Phil’s Stationery

[From How To with John Wilson (2023). Click for a larger store.]

I was surprised and delighted to see Phil’s Stationery make a brief appearance in “How to Track Your Package,” the final episode of How To with John Wilson. When Elaine and I visited Phil’s in 2016, I was hoping to find an Ace hard rubber comb. O, reason not the need. I knew that at one time the store had a cache of the extinct Aces. Not any more. So we just started browsing.

The owner (not Phil) asked, “Are you from a production company?” No, we just liked stationery. It turns out that part of the business is furnishing vintage office supplies as props for film and television. I ended up going through a box of old pencils and picking out some choice ones for a friend who was about to retire from teaching. I remember also buying a magnifying thread-counter. O, reason not the need. Elaine chose some items as well. O, reason not her need either.

How does this store manage to make the rent in midtown Manhattan? If I remember correctly, the family owns the building.

Phil’s has made the pages of Ephemeral New York and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. The store has many happy customers, and I am happy to know that it’s still going.

TCRWP LC? LLC!

Teachers College, Columbia University is dissolving the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project:

Moving forward, TC wants to foster more conversations and collaboration among different evidence-based approaches to literacy, and ensure our programs are aligned with the needs of teachers and school districts looking to partner.

To support this objective, the work of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) and its staff will transition to an Advancing Literacy unit within TC’s Continuing Professional Studies (CPS) division for the 2023-2024 year, a return to its original professional development roots. The entity TCRWP, founded in 1981, will be dissolved as part of this shift. TC is working to align the work of TC staff with the needs of school districts and changes in reading curriculum locally and nationwide.

For many years, TCRWP’s founding director Lucy Calkins led efforts to support teachers as they develop students as readers and writers. Dr. Calkins has stepped down as Director of the Reading and Writing Project. She is Robinson Professor in Children's Literature at Teachers College, a tenured faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, on sabbatical during the 2023-2024 academic year.

“Many teachers credit TCRWP for creating communities of practice where teachers gain valuable resources and support,” says KerryAnn O’Meara, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost and Dean of the College. “TC is grateful to Dr. Calkins for her service.”

Dr. Calkins shares her expertise as a consultant through her own LLC. Teachers College is not involved in the operations or provision of services provided by Dr. Calkins in her LLC.

Notice some of the language of this statement:

~ “Evidence-based approaches”: that sounds, no pun intended, like phonics.

~ “Aligned with the needs of teachers and school districts”: because so many have dropped Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study curriculum.

~ “The needs of school districts and changes in reading curriculum locally and nationwide”: the New York City school system is one of many that have abandoned Calkins’s Units of Study curriculum.

~ “‘TC is grateful to Dr. Calkins for her service’”: my, that’s perfunctory. Yes, thank you for your service. I think we’re done here.

And what is Lucy Calkins doing on sabbatical? She’s doubling down and striking back against what she calls “fake reading wars” with an LLC, Rebalancing Literacy. In one of the videos on her website, she claims that podcasts and newspaper articles are scaring the public into thinking that teachers aren’t teaching children “their ABCs.” That’s not an accurate claim. Of course it’s not the alphabet that’s missing; it’s phonics.

One has to wonder why Calkins has created an LLC to do this work. Might she developing a new curriculum to market?

The best way to learn about what’s at stake in the so-called reading wars: listen to Emily Hanford’s podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong (American Public Media). It’s the most consequential podcast I’ve ever heard.

Last year I wrote an e-mail to Lucy Calkins and two other prominent advocates of so-called “balanced literacy,” sharing my thoughts after listening to Sold a Story. No replies, of course.

Related reading
A handful of OCA Sold a Story posts (Pinboard)

[The post title: TCRWP is no more. What’s Lucy Calkins going to do? Create an LLC.]

Linus’s whom

[Peanuts, September 6, 1976. Click for a larger view.]

Linus has yoo-hooed to someone. Sally’s response to his gentle correction: “Forget it!”

See also Lucy’s whom.

[Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. I prefer posting the black-and-white of newsprint.]

Nancy Labor Day

In today’s Nancy, Olivia Jaimes continues the Ernie Bushmiller practice of taking holidays off, sort of.

Labor Day

[“Chicago and North Western R.R., Mrs. Thelma Cuvage, working in the sand house at the roundhouse, Clinton, Iowa. Her job is to see that sand is sifted and cleaned for use in the locomotives. Mrs. Cuvage's husband works as a guard at the Savannah (Ill.) Ordnance plant.” Photograph by Jack Delano. April 1943. From the Library of Congress Flickr pages. Click for a larger view.]

Recently updated

The scene of the crimes Now with much more about Joseph Magnasco’s family history.

The scene of the crimes

Last week’s photograph of a Gowanus diner led me to a story about its proprietor, Michael Tolopka, being robbed of $240 at 4th Avenue and Union Street. My friend Slywy snagged the Daily News article with more details:

[Daily News, November 11, 1941.]

Tolopka was robbed outside a bar and grill. There was only one such establishment at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Union Street: the College Restaurant.

[224 4th Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Between 1930 and 1944, at least five other Brooklyn restaurants had the word college in their names, each establishment apparently independent of the others. My guess is that the name of the College Inn restaurant in Chicago’s Hotel Sherman inspired copycats.

In 1961, the College Restaurant on 4th Avenue was the scene of a crime far more spectacular than the Tolopka robbery.

[Brooklyn Daily, October 6, 1961. Click for a larger view.]

In June 1961, Joseph Magnasco (b. 1925), was among those convicted of hijacking a truckful of linen. He was shot and killed before being sentenced. A Getty-owned photograph shows a priest administering last rites to the dead Magnasco on the sidewalk. All the hijacking convictions were later reversed.

