The Milky Way

My friend Luanne shared a surprise. The phrase “the Milky Way” first appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House of Fame (c. 1380):

“Now,” quod he thoo, “cast up thyn yë.
Se yonder, loo, the Galaxie,
Which men clepeth the Milky Way,
For hit ys whit (and somme, parfey,
Kallen hyt Watlynge Strete)”

Why Galaxie? The OED explains: “post-classical Latin galaxias Milky Way.”

Why Milky Way? The OED explains: “after classical Latin lactea via.”

And why Watlynge Strete? My ancient edition of Chaucer (ed. F.N. Robinson, 1957) explains:

Watlynge Strete, a famous old road, which probably ran from Kent to the Firth of Forth. The Milky Way was called “Watling street” or “Walsingham way” in England, just as it was known in southern Europe as “la via di San Jacopo” (the way to Santiago) and “la strada di Roma” (the way to Rome).

Richard Abbott offers a correction about Watling Street in the comments: “Modern thinking, based on Roman route itineraries, is that it actually goes from Kent roughly north-west through London to Wroxeter.” He adds much more about Watling Street. Here’s a modern-day journey on the street. And from the BBC, “The road that led to 1,000 stories.” Among them: The Canterbury Tales.

[“Now,” quoth he, “cast up your eye. See yonder, lo, the Galaxy, which men call the Milky Way, for it is white (and some, by my faith, call it Watling Street).”]

Succession, sheesh

“I thought it might be time for you and I to move on.”

All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

[The Times calls this first episode “lively and highly entertaining.” I found it a snorefest. Watch people make calls to negotiate a deal — fun!]

NYT vs. Guardian

A cult leader held a gathering with followers yesterday in Waco, Texas. Here’s an account from The New York Times. And here’s an account from The Guardian. Which one gives a better sense of what happened?

I’ll offer just one detail. From the Times:

From the stage, Mr. Trump notably did not attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, in the kind of caustic terms that he had used on social media in recent days. This past week, he had called Mr. Bragg, who is Black, an “animal” and accused him of racism for pursuing a case based on hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. . . .

He did attack one of Mr. Bragg’s senior counsels by name, noting that he came to the office from the Justice Department and describing the move, without evidence, as part of a national conspiracy. “They couldn’t get it done in Washington, so they said, ‘Let’s use local offices,’” Mr. Trump said.

What the Times doesn’t report, and what The Guardian does report, is that Trump** called New York prosecutors “absolute human scum.” Here’s the video. “Human scum” is what he called Bragg last week on his faux-Twitter. Kinda caustic if you ask me.

I left a comment on the Times article, noting that it’s a remarkably demure account of yesterday’s cult gathering. Letting the details go unreported increases the danger that Trump** and his followers pose to our democracy.

*

4:00 p.m.: I have to add one more contrast. The Times:

The rally featured one new twist: the playing of “Justice for All,” a song featuring the J6 Prison Choir, which is made up of men who were imprisoned for their part in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The song, which topped some iTunes download charts, is part of a broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to reframe the riot and the effort to overturn the election as patriotic. The track features the men singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while Mr. Trump recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

And The Guardian:

He opened the rally by playing a song, “Justice for All”, that features a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing the national anthem intercut with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Trump stood solemnly on a podium with hand on heart and footage from the Capitol riot was shown on big screens and US flags billowed in the wind. “That song tells you a lot because it’s number one in every single category,” he told a crowd of thousands. “Number two was Taylor Swift, number three was Miley Cyrus.”

Footage from January 6, shown as something to celebrate, another detail the Times omits.

The Times hasn’t published my comment, perhaps because the paper prohibits “namecalling” and I referred to Trump** and his followers as fascists.

*

7:30 p.m.: I tried another comment, minus “fascists” and “absolute human scum,” and it got through.

[Two impeachments, two asterisks. And an untold number of crimes.]

The shadows

[2516 Hughes Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Residential blocks are seldom the most compelling viewing in the WPA tax photographs. But then a building shows up with people looking out from windows and doorways, watching the photographers, and a block has interest. Or there’s a kid stuck minding the baby carriage, and lots of long shadows in the foreground. And one mysteriously long, long shadow. How? Why? The shadows know.

