Brooklyn in the news

From Gothamist:

Nearly every Sunday morning for four years, residents of a quiet block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn woke up to reams of paper dumped on their street. A serial litterer was precisely slicing pages from old Reader’s Digests, Bibles, junk mail and 1970s porn magazines before dumping them on tree-lined Noble Street between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street. Surveillance videos captured the driver tossing the pages from his car before sunrise.

Who? Why? You’ll have to click through for an answer to, at least, the first question.

[I’m reminded of the Toynbee tiles. I got to see one in 2017.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. I started with 1-D, four letters, “Small row” and 14-A, five letters, “Artistic lamentation.” The puzzle soon grew more difficult, and one clue gave me fits.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note, including the fit one:

5-D, fourteen letters, “Steamers, for instance.” Wow, or whoa. I was thinking clams.

16-D, fourteen letters, “Expression of lost love lamentation.” Wow again. I loved seeing the answer in a crossword.

19-A, seven letters, “Overemotional oratory.” The form of the answer makes the clue tricky.

22-A, five letters, “Name on the ACC member list.” Perversely trivial. And is the answer even a name? I don’t think so.

33-A, nine letters, “Haydn opera.” The clue that gave me fits. Even if the answer is correct — and Elaine says it’s not — the clue is just ridic. More in the comments.

35-A, fifteen letters, “Symbol of proletarian solidarity.” If you say so. But I don’t think many working people would recognize it as such.

41-D, three letters, “With 42 Down, Palme d’Or winner for 1993.” Random trivia, which I hugely dislike in crosswords. Ah, yes, the ’93 winner, not ’92 or ’94. Who knows this, and who’ll remember it a week from now? And I always dislike common words clued as trivia.

43-A, five letters, “Evidence of encryption.” I am happy to say I knew it.

49-A, seven letters, “Onetime big name in beverages.” Onetime? I have a bottle of their gin (cheap!) in the kitchen. But the clue might have more to do with corporate history than with a name present on store shelves.

My favorite in this puzzle: 45-D, five letters, “What a loud barker might be called.” Just plain clever.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments, along with more about 33-A.

Tony Bennett (1926–2023)

Tony Bennett has died at the age of ninety-six. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link).

From Whitney Balliett’s American Singers: Twenty-Seven Portraits in Song (1988):

Alec Wilder, who has known Bennett for many years, once wrote, “The list of ’believers’ isn’t very long. But those who are on it are very special people. Among them, certainly, is Tony Bennett. But first I should say what I mean by a believer. He is one whose sights stay high, who makes as few concessions as he can, whose ideals will not permit him to follow false trails or fashions for notoriety’s or security’s sake, who takes chances, who seeks to convey, by whatever means, his affections and convictions, and who has faith in the power of beauty to survive, no matter how much squalor and ugliness seek to suppress it. I am close enough to him to know that his insistence on maintaining his musical convictions has been far from easy. His effervescent delight in bringing to his audiences the best songs, the best musicians, the best of his singing and showmanship is apparent to anyone who has the good sense to listen to him in person or on records.”

Here are just two samples of Tony Bennett with Bill Evans, both from On the Town, words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Leonard Bernstein: “Lucky to Be Me” and “Some Other Time.”

[Sorry, New York Times, Tony Bennett was not, as your headline has it, a “jazzy crooner.”]

Lisa Desjardins, Geoff Bennett, and Paul Offitt on RFK Jr.

On the PBS NewsHour last night, Lisa Desjardins examined Robert F. Kennedy’s claims about vaccinations and COVID-19, and Geoff Bennett interviewed Dr. Paul Offitt, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Just one excerpt, with a story that‘s new to me:

Bennett: You also point to one episode where he spoke out against the measles vaccine. What was the impact of that?

