It’s #StayTheFuckHome. Not a joke. With twelve guidelines, in order of increasing difficulty and effectiveness.
Not everyone can stay the, &c. The first nine guidelines are probably within the reach of most readers.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
A movement for these times
“Not a snow day”
Asaf Bitton, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, offers recommendations for social distancing. “This is not,” he says, “a snow day”:
the only strategies that can get us off this concerning trajectory are those that enable us to work together as a community to maintain public health by staying apart.*
March 16: The Boston Globe has an updated, expanded version of this piece.
Today’s Zippy
[Zippy, March 15, 2020. Click for a larger view.]
Today’s Zippy feels like a cross between Bill Griffith and Roz Chast. How many boxes can you check? (Me, eight.)
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Flattening the curve
From The Washington Post: “Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to ‘flatten the curve.’”
The graphics make the point: “If people are less mobile and interact with each other less, the virus has fewer opportunities to spread.”
Elaine and I stayed inside today, with short trips to the garage to use the elliptical machine. If the weather is better tomorrow, we’ll go for a walk in the open air. And that’ll be it.
Thanks, Rachel.
“Nancy?” “Sluggo!”
[“Dueling Dualities.” Zippy, March 14, 2020.]
Today’s Zippy is a flurry of choices: column A/column B, blue state/red state, iPhone/Android, Nancy/Sluggo.
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Andreas Brown (1933–2020)
“A bibliophile since childhood who bought the revered Gotham Book Mart in Midtown Manhattan from its idiosyncratic founder, Frances Steloff, and kept it alive as a frowzy literary shrine for four more decades”: from the New York Times obituary.
I’m pretty sure I saw Andreas Brown on one of my trips to the Gotham. He might have been the guy showing me the rare Ted Berrigan stuff — I just don’t know. I know that I saw Frances Steloff at least once, sitting in an alcove back near the tables of little magazines.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, was surprisingly easy, aside from the southeast corner. But man oh man that southeast corner. It had arcana: 60-D, three letters, “Onetime North Island herbivore.” It had a tricky spelling: 48-D, six letters, “Trifling.” It had general weirdness: 59-A, eight letters, “Verdict of disapproval”; 64-A, six letters, “Creatively turbulent.” And it had a clue that reminded me of what must be my considerable distance from current trends in entertaining (62-A, eight letters, “Cutlery carrier”). I’m glad that those clues were not the whole puzzle.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
11-D, seven letters, “Boston Public Library muralist.” Because Boston.
16-A, eight letters, “Fashion effect aka ‘manscara.’” Not that I use the stuff.
25-D, seven letters, “108 Odyssey fellows.” I always like seeing Homer in a crossword. The 108 is an extra treat. And that is the number, which a reader can work out by adding numbers as Telemachus gives them in book 16.
36-A, four letters, “‘A nightingale who sits in darkness,’ per Shelley.” I like to think that my late friend Rob Zseleczky is pleased whenever Shelley turns up in a crossword.
46-A, five letters, “Many a paperweight.” Mine are rocks and tile trim.
And another one of the clue-and-answer pairs that baffle me until I begin typing them out: 58-D, three letters, “Fellow from Wheeling.”
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Unfit
I’m watching Donald Trump* struggle to read what’s been written for him and thinking, Unfit, unfit, unfit. What are those standing behind him thinking?
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