Today the corner where this residence and others stood is home to the Avicenna Surgery Center.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

What I’d like to see in Succession

The fourth and final season of Succession begins tomorrow. What I’d like to see: a far greater exploration of the family past. The opening credits are entirely about the childhood world of the Roy offspring, but we’ve learned about that world only in dribs and drabs. Or maybe just dribs. What, for instance, became of Connor’s mother? We have no idea. And further back: what happened to Logan Roy’s sister Rose? I’d like to learn something that might make the Roys appear more than merely hateful, scheming, and inane. Or if they are to remain merely hateful, scheming, and inane, I’d like at least to learn something that would do more to account for the family dynamic.

I’m thinking especially about an enigmatic moment in the opening credits: a glimpse of a woman reclining on a chaise longue, looking across a lawn. Then again, it may not be meant as enigmatic: it may be just one more surface detail of privilege.

And I’d like to learn what Tom Wambsgans is really all about.

[I think my general problem with Succession is that I keep expecting it to be more than it is.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg. It’s tough, knotty, difficult, formidable. (And I just accounted for all its answers — of one, two, three, and four syllables.) I missed by one square: having come up with a wholly plausible answer for 1-A, four letters, “Dough additive,” an answer that I never thought to second-guess, I assumed that the resulting answer for 1-D, four letters, “Plotter's preparations” was strained and Stumpery. But it was just wrong.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, thirteen letters, “Stay out all night.” Nice.

9-A, three letters, “Entryway adorned with a butterfly.” Pretty strained.

10-D, five letters, “Cliffside debris.” I like this word.

16-A, ten letters, “Publishing bottleneck.” A novel answer, no pun intended.

23-A, eight letters, “Dander-free pets.” Elaine approved of this clue when I ran it by her, but as she also points out, apples are a gluten-free food. And I am writing at a dander-free desk, on a fragrance-free MacBook Air. There’s something odd about calling these critters dander-free.

26-D, ten letters, “Multi-milk Mexican dessert.” A giveaway, I think, but I’ll take it.

38-A, eleven letters, “Small corner gatherings.” Clever.

43-A, eight letters, “Person paid to wave.” I think the Saturday Stumper is a bit obsessed with this line of work, or clueing.

45-A, eight letters, “Third quarters.” Stumpery.

My favorite in this puzzle, because it broke things open and because I got the answer from nothing more than its last three letters: 17-D, thirteen letters, “Contemporary office trend.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“You’re sitting in a tree, Cath”

Catherine is troubled. She and Peter Schiller went down the hill together, on one sled, he on top of her. He said “Love you” or “I love you” in her ear.

Steven Millhauser, “The Sledding Party,” in In the Penny Arcade (1986).

A Salingeresque moment, I’d say.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Ducks?

[“Sole Music.” Zippy, March 25, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Zippy made me wonder: are they still called duck boots?

A DuckDuckGo search (heh) for l l bean duck boots turns up L.L. Bean pages with duck in the title: e.g., “The Original Duck Boot”. But go the page, and there’s no duck. Look at the page source (which I don’t really know how to make sense of), and duck is in there. Search the Bean site for duck boots, and boots show up, minus duck. Search the Bean site for duck alone, and nothing shows up. But: “We did find results for ‘duskiness.’”

My guess is that associations with guns and hunting make it simpler for L.L. Bean to keep the duck part quiet.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[The label on my newish Bean Boot Gumshoes says “Bean Boots.” My old ones wore out after thirty years or so.]

“God, you’re prejudiced”

Eleanor Schumann, a chronic absentee, a high-school Annabel Lee (though she hates Poe), keeper of her own Childhood Museum (accessed via a door in the back wall of a closet), has changed. Arthur Grumm, who visits Eleanor in her bedroom after school, doesn’t like it.

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

That’s the last passage I’m posting from Portrait of a Romantic, It’s a terrific novel, exploring several varieties of adolescent experience, as recounted by a former adolescent — twenty-nine-year-old Grumm, one who made it out, at least sort of.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Perimeter oscillations

Wow:

The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations. This new identity manifests itself in an authentic geometry that is to become proprietary to the Pepsi culture.

I’m not sure how I came to notice this document, a 2008 working proposal for a redesign of the Pepsi logo by “brand guru” Peter Arnell. Newsweek deemed it real. If it’s not real, it’s at least real gone.

[Speaking of branding: Pepsi-Cola became Pepsi in 1961. Who knew?]