was in a living room, putting on my coat, getting ready to leave a party. An acquaintance sitting on the sofa asked, “How's your mom?” “Oh,” I said, “she died this past April.” I turned around to leave and there she was, walking toward me, wearing pants and a cozy sweater, totally with it, totally herself.

That’s as far as it got.

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). “Totally herself”: that is, with everything that dementia took away. But she was always herself .]

It’s a Little Compton life

The PBS NewsHour had a slightly startling story last night: “How a small town in Rhode Island is connected to It’s a Wonderful Life .”

I visited Little Compton, Rhode Island, several times in my grad school days (a friend’s family had a summer house). I never knew about this connection. I associate Little Compton with Pete Seeger (once), blazing sunsets, and the Commons Lunch, which closed earlier this year (with a promised reopening as an event space).

And I associate the Commons Lunch with johnnycakes — crisp, thin, made from white cornmeal and milk, fried in bacon fat. I would buy a bag of cornmeal in Little Compton and make johnnycakes in Boston, but they never were as good. Whadja expect?

Stan Newman’s Christmas Eve crossword

Stan Newman let me know in a comment on an OCA post that he has an unusual Christmas Eve crossword coming tomorrow. There’s a full explanation in his Facebook post:

It’s Wednesday-easy, with a highly appropriate theme (which the title will “give away” to many) that I’ve been trying to do for years, but the normal symmetry rules got in the way. An out-of-the-box inspiration finally solved the snag, and all the theme answers are indeed symmetrically placed, with one small rule-breaker that no one should mind.

I am curious (black and white).

Something I didn’t know: the Newsday crossword is available for free at the Boston Herald. The puzzle is also free at The Washington Post .

Thanks, Stan!

*

December 24: It’s a fun puzzle.

Questioning all of it

[“The Road Less Traveled.” Zippy, December 23, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy, Zippy wonders if Zerbina is having “one of her episodes.” She isn’t. Questioning all of reality seems like a natural thing to do these days, weeks, months, and years.

The latest bits to addle my brain, both reported in Letters from an American : a line of “         -class” battleships (I suggest the USS Dementia and the USS Incontinent for the first two), and an admission that the ever-swelling ballroom is an exercise in self-glorification: “I’m building a monument to myself because no one else will.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Dementia and incontinence are no joke, but the current occupant is. I have redacted the occupant’s name, which I choose never to type out.]

How to improve writing (no. 131)

Our trash service has let us know that pickup will be a day later this week:

Thank you for being a valued waste management customer. We appreciate the opportunity to be your environmental service and solutions partner.

I’m afraid I’d be putting on airs if I were to think of myself as a waste-management customer, or if I were to think of the trash service as my environmental service and solutions partner.

Imagine a conversation with a new neighbor:

“Have a chosen an environmental service and solutions partner yet?”

“...”

Here’s what I think would be better:

Thank you for being a customer. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you.

The moral: consider your audience. The jargon of a business need not seep into communication with a customer.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts

[This post is no. 131 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose.]

Seasonal pronouns and commas

Ye or you ? And whither the comma? Two inquiries into the the words “God rest ye/you[,?] merry[,?] gentlemen,” in song (RamsesThePigeon) and paragraphs (Grammarphobia).

Thanks to Kevin Hart for making me think about this title. (Because someone asked: he’s a friend in the blogosphere, not the actor.)

[My immediate association when I hear the words “rest you”: Edgar’s words to Gloucester in King Lear: “Sit you down father, rest you,” as heard at the end of the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.”]

Recently updated

CECOT story online There’s now a clean copy at the Internet Archive.

CECOT story online

The 60 Minutes report killed by Bari Weiss about the Salvadoran prison CECOT is available online (YouTube). If that link fails, it should be possible to find another upload: search for 60 minutes cecot and limit the results to videos.

Our tax dollars at work, funding nightmarish violations of human rights.

December 23: There’s now a clean copy at the Internet Archive.

Everything old is new again

Richard Hakluyt, “The famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea, and there hence about the whole globe of the earth, begun in the year of our Lord 1577” (1589).

I trust that the timeliness of this passage is apparent.

The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe is no. 65 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

[Caravel : “a small 15th and 16th century ship that has usually three masts with lateen sails” (Merriam-Webster). For lateen , see here.]

Monkey mask

Matsuo Bashō, from Lips too chilled, trans. Lucien Stryk (2015).

A more literal translation might be “Year after year / a monkey mask / worn by a monkey.” There’s considerable commentary on these three lines.

