“The odors”

Sonie Marburg’s father worked as a shoe repairman. One day he left his family and Massachusetts to go west.

Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure (1944).

That’s the first moment of involuntary memory in the novel.

Also from this novel
A pallet on the floor

MSNBC, sheesh

“... trying to put some distance between he and her ...”

I hereby offer all MSNBC reporters a quick course in pronoun repair. And I’ll keep it between I and them.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

MLK: diversity

“It seems to me that integration at its best is the opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity”: Martin Luther King Jr., eleven months before his death, in an interview with NBC’s Sander Vanocur.

The date of the interview: May 8, 1967. The earliest Oxford English Dictionary citation for its 1.d. definition of diversity,

The fact, condition, or practice of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds, and (more recently) of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.,

is from December 26, 1968. It’d be a wonderful thing if King’s use of the word in this interview were to make it into the dictionary as an earlier citation. I turned myself into a dictionary person yesterday to try to make that happen.

MLK

[“Honor King: End Racism!” Poster, 33 1/2″ × 22 1/4″. Click for a larger view.]

From the New York Public Library:

Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated. The placard was mass produced for the March posthumously. At the bottom it says: Allied printing Trades Council, 8 April 1968.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929.

Joyce Randolph (1924–2024)

Joyce Randolph, aka Trixie Norton, the last Honeymooner, has died at the age of ninety-nine. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link).

Randolph was the subject of a Times article in 2007 (gift link), which described her gracious response to fans who spotted her in Sardi’s: “‘I talk to everyone,’ she said. ‘You can’t be hoity.’”

One error in the appreciative and otherwise well-informed Times obituary: in the Honeymooners episode “Better Living Through TV” (November 12, 1955), Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton do not invent the Handy Housewife Helper. The brother of one of Ralph’s fellow bus drivers has a Bronx warehouse in which someone left 2,000 of the gadgets. Ralph and Ed buy the lot for $200 and attempt — attempt — to sell them via a television commercial. It does not go well.

*

July 19, 2024: The Times will not be correcting the error. Details here.

Related reading
All OCA Honeymooners posts (Pinboard)

And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street and Hester Street

[193 Hester Street/129 Mulberry Street, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I was looking for Chinatown when I found myself in Little Italy. I saw this corner as 193 Hester Street at 1940s.nyc. But it’s also known as 129 Mulberry Street. Hester Street is Chinatown, and Mulberry Street runs through Little Italy, so one can imagine the 129 address as granting this corner greater Italian-American cachet.

I chose this photograph for the laundry — was it a Monday? — and then noticed the Coca-Cola sign and the two youngsters walking in tandem. And that must be a restaurant on the ground floor. A pleasant photograph. And then I looked up the building’s two addresses and realized what I had hit on.

This Mulberry Street address was once the home of Umbertos Clam House, now in business at 132 Mulberry, still without an apostrophe. The 129 address is where the mobster “Crazy Joe” Gallo was shot to death in 1972, weeks after the restaurant’s opening. Here’s one New York Times article on the murder’s aftermath (gift link). I’m not interested in rehearsing the details. But I must note that the Gallo name points back to a previous tax post, about the College Restaurant in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

In 2023, the ground floor of 129 Mulberry is home to another restaurant, Da Gennaro. Mulberry Street remains the home of the yearly Feast of San Gennaro.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I found today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, more congenial than some recent Stumpers. Very doable, with ample misdirection and trickiness, but very little far-fetchedness. And yes, I think it’s far-fetched to think of far-fetchedness as a word. Also, I think that its hyphen will at some point become unnecessary.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, five letters, “Bag label.” Yes, I guessed IDTAG first, just as I think I was supposed to.

4-D, fourteen letters, “Tank.” The second answer I filled in, with help from 16-A, five letters, “Some rust removers.”

10-D, nine letters, “Right thing.” A wonderful clue.

12-D, four letters, “Plodding pair.” Yes, I guessed FEET first.

14-A, nine letters, “Organic cooler.” Nice misdirection.

14-D, five letters, “Organic cooler.” Eh, maybe not so nice.

15-D, fourteen letters, “’79 film with the line ‘Pardon my boa!’” The other fourteen-letter answer in this puzzle.

17-A, nine letters, “Couple’s game phrase.” Kinda weird.

39-D, seven letters, “Palate cleanser.” Far-fetched but also pretty much inaccurate.

42-A, seven letters, “Chlorides in a bag.” Timely.

49-D, five letters, “National Blocking Association focus.” I thought must be , couldn’t be , must be .

61-A, three letters, “Munch kin land, briefly.” Yes, far-fetchedness is a word.

My favorite in this puzzle: 22-A, eight letters, “Peak performance establishment.” Though I’d never want to be there.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Bread, milk, toilet paper

This post has been receiving a great many visits: Ready For the Snow. If you’re beset by a snowstorm, I hope you’re ready.

No snow in downstate Illinois, just rain. May everyone stay safe in, or better, out of, the weather.

Planner history

From Jillian Hess’s Noted, “A Short History of the Daily Planner”:

Today we tend to think of daily planners as records of what will happen. But most of its early users saw daily blank space in their notebooks as a way to record what had happened. It was a way to account for one’s time and how it was spent (as George Washington noted).

It’s not until the 20th century that we see pocket diaries regularly used for recording future events.

The 20th century! That’s exactly when I started using a planner to record future events (and each day’s things to do).

My planner history took a strange turn in this century when I discovered that my 2024 Moleskine pocket daily planner was missing sixteen days. (Yes, really.) So I bought a Leuchtturm pocket weekly with notebook and found myself trying hard to like it. But the faux-leather cover, ultra-faint print, and tiny Saturday/Sunday spaces are just not for me. Using this planner for just a few days made me realize how much I like the idea of every day having its own page. Or as Harvey Pekar says in the OCA sidebar, “Every day is a new deal.”

So why didn’t I buy a Leuchtturm pocket daily? It’s not offered on the company’s U.S. site, and Amazon has it only as an import from Japan, taking weeks to ship, with this cryptic warning: “Imports from Japan may differ from local products.” Would I be getting a planner with Japanese text? Also: “Manufacturer warranty may not apply.”

Twelve days ago I wrote that my defective Moleskine would be my last. But last weekend I ordered another 2024 Moleskine from Amazon. It arrived with all the days of the year included, even February 29. I ordered it after being told via e-mail that Moleskine would not replace the defective planner (their former practice) and that I’d be issued a refund. Okay.

But then, oops, they said they made a mistake. Since I hadn’t ordered from their website, I could receive only a credit. I had of course sent them a screenshot of my Amazon order at the start of our correspondence. I’ve now written to the company asking for a refund and am awaiting a response.

Does it go without saying that I noted in my planner the date on which I sent my letter?

*

The story of my effort to get a refund for my defective Moleskine continues here.

[Hess notes that the OED first has planner as a thing (not a person) in the 1970s: “Something used to facilitate planning, as a chart or table containing planning information, a calendar recording future appointments, etc.”]

Fruit Stripe gum

The New York Times reports that Fruit Stripe gum is being discontinued.

Did you know that Fruit Stripe gum had several animal mascots? From the Times:

Yipes the Zebra emerged as the dominant mascot, with every gum wrapper doubling as a Yipes temporary tattoo. The tattoos depicted Yipes in active poses, such as skateboarding, playing baseball or eating grass.

Yipes I hardly knew ye.