Offitt: In Samoa [in 2018], there were two children that died immediately following receipt of a measles vaccine. And the way it works into Samoa is, they have a MMR vaccine in powdered form. It needs to be diluted in water. Two nurses made a mistake. Instead of diluting it in water, they diluted it in a muscle relaxant. Those children stopped breathing and died immediately. Now, very quickly, within two weeks, it was realized what that mistake was. It was a nursing error.

But, nonetheless, RFK Jr. seized on that. He flooded Facebook with information that measles vaccine is killing children in Samoa. He went to Samoa. He met with anti-vaccine activists. He met with senior officials in Samoa and kept the drumbeat alive that measles vaccine was killing children in Samoa. As a consequence, vaccination rates fell from 70 percent to 30 percent. And between September and December of 2019, there was a massive measles epidemic.

In this island nation of 200,000 people, there were 57,000 cases of measles and 83 deaths. Most of those deaths were in children less than four years of age. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had everything to do with that. And that shows you how disinformation can kill.

Here’s a BBC report on what happened in Samoa.

This NewsHour segment should be shared widely. I’m sharing it with the tens of people who are likely to see this post.

Sardines, paste, pasta

Here’s a recipe for sardine paste. Paste? As Steven points out, pâté would sound far more appetizing. Thanks, Steven.

And here’s a description of Nigella Lawson’s sardines and spaghetti, heralded as “the dish of summer.”

I know that when it comes to cooking, there is very little that’s new under the sun. In 2015 The Crow wrote about a then-forty-year-old memory of sardines and cavatini. And shortly thereafter, Chris at Dreamers Rise left a comment on this blog about making sardines with linguine. Which in turn inspired me to try sardines with capellini. Mangia.

Related reading
All OCA sardines posts (Pinboard)

[The article about the Lawson recipe describes a “tomatoey” dish, but there are no tomatoes in the recipe.]

Elements of Style reviewed

“At its best when it limns the gap between the seemingly straightforward advice of Strunk and White (use active voice, avoid needless words) with [and?] the messiness of the ensemble’s lived experiences”: from a Chicago Reader review of the Neo-Futurist stage show Elements of Style.

I can’t claim to understand what this show is about, but I at least know it’s there.

Related posts
The Elements on the stage : All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)

Ikea phone index-card stand

[Click for a larger stand.]

When we were out in Los Angeles for a few days, our daughter Rachel gave us each an Ikea phone stand. A nifty gift for those who have traveled with just a backpack apiece.

There’s just one problem with these stands: they don’t accommodate a phone in a case, at least not our phones. But the stands make great index-card holders. I’m very happy to have repurposed another household item for stationery purposes.

Thank you, Rachel.

More repurposing
Cooling rack : Dish drainer : Doorstop : Shaving-cream caps : Tea tin : More tea tins : Yogurt jar

Unchained medley

We were driving past an Applebee’s, so I gave out with a faux-spirited rendition of the Cheers theme, a song not long ago in use in the chain’s television commercials, ending with “You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”

And Elaine sang in reply, “I wanna be where the people are.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Coming soon

From The New York Times:

Former President Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that he recently received a so-called target letter from the special counsel Jack Smith in connection with the criminal investigation into his efforts to hold onto power after he lost the 2020 election, a sign that he is likely to be indicted in the case.

It would be the second time Mr. Smith has notified Mr. Trump that he is a target in a federal investigation. The first, in June, was in connection to the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of national defense material after he left office and his alleged obstruction of efforts to retrieve it.

“The lower fishbody”

A dead mermaid washes up on the shore of a public beach, and a town responds.

Steven Millhauser, “Mermaid Fever,” in Voices in the Night (2015).

And suddently I’m seeing mermaids (and mermen): in the stylish low-budget movie Night Tide, with Dennis Hopper, in the Route 66 episode “The Cruelest Sea of All,” in the Netflix series Merpeople. And my young granddaughters are all in the grip of mermaid fever. The kids these days.

You can read “Mermaid Fever” at Harper’s.

Thanks, Chris, for recommending Night Tide.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)