Lips too chilled is no. 62 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

Something rotten in Denmark

The Guardian reports that due to “increasing digitalization,” the Danish postal service will stop delivering letters at the end of the year. What will letter-writing Danes do? Use Dao, a delivery service that already delivers letters. More:

The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624. In the last 25 years, letter-sending has been in sharp decline in Denmark, with a fall of more than 90%.

But evidence suggests a resurgence in letter-writing among younger people could be under way.

Dao said its research had found 18- to 34-year-olds send two to three times as many letters as other age groups, citing the trend researcher Mads Arlien-Søborg, who puts the rise down to young people “looking for a counterbalance to digital oversaturation.” Letter-writing, he said, had become a “conscious choice.”

Let us hope that the notoriously aliterate current occupant doesn’t hear about this development and start thinking about making changes at the USPS. His secretary of “health” already wants to follow Denmark’s vaccine schedule.

Related reading
All OCA letter posts (Pinboard)

Why hope?

From Jonathan Capehart’s sitdown with Michelle Obama:

“What gives you hope when so much is so awful?”

[Pointing to a girl in the audience .] “That little girl right there. There is no way that you can look at that beautiful little girl and not understand that we do not have the right or the luxury to become hopeless.”

I’m happy to remind myself once again that we met the Obamas in 2004 during Barack Obama’s campaign for Senate. Michelle talked to people in the function room of a local restaurant. Barack visited later on and spoke at a nearby community college. N.B.: Democratic candidates running in state-wide elections never show up here.

Elaine and I watched a chunk of this interview last night. I said that if we had either Obama in our living room, I’d like to ask how the country that elected Barack Obama twice could also elect the current occupant twice. I’m still not sure how to answer that question.

You can watch the interview at YouTube. This exchange begins at 1:02:57.

A related post
Obama thoughts

“GAS COSTS LESS”

[79 West 9th Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Is he auditioning for a role in Hamlet ? Um, no.

The girl at the window: did you spot her?

The 1980s tax photo shows a vacant lot in disrepair. Today there’s a parking lot.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is David P. Williams’s fourth Stumper in the last four months. It has lots of the good stuff — and two crossings that left me at a loss.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, five letters, “Unreal.” I think first of the word’s slang application: Oh man, that’s crazy. The answer is a slight surprise.

6-D, ten letters, “Your bag.” I dig.

14-A, five letters, “Most easily tied.” Stumper-y.

17-A, ten letters, “Pyramid schemes.” I am happy to have caught on right away.

26-A, thirteen letters, “Give it up.” THROWINTHETOWEL doesn’t fit. How about THROWINATOWEL?

29-D, ten letters, “Brits who get gin on their birthday.” Of course! See 36-D for more Anglophile flavor.

33-D, four letters, “Trail in good order.” I was thinking of a tidily swept path through the woods. I didn’t catch the point of the clue before typing that sentence.

34-D, four letters, “Turns quickly.” ZIGS? ZAGS? ROTS? Stumper-y.

36-D, eight letters, “‘Disorderly’ dessert served at a Harrow cricket match.” See 29-D.

46-D, six letters, “Subject of the literary analysis Angels and Wild Things.” Maybe a giveaway, maybe not.

55-D, four letters, “She’s name-checked in Wonder’s Ellington tribute.” A wonderful way to clue her oft-appearing name.

My stumbling points: the crossings of 38-D, five letters, “Oral”; 42-A, five letters, “Capital of Algeria”; and 50-A, five letters, “Rapdom’s close relative.” “Oral” seems to me a dubious clue. As for 50-A, I think there’s only one in music.

And a quarrel: 49-D, five letters, “Beethoven’s Fifth soloist.” Elaine assures me that there’s no such soloist in the symphony or the piano concerto. I’m waiting to find out if I’ve missed something tricky in the clue.

My favorite in this puzzle: 45-A, thirteen letters, “Bunk.” Such an uncoarse way of putting it.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Got oil?

“He’s like the best snake-oil salesman ever”: Rob Reiner, speaking to Margaret Hoover of the once and future occupant, in an April 2019 episode of Firing Line , shown again tonight.

“Every dog in the city”

Aesop, “The Man Bitten by a Dog,” from The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon , trans. Robert and Olivia Temple.

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon is no. 61 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

[Those being sued or extorted or in danger of being sued or extorted by the current occupant should heed this fable.]

“Zooks!”

Paul Giamatti reads Robert Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” (The Poetry Foundation).

