Is it fascism yet?

Former senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), speaking about Donald Trump* and the Department of Homeland Security:

Feingold said both the Trump administration’s actions in Portland and President Trump’s threats to send federal agents to patrol cities with Democratic mayors are part of a “truly dystopian picture” that is worse than anything that was imagined during the George W. Bush administration. These actions, he added, are more appropriate for “a completely lawless country without any protection of the rule of law” than the United States of America.

“This is right out there in the open and is a direct affront to American democracy. People should be able to express their political views consistent with the First Amendment and not be afraid of reprisal from the federal government,” he said. “What I was warning about in 2001 was what would happen if we elected somebody who really didn’t have any respect for our system of government, and that’s where we are today. He [Trump] and his administration are doubling down on the most frightening series of threats that any of us have ever seen in our democracy.”

😱

News, at least to me: Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the basis for the face screaming in fear emoji, may not depict a person screaming. Aiieee!

Thanks, Ben.

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A P.S. 131 class picture, 1964–1965 There was much more to my third-grade teacher’s life than met my third-grade eye.

Tom Finn (1948–2020)

Tom Finn, bassist and singer with the Left Banke, died last month at the age of seventy-one.

Here are two songs from The Left Banke Too (1968). Finn wrote them and sings lead: “Nice to See You” and “There’s Gonna Be a Storm.” Baroque pop, yes.

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Steve Martin Caro (1948–2020) : George Cameron (1947–2018) : What I hear in “Walk Away Renée”

“Have been and will always be”

Germany has invaded France. An unnamed man has fled Paris. He’s stuck in Marseille, living on pizza, rosé, and ersatz coffee.


Anna Seghers, Transit. 1951. Trans. from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

The narrator’s reverence for “things that have been and will always be there” reminds me of Holden Caulfield’s affection for museum dioramas: “everything always stayed right where it was.” See also “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Seghers’s novel, the basis for the 2018 film of the same name, is a forlorn meditation on contingency and identity. It’s another New York Review Books rediscovery.

This post is for the pizza makers in the fambly. And yes, the most cursory search will confirm that Marseille, still, means pizza.

A related post
Pizza with sardines (Inspired by Transit)

The Oedipus Project

“Arrogant leadership, ignored prophecy, and a pestilence”: Theater of War has created The Oedipus Project, a staged reading (via Zoom) of scenes from Sophocles’s Oedipus. I hope a recording comes online for everyone who, like me, missed it live.

Sped up, or speeded up

The car chase at the end of High Sierra: was the film sped up, or speeded up ?

Garner’s Modern English Usage is on the case:

The best past tense and past-participial form is sped, not *speeded. It has been so since the 17th century. But there’s one exception: the phrasal verb speed up (= to accelerate) <she speeded up to 80 m.p.h.>.

But the GMEU recommendation may have to change as usage changes: the Google Ngram Viewer shows sped up on the rise and speeded up steadily declining.

The Viewer’s peak years for speeded up are 1942 and 1943. High Sierra is from 1941, so let’s say that the film was speeded up.

*

Bryan Garner tells me that he’ll be revising the entry for speed > sped > sped.

[1942, 1943: because of references to wartime production?]

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No hoax Now there are charges.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Brad Wilber, and it’s a tough one. I started with 8-A, eight letters, “St. Thomas, compared to the other US Virgin Islands.” Wrong answer, but at least the last two letters were right, and they sent me on my way. Two answers had me thinking they couldn’t be right, but they were. And so all the answers were right.

Clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

12-D, eight letters, “Curb cut beneficiary.” Been there. Will be again, someday.

24-A, six letters, “Pulse quickeners.” No, that can’t be right, I thought. Even after I had the answer, it took me a while to see it. I was expecting a more recognizable plural.

25-D, five letters, “They often keep the change.” Among other things.

30-D, six letters, “Ready for delivery.” I like the indirection.

32-A, five letters, “Mentor of Mozart.” Rudimentary knowledge of classical music pays off.

35-D, four letters, “Showerhead essential.” Here too the answer had me thinking That can’t be right. I have a love-hate relationship with this kind of clue.

43-A, five letters, “Prepares on canvas.” I was thinking of something having to do with gesso. Bob Ross, help!

50-D, five letters, “Justifications for bizarre behavior.” Well, maybe not justifications. Occasions?

63-A, six letters, “Dairy delivery.” And thanks, once again, after many years, to the student who corrected my pronunciation of the answer.

65-A, five letters, “Voyages of the ‘USS Enterprise.’” This clue had me stuck, not because of an admitted lack of Star Trek knowledge but because I didn’t understand the form that the answer took.

And one clue I liked, but whose answer, not at all: 18-A, eight letters, “Backdrop for moonwalks.” I was trying to think of an answer having to do with MTV. Nope.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

John Lewis (1940–2020)

A giant of our country, past, present, and future. The New York Times has an obituary.

From a January conversation with Valerie Jackson for StoryCorps:

“My philosophy is very simple: when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to stand up, you have to say something, you have to do something. My mother told me over and over again, when I went off to school, not to get in trouble. But I told her I got in good trouble, necessary trouble. Even today, I tell people, ‘We need to get in good trouble.’”

[My transcription.]