This Wikipedia article, though it doesn’t mention Magnasco, gives some context for his killing: a battle between the Gallo and Profaci crime families. A 1961 newspaper article calls Magnasco a “top level Gallo mobster.” A 1963 article identifies Magnasco as a “Gallo henchman”; another calls him a “Gallo mobster.”

And there’s a complication: Magnasco seems to have defected from the Profaci family.

[Newsday, October 5, 1961. Click for larger views.]

Magnasco’s killing appears to have gone unsolved.

Joseph Magnasco previously made the news in 1947, when he attempted to rob a railroad-station safe in Lynnbrook, Long Island. An May 19 article from the Nassau Daily Review-Star reports that “Woman Routs Thug Saving $1,600 At Railroad Station.” Magnasco attempted to take money from an open safe and fought with a female ticket agent before fleeing. A May 20 article reports that a police officer noticed a man walking along a road with a bloody handkerchief around one hand. That was Magnasco. The officer was rewarded with a day off to go fishing. Magnasco later pleaded guilty to possession of an automatic pistol. It’s not clear that he faced any other charges.

[Nassau Daily Review-Star, May 20, 1947.]

Here’s a better likeness, most likely a mug shot from a later arrest:

[Joseph Magnasco, n.d.]

There’s just one Joseph Magnasco in the 1940 census who was born in 1925. He was a fifteen-year-old resident of The Children’s Village, a home for orphans and troubled boys in Dobbs Ferry, New York. From the Children’s Village website:

1958: The Children’s Village was officially designated a Residential Treatment Center. This came as the culmination of the evolution from an orphanage to a residential school for troubled boys to a true clinical program capable of meeting the needs of seriously disturbed children.

I wonder if this Joseph — who must be the one I’m writing about — was the son of Pietro Magnasco, a Brooklyn union organizer and racketeer who was arrested for murder in January 1930 and was shot to death in May 1930. With each man, a five-month gap between arrest and murder. Pretty eerie.

On a happier note, notice the sign over the College Restaurant: the Scuola Gratuita di Italiano e di Musica. I hope I’m reading the small words correctly.

Also on a happier note, Taheni, a Mediterranean grill, now occupies the first floor at 224.

I would still like to know what Michael Tolopka was doing with $1240 in cash in his pockets.

Thanks to Brian, Slywy, Brooklyn Newsstand, and NYS Historic Newspapers.

*

A few more details: There’s just the one Joseph Magnasco in the Social Security Death Index. Find a Grave reveals an interesting detail: Magnasco served as a corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve in World War II.

A little more: I found Joseph Magnasco in the 1950 census (it’s impossible to link directly to the relevant page). He was then living in a basement apartment at 100 Garfield Place, Park Slope, Brooklyn, with Urbano DeSantis, sixty-three, a bricklayer; Christine DeSantis, forty-five, Urbano’s wife; and Angelo DeSantis, thirty, their son, a photographer. Magnasco, twenty-five, also identified as a son, is listed as unemployed but looking for work. My guess for now is that Christine is his mother, remarried. The distance from the College Restaurant to Garfield Place: three-tenths of a mile.

*

Here’s Christine Magnasco in the 1940 census, thirty-five, widowed, neither working nor looking for work, living in an apartment at 59 Lincoln Place, Park Slope. A puzzle: she’s listed as the head of a household of nine, yet she’s the only person listed at this address. Perhaps she was managing a household of several generations.

*

Just one more bit, again moving backwards: this article identifies the body found on a New Jersey farm in May 1930 as Peter Magnaro. At least that was the name on his driver’s license.

[“Brooklyn Man Is Found Slain on Jersey Farm.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1930. Click for a larger view.]

So: Peter Magnaro, killed in a bootlegging war, was Pietro Magnasco, husband of Christine, father of Joseph. I’m closing the case.

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

Messrs. Zip

[“Stamp of Approval.” Zippy, September 2, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

I like Mr. ZIP. In the depths of the pandemic, I would sometimes draw his image on the envelopes of our outgoing mail, alongside “Thanks, USPS.”

I’ll borrow something I wrote in a post with a 1968 advertisement about ZIP codes and “snail mail”: “Mr. ZIP retired in 1986. He later died of a broken heart.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stella Zawistowski, seems to be available only as a file to print. I thought I’d sail through until I hit the southwest corner. 45-A, four letters, “Thatcher’s undergrad major”? Who knows? Who cares? I had to look it up, which made that corner fall into place.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-D, nine letters, “Forms for fun facts.” I saw it right away, but I’d want to add quotation marks for fun.

6-A, nine letters, “Generously spread.” I knew it had to be.

23-A, five letters, “Legal ability.” I was thinking something like SMARTS.

23-D, six letters, “Three-legged duelers.” Pretty far-fetched.

26-A, eleven letters, “They have lots to talk about.” REALESTATEAGENTS doesn’t fit.

34-D, nine letters, “Anticipation.” I can’t recall seeing the answer in a crossword before.

45-D, five letters, “Alternative to <.” From the southwest corner, and just fiendish.

46-D, five letters, “Charming one.” Also southwestern, and tricky, even with the middle letter in place.

56-A, nine letters, “Certain predictive tools.” Happy to have caught on.

59-A, nine letters, “Narrowly confined.” A nice clue.

My favorite in this puzzle: 30-A, six letters, “Send cloudward.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“HOIT”

[Nancy, August 19, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

Re: today’s yesterday’s Nancy : see “Hert is hoit.” See also Grammarphobia’s discussion of er and oi trading places.

[My Brooklyn grandparents heated their house with erl.]