Also: Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider.”

Pine Valley Family Farm lines

Here are some lines culled from Christmas in Pine Valley (dir. Damián Romay, 2022), a hilariously bad holiday movie.

Our cast: Natalie runs Pine Valley Family Farm, purportedly a family-owned business, with help from friend Lisa, “Aunt” Mary (not Natalie’s aunt), “Grandpa” Carlos (not Natalie’s grandfather), and little Elsa. (She appears to be Carlos’s granddaughter — he calls her Elsita.) Josh is the disgraced reporter who comes to write a magazine article about the farm and is scrupulously checking every fact so as not to blow the assignment. Mr. Prentice owns stores that stock only items from family-owned businesses.

*

[Mr. Prentice arrives.]

“I’m very interested to learn more about your Pine Valley Family Farm.”

[He immediately orders 500 of each item they produce — apparently soaps and handcarved ornaments.]

“I can’t tell you how happy I was to find your blog online.”

*

[Josh tells his editor that he’s skeptical about his new assignment.]

“You know I love a great human-interest story, Morgan, but I’m an investigative journalist.”

*

[Josh helps Natalie makes soap and expresses skepticism about the Pine Valley process.]

“Glycerin, instead of lye? Which I happen to know comes from wood ashes. No reason not to have plenty of that around here.”

[He really is an investigative journalist.]

*

“I’ll need to learn all about you and your wonderful holiday traditions.”

[He really is an investigative journalist.]

*

[Young Elsa is playing the piano.]

Lisa: “What’s that?”

Elsa: “Um, the opening of ‘Jingle Bells.’”

Mary: “Oh, I know that one.”

Natalie: “I do too. Keep going, Elsa.”

Elsa: “That’s all I know. I’m only eight.”

Josh, entering: “Did I hear ‘Jingle Bells?’”

Natalie: “Ah.”

Josh: “That was the first song I learned too. Don’t let me interrupt, but I’d love to join in.”

Elsa: “Nope, I’m done.”

*

[Trouble in the supply chain.]

Mr. Prentice: “I just had to cancel a large order with another company, and it's left a rather large hole in our supply chain for next year.”

Josh: “What happened, if you don't mind me asking?”

Mr. Prentice: “It came to our attention that their image as a family-owned business was completely false, not a word of truth to it. They didn't even make a single product themselves. Everything was imported.”

Natalie: “Oh, that’s —”

Josh: “How some unscrupulous people try to manipulate the public for financial gain. I'm Josh Sims, by the way.”

*

[Josh checks the height of the town tree, from Pine Valley Family Farm, natch. Did Natalie tell the truth about it?]

“Sixteen feet and three inches, exactly. The tree. Sixteen feet and three inches.”

“Oh, okay, so I was close.”

“But not exactly.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize that the readers of Southern Country Lifestyle Magazine were such sticklers for horticulture.”

“I guess. But still.”

*

[When Natalie was working on a blog post, Elsa accidentally deleted a passage, unwittingly joined two distant sentences, and pressed Publish. The resulting sentence says that Natalie is getting married. After Josh reads the post, Natalie pretends that she’s getting married to a fellow named Dave, a friend of Lisa’s. Josh thinks Dave is too laid back for Natalie and tells her so.]

“What's wrong with laid back?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. But it just doesn't seem very you. Yeah, you’re energetic, intense, electric.”

*

[Ever investigating.]

“I’ve been meaning to ask, when do you guys go out on the farm and pick out a tree for the house and bring it back on a hand-drawn sleigh?”

*

Josh: “it must be really beautiful when it's all lit up with the Christmas luminaries.”

Natalie: “Yeah, it really must.”

*

[Lisa is shocked, shocked, to see Mr. Prentice at the Pine Valley Christmas dance.]

“Mr. Prentice, what are you doing here?”

“I enjoyed reading about the Christmas dance so much that I decided to come see it for myself.”

*

[Josh seeks the truth.]

“Natalie, there's something I have to ask you about. It’s about your blog. It says Pine Valley started as a Christmas tree farm in 1937, but property records show the family actually bought it in 1931.”

*

[Mr. Prentice is soon shocked, shocked, to learn that the Pine Valley Family Farm folks are not in fact a family. But Josh makes Mr. Prentice read a blog post in which Natalie explains her deception. And everyone else explains things to Mr. Prentice: “Aunt” Mary is Natalie’s mother’s second cousin once removed. And “Grandpa” Carlos will soon be marrying Mary. And Lisa and Natalie are just as close as sisters. All is made right.]

