At the bus terminal

Elaine and I were finding our way out of a bus terminal. I was carrying two suitcases, the old-fashioned kind, one under my right arm, one in my right hand, so as to leave my other hand free. We exited at ground level and found ourselves in a small parking lot, enclosed by a ten- or twelve-foot-high grassy slope. Elaine tried to scale it and slid down, her dress now covered in mud. I told her to hold on and said I would try to find an elevator. And there was one — right by the door through which he had exited. We had overlooked it.

I pressed a button and stepped into what looked like a large, well-lit room — very large, like a museum gallery. There were four or five younger people already there. The elevator began going up, and I noticed that there were no numbers for floors. “You should invite him to the wedding,” said one woman to another. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m already married, and my wife just slid down the slope outside.” They looked away from me. I turned to an enormous man to my left, both broad and tall. “She was supposed to ask, ‘How long have you been married?’” I said. “When you tell someone you’re married, they’re supposed to ask.” He just looked at me.

When I exited the elevator, at ground level again, Elaine was waiting. Her dress had been washed clean by the rain that was now falling.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Possible sources: a story from Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid podcast about Arlene Alda traveling with two small suitcases, Elaine shortening a tunic, the room-in-an-elevator in the Karloff–Lugosi movie The Raven, arguments about social protocol in Curb Your Enthusiasm, the muddy puddles of Peppa Pig.]

No wind, no rain

A new episode of the BBC’s Soul Music , the first one in some time, is devoted to Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

I just listened while walking and wondered: was this the first time I was going to listen to Soul Music without tearing up? With three-and-a-half minutes to go, I found out.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

She’s making her screen debut.

Leave your best guess in the comments. I’ll add hints if needed.

*

8:37 a.m.: No hints needed. The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors
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"Daylight Calendar”

“3-day days are the worst”: from the latest xkcd, “Daylight Calendar.”

[For me, it’s Verilux time.]

Grimm

I just realized what — or who — has been running through my head during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial: Percy Grimm, the young vigilante of William Faulkner’s Light in August.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

The actor on the right: instantly recognizable, no? The actor on the left: maybe not so much? Leave your best guess in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

8:36 a.m.: That was fast. The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors
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A Nassau Street candy store

[94 Nassau Street, New York, New York. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Another candy store, this one serving Borden’s ice cream. The building still stands, with a CVS at street level.

If you click to enlarge, you’ll see the once-ubiquitous Bell Telephone sign and two dapper men with light-colored hats and shoes.

Two Brooklyn candy stores
4417 New Utrecht Avenue : 4319 13th Avenue

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is on the tough side. I missed by one letter, and the last time that happened was November 2020, with a puzzle by — yes, Matthew Sewell. I don’t keep track of these things, but my blog posts do.

I blame the constructor and myself: the clueing in today’s puzzle is a bit strained and sneaky, but I missed a bit of context that would have helped. Lookit: 4-D, six letters, “Stylistic bands.” That clue is rather strained, and two answers fit, with their fourth letters differing. The answer I chose seemed to me vaguely plausible. The answer the puzzle wants doesn’t, to my mind, seem nearly as plausible: indeed, it’s pretty farfetched. 4-D crosses 18-A, four letters, “Site of the craters Casanova and Valentine,” and here again, two answers fit, with their third letters (the fourth letter of 4-D) differing. I chose the four-letter answer I thought would fit. But I should have thought more about Casanova and Valentine. Sigh.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, eight letters, “Korean rice dish.” I had it this summer, streetside. I heartily recommend it, and I like its name.

15-D, four letters, “Silents superstar as Cleopatra, Salomé, etc.” I know I’ve never seen her on screen, but I also know that I know the name.

28-D, six letters, “More than a long-distance caller.” This clue-answer pairing feels extremely strained. I would borrow some rice from 8-D: rest, ice, compression, elevation. And I’d get a better clue.

47-A, seven letters, “Trailer classification.” I thought first of big rigs.

56-A, six letters, “Second Lady of the ’60s.” The name makes me think of a Tom Waits song. Careful with that spoiling link.

57-A, eight letters, “Prepares for prognostication, perhaps.” Or perhaps not!

58-A, five letters, “Folkloric banisher of the sea monster Caoránach.” I’m sorry, but that’s not the banisher’s name.

No spoilers if you don’t click on the Tom Waits link; the answers are in the comments.

[If the Newsday paywall makes it impossible for you to access the Stumper, you might try this link. Or try a different browser. Or try another source — GameLab, for instance. Newsday would do well to offer a crossword subscription. I’d happily pay for the puzzle, but I won’t pay $6.98 a week for a digital subscription to the paper.]

It’s on

Brand-new news:

Stephen K. Bannon, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides early in his presidency, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress, the Justice Department said. . . .

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

“Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles,” Mr. Garland said.

I wonder how many shirts they let you wear under an orange jumpsuit.

Anticipatory plagiarism

[Nancy, November 12, 2021.]

It’s “a famous quote” that circulates online and off, attributed to the sociologist Robert K. Merton:

Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.

A source? There never is one. In Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (1998), for instance, Anne Fadiman quotes this sentence, attributes it to Merton, and adds

I am unable to provide a citation because my source is a yellow Post-it handed to me by my brother in Captiva, Florida, in November 1996.

Merton comes close to the words “anticipatory plagiarism” in On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (1965), which looks into the history of the aphorism “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Here’s Merton:

Newton then makes a profoundly sociological observation about the behavior of men in general and by implication, the behavior of men of science in particular, that, until this moment, I had thought I was the first to have made. That anticipatory plagiarist, Newton, follows the sentences I have just quoted from his letter with this penetrating observation

— and so on. Notice that there’s nothing here of a definition. Merton is making a quick joke: he had a thought, but Newton had it first, dammit.

And Winston Churchill had “anticipatory plagiarism” first, or at least before Merton. Here’s Churchill, May 19, 1927, with a remark collected in The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill (2009) and elsewhere. Churchill was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressing the House of Commons:

Mr Lowe seems to have been walking over my footsteps before I had trodden them, because he said, trying to explain what had occurred to the satisfaction of a very strict House in those days: “And so each year will take money from its successor, and this process may go till the end of time, although how it will be settled when the world comes to an end I am at a loss to know.” It was unconscious anticipatory plagiarism.

The weird thing: I recently mentioned anticipatory plagiarism in an e-mail to a friend, tried to recall the source, looked it up, and found Robert K. Merton. But had I remembered a 2013 Orange Crate Art post about cupcakes and handwriting, I would have had it right. And if I had not read Nancy this morning, I would not have thought to write this post.

[Lowe: Robert Lowe.]