In The New Yorker, Nathan Heller offers “tips for the congresswoman Mary Miller and anyone who might drop an accidental ‘Sieg heil!’ on the lecture circuit”: “You Praised Hitler in a Speech? How to Avoid Those ‘Oops’ Moments.”
Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), a newcomer to the House of Representatives, has not received the attention given to more overtly unhinged members. I think that makes her even more dangerous. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, she has been appointed to the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Representative Miller is a disgrace to our district. A petition calling for her resignation has 26,000+ signatures.
Related posts
January 5 and 6 in D.C., with Mary Miller : The objectors included Mary Miller : A letter to Mary Miller : Mary Miller, with no mask : Mary Miller, still in trouble
Monday, February 1, 2021
Rep. Mary Miller in The New Yorker
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Stumper redux
Good news for Newsday Saturday Stumper fans, in an e-mail from crossword editor Stan Newman:
Beginning in late spring there’ll be an occasional Saturday with “the ‘good old meanness’ of before.” Stan is also thinking about creating a weekly non-Newsday puzzle of Stumper difficulty.
And if enough people are interested, he’ll create
Stumpers of the Year collections as .puz files, $14.88 a year. The explanation of the price: Stan began with Newsday in 1988; the collections will begin with 2014. If you’re interested, send an e-mail to with “Stumpers of the Year” in the subject line.
[E-mail address encoded with email-encoder.com.]
“A marvelous Rembrandt”
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Today’s Newsday Saturday
Today’s Newsday Saturday crossword, by Stan Newman, is a tough puzzle. As I worked at it, I though, Wait a minute, this puzzle is supposed to be easier than a Saturday Stumper. But this puzzle was comparable to a Stumper in difficulty. Not a lot of trickiness, but an awful lot of indirection. 20-D, five letters, “Official endorsements”? 25-A, four letters, “Office initials”? I had no idea, until I did.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
9-D, five letters, “Soprano line opener.” Clever.
17-A, eight letters, “Flag-capturing game.” I am surprised to see that this game is still around — the answer feels dowdy to me. Quick, to the rec room!
22-A, three letters, “‘Inside‘ amenity.” I was thinking it must be something for A-listers. Silly me.
55-D, four letters, “In the bag, perhaps.” The clue redeems the answer.
61-D, three letters, “He’s old-fashioned, ultimately.” Shades of the Stumper!
And my three favorites:
8-D, fifteen letters, “Diner menu listing that can’t be ordered.” Maybe obvious to some, but new to me. And I like anything with a diner in it.
35-A, “Theft insurance of a sort.” The other fifteen-letter answer in the puzzle. A useful reminder for those who need one.
58-A, eight letters, “Naval enlistee.” I admit it: I had to do some rethinking to see the plainly obvious answer.
One clue-and-answer I have to take issue with: 44-D, six letters, “Stradivari, secondarily.” No, he was not.
January 31: Good news: the Stumper is not gone forever. See this post.
Friday, January 29, 2021
Deadpan reportage
From a New York Times article about Lenka Perron, a one-time believer who found her way out of QAnon:
Mr. Trump himself was a source of doubt. Q presented him as a brilliant mastermind, and for a while she accepted that. But it became harder to reconcile that persona with what she observed in real life.
Sonny Fox (1925–2021)
Newsday has an obituary. And from last year, a brief interview. And here, from Montclair State University, is an extended look at Sonny Fox’s life and work, which included much more than Wonderama.
Raise your hand if you remember Wonderama.
Sardines and gin
Once unpacked, so to speak, the headline makes sense: “Popular Tin of Sardines gin bar to open in former Roker toilet block.”
Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)
A Gris collage
At The New York Times, Jason Farago offers a close reading of Juan Gris’s Still Life: The Table.
[If I were teaching William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All, this Times feature would be doing some of the work for me.]
Cicely Tyson (1924–2021)
Cicely Tyson, in a recent interview with The New York Times: “When I smile, I smile. I do not grin. There’s a difference, OK?” The Times has an obituary.
Cicely Tyson’s third appearance on television was in an episode of Naked City.
Thursday, January 28, 2021
“Orange-colored envelope”
Mme de Guermantes: the narrator seeks to know “the mystery of her name,” which is not to be discerned when he sees her leaving her house or riding in her carriage.
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. Mark Treharne (New York: Penguin, 2002).
I love the way what “my father’s friend had said” becomes, “after all,” the measure of objectivity. Proust is unsparingly comic in his presentation of a younger self.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
