Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg, and it’s a doozy, or a lulu, or both. Thirty-seven minutes for me, and more than once I was sure I’d have to give up. My starting point was 3-D, four letters, “Where the Rhine rises,” a clue I’ve seen, more or less, before. From there, 18-A, five letters, “Sounding stuffy.” Timely! And after that I struggled. Toughest points, the northwest and southwest. Oof.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, four letters, “Go around.” SPIN? TURN? Your initial guess may be better than mine.

11-D, ten letters, “Play adaptations.” Clever.

14-A, ten letters, “Large racket.” This one drove me a bit crazy.

16-A, ten letters, “What ranch houses typically haven’t.” I was thinking the answer had to be plural.

26-D, five letters, “Depression on a trunk.” A giveaway, nearly indentical to a clue from last Saturday.

42-A, six letters, “Of the above.” Tricky. I first thought the answer must be an arcane bibliographical abbreviation.

44-D, six letters, “French writer of ‘Facts are stubborn things.’” I thought that came from John Adams. But the French writer isn’t the original source either, not that the clue says he is.

49-A, four letters, “Mozzarella alternative for lasagna.” No, I’m a traditionalist.

53-A, five letters, “What a seminarian may become.” It’s misdirection only if your idea of a seminary is, uh, parochial.

59-D, three letters, “Cell ancestor.” A nice way to make the familiar difficult.

62-A, ten letters, “Largest break in the California Coastal Range.” Threw me for a loop. SOMECANYON?

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-A, fifteen letters, “Time best forgotten.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

NPR, sheesh

“As him and his aides think about this.”

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

[I don’t go looking for trouble. It finds me.]

To: Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell

I’m up to episode five in Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong. The podcast remains utterly infuriating — so much wrongheaded thinking about the teaching of reading, so many children damaged as a result. And so much money made from curriculum materials that teach children to read the way poor readers read — by guessing at words, or as those who promulgate these methods now say, “hypothesizing.”

I ended up writing an e-mail to Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell, three prime movers behind reading instruction whose work is examined in the podcast. Here’s what I sent:

I’m moved to write to you after listening to the podcast Sold a Story. Not a flattering title from your perspective, to be sure.

I write as a retired professor of English with thirty years of teaching at a regional state school. I came to reading at a young age, well before kindergarten. We were a family of modest means, but I had a dad who read to me every night, a shelf or two of books in the house, The New York Times every day, and a public library. I was one of the lucky kids who catch on to reading without explicit instruction in phonics.

It wasn’t until I volunteered as a literacy tutor working with non-reading adults that I realized how important explicit instruction in phonics is. The program I volunteered with was big on sight words: MEN, WOMEN, EXIT, and so on. I asked at one meeting what students were supposed to do when encountering a word they’d never seen before. There was no answer. I somehow got hold of a phonics curriculum and worked for several years with a man in his fifties who learned to read well enough to read a Rules of the Road handbook and pass the written test for his driver’s license.

So I understand the value of phonics. But it wasn’t until I listened to Sold a Story that I began to realize the extent to which the deficits in many of the students I taught as a college professor must have been related to a lack of instruction in phonics. Something I learned early on: not to ask students to read aloud in class. It can be painful. I don’t mean cold-calling on students; I mean just asking a student to read, say, a sentence or two from a text to support a statement about that text. Things are different, I’m sure, with students at elite institutions. But many a college student, in my experience, cannot read aloud with any fluency. It’s. Word. By. Word. When I realized that I had to feed students words here and there, I knew that it was time to give up on reading aloud.

And now after listening to Sold a Story I better understand why students so often would guess at the meanings of unfamiliar words when reading, instead of using a dictionary. They had been taught to guess about words by using so-called context clues. I would explain, again and again, that often the most important context for understanding the meaning of a word is the word itself, something that you can find only by using a dictionary. In other words, there’s no need to guess. And if you do guess, there’s no way to know if you’re right.

I wonder in retrospect about so many elements of college life. I wonder about the extent to which the dreary professorial practice of outlining the textbook on “the board” is not merely a matter of professorial laziness but a way to compensate, consciously or unconsciously, for students’ weaknesses as readers. And I wonder about the extent to which the decline of interest in the humanities might be explained at least in part by the difficulty so many college students have with the mechanics of reading. Figuring out the words is, for many college students, just plain hard — because they were never properly taught how.

Your curriculum and others like it have done, I believe, great damage to the cause of reading. When so few elementary-school students (even pre-pandemic) can read at grade level, when so many high-school and college students profess to “hate reading,” it’s clear that something has gone wrong.

Sincerely, &c.

