MLK

Colbert I. King (no relation), writing in The Washington Post:

The greatest contrast between the time King led the struggle for America’s legal and social transformation and now is a White House occupied by Donald Trump.

The federal government, once a powerful legal and moral force to make real the promise of democracy, is in the hands of adversaries who seek to restore a hierarchy in which the interests of the bigoted, the xenophobic, the sexist and the defender of white male privilege always come out on top. . . .

How far have we traveled?

From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.

King, and the movement he led, would be outraged. The rest of us should be, too.

Fools

I watched a bit of Rudy Giuliani’s performance on CNN this morning and thought again of how much he reminds me of a Shakespearean fool. The Shakespearean fool serves a king. Giuliani serves a would-be king. The Shakespearean fool speaks whatever comes into his head. Giuliani — yes, the same.

The great difference: the Shakespearean fool speaks truth to power. He speaks wisdom in the form of deeply sensical nonsense. Giuliani speaks mere nonsense, a fast-paced double-talk whose purpose is to befuddle. He’s really no Shakespearean fool at all, though he does play a fool on TV.

Domestic comedy

“I only know Ben Mankiewicz. Everyone else is Not Ben Mankiewicz.”

See also Buz and Not Buz.

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Nancy

Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy is a special treat today: familiar props (cookie jar, means to it) and lots of meta.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Lots of meta: I read the differing page layouts as the difference between life and art.]

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.]