FOR SALE

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

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

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[“Well rotted,” the ads said.]

On James Baldwin’s birthday

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

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

The emperor’s new pool

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

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

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

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.