My e-mail to Professor Calkins added that though my family had books and The New York Times in the house, we had no monogrammed towels. From Calkins’s The Art of Teaching Writing (1994): “They [student writers] will ask about the monogram letters on their bath towels and the words on their sweatshirts.” Is it privilege yet?

*

In Education Week, Calkins has responded to Sold a Story (without mentioning it by name) by mischaracterizing advocates of instruction in phonics:

The message that has been pushed out by some phonics advocates, and that has trickled down to parents and even some educators, is an oversimplified one: If only teachers would teach phonics exclusively, then presto, all the reading problems in the world would vanish.

No one pushes out that message. No one would advocate teaching phonics exclusively or claim that phonics solves all reading difficulty. But phonics is a foundation. Without a foundation, you’re likely to be on shaky ground.

Related reading
A few OCA Sold a Story posts

Veterans Day

[From a letter to The New York Times, published as “Two Minutes’ Silence: Plans for the World-Wide Celebration of Armistice Day.” November 9, 1922.]

The first World War ended on November 11, 1918. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In 1954, Armistice Day became Veterans Day. I wonder what the writer of this letter would make of 2022.

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

The Deep Blue Sea (dir. Terence Davies, 2011). From the Terence Rattigan play, the story of a passionate woman (Rachel Weisz) caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, or two unsatisfactory alternatives: her marriage to a devoted, older, unexciting judge (Simon Russell Beale) or an affair with a reckless former RAF pilot who seems incapable of love (Tom Hiddleston). Strong overtones of Anna Karenina, which I trust are intended. In Davies fashion, the story arrives in pieces, one reality dissolving into another. The best moment belongs to Mrs. Elton, the landlady (Ann Mitchell), who speaks of what real love is: “It’s wiping someone’s ass or changing the sheets when they’ve wet themselves, and letting ’em keep their dignity so you can both go on.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949). I’ve written about this movie in several posts. It’s a perfect short noir. What I especially noticed this time: everyman Joe Norson (Farley Granger), having acted impulsively, madly, becomes something of a child in need of soothing care, even as his wife (Cathy O’Donnell) has just given birth to their son. Jean Hagen and Paul Kelly steal the movie: she, as an alcoholic singer; he, as a police captain flipping intercom switches and snapping orders. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Scarlet Hour (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1956). A noirish melodrama with overtones of Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. The main ingredients of the somewhat wobbly plot: an increasingly risky affair between a real-estate developer’s wife (Carol Ohmart) and his top salesman (Tom Tryon), a furtive tryst on a country road, a heist scheme overheard, and a heist gone wrong. As the developer, James Gregory is alternately brutal and conciliatory; as the developer’s wife, Carol Ohmart suggests Phyllis Dietrichson’s icy calculation and Norma Desmond’s desperation. It’s fun to see Edward Binns, Nat “King” Cole, David Lewis (an exec in The Apartment), E.G. Marshall, Elaine Stritch (who hated the movie), and “Tom” Tryon, whom I know as Thomas Tryon, as I wrote a book report on his novel The Other in tenth grade. ★★★ (YT)

*

So Ends Our Night (dir. John Cromwell, 1941). “This is a story of the people without passports”: Fredric March, Glenn Ford, and Margaret Sullavan as three German refugees, the first a political dissident, the other two Jewish, now moving from country to country, always in danger of discovery and deportation because they lack the necessary documents. It’s especially painful to see Ford’s and Sullavan’s characters dream of a life in the United States when we know how the odds would have been stacked against that. The movie’s one weakness might be its ultra-episodic organization, but the director is telling a big story, and the constant shifts in scene and tone reflect the unpredictability of life without a home: things happen. Ford and Sullavan are especially good here, and Leonid Kinskey and Erich von Stroheim add comedy and menace to the proceedings. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel The Passenger would make a great complement to this movie.]

*

Cage of Evil (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1960). Eddie Mueller apologized for this one. It is pretty bad, but, alas, not bad enough to be good — just stupid. Scott Harper (Ronald Foster), a cop improbably headed for a promotion, and Holly Taylor (Pat Blair), a crook’s girl, get together in an improbable scheme to make off with some uncut diamonds. With a dopey voiceover by John Maxwell as Foster’s superior, a brief appearance by Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from Adventures of Superman), and one awkwardly funny moment when Scott is surprised to meet up with his fellow cops as he’s about to sell the diamonds. ★ (TCM)

*

The Iron Curtain (dir. William Wellman, 1948). A story of espionage and renunciation, from the memoirs of Igor Gouzenko, told in semi-documentary style with a voiceover by Reed Hadley. Dana Andrews is Gouzenko, a code expert working at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa; Gene Tierney is his wife Anna. When Igor (with help from Anna) begins to recognize the shared humanity of his Canadian neighbors, he makes a decision that puts him and his relatives back home in danger. With music from Russian composers and stylish shadows from cinematographer Charles G.Clarke. ★★★★ (YT)

