Gray’s Papaya’s Nicholas Gray

The New York Times has an obituary for Nicholas Gray, the Gray of Gray’s Papaya.

Gray’s Papaya is a wonderful place to stop if you’re in Manhattan. And yes, “you chew standing.”

About reading

Catherine Rampell, writing in The Washington Post :

Amid debates about how children will process texts invoking racism or sexual identity, a much more basic question plagues our educational system: whether children can process texts, period.

And:

It is disheartening that the culture wars have come for not just lesson plans but librarians, too. Librarians are instrumental in promoting literacy. They guide students toward texts that will absorb and engage them. They nudge kids toward books, films, periodicals and online resources that will answer burning, sometimes embarrassing questions.

Perhaps most important, they teach children how to critically evaluate the credibility of their sources — not only the tomes on library shelves but also whatever they might find in the Wild West of TikTok and Reddit, where protective parents are less able to gate-keep.

Call me old-school, but maybe we should devote less energy to limiting what kids are reading and more to whether they can read at all.

Related reading
A few OCA Sold a Story posts

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave a name in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

I’ve just seen a face

Related reading
All OCA pareidolia posts (Pinboard)

When writers go on strike

What? From The New York Times:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is planning to announce the start of his 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday in a live audio conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, the platform’s polarizing owner, according to people with knowledge of his plans.

That’s the kind of laughably crappy storyline you’re left with when writers go on strike.

Mimestream out of beta

Mimestream, the great Gmail client for Mac, is out of beta and thus no longer available for free. I’ve been using Mimestream since November 2021. As I wrote back then, “I plan to pay for the app when it goes to market, even (so help me) if it’s available only by subscription.” It is now available by subscription only, and I have kept my word.

“The three-ring kind”

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

Pretzels turn up here and there in Steven Millhauser’s fiction: rods, sticks, and (elsewhere) three-ringers. I think of them as a marker of mid-century American life, like plaid thermoses and transistor radios. One of the books on Edwin Mullhouse’s bookshelf when he’s two and three: The Little Pretzel Who Had No Salt.

Here is the pretzel form that young Catherine is missing:

[Life, March 8, 1968. Click for a larger, saltier view.]

Raise your hand if you remember when pretzels came in waxed-paper bags enclosed in carboard boxes. Raise your hand if you remember when “salty” was a selling point.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Alembic, humph

[New York Times Spelling Bee, May 23, 2023.]

I thought that alembic would be one of today’s pangrams. “Not in word list,” says the Bee. Humph.

Merriam-Webster has it covered: “an apparatus used in distillation,” “something that refines or transmutes as if by distillation.” There’s even an illustration.

Sample sentence: “I thought that alembic would be one of today’s pangrams.”

“Reachable by rowboat”

The New Dressler is no ordinary hotel.

Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996).

If this description piques your interest, read the novel and discover the wonders of Martin Dressler’s next hotel, the Grand Cosmo.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

A word of a day: gamut

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day yesterday was gamut. Dig its origin:

The first note on the scale of Guido d’Arezzo, an 11th century musician and monk who had his own way of applying syllables to musical tones, was ut. D’Arezzo also called the first line of his bass staff gamma, which meant that gamma ut was the term for a note written on the first staff line. In time, gamma ut underwent a shortening to gamut, and later its meaning expanded first to cover all the notes of d’Arezzo’s scale, then to cover all the notes in the range of an instrument, and, eventually, to cover an entire range of any sort.

The American Heritage Dictionary entry for gamut provides a helpful gloss on ut :

first word in a Latin hymn to Saint John the Baptist, the initial syllables of successive lines of which were sung to the notes of an ascending scale CDEFGA: Ut queant laxis re sonare fibris Mi ra gestorum fa muli tuorum, Sol ve polluti la bii reatum, Sancte Iohannes.

A Wikipedia article about the hymn “Ut queant laxis” has much more, including the addition of the note si, later ti, a drink with jam and bread.

On a related note: here are Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, and Van Dyke Parks, performing Woody Guthrie’s Do Re Mi.

[Too late: after writing this post, I discovered that gamut was the subject of a less detailed 2005 OCA post. I’ve capitalized the name d’Arezzo in the second sentence of the passage from Merriam-Webster. From The Chicago Manual of Style, 8.5, “Names with particles”: “When the surname is used alone, the particle is usually (but not always) retained, capitalized or lowercased and spaced as in the full name (though always capitalized when beginning a sentence or a note).”]