Natalie: “Did you have a part in this?”

Josh: “Well, I did insist he read your new blog post and said I was going to convince my editor to run it instead of my article. I couldn't have explained Pine Valley family better than you did. Also that everyone's going to want Pine Valley Family Farm products, so we better stock up now.”

[Laughter.]

*

These lines will take on added luster if you watch the movie, especially if you watch with members of my fambly. And it must be said: there is only one Pine Valley, the home of All My Children, aka All My Kids. (Yes, I watched, through much of grad school.)

“Badly cast”

Oscar Wilde, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” (1891).

Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime is no. 59 in the Penguin Little Black Classics series (2015).

A lost cause

Jamelle Bouie, writing in The New York Times (gift link): “The White House Is a Lost Cause.” Alternate title, from the tab in my browser: “The Man Who Rules the Country Presides Over Nothing.”

Then who is running things? Bouie names shadow presidents: Russell Vought for domestic policy; Stephen Miller for internal security (“to make America white again, or at least whiter than it is now”); Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio for war and regime change in Venezuela; Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for capitulation to Russia in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, as you’ve probably noticed, the current occupant has created screed-laden plaques (Times gift link) to accompany the framed photographs in his walk of presidents, or wall of presidents, or whatever it’s called. File under Tell me you’re a psychopath without telling me you’re a psychopath .

Joyce and Yeats?

Some real strangeness in the comic thriller Fingers at the Window (dir. Charles Lederer, 1942). Oliver Duffy (Lew Ayres) and Edwina Brown (Laraine Day) are attempting to gain access to a hospital in their search for an axe murderer. The hospital is interviewing “loonies,” so Oliver pretends to be one, gets in, and then introduces himself to Dr. Immelman (Miles Mander): “I’m Doctor Stephen Dedalus of Ireland.” He reminds Immelman that they met in Zurich.

Stephen Dedalus is of course the protagonist of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and one of the three principal characters in Ulysses. Joyce lived in Zurich while working on Ulysses .

[Click any image for a larger view.]

When we get a full frontal view of Dr. Immelman, he bears a strong resemblance to the older James Joyce.


And here’s a genuine “loony” (Jules Cowles) being questioned. The doctor reassures him: “Remember, there are no evil spirits.” This fellow bears a strong resemblance to the older William Butler Yeats, whose interest in the supernatural is well known. Irreverent Dubliners called Yeats Willie the Spooks.


I think it’s reasonable to think that someone working on this movie was having fun.

Musgrave 2025 Holiday Gift Set (pencils)

If you, like me, believe that children should have more than one or two pencils, Musgrave is offering a 2025 Holiday Gift Pack: “two official List Checker 1225s, two peppermint-scented (!) striped Peppermint pencils, one red Poinsettia pencil, one gold Good News 701, and six pretty Christmas-patterned pencils inspired by our favorite wrapping paper.”

Note: peppermint-scented (!).

Great for kids or anyone else.

[Musgrave is one of the last companies making pencils in the United States.]

Twelve movies

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

Fingers at the Window (dir. Charles Lederer, 1942). Axe murderers — yes, plural, are terrorizing Chicago. Late one night, a top-hatted actor (Lew Ayres) saves a pedestrian (Laraine Day) from one of these killers, and our story begins. A low-budget thriller with many (too many) comic touches. And one or two surprising Joycean moments. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Unsuspected (dir. Michael Curtiz). I was happy to rewatch a murder mystery with a radio host as star — Claude Rains as Victor Gadison, “writer, art collector, and teller of strange tales,” and host of ‌The Unsuspected. I had forgotten though that most of the action develops in a big, dark house: what we have here is really Gothic noir, with a strong nod to Laura. As in, say, The Big Sleep, the plot is difficult to follow: atmosphere here is what counts. Also counting: Constance Bennett as an Eve Arden type, Audrey Totter as a snippy demon, and Woody Bredell’s cinematography. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Shed No Tears (dir. Jean Yarborough, 1948). In this B-movie, June Vincent plays Edna Glover, who convinces her sad-sack husband Sam (Wallace Ford) to fake his death and hide out while she waits to collect on his life insurance. But Edna has a man on the side, and Sam has a son, and a long-winded private detective begins to look into this purportedly accidental death. Weirdest scene: Sam and Edna sleeping in separate beds, he with a revolver on his stomach. As the effete detective, Johnstone White provides added interest. ★★ (YT)