*

My Cousin Rachel (dir. Henry Koster, 1952). From a novel by Daphne Du Maurier: gothic noir, with cliffs, a great house by the sea, overtones of Hamlet (and Rebecca), and ambiguities that never resolve. Olivia de Haviland is Rachel Ashley, widow of Ambrose Ashley (John Sutton), the beloved guardian and cousin of Philip Ashley (Richard Burton). Philip suspects Rachel of killing Ambrose in Italy, but finds himself falling in love with her when she comes to visit the great house in England. De Haviland and Burton are superb: a cool cipher and a younger man utterly besotted. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Chicago Confidential (dir. Sidney Salkow, 1957) I chose it after seeing that the first scene was shot on location. But that was false advertising; all other locations are on sets. The movie tells a story of racketeers taking over a union (the Workers National Brotherhood, which seems like a thinly disguised version of the Teamsters) and using any means necessary to establish their authority. Four pluses: a nerdy demonstration of voice analysis via oscilloscope, an impressionist’s nightclub act, a spirited performance from Beverly Garland (Barbara Harper Douglas on My Three Sons), and a moment straight from The 39 Steps, which I am happy to have predicted. ★★ (YT)

*

Take My Life (dir. Ronald Neame, 1947). From the magical year 1947, a Hitchcockian story of a man wrongly accused of murder (Hugh Williams) and his wife’s (Greta Gynt) effort to establish his innocence. The musical backdrop — she’s an opera singer, he’s her manager — matters little, save for one melody, found on a sheet of music paper in a suitcase. The movie drags in the middle but quickens considerably when the story moves from London to Scotland. The near-duplication of a scene from Shadow of a Doubt is astonishing in its shamelessness. ★★★ (IA)

*

Exposed (dir. George Blair, 1947). A Republic Picture, with Adele Mara as private detective B. Prentice. A dumb effort with some snappy patter. “He’s a bad egg, honey.” “Don’t worry — I’ll scramble him.” ★★ (YT)

*

Moss Rose (dir. Gregory Ratoff, 1947). Victorian noir: Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy) as a chorus girl in Victorian England who finds her friend and fellow dancer dead, with a Bible and a moss rose on her night table. But whodunit? With Victor Mature as a suave foreign-looking gentleman, Patricia Medina as his jealous fiancée, and Ethel Barrymore as his mother. And Vincent Price as a Scotland Yard inspector with extensive knowledge of flowers. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Baron of Arizona (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1950). Based on the true story of James Reavis, who laid fraudulent claim to the territory of Arizona. Vincent Price is Reavis, an arrogant, slick fabulator, and any resemblance to any present-day fabulator is pure coincidence. With Beulah Bondi, Ellen Drew, and Reed Hadley as a narrator and character. Exciting to see a movie in which ink is a crucial plot element. ★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

WWDFWS

A remarkable premise: a VR headset that kills the user after a lost game. What would David Foster Wallace say?

Related reading
All OCA DFW posts (Pinboard)

[Readers of Infinite Jest will recall “the Entertainment.”]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger if not more helpful view.]

I couldn’t resist. But I’m guessing that someone will know who’s under wraps here. Leave your answer in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

Here’s a hint before I head out for a walk: when the bandages come off, he’ll have a new life and the face of a famous actor.

*

All is now revealed in the comments, with a link to a screenshot without bandages.

More mystery actors
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Today’s Nancy

In today’s Nancy, repurposed Halloween decorations. I wonder if the rainbow is meaningful.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

About last night

In Illinois: we have a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, &c. Voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. (No thanks to downstate voters there.) Two friends of ours were reelected to the county board (the only Democrats). And we still have Mary Miller to disgrace us on the national stage (though her pal Lauren Boebert may be on her way out).

The national news last night was good, at least better than many people expected. Elaine and I stayed up late enough to hear John Fetterman speak. This morning I noticed a tweet from Asha Rangappa:

Maybe the GOP will realize that Trump getting indicted and going to jail may not be a bad thing.

And with Letitia James and Kathy Hochul reelected, there’d be no pardon to await in New York State.

Carrying a torch

From the latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, posted thirty-three minutes ago:

I just got a text from a Gen Z voter in Michigan who has been in line to vote for more than an hour and predicts he will be there hours more. He has no intention of leaving. If there is an obvious story from today with results still unknown, it is this: a new generation is picking up the torch of our democracy.