A Honeymooners correction, still needed

Three weeks after publication, a factual error in the New York Times obituary for Joyce Randolph stands uncorrected:

As Trixie, Ms. Randolph played the upstairs wife who crossed her arms and commiserated with her best friend, Alice, over addlepated husbands who somehow got drunk on grape juice, found a suitcase of the mob’s counterfeit cash, invented a “handy” kitchen tool that could “core a apple” and, after waiting all year for the convention of their International Order of Friendly Raccoons, took the wrong train.

Those choice — or, in Brooklynese, cherce — details make me think that the writer, Robert D. McFadden, loves The Honeymooners , so much so that he may have been writing from memory. But in the Honeymooners episode “Better Living Through TV” (November 12, 1955), Ralph and Ed 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 try to sell them via a television commercial.

I’ve written to the Times twice about the error. I included a link to the episode at Dailymotion, pointing out where the relevant dialogue may be found (at the 3:35 mark). Still no correction.

As Edward L. Norton might say, Sheesh.

*

July 19, 2024: I wrote to the Times again yesterday, and this time I received a non-automated reply. Long story short: the error will stand. The person who wrote says that the Times can correct errors if they’re pointed out in “a reasonable amount of time.” After that, errors stand, as the paper lacks to resources to to “re-report” old articles. The writer also noted that the Times never heard from me before yesterday.

In reponse, I sent screenshots of previous e-mails to and automated replies from NYT Corrections (January 14 and February 3). I also pointed out that changing one word — changing invented to, say, marketed, is hardly a matter of re-reporting an article. No reply.

As Edward L. Norton might say, Sheesh.

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Calendar, notes, task management

David Sparks, in the Mac Power Users episode Don’t Hear What We Aren’t Saying:

“The holy trinity of productivity: you need a good calendar app, a good notes app, and a good task app. And if you can figure out what those three are, you’re off to the races.”

As I was listening, it hit me that a pocket agenda/diary/planner — whatever it might be called — is all three.

[Still no reply from Moleskine to my request for a refund for a 2024 planner with sixteen days missing. If I don’t get a reply, I’m switching to Letts or Leuchtturm for 2025.]

Für Nancy

Olivia Jaimes offers a beautiful Sunday Nancy . There’s no key signature, no accidentals, but c’mon: unlike Beethoven, the child has nothing more than a rake with which to compose.

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The Duke Ellington House

[929-935 St. Nicholas Avenue, Washington Heights, Manhattan. c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much, much larger view.]

Apartment 4A in no. 935, the building on the corner, was home to Duke Ellington from 1939 to 1961. The building has landmark status as the Duke Ellington House.

From 1957, here is Ellington in 4A, talking with Edward R. Murrow. And here are a few photographs of the apartment. Somewhere there’s a clip of Ellington in his kitchen (in this apartment?), boiling water in a white enamel pot as he talks to an interviewer (with the conversation overdubbed — in Italian, I think). You’ll just have to take my word for it. At home or on the road, hot water was Ellington’s breakfast beverage of choice. But he was not often home.

Noble Sissle also lived in the building.

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[Despite what the documentary says, Ellington did drink tea and coffee (the coffee with lemon). Also Coca-Cola with added sugar.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I dunno — maybe it’s just me — but the Newsday  Saturday Stumper seems to be increasing in difficulty and lessening in fun. I got it all, but clueing feels more contrary, more obscure, more strained.

From today’s Stumper, by Steve Mossberg: 38-A, four letters, “Nickname for a western capital namesake.” Have many humans been named for that capital? A search for named for [that capital] turns up a United States Navy submarine. And I doubt that she has a nickname. A search for named for the capital of [the state] turns up the submarine and a ring with a gemstone. I doubt that the ring has a nickname either. Granted, namesake need not mean “named for.” But still.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

7-D, ten letters, “Sussex cinnamon roll.” A tad obscure.

9-D, four letters, “Cultivated fields.” I am happy to say that I saw through this clue in an instant.

14-A, ten letters, “Directive when sparring.” I like the misdirection in sparring, but I wouldn’t call it the answer a directive.

23-A, four letters, “Common gathering announcement.” Tricky. I was trying for figure out what a common gathering might be.

24-D, five letters, “Mr. McMurtry alma mater.” Is it common to refer to the school where one received a graduate degree as one’s alma mater? I don’t think so. But even if it is, this is a mighty weak way to clue a school. And I don’t care where Larry McMurtry did his graduate work.

26-A, nine letters, “In which ‘language’ is lingvo .” A giveaway, I think.

28-D, ten letters, “Stale-bread Italian salad.” I guessed but have never partaken.

35-A, seven letters, “Got ready for dinner, at times.” My first guess was DRESSED. I think I was supposed to make that mistake.

41-D, seven letters, “Spanish fortified wine.” I’m back in Renaissance Prose, with the professor who’d bring a bottle and paper cups to enliven our discussions and make us feel like grown-ups.

57-A, ten letters, “Swindle saw starter.” My starting point. That answer had to be.

60-A, ten letters, “Half of a formal pairing.” A Google search suggests that it’s hardly limited to formal settings.

My favorite in this puzzle: 40-A, ten letters, “While away the hours.” I whiled away a good hour working on this puzzle.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A word in The Waste Land

“Quando fiam uti chelidon ” [When shall I become like the swallow]: words from the anonymous Latin poem Perviglium Veneris [Vigil of Venus]. They appear in line 428 of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land .

Advertisers buying placement in search-engine results are especially interested in one of these words. Dr. Pip Thornton tells Michael Rosen why in an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth : “Words for Sale!”

“This is not a letter”

Letters/not-letters from Katherine Mansfield (Letters of Note ).

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Phrase of the day: cacoëthes scribendi

I found it Jean Stafford’s Collected Stories (1969), in the “Author’s note,” where Stafford writes briefly of the two principal books of her childhood, one by her father, the other by a first cousin once removed. Stafford never read either book:

However, their titles influenced me when my cacoëthes scribendi set in and I wrote about twisters on the plains, stampedes when herds of longhorns were being driven up from the Panhandle to Dodge, and bloody incidents south of the border.

Merriam-Webster has it: “an uncontrollable urge to write.” Cacoëthes has an interesting past:

borrowed from Latin cacoēthes “malignant tumor at an early stage, disease of character,” borrowed from Greek kakóēthes “malignancy, wickedness,” noun derivative from neuter of kakoḗthēs “ill-disposed, malicious, (of things) abominable, (of tumors, fevers, etc.) malignant,” from kako- CACO- + -ēthēs, adjective derivative of êthos “custom, disposition, character” — more at ETHOS.

And there’s a note:

Use of the word in the sense “insatiable desire” is largely dependent on an oft-quoted line by the Roman satirist Juvenal: “tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes” (“the incurable disease of writing takes hold of many”).

The phrase appears in Juvenal’s seventh satire: “Tenet insanabile multos / Scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit” [An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many, and grows old in their sick hearts].

Cacoëthes reminds me of other bad words: cacophony, of course, but also cacography (bad handwriting, bad spelling), cacology (bad diction or pronunciation), and kakistocracy (government by the worst people). Kakistos is the Greek superlative.

[Latin from The Perseus Project. English translation from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (2002).]

Griffy, Zippy, and NPR

“Th’ reassuring timbre of Mary Louise Kelly, th’ velvety tones of Steve Inskeep, th’ friendly chatter of Ari Shapiro, th’ lilting warmth of Audie Cornish”: Griffy and Zippy listen to NPR.

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A speech balloon on the move

[Nancy, February 1, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s (new) Nancy , one balloon is about to pop another.

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