*

Christmas in Pine Valley (dir. Damián Romay, 2022). It’s a feeble imitation of Christmas in Connecticut (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1945) and a product of Candace Cameron Bure’s Great American Family network, which may explain why the dark cloud hanging over the reporter visiting Pine Valley Farm (Andrew Biernat) is his carelessness with facts for a story about “the college admissions scandal” (that’s payback, I think: recall that Bure’s fellow Full House actor Lori Loughlin was one of the parents snared in the 2019 real-world scandal). This movie is laughably bad, with dialogue that sounds like something from Duolingo exercises (“I’m very interested to learn more about your Pine Valley Family Farm”), and reporter Josh spending day after day after day at the farm for a magazine puff piece, only to discover the sordid truth that those who run this farm are trying to put one over on him. (There’s the Christmas in Connecticut connection.) We watched as a fambly and laughed until we choked for breath. ★/★★★★ (As a movie, one star; as a bad movie, four.) (H)

*

The Bishop’s Wife (dir. Henry Koster, 1947). Does Cary Grant really play the harp? Elaine wrote a post that gets a flurry of visits whenever the movie airs (he doesn’t), and her post and our recent appreciation of Loretta Young’s acting prompted me to suggest watching this movie again. Cozy, snowy, city stuff: Henry (David Niven), a newly appointed bishop, courts wealthy donors to fund the construction of a cathedral; his beautiful wife Julia (Young) is left to her own devices; and the angel Dudley (Cary Grant) arrives to set things right (while enjoying a Platonic affair with Julia). Loopiest scene: not the harp but the skating. ★★★★ (R)

*

Criterion shorts

One of the less obvious pleasures of the Criterion Channel is its collection of shorts.

N.U. (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1948). The title stands for nettezza urbana: or urban sanitation. A look at Italian street sweepers, an brigade at work with brooms and shovels. The voiceover makes the point that the viewer doesn’t know these men, and the film honors their privacy: there are no interviews, only glimpses of men starting their day, doing their work, and going home to what appears to be utter poverty. A grim postwar landscape, but still the streets get clean. ★★★★

The Bowery (dir. Sara Driver, 1994). A sad ten minutes on the boulevard of broken dreams. Lucy Sante is the occasional narrator, speaking of the street’s past of dime museums, tattoo parlors, and taverns. What we see of the Bowery’s present leans heavily to substance abuse and mental illness. By 2019, when Elaine and I walked the Bowery on our way to an art gallery, much of this world was already gone, and the gentrification vibe was strong, as the words art gallery already make clear. ★★★★

Stoney Knows How (dir. Pacho Lane, 1981). Tattoo artist Leonard L. “Stoney” St. Clair (1912–1980) could be a character out of a Tom Waits song. “Crippled up” from childhood by rheumatoid arthritis, Stoney drew incessantly while hospitalized in childhood, ran off with a circus at the age of fifteen, learned the art of sword swallowing, and came to tattooing not long after. Limited mobility (in both arms and legs) seems to have been no impediment to his artistry, which is amply on display here, along with his gift for storytelling. A visual and verbal treat (and dig all the signage in Stoney’s storefront shop). ★★★★ (CC)

[You can watch at Folkstream.]

Caring Cabin (dir. Chelsea McMullan and Douglas Nayler, Jr. 2025). It’s the pilot for a children’s television show, put on hold when its host, electronic music pioneer and transman Beverly Glenn-Copeland, here “Glenn,” was diagnosed with dementia. The pilot is eleven minutes of peaceful, happy music and talk, with film footage from nature, singing squirrel and flower puppets, and the host in the midst of it all. A charming cross between Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I think kids would have loved it. ★★★★

Carol & Joy (dir. Nathan Silver, 2025). A Criterion Channel premiere: a short documentary about Carol Kane and her mother Joy. Or, really, a documentary of the two, random snatches of conversation and musical performance in a small Upper West Side apartment, filmed with a handheld camera and the screen sometimes going blank when the film runs out. Some background info about Joy, perhaps in the form of intertitles, would be helpful: all I can gather from the movie itself is that she was ninety-eight at the time of filming, a vocal coach, and a former dancer (note: she has a website). Give Joy a full-length movie, and let her tell her story. ★★★ (CC)

