The Unmarked Graveyard

From Radio Diaries, an eight-episode podcast series: The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island.

New York City’s Hart Island is what’s typically called a potter’s field. Seven of the eight podcast episodes tell the stories of people buried there. One episode tells the story of an artist dedicated to documenting the island’s dead. Having listened to six episodes so far, I recommend this podcast with enthusiasm.

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A mother, in the eighth episode: “People don’t just disappear.”

Ineligible

From The New York Times (gift link):

Former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible to hold office again, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, accepting the argument that the 14th Amendment disqualifies him in an explosive decision that could upend the 2024 election.

Far from final, but still welcome, news.

CleanMyMac X on sale

The Mac app CleanMyMac X is on sale. Here’s an intro to the app. And there’s a seven-day free trial.

CleanMyMac X is a great app for managing/maintaining a Mac. So say experts. My only connection to CleanMyMac X is that of a happy user (since 2019).

“Scratches, indentations, scrolls”

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver (New York: HarperCollins, 1974).

Related reading
All OCA Calvino posts (Pinboard)

The British Library was hacked

“How ironic that the most quaintly analog form of research possible, using physical books in a physical library, has been devastated by the hijacking of a digital system”: Carolyn Dever tells the story of the Halloween ransomware attack of the British Library. More at the British Library’s website.

[Small world: I just read about “Michael Field” in Sarah Ogilvie’s The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary.]

Jeffrey Foskett (1956–2023)

“A singer-guitarist that spent decades in the Beach Boys and played a pivotal role in Brian Wilson’s late Nineties comeback thanks to his soaring falsetto and effortless ability to harmonize”: from a Rolling Stone obituary.

Jeffrey Foskett was a man for all seasons, and a key figure among the musicians who brought Brian Wilson back from, well, the wasteland. I was fortunate to see him performing with Brian on the first Pet Sounds and SMiLE tours. Jeffrey Foskett’s death is a great loss to music.

Tár pencils: Blackwings

[Tár (dir. Todd Field, 2022). Click for a much larger view.]

Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) has quite a stash of Blackwing pencils — no doubt to suggest a tie to her teacher Leonard Bernstein, another Blackwing user. Yes, Tár was his student: the Bernstein estate has confirmed it.

If you click to see the screenshot at full size, you’ll see Eberhard Faber Blackwings on the left, followed by Palomino Blackwings, followed by more boxes of Eberhard Faber pencils. I like seing that Tár chooses an Eberhard Faber Blackwing to sharpen. She’s using the real thing first.

I have nothing against resurrecting a brand name, but I have an admitted animus against the company that makes the Palomino Blackwing, whose business practices I find ethically dubious. See, for instance, these two posts: Duke Ellington, Blackwing pencils, and aspirational branding and The Palomino Blackwing pencil and truth in advertising. And from Sean Malone, the Blackwing’s own historian, Facts, fiction, and the Blackwing experience.

Related reading
All OCA Blackwing posts (Pinboard)

A Tár pencil: Caran d’Ache

[From Tár (dir. Todd Field, 2022). Click for a much larger view.]

That’s a Pablo colored pencil from Caran d’Ache. The 120-pencil set is a mere $530 (VAT).

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Some Automats

[155 W. 33rd Street, 250 W. 42nd Street, 611 W. 181st Street, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click any image for a much, much, much larger view.]

There are thirty-eight Horn and Hardart Automats in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. This has been some of them.

Related reading
All OCA Automat posts : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[“There are thirty-eight”: I’m channeling The Naked City and Naked City. There were also eighteen Horn and Hardart retail outlets in Manhattan, one Automat and two retail outlets in Brooklyn, eight retail outlets in the Bronx, and “some” (three) retail outlets in Queens.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Lester Ruff (puzzle editor Stan Newman), and, yes, it is Less Rough. I started with 8-A, seven letters, “Shakespearean general” and 14-D, seven letters, “Why some risks are taken,” and then word after word fell into place. The one tricky spot: the southwest corner, where an unfamiliar answer, a tricky clue, and a piece of sports trivia had me stumped for a bit.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, seven letters, “Surname shared by different Best Actor Oscar winners.” I immediately thought HEPBURN. But no, the clue asks for Best Actor.

15-A, seven letters, “Step-by-step guide.” I was thinking too literally — of, say, IKEA instructions. (Shudder.)

28-D, five letters, “Word before clerk or company.” Been there, done that, at least the clerk part. And the non-clerk in me says there should be two pairs of italics or quotation marks in that clue.

38-A, eight letters, “Pulley with teeth.” Difficult for me to visualize, perhaps because I’ve never noticed one.

38-D, seven letters, “It’s handled in the kitchen.” The answer is unfamiliar to me, though I concede that the thing is handled in the kitchen.

39-D, seven letters, “Plain.” Tricky.

40-D, seven letters, “Big Ten team as of 2014.” There’s the sports trivia. (Could this puzzle be a rerun?)

53-A, four letters, “Feet, so to speak.” This answer needs to be brought back into everyday speech.

62-A, seven letters, “It puts the ‘high’ in highway.” All I could think of at first was an overpass.

64-A, seven letters, “Fit nicely.” A cozy answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 59-D, three letters, “It’s about as old as the club.” (AXE?!)

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.