A new book from Jerry Craft

[Top to bottom: Drew, Liam, Jordan. Click for a larger view.]

Jerry Craft, School Trip. New York: HarperCollins, 2023. 250 pp. $14.99.

        Drew: “You know, never really see kids like us
        traveling in books and movies.”

        Maury: “I wonder why that is.”

        Jordan: “Hmmm . . .”

As our story begins, middle-schooler Jordan Banks is still without his “big-boy stink.” If his classmates are to be believed, he smells of baby powder and sunshine. He’s still torn between staying on at Riverdale Academy Day School and switching to the High School of Music, Art, and Mime, to which he’s just been accepted. And now, with the gift of a new beret from his parents, he’s off to Paris, with eight other Riverdale kids — Alexandra (“girl Alex”), Andy, Ashley, Drew, Liam, Maury, Ramon, Samira — and two teachers, Messrs. Garner and Roche.

School Trip brings in a wealth of cultural material: French work and play (lengthy paid vacations, slow eating), French cuisine (croissants, escargot, ratatouille), French words in English (bon voyage, rendezvous ), Black Americans in Paris (Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Ollie Harrington, Richard Wright). There are recurring comic bits about English idioms (“Stop and smell the roses”) and language quirks (Why a pair of pants? Why pork and beef, not pig and cow ?). And of course, there’s sightseeing, with visits to the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and Sacré Couer, with child of wealth Maury leading the way.

But as Thomas Merton wrote, our real journey in life is interior. The kids’ room assignments lead to tension, the airing of grievances, truth-telling, apologies, and amends. The kids negotiate differences in economic status, race, and religion; ponder what it means to make a joke and what it means to be cruel; and come to understand the lasting pain of being bullied. All the kids are, as Jordan says, “new and improved kids” by the end of the trip — even obnoxious Andy.

Along the way, there’s a pre-Paris visit to a mall with a Banned Book Barn, a Jordan comic strip with a children's writer accused of having a “neo-faxo-harpo-marxo agenda” (“Lady, my book is about my puppy!” the writer replies), and a Riverdale Academy graphic-novel collection conspicuously devoid of two banned books that the librarian knows Jordan would like. As you may know, Jerry Craft’s New Kid and Class Act have been banned (really) for (supposedly) promulgating critical race theory. It’s Craft though who gets the last laugh here, as Jordan’s mom cautions her son about unrealistic art aspirations:

“Jordan Banks! You are a black kid who was born in Harlem and raised in Washington Heights . . .

“Do youreally think that one day you'll grow up to make some New York Times best-selling comic book that will win all the big literary awards, get translated into different languages, and then what? . . . get turned into a movie?”

Yes. (See the 3:47 mark.) It’s in development.

A related post
New Kid and Class Act, my review

Mother’s Day

[My mom, not yet a mom, in Florida, 1954. Photograph by my dad, not yet my dad. Shared with permission. Click for a larger view.]

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. At some points I’d say that I 54-A, nine letters, “Dispreferred” it. There’s some pretty strained cluing. At other points, I was tempted to utter a 52-A, eight letters, “Declaration of frustration.” But if one 34-A, fifteen letters, “Weighs carefully,” one might find that one 20-D, twelve letters, “Concludes deliberations” — and successfully so. Which I did. I started in two corners with 1-A, four letters, “Sheet used by Greek bakers”and 46-A, seven letters, “Bonus numbers.” Those corners came together easily. The rest of the puzzle was considerably tougher.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, five letters, “Measure named for an Einstein idol.” Because I can’t believe I knew it.

7-D, four letters, “They’re there to stay” and 24-D, five letters, “It’s there to stay.” Strained, strained.

10-D, nine letters, “Aboriginal rite of passage.” It helps to watch movies.

11-D, four letters, “Round tab.” This one baffled me until it didn’t.

16-A, nine letters, “Significant change.” Yes, it’s a Stumper.

19-A, eight letters, “Many people call on them.” I was thinking of classrooms and pleas to the gods.

28-A, three letters, “Got behind.” Oy.

36-D, six letters, “Literary adjustment from past narratives.” I just like knowing what this word means.

40-A, four letters, “Smaller size treats.” I was thinking of a brand name.