*

In Our Time (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1944). Poland: the Second War has not yet begun when Jennifer Whittredge (Ida Lupino), an aide-de-camp to a wealthy English antiques buyer visiting Poland (Mary Boland), meets Count Stefan Orwid (Paul Henreid). Their romance plays out against a backdrop of war and intrafamily conflict. Henreid and Lupino shine: each is hesitant, shy, and finally, resolute. Michael Chekhov has a fine turn as a wise, cigarette-smoking uncle. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

‌The New Yorker at 100 (dir. Marshall Curry, 2025). A documentary that seems designed to pull in younger readers, while giving much the magazine’s history short or shorter shrift. Julianne Moore narrates; a series of actors and comedians talk about how wonderful The New Yorker is; David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, is especially prominent; a handful of current writers, cartoonists, editors, and staff get some time in front of the camera (Richard Brody and Roz Chast are fun); and the magazine’s social conscience is given place of prominence, with emphasis on contributions by James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Ronan Farrow, and John Hersey. So much is missing: Jamaica Kincaid, J.D. Salinger, E.B. White, and other writers are names that float across the screen; there is no mention of Roger Angell, Whitney Balliett, Maeve Brennan, A.J. Liebling, John McPhee, Joseph Mitchell, S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, or Calvin Trillin; almost no mention of Pauline Kael; no mention of Eleanor Gould, “Miss Gould,” the magazine’s famed copy editor; no mention of Mary Norris, who can be seen for a moment in one staff meeting. The low point is hearing about and then seeing a telegram from Harold Ross, the magazine’s founder, to “a writer” who wanted to quit the magazine: that writer, left unidentified (save for his name on a telegram), was E.B. White. ★★ (N)

[Harold Ross to “a writer.” Click for a larger view.]

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

Antivenom

There is no bottom

I wanted to step away from the news today (like Chester Ludlow), but I want to call attention to this social-media post from the current occupant.

He is deeply, deeply sick. And there is, really, no bottom.

[I pasted in the wrong URL for the social-media post — now corrected.]

A visit to Chester Ludlow

[“On the Off Ramp.” Zippy, December 15, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zippy , our hero has traveled for “another confab” with Chester Ludlow. Zippy wants to talk about “No King.” Chester: “If this is about my aggressive behavior when playing checkers, I wish to offer my apologies.” See, Chester doesn’t follow the news.

The exit sign seen in this first panel of today’s strip is for real, as seen here. It names two towns, not an aggressive checkers player.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with Merriam-Webster’s choice: slop .

[My choice too, back in October.]

“Things can happen”

“Things can happen”: the current occupant’s comment just now on the mass shooting at Brown University. Reminiscent of his comment on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi: “Things happen.”

What a sad empty shell of a human being.

Another unattended carriage

[298 West 11th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Strange but true: at one time it was common practice to leave a baby in an unattended carriage outside an apartment building, a house, a store. And I have the tax photographs to prove it. As recently as 2022, unattended babies in carriages and strollers were still common in Denmark.

Strange to think that the carriages in these tax photographs might hold persons now in their mid-eighties.

[Outside no. 296. Is that a baby, or just some bedding?]

It turns out that this block is right around the corner from Jane Jacobs’s block. When this photograph was taken, the restaurant on the corner (to the right in the photograph) was Dorgene, at 570 Hudson Street. “Quiet and pleasant place to dine,” said The Metropolitan Host in 1938; “intimate pine-panelled restaurant and bar serving American food,” the Host added in 1940. The restaurant was still going in 1961: it makes an appearance in The Death and Life of Great American Cities on page 52. Noel Stock’s The Life of Ezra Pound (1970) notes that James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions, gave several dinner parties at Dorgene for Pound and his companion Olga Rudge when they visited the United States in spring 1969. Here’s a Dorgene matchbook.

Today no. 570 is Anton’s. Nos. 296 and 298 also still stand. Cross Hudson Street and you’re standing in front of the White Horse Tavern. But now we’re getting pretty far from the carriage.

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

Helpers

You may recall what Fred Rogers said to do in a time of catastrophe. He quoted his mother’s advice: “Always look for the helpers.”

In Sydney, a man identified by family members as Ahmed al Ahmed tackled and disarmed a gunman. He was shot twice in the process (by the man he disarmed or by tge second gunman). From The New York Times:

Chris Minns, the premier of the state of New South Wales, praised the actions of a bystander who was shown in social media footage tackling one of the gunmen from behind and wresting control of his firearm. He said the man likely saved the lives of many people.

In Providence, the owner of a teahouse found shelter for students. Again from the Times:

Michelle Cheng, owner of Ceremony Tea, said she was able to find lodging for several students at a nearby apartment complex as the shelter in place continued. “This is so messed up, “ she said through tears. “I left everything at home to my husband and raced over because we need to be here for our customers.”

