NYRB sale

New York Review Books has a half-off sale on selected books. I can vouch for Balzac, Gass, and Schnitzler.

Joe Friday and T.S.E.

From a New York Times review of Andrew McCabe’s The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump:

The first sentence demands to be read in the voice of Jack Webb from Dragnet: “Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law.”

How about Joe Friday and T.S. Eliot? From “The Hollow Men”:

    Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

[Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. And Robert Mueller.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Verb tenses are tricky with crosswords:

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, is difficult. There it is, sitting on the Newsday website.

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, was difficult. There it is, now solved.

My portal: 13-Down, nine letters, “What the UN overlooks.” And then I stumbled and stumbled, and stumbled some more.

Some excellent clues:

28-Across, twelve letters, “The bright orange tangor, for one.” A bird? No.

39-Across, five letters, “Big name in African dramatics.” I knew I knew it.

49-Across, four letters, “Pan’s close relative.” The answer baffled me up to the moment I typed the clue here.

33-Down, nine letters, “Learned.” Yep.

But I’m still baffled by the answer for 46-Down, six letters, “Indoor transportation system.” A little help?

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

An unexpected introduction

At a concert last night by Sinfonia da Camera, conducted by Ian Hobson, a man walked onstage to speak a bit about the composer John de Lacy Wooldridge (1919–1958). The orchestra was about to give the American premiere of Wooldridge’s Concerto for Orchestra and Oboe, with John Dee, soloist. The last words of the introduction:

“What you’re hearing is a young piece by a young man who happened to be my father.”

That introduction gave the music that followed — pastoral, sometimes playful — even greater emotional content.

[The speaker, who never gave his name, was Hugh Wooldridge.]

You don’t have to be a psychiatrist . . . .

Dunning-Kruger moment of the year, if you’re declaring a “national emergency”: “I didn’t need to do this.”

Word of the day: cloakroom

A friend mentioned a cloakroom the other day — a little room near the entrance of his elementary school, many years ago, with a sink and toilet. Huh?

I have a vivid memory of a cloakroom from second grade: Miss M. once attempted to quiet us down by throwing her shoes at us as we donned our coats in there. The cloakroom was a genuine room, a small one, with hooks lining three walls. No sink, no toilet. No cloaks either, just coats and hats and mittens and gloves and boots — and shoes flying. Did every classroom in my elementary school have a cloakroom? I have no idea.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition:

A room for the temporary storage of coats, bags, etc., esp. in a large public building, as a theatre, school, railway station, etc., typically near the entrance; such a room containing or adjoining toilets, facilities for washing, etc.; (hence, euphem.) a toilet for public use.

The first citation is from 1823. I find it dispiriting to think that our ancestors at least sometimes stored “coats, bags, etc.” in the presence of a public toilet. Talk about a multi-purpose room.

A later meaning (first citation 1865):

Chiefly Brit. and Irish English. A small room in a private home, typically close to the front entrance, which may be used to store coats, hats, shoes, etc., and which may also contain a toilet and often a washbasin.

Now frequently used euphemistically in advertising to denote any small room containing a toilet, regardless of whether there is also storage space.

That makes me think that cloakroom and water closet might be roughly synonymous. The OED identifies water closet as “chiefly arch., hist., or euphem., except in the abbreviated form W.C.”

A still later meaning of cloakroom (first citation 1878):

U.S. Politics. A private room adjacent to a legislative chamber of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. where members of Congress and other authorized individuals can meet, work, or relax.

Two cloakrooms lead off each chamber, one for each party. These rooms were originally for the storage of coats, etc.

No surprise that the cloak of cloakroom means just what you’d expect: “a loose outer garment worn by both sexes over their other clothes.” I was beginning to hope that cloak might be related to cloaca, “a privy,” “a sewer or drain, esp. the main one serving a particular town or district.”

Wardrobe, by the way, first meant “a privy, a latrine.”

Reader, did you go to a school antique enough to have anything called a cloakroom?

Still more kids ’n’ coffee

But no more after this post, because coffee really isn’t good for kids. From Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks (1868). Dick (later Richard Hunter), treats a fellow boot black to breakfast:

“What’ll you have, Johnny?”

“Same as you.”

“Cup o’ coffee and beefsteak,” ordered Dick.

These were promptly brought, and Johnny attacked them vigorously.

Coffee and beefsteak is standard breakfast fare in this novel, sometimes with rolls or bread.

Related posts
coffee (A repurposed Ovaltine ad) : Kids ’n’ coffee (Nancy and Sluggo) : “A whole cup of coffee for myself!”

“Dearest Liz”

From Field Notes. Clever, and it’s true:



Field Notes is giving away a red Bic Clic with every order placed today. I’m full up on supplies, but someone else might not be.

A pencil box, not Lassie

[From Lassie Come Home (dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1943). Click for a larger view.]

Father (Donald Crisp) and Mother (Elsa Lanchester) marvel at the birthday gift they’ve bought for young Joe (Roddy McDowall). “It’s wonderful, the things they have nowadays,” says Father. “There were no pencils when I were a lad. We had only slates.”

Joe is disappointed when he learns that the surprise in store for him is not Lassie. No, she’s not returned. But he puts on a brave face, thanking his parents for a gift he pronounces “champion.”

That looks like an Eberhard Faber Union eraser, doesn’t it? White side, pencil; grey side, ink.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie and stationery posts (Pinboard)

Valentine’s Day

[“Heart Amulet.” From Egypt, New Kingdom, Ramesside, c. 1295–1070 BCE. Red jasper. 1 1/8″ × 7/8″ × 9/16″. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection.]

Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

[More about amulets and the heart, or ib, at this object’s museum page.]