“Home Run”

“Bottom of the ninth, two out, game tied, runners at the corners, the count full on McCluskey, the fans on their feet, this place is going wild”: so begins “Home Run,” a sentence-long story by Steven Millhauser. You won’t be disappointed.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

“And behold!”

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard) : A library slip: 1941, 1992

“And a bottle of blueblack ink”

Summer ending, as the future reaches into the present:

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Black inks

From Jet Pens: a guide to black inks for fountain pens.

For me, Aurora Black rules.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Even knowing she was in the movie, I had to consult the IMDb to figure out which character she played. But if you recognize her, or think you do, leave her name in the comments.

*

A hint: She knows the downtown scene.

*

Anyone who’d like to guess is still welome to, but I’ve put the name in the comments.

More mystery actors
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“Like a sky”

Meet William Mainwaring:

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Giving up the whole game

In the latest installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson addresses the assertion of CPAC speaker Michael Knowles that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Richardson points out that Knowles’s statement is not just an attack on transgender people. She makes a connection to Hungarian autocrat’s Victor Orbán’s efforts to end liberal democracy:

Tapping into the anti-LGBTQ sentiment that Orbán and those like him have used to win voters, the statement was a crucial salvo in the attempt to destroy American democracy and replace it with Christian nationalism.

But there is a very simple answer to the radical right’s attack on LGBTQ people that also answers their rejection of democracy. It is an answer that history has proved again and again. Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group.

A useful supplement, from Samuel Perry, professor of sociology: How can we spot #ChristianNationalism in the wild? And a related post: Mary Miller and trans rights.

Tip-Top Diner

[Tip-Top Diner, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The archives have the address as 2448 Prospect Avenue, which can’t be right: no. 2448 is at one end of a row of rowhouses. Looking at Street View of 1940s New York makes me think that this diner resided on Crotona Avenue, next to what is now the Grace H. Dodge Career and Technical High School. There’s a fenced lot where (I think) the diner once stood.

Tip-Top is a lovely name for a diner: it suggests, at least to my ear, a modest spiffiness. The plates and coffee cups shine. The water glasses gleam. The counterman is wearing a bowtie. No cigarette dangles from his lips.

I would have guessed tip-top to be a nineteenth- or twentieth-century invention. But no. The Oxford English Dictionary dates it to 1702. From its beginnings, it had both literal and figurative meanings: “the very top; the highest point or part; the extreme summit”; “highest pitch or degree; extreme height; acme.” The earliest citation, from a translation of Cicero: “When a Wise Man is at the Tip-top of all Felicity, can he wish Things were better with him?”

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

[Beer and ale? That’s a Ballantine billboard.]

System of laundry

Downstairs: folding, with two episodes of Lassie.

Upstairs: storing, with one side of the English Beat’s first LP.

[Whatever works.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell, whose name is roughly synonymous with “rough Stumper” (forty-one minutes for me). This Stumper has plentiful helpings (hinderings?) of the oblique (60-A, five letters, “Unavailing ID”), the obscure (15-A, nine letters, “TV debut of ’75”) and the “Huh?” (22-A, letters, “Penetrating”). I was surprised that I got the whole thing.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

9-D, six letters, “High point of the National Park Service.” I’m pleased with myself that I know how it’s spelled.

10-A, five letters, “Home worker’s activity.” KInda forced. I’d think of the answer as a state, not an activity.

12-D, letters, “Most-played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s.” It’s trivia night?

13-D, four letters, “Not in a long time.” Sneaky.

14-D, four letters, “Event to be found on active.com.” An arcane way to clue a familiar bit of crosswordese.

17-A, nine letters, “When the going rate’s reduced.” Almost a giveaway; the start might mislead.

27-D, ten letters, “What may end up on the cutting room floor.” More than slightly preposterous.

31-D, four letters, “City ___.” Where's my fedora?

35-A, fifteen letters, “Rap-battle venues.” Just a fun answer.

41-A, nine letters, “Captains’ commands.” Tricky.

51-D, four letters, “Fit to finish.” Stumpery.

56-A, nine letters, “Second restraining order.” Very clever.

59-A, nine letters, “Hong Kong medium of exchange.” Also very clever.

My favorite in this puzzle, just because the answer is so unusual: 11-D, eleven letters, “Global perspective.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.