49-D, five letters, “Etymology sharer with ‘sire.’ ” Now it seems obvious.

50-A, six letters, “Squeaky clean.” Clever, and not that easy to see.

55-A, five letters, “Divisive device in the theater.” Solvers might divide over whether this clue is unnecessarily strained.

57-A, four letters, “Prefix meaning ‘song.’ ” Thank you, Ezra Pound.

My favorite: 58-A, four letters, “Soft hail,” making a bit of crosswordese live anew.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Einstein Plumbing

From Letters of Note, Albert Einstein’s response to a question about the treatment of intellectuals in the McCarthy years:

You have asked me what I thought about your articles concerning the situation of the scientists in America. Instead of trying to analyze the problem I may express my feeling in a short remark:

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

And plumbers responded.

.mov and .zip

Google has created eight new top-level domains, including .mov and .zip. Imagine the hilarity when someone clicks to open what appears to be a .mov or .zip file and gets taken to a sketchy website. Taken, indeed.

Here’s a harmless example: financialstatement.zip. As Stephen Hackett says, “Google has brought something terrible into the world.”

Recently updated

Van Dyke Parks in The Honeymooners He played Tommy Borden, not Tommy Manicotti.

Lollygagging

[Beetle Bailey, May 12, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

In the second panel of today’s Beetle Bailey, Beetle makes the effort the look up the meaning on his phone. “To spend time idling,” he reports. And Sarge accuses him of lollygoogling.

A good dictionary would reveal an interesting history for lollygag. From Merriam-Webster:

Since the 19th century, lollygag (sometimes also spelled lallygag) has been used as a slang word to describe acts of wasting time as well as displays of affection. Nowadays, lollygag doesn’t usually refer to flirting or cuddling, but back in 1946, one Navy captain considered lollygagging enough of a problem to issue this stern warning: “Lovemaking and lollygagging are hereby strictly forbidden. . . . The holding of hands, osculation and constant embracing of WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service], corpsmen or civilians and sailors or any combination of male and female personnel is a violation of naval discipline.”

The Oxford English Dictionary entry for lallygag (U.S. slang, origin unknown, “to fool around; to ‘neck’; to dawdle, to dally”) includes a citation from 1868 with this choice phrase: “lascivious lolly-gagging lumps of licentiousness.” (That sounds like something written by one of William Safire’s ancestors.) Green’s Dictionary of Slang has an entry for lallygag with a wealth of citations. The Google Ngram Viewer shows lolly- far outpacing the lollygagging lally-.

I think lollygoogle might have some usefulness as an arch way to describe idle searching, but I prefer to use DuckDuckGo.

[William Safire: responsible for Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism.” And if you’re now wondering: lollipop is a much older word that may derive from lolly, a dialect word for tongue. Might lollipop have something to do with lollygagging? Dunno.]

Portuguese canned fish

A website: Portuguese Canning Industry Digital Museum. The cans are here. The are four pages alone for brands beginning with A.

Found via Present & Correct.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Writing materials

Dolly Parton, talking to Melissa Block of NPR about songwriting:

Sometimes I get woke up in the middle of the night, because I often dream about singing songs. And I used to think I’d remember ’em, where I’ll be singing in a dream, and I know it’s not a song I know. And so I just try to keep a little tape recorder or notepad. But even on planes, I just write on a barf bag if I get an idea for a song. I just dig in my purse, try to find a pencil, and write on anything I can. That’s how all writers do it though, somebody that really writes all the time like I do.

Do you ever write with lipstick?

I’ve written with my lipstick, and I’ve written with an eyebrow pencil a lot.

Probably a little easier with an eyebrow pencil, I would think.

It’s a little better, a little easier.

More writing materials: Mercer Ellington said that in writing the non-autobiography Music Is My Mistress, his father Duke Ellington used hotel stationery, menus, and napkins.

Chris Strachwitz (1931–2023)

A different kind of record executive. From the New York Times obituary:

Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.

The documentary This Ain’t No Mouse Music! (dir. Maureen Gosling and Chris Simon, 2014) traces Strachwitz’s devotion to blues, bluegrass, norteño, Cajun music, and New Orleans jazz. The film streams at Kanopy, and it’s worth seeking out.