A source for Columbo

Porfiry Petrovich (no family name) is the principal investigator of a double murder. He is speaking to Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, translated by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 2021).

At the 278-page mark, this novel just became interesting in a new way. Elaine and I, independent of each another, each wrote Columbo in our margins. So I’m happy to see that Lieutenant Columbo’s creators, Richard Levinson and William Link, named Porfiry Petrovich as a model for their character. Some years back, I thought that the little detective in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques had something to do with the character of Columbo. And I still think that Dickens’s Inspector Bucket, with his invisible wife and missing first name, is in there somewhere.

Two related posts
Columbo’s notebook : Separated at birth: Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, William Hopper

[Re Columbo’s first name, see here.]

A source of swing?

“Nearly imperceptible delays in soloists’ timing contribute to the music’s signature rhythm”: from Science News, a claim about where jazz gets its swing.

Try listening to the two music samples therein (fifty-two seconds of the Duke Jordan composition “Jordu”). I have to admit that I hear no difference between them. The study described in the article includes a an online gizmo that allows the user to try different “swing ratios” with a six-second sample of “Jordu.”

A more satisfying musical experience: hearing Duke Jordan himself play “Jordu.”

Thanks, Frank.

Related reading
All OCA jazz posts (Pinboard)

“Machinery”

[John Cowhey & Sons, 440 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

A recent Zippy strip featured a Mrs. Gowanus, which made me think of the Gowanus Canal, and I ended up wandering around the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Thus I found myself at the corner of Van Brunt and Beard Streets.

I chose this photograph for the quotation marks around “MACHINERY,” which add, at least in my fevered imagination, an ominous tinge to the premises. We brought the “machinery,” boss, just like you asked. Marine equipment, anchors, chains — yikes. I think of Salvatore Bonpensiero being taken on his last boat ride: “Get the weights.”

In reality though, John Cowhey was, as far as I can tell, an upstanding Brooklynite.

[Brooklyn Times-Union, October 9, 1912.]

The following paragraph must be about a son John, as the article in which it appears says that this John and two other businessmen in the area are “fast friends”:

[“Ex-Barnacle Fighter Finds Waterproofing Skyscrapers Like Painting Ship Hulls.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 25, 1929.]

Here’s another Cowhey son:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 2, 1937.]

A story that would be a bit scarier if the subhead didn’t give it away:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 20, 1931.]

And a photograph accompanying the article:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 20, 1931. Click for a larger view.]

Brooklyn Newsstand turns up several articles about a lurid story with the Cowhey name: in February 1884, an Annie and John Cowhey, sister and brother, were accused of killing their father Denis Cowhey and their sister and brother-in-law Catharine (Kate) and Thomas Collier (or Collyer — it’s spelled both ways, sometimes in the same article). The three died from arsenic added to soup and hash. Given the absence of any reference to the well-known Cowhey & Sons in articles about the murders, I’ll guess that this John Cowhey has no connection to 440 Van Brunt. And for what it’s worth, he is described as a former stone-cutter who tended bar. The Cowhey siblings were never prosecuted.

The most interesting detail about this case: a young woman matching a description of Annie Cowhey purchased two boxes of Rough on Rats poison, one before Denis Cowhey’s death, the other before the Colliers’ deaths. But Catharine Collier was deemed the likely killer: she did not want her father to remarry and, after killing him, was believed to have become desperate.

[The Delineator, January 1905.]

I have begun to realize that it’s impossible to just find a nifty photograph, post it, and be done.

The 440 location is now a private residence, with six bedrooms, six bathrooms, and 9,149 square feet. Pretty severe looking, if you ask me, or Google Maps.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

“Sort of a dull ashtray”

In today’s Zippy, Bill Griffith remembers his wife and fellow artist, Diane Noomin. There was a New York Times obituary.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Another leak

Extraordinary news in The New York Times: “Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach.” The former leader is the Reverend Rob Schenck, who has modified his view of abortion and is now, the Times says, redefining himself as “a progressive evangelical leader”:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice [Samuel] Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law and corporations’ ability to claim religious rights.

Matthew Butterick, who made a brilliant analysis of the leaked PDF of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft decision, has commented on Alito’s denial. From the Times:

Justice Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, denied disclosing the decision. He said that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights, and did not dispute that the two couples ate together on June 3, 2014. But the justice said that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.”

And Butterick:

Unfortunately, this is the kind of denial that raises more questions than it answers due to the deliberately narrow phrase “were told”. The denial would remain true even if, say, Ms. Alito had put a copy of the draft opinion on the table, allowed Ms. Wright to look it over, and then taken it back — no “telling”, just showing.

You can read Butterick’s analysis on the PDF and his comments on the Schenck story here.

I am moved to poetry:

Did Samuel Alito
Think it was neato
To spill SCOTUS beans in advance?

He’s gotta deny it,
And say he kept quiet,
But what’s that I smell? Burning pants.

[Note: I am not saying that Alito is not telling the truth.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. I think it’s on the easy side, with the right half being more immediately doable than the left. I started with — gulp — the fifteen-letter answer for 17-A, “Not before that specific moment.” That feels like a gimme to me. Was it meant to be?

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, thirteen letters, “Infomercial order.” I have watched many an infomercial for sick fun. (The Magic Bullet is our fambly’s favorite.) But this answer doesn’t ring true to me.

7-D, three letters, “Protective layer.” Short and sweet.

10-D, eleven letters, “Excursions with escorts.” Not that kind of escort. This answer fills me with nostalgia.

12-D, six letters, “Reached out electronically.” I haven’t thought it this verb in years.

20-A, six letters, “Word from Malay for “sheath.’” Lifelong learning!

23-D, eleven letters, “Unimaginative.” I think the humdrum answer is a meta joke.

29-D, four letters, “Start to trust.” Clever.

40-A, six letters, “Start back.” The kind of answer that I second-guess even when I’m sure it must be right.

44-D, six letters, “‘Stupidity is a ____ for misconception’: Poe.” Yep, investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. That’s what the voters want you to do.

56-A, fifteen letters, “Turnoff before checking in.” I kept thinking about interstate exits.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

FTX fortunes

Many months ago our favorite restaurant (Thai) began handing out fortune cookies with FTX advertising on one side. Tonight’s fortune, or observation: “Sometimes it’s hard to imagine life before this.”

I wonder how long it’ll be before these fortunes disappear.

A letter to Dr. Laura Schlessinger

From Letters of Note, a letter from Kent Ashcraft, a musician, with some hilarious questions for Dr. Laura Schlessinger about biblical do s and don’t s. Here’s one question:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Leviticus 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

Context, from Wikipedia:

Over the years, Schlessinger expressed opposition to homosexuality based on biblical scripture, at one point referring to homosexual behavior as “products of a biological disorder.” Her rhetoric eventually prompted an open letter penned in the year 2000 responding to her position that used text of Bible decrees.

I can think of at least one congressional representative to whom I’d like to send this letter, Illinois’s own Mary Miller. She’s already ranting about the Respect for Marriage Act, which she calls the “Anti-Marriage Act.”

[Whatever became of Laura Schlessinger? She’s on satellite radio. And she really has a doctorate, in physiology, from Columbia University. Holy smokes! No pun on the burning bull.]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with homer.

Today’s Zippy ’s yesterday

“How much time do we spend remembering the past?” Today’s Zippy is one for the ages.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Here’s why I added 12ft.io to the link.]