Much closer to home, a Salvation Army branch provided shelter for passengers whose bus was one of the many vehicles in accidents on the snow-covered interstate yesterday. A school-bus driver named Scott Young came out to transport the passengers from the site of the accident.

Deli King, i.m.

I checked in this morning on a restaurant from my Allston-Brighton past, Deli King, which relocated to Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in 1989. All I knew back then was that the restaurant had disappeared from the northeast corner of Harvard and Commonwealth Avenues sometime after I left Boston. I learned about Deli King’s new home a couple of years ago but never made it to Tewksbury.

And now I’ve learned that Deli King closed in 2024. The local news reported that the restaurant’s owners, brothers-in-law Arthur Agganis and Dimitrios Gomatos, were planning to visit Greece in their retirement.

I loved Deli King, sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for dinner after a long day of grad-studenting (souvlaki, please). Elaine and I were eating there individually before we met — she, sometimes twice a day, as her Comm. Ave. apartment had no kitchen.

I remember always being struck by the consummate hospitality — ξενία, xenia — of the Deli King crew. You could be an unhoused person who had put together enough spare change for a meal, and you’d be treated with the same courtesy as someone in a jacket and tie. “What can I get for you, my friend?” was always Arthur’s opening question.

What I especially liked in the news report about the restaurant’s closing: the food looks the same. As Elaine says, why mess with perfection?

Deli King’s website is still up. Souvlaki, please.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a winner. Cleverness, trickiness, and difficulty from the get-go: 1-A, five letters, “Led to lineally.” At times I could identity with 38-A, fifteen letters, “I’m stumped!” But then I didn’t, or wasn’t.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, five letters, “Cabbage or clams.” Obviously money, but what kind?

5-D, four letters, “Poor Richard’s cure-all herb.” Oh, sneaky. My first thought was SAGE.

10-A, four letters, “Side of ribs.” SLAB seemed to fit.

11-D, nine letters, “Gamer’s acquisition activity.” I think this term might define everything that happens in Ms. Pac-Man. That’s the extent of my gaming.

17-A, ten letters, “Capital within 500 mi. of 40% of all in the US.” I don’t like geographical trivia, and I’m tempted to dismiss this clue as too Jeopardy-like, but the clue is more of a clue than one might first think.

23-A, four letters, “Authoritative quote source.” Nice.

34-D, nine letters, “What the Emmys are named for.” I remember looking it up once.

37-D, seven letters, “Windows 95 introduction.” Brian Eno created the startup sound, but that’s not what the clue is asking for.

46-D, five letters, “Head honchos?” Yes, if it has to be in a puzzle, at least clue it comically.

59-D, three letters, “Pepsi’s root beer.” A&W? No. Dad’s? No. Barq’s? No. Hires? No, that’s not even made anymore. I’d call the Pepsi brand the forgotten root beer, but maybe that’s because I don’t drink root beer.

My favorites in this puzzle: 27-A, five letters, “Look-both-ways guy” and 55-A, seven letters, “Look-both-ways traveler.” There’s real ingenuity in the second clue.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Parts and wholes

From The New York Times (gift link): “Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.” Sigh. And sigh again.

See also Natalie Wexler, “Beyond Excerpts” (American Educator ):

We have to recognize that limiting students to brief texts seen as vehicles for teaching comprehension skills is an illusory and self-defeating approach. Technology and other societal pressures present new and daunting challenges to students’ abilities and attention spans, but our best chance of addressing those challenges is to center whole books in the K–12 curriculum.

I read that article and that essay as someone who once taught Bleak House and Infinite Jest in sophomore-level gen-ed classes. I’m with Andrew Polk, a tenth-grade English teacher quoted in the Times article: “Students absolutely can and do rise to the occasion. It’s just a matter of setting those expectations.” Yes, great expectations.

One of the most poignant comments I ever got on a student evaluation form: “This is the first class in which I read an entire book.” Imagine the sense of accomplishment that student must have felt.

Adam Kinzinger on decline

Adamn Kinzinger collects all the signs in one Substack post:

There’s something very wrong with Donald Trump. I’m not talking about his drive toward dictatorship, although that’s a massive threat he presents every day. I’m talking about his health — mental and physical — and what his decline means for our political future.

Kinzinger remains hopeful: “this country WILL endure after him. Maybe a touch bruised and battered, or more than a touch, but we will survive. Then we must ‘think and act anew’ as President Lincoln said.”

