The Blackwing clamp, 100 years old

The excellent blog pencil talk notes the March 29, 1921 filing of the patent for the clamp that became a distinctive feature of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencil: Happy 100th anniversary, Blackwing clamp!

Making it plain

From the Derek Chauvin murder trial. Steve Schleicher, prosecutor, asks a question. Alisha Oyler, witness, responds:

“Now can you please explain to the jury, why did you continue to record what you were seeing here?”

“Because I just — I always see the police, they’re always messing with people. And it’s wrong and it’s not right."

You can see this exchange at C-SPAN (5:48:59).

Mary Miller and trans rights

In The New York Times and The Washington Post this morning, news of a new battle in the so-called culture wars. From a Times article:

Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere. . . .

The idea that there is a sudden influx of transgender competitors who are dominating women’s and girls’ sports does not reflect reality — in high school, college or professionally.

And from a Washington Post opinion piece by Megan Rapinoe:

These bills are attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Transgender kids want the opportunity to play sports for the same reasons other kids do: to be a part of a team where they feel like they belong. Proponents of these bills argue that they are protecting women. As a woman who has played sports my whole life, I know that the threats to women’s and girls’ sports are lack of funding, resources and media coverage; sexual harassment; and unequal pay.

The Times article points out that these bills are the result of nationally coordinated efforts on the part of socially conservative organizations and female legislators. It’s no coincidence that the first bill introduced by my representative in Congress, Mary Miller (Illinois-15), would require sex-segregation in school bathrooms and locker rooms and on sports teams, with sex defined as “biological sex, not gender identity.” The bill, which Miller calls the Safety and Opportunity for Girls Act, appears to be H.R. 1417, titled “To clarify protections related to sex and sex-segregated spaces and to activities under title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.” There’s a general snafu with the House Education and Labor Committee website, with nothing to read for H.R. 1417 or any other legislation.

H.R. 1417 is likely going nowhere. But that won’t matter to Mary Miller’s supporters. I can already hear the campaign ads next year: “As a mom to five daughters, Miller led to fight to pass,” &c.

Among those co-sponsoring Miller’s bill: Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

All the Mary Miller 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 : His ’n’ resignations are in order : Mary Miller in The New Yorker : Mary Miller vs. AOC : Mary Miller’s response to mass murder

Separated at birth

  [Markku Luolajan-Mikkola, baroque cellist and viol player, and John Malkovich, actor and director. Click either image for a larger view.]

Younger self, that might be your older self.

Thanks to Steven Hall for suggesting a Luolajan-Mikkola and Malkovich pairing.

Also separated at birth
Claude Akins and Simon Oakland : Ernest Angley and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán : Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Adam Driver and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska : Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

An EXchange name sighting

[Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco. From Sweet Smell of Success (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1957). Click for a larger view.]

Yes, it looks like Sidney is about to beseech the gods. Or the god, J. J. Hunsecker. EL-what? It’s impossible (for me) to read. ELdorado would make sense, but Ma Bell suggests ELmwood.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Domestic comedy

“Did you do the dishes last night?”

“Yes, you identified me as doing them, as such.”

Elaine and I have been working the empty phrases “as such” and “at that” into our conversation. Living where we do, we have long been accustomed to making our own fun.

How, earlier in the day, had I identified Elaine as the dishdoer? By the spatula in the dishdrainer. Elaine puts those larger tools in the cutlery cups. I stand them up in the small rectangles formed by the coated wires running the length and width of the drainer. When I asked about the dishes, the spatula was gone.

As I said, “our own fun.” And good fun at that.

I have written this post in the excellent writing app iA Writer. When I turned on the Style Check (for fun), the app suggested removing “as such” from these sentences. No way.

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

The one that got away

I forgot to include in an earlier post this clue from today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword: 14-D, four letters, “‘___ by night, a chest of drawers by day’: Goldsmith.” I will give away the answer, from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village,” in lines that describe a now-gone inn or tavern, a “house where nut-brown draughts inspired”:

The chest contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.

Those lines seemed familiar, and not because I have Oliver Goldsmith on my mind. I thought of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the enervated coupling of the typist and clerk:

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

There’s no note for these lines in Eliot’s often-parodic “Notes on The Waste Land,” but there is a note for lines that soon follow:

When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

Eliot’s note: “V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.” Here’s the song.

Was Eliot consciously borrowing from Goldsmith with the divan/bed thirty lines earlier? Unconsciously borrowing? I think it must have been one or the other.

The coupling of the clerk and typist seems to have extraordinary resonance in contemporary college classrooms, at least in my experience of teaching The Waste Land. It’s an emotional blank, presented in fourteen lines that — guess what? — turn out to be a Shakespearean sonnet.

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Brad Wilber, solves like an easier Stumper. Lots of interest in the clues and answers, with generous helpings of novelty and misdirection.

1-A, nine letters, “Off-the-grid period.” I, not even sports-minded, thought football.

12-D, ten letters, “Swag supporter.” Nice and arcane, at least to my ear.

19-A, five letters, “Female name that sounds like Roman numerals.” Not DEEDEE — too long. Not DIDI — too short. Not EM — you can’t have a two-letter answer in a crossword.

27-A, seven letters, “Parisian’s patron.” My first thought: What’s the French for customer?

29-D, ten letters, “Do-it-all’s bane.” Yep.

37-A, three letters, “Navigation aid.” Duh, right? Wrong. This clue adds value to 62-D, three letters, “What a 37 Across can’t do without.”

45-A, seven letters, “Peanut butter Hershey bars.” Semi-obscure candy treats seem to sneak into Newsday Saturday puzzles. Not long ago it was a MARSBAR.

64-A, nine letters, “They’re in a star’s orbit.” Wait, stars orbit?

My favorite clue-and-answer in this puzzle: 13-D, ten letters, “Seller of banded and boxed merchandise.”

And one clue I’d like to make Stumper-y: 28-D, “What a daredevil might kiss when done.” That seems too explicatory to me. How about “Dry spot”? “Everybody’s turf”? “Place to take a stand”? I’m omitting the letter count to not give away an answer. Never no spoilers.

All answers are in the comments.

*

I forgot one clue-and-answer and ending up writing another post: The one that got away.

Beverly Cleary (1916–2021)

The writer Beverly Cleary has died at the age of 104. The New York Times has an ample feature on her life and work, beginning here. HarperCollins has a Cleary website.

I’m a latecomer to the Cleary world. In adulthood, I’ve read all the Ramona books, Ellen Tebbits (my daughter’s favorite), Fifteen, Jean and Johnny, The Luckiest Girl, Sister of the Bride, and Cleary’s two memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. Her writing has lifted me to laughter and reduced me to tears.

Fellow kids-at-heart, I encourage you to read Beverly Cleary if you haven’t.

Related reading
All OCA Beverly Cleary posts

False prophesying in the Times

From The New York Times:

The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.

“Prophesied” seems very odd in the newspaper of record. “Falsely prophesied” seems odder still. “Believed” or “claimed” would be a more appropriate choice.