Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is mostly easy. For instance, 41-Across, ten letters, “First Maria in The Sound of Music.” Or 50-Across, nine letters, “Olympian dubbed ‘Lightning.’” But the northeast corner is tough. I filled in my final answer, 9-Across, five letters, “What fills some shoes,” knew it had to be right, but had no idea what it meant until I looked it up.

Four clues I especially liked, all of which made short answers more fun: 19-Across, four letters, “What surrounders.” 43-Across, three letters, “Ironclad designation.” 3-Down, three letters, “Ox tail.” And 29-Down, three letters, “When live NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA games might be watched.”

No open refrigerators (spoilers): the answers are in the comments.

Larkin anachronism

[The Bookshop (dir. Isabel Coixet, 2017). Click for more readable books.]

The Bookshop might be said to take place in 1950-something. This still is from early in the film. A man dictating a letter later on says “1959.” Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: 1953. Kingsley Amis’s That Uncertain Feeling: 1955. But Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, both of which appear later in the film, as new books, the one shortly before the letter (complete with a reference to Graham Greene’s review), the other not long after the letter: 1955 and 1957.

The covers for the Bradbury and Amis in this shot look right — I can’t say about the spines. But a Philip Larkin Collected Poems didn’t appear until until 1988, followed by a second Collected (2003) and a Complete Poems (2012).

There are many ways to find fault with The Bookshop — the Larkin anachronism is just a small one.

Pasta, sardines, and fennel

[“I’m thinkin’ ’bout a-this whole world.”]

The Crow, a sardine fan like me, sent me links for cooking videos focused on “the small oily fish.” Last night I tried this recipe, an impression of the Sicilian dish pasta con le sarde. Winner, winner, sardine dinner! Many flavors, many textures, all of them delightful. The only changes I would make: add some salt and pepper, and use two cans of sardines. One is not enough.

The video shows this dish coming together in about two minutes. It took me about an hour — a fair amount of assembly is required. A more organized cook would need less time. And would not forget the sardines until the last minute.

Thanks, Martha!

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Pork bellies

[Zippy, January 18, 2019.]

What are pork bellies? Goodness me, don't you know what pork bellies are? You hear about them on the . . . on the commodity report, isn’t it?

Or you used to. Though I could swear that the radio still brings news of pork bellies. I will have to listen more closely.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Questions asked with apologies to Gabriel Conroy’s galoshes.]

A thinking-about-a-MacBook tip

I bought a MacBook Air last week, and I’m very happy with it. But for a long time I hesitated, because I couldn’t get past the keyboard. How was I supposed to type on this thing? And then I realized that typing with any accuracy and ease on my MacBook Pro is just as difficult if I’m reaching down to the keyboard from a standing position.

My tip, for anyone thinking about a MacBook: ask if you can try the machine of your choice while sitting. (It might be easier to manage that in a college bookstore than in an Apple Store.) After I sat down to type, I needed only a minute or two to decide that I could be happy with the new keyboard.

My MacBook Pro (2011) is far from shabby, but the screen and speed of the new Air are far superior. And I can type on the keyboard! Look: see?

“Traditional blogs,” past and future

David Heinemeier Hansson, one of the makers of Basecamp, writing about his company’s decision to leave Medium:

Writing for us is not a business, in any direct sense of the word. We write because we have something to say, not to make money off page views, advertisements, or subscriptions. . . .

Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.

Blogging requires a belief in the possible value of one’s observations, questions, drawings, photographs, whatever, and the willingness to invest time in making them available to others. And the rewards are more often intrinsic than ex-. So let’s see.

[Via Michael Tsai.]

Cash and a glove

I’m not sure why this Wall Street Journal article isn’t behind a paywall. But since it’s not:

In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign.

In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.

John Gauger is the chief information officer at Liberty University, the school founded by Jerry Falwell as Lynchburg Baptist College, now run by Jerry Falwell Jr. Or chief “information” officer.

*

9:17 a.m.: Well, now the article is behind a paywall. Here’s the Washington Post story.

Heat and knowledge

Inversely proportional. In “Slawkenbergius’s Tale,” a group of disputing clerics are launched “into the gulph of school-divinity”:


Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 4 (1761).

Also from Sterne
Letters for all occasions : Yorick, distracted : Yorick, translating : Yorick, soulful : Digressions : Uncle Toby and the fly

Uncle Toby and the fly

Uncle Toby Shandy, Tristram says, had “scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.” A ten-year-old Tristram sees this scene:


Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 2.12 (1759).

Though Tristram gives some credit to “the study of the Literae humaniores, at the university,” he tells us that he believes he owes half of his philanthropy “to that one accidental impression” made upon him by his uncle.

Also from Sterne
Letters for all occasions : Yorick, distracted : Yorick, translating : Yorick, soulful : Digressions

[The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (1997) dates not hurt a fly to the early 1800s. Does Uncle Toby lurk quietly in the idiom’s backstory?]

WWLS

As I look at the photograph, I try to imagine: what would Lincoln say? Not about the food but about the huckster showing it off.