I hope Kinzinger is right.

Tempo De Zoot Suit Melancholia

“Cheese after”

“I didn’t carry you up a mountain not to eat cheese after”: David (Dan Levy) to Patrick (Noah Reid) in the Schitt’s Creek episode “The Hike” (April 2, 2019).

A related post
Some subtle Schitt

[Our household is happy to have stuck with Schitt’s Creek. The advice we had from a friend: get past the first season. Yes, the series gets better and better.]

Connie Converse, Mongol user

[Howard Fishman, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (New York: Dutton, 2023). The photographer is unidentified. Click for a larger view.]

Howard Fishman’s biography is an extraordinary effort to document the life and times of Elizabeth Eaton “Connie” Converse (1924–disappeared 1974), whose music survives in home recordings from the 1950s. Converse was a singer-songwriter before there was such a category in American music. Like Molly Drake, she has found a public audience in the twenty-first century.

A similar photograph in Fishman’s biography makes me think that this cover photograph is another from a series taken on August 22, 1959, at 46 West 88th Street, Manhattan, Converse’s last address in the city before she moved to Ann Arbor.

Click for a larger view, look closely, and see what you recognize. I see C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite and White Collar and David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd. Lesser-known books: Ernest Nagel’s Sovereign Reason and Other Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Donald Tovey’s The Forms of Music, and what I think is Quentin Reynolds’s Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz. There’s also a book titled Trees.

In the glass on the bookshelf, what might be a Parker Vacumatic fountain pen and what is, beyond any doubt, a Mongol pencil.

[Click for a larger view.]

There’s another Mongol next to the clipboard on the sofa.

Related materials
Connie Converse’s recordings (Bandcamp) : We Lived Alone: The Connie Converse Documentary (YouTube) : A line from a song : “A long winter” (from Converse’s prose)

[Fishman’s biography is admittedly obsessive in its search for the details of Converse’s life. In the book’s index, the first item under “Converse, Elizabeth Eaton ‘Connie’” is “author’s obsession with.”]

Dasani on Toast

From BBC Radio 4, an episode of Toast about Dasani’s failure in the UK market. Toast is devoted to products and businesses that ended up as that. The reasons for Dasani’s UK failure may surprise you — the water’s taste was not among them.

[Years ago, my daughter Rachel (perfectly) characterized Dasani as “melty.” We agreed that water should be wet, not melty.]

Keystone Kash, or Is our AI learning?

Why is Kash Patel called Keystone Kash?

Google AI, a week or so ago:

Kash Patel’s nickname “Keystone Kash” comes from his role as FBI Director and is a critical/sarcastic moniker highlighting perceived missteps, controversies, and lavish behavior, contrasting with the “Keystone State” (Pennsylvania) meaning something central and vital, but here implying a flawed linchpin or a bungler, linked to high-profile investigations and luxurious travel, as reported by news outlets in late 2025.

Google AI this morning:

The nickname “Keystone Kash” for Kash Patel comes from his deep involvement and pivotal role (like a “keystone” holding an arch together) in key Trump-era national security investigations and policy shifts, especially concerning intelligence & surveillance, and his assertive presence in conservative media, embodying a central figure in the “Trump-aligned” legal/political battles, but there’s no single, official origin story, just a popular moniker reflecting his impact.

So he’s the opposite of a keystone. Or he’s a keystone.

It would appear that Google AI has yet to learn about the Keystone Kops. Or if it has, it has no way of making a connection to Kash. That’s for us humans, at least so far.

[It was George W. Bush who asked “Is our children learning?” “Flawed linchpin”: such fancy phrasing!]

Undermining credibility

From the most recent installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American :

When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers asked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”

“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”

Times New Roman again

From The New York Times, not The Onion :

Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity.

While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in official department paperwork.

In an “Action Request” memo obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Rubio said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.”

“Decorum and professionalism”: the bywords of the current occupant’s administration.

The article goes on to note that

Then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken ordered the 2023 typeface shift on the recommendation of the State Department’s office of diversity and inclusion, which Mr. Rubio has since abolished. The change was meant to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers.

Split screen

As the current occupant opines (and slurs) about the number of dolls and pencils children should have, &c., Miami elects a Democratic mayor for the first time in many years. First female mayor too.

“You can give up pencils”? No frickin’ way.

[It’s either his teeth (veneers) or impaired speech: listen, for instance, for shertain.]