HCR on July 21

Heather Cox Richardson on yesterday’s big news.

Joe Biden has dropped out

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

The New York Times has the story (gift link).

I think it’s the right choice. But still I have tears in my eyes. Age, dammit.

Mott Street, in July

[With apologies to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.]

[127 Mott Street, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

And tell me what street compares with Mott Street in July, sweet pushcarts gently gliding by. Please imagine the pushcarts gliding. See also Delancey Street.

Click for a larger view and see if you can see the four people at their windows.

*

July 24: A belated thought: check the WPA Guide:

The pushcarts on Mott Street from Canal to Broome, a block east of Mulberry Street, are relics of a thriving market that once embraced the four streets west of the Bowery. They sell ripe and green olives, artichokes, goats‘ cheeses, finochio (sweet fennel), and ready-to-eat pizza, an unsweetened pastry filled with tomatoes and cheese, meat, or fish.

The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s New York. 1939. (New York: The New Press, 1992).

Notice that the exotic food pizza has to be explained.

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

Asylum and asylums

As reported on the platform formerly known as Twitter (which I’m unable to link to), Asha Rangappa suggsts a “missing link”:

When he hears the word “asylum” in connection with migrants he thinks it means insane asylums, not refuge from persecution. Hence Hannibal Lecter, etc. Omg.

The word asylum comes to us from the classical Latin asȳlum, refuge, sanctuary, which derives in turn from the Hellenistic Greek ἄσῡλον, refuge, sanctuary. The still-familiar meaning (1596): “a secure place of refuge, shelter, or retreat.” The dictionary dates the meaning relevant to refugees to 1842: “Protection and (usually temporary) permission to stay granted by a state to a refugee, esp. a political refugee, from another country.” If Trump is indeed imagining insane asylums, he’s latching onto a later meaning (1775) that the dictionary labels “chiefly historical ”: “a secure institution or establishment for the confinement and treatment of people diagnosed with severe mental illness; a psychiatric hospital. Also: a prison for mentally ill criminals.”

And speaking of secure institutions, I’ll cite Chris Sununu, Republican governor of New Hampshire, speaking about Donald Trump: “I doubt that he’s so crazy that he should be in a mental institution, but if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”

*

Here’s the X post. Thanks, Daughter Number Three.

Omg I think this is the missing link. 🎯 When he hears the word “asylum” in connection with migrants he thinks it means insane asylums, not refuge from persecution. Hence Hannibal Lecter, etc. Omg. 🤣😳 https://t.co/C58QDtHZpT

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) July 20, 2024

[Sununu’s words appear in an introductory video for George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. It’s quite a crossword. I started with 29-D, five letters, “Tutta la ____ （till dawn),” which yielded 40-A, four letters, “Something solemnized.” And then a fingerhold here, a toehold there. I didn't think I’d ever get it all, until I did.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, four letters, “No pro bono battler.” One would think law, or at least I would.

2-D, four letters, “Mythical fire starter.” Clever.

5-A, four letters, “Lee alternative.” One would think LEVI, or at least I would.

14-D, six letters, “Pop icon who lived across the street from Neil Diamond.” I will have to take your word for it.

16-A, four letters, “Pop icon with an Our Way podcast.” Really out of the way. Sorry, 16-A.

20-A, fourteen letters, “Defiant non-apology.” Great answer, at least for a crossword, though perhaps not in real life.

23-A, six letters, “Part of a peak performance.” One would think ASCENT, or at least I would, complete with fingerholds and toeholds.

24-A, seven letters, “At-work gamer’s quick-change shortcut.” I remember reading about it, many years ago.

24-D, five letters, “Set off.” Ambiguity alert.

26-D, ten letters, “Fusion favorite with salmon-topped slices.” See 14-D.

30-D, five letters, “Whom Tiger tied for PGA Tour wins in 2019.” I think the conventions of crosswords require Woods in this clue.

47-D, six letters, “Ladylike?” Really clever. I was thinking something to do with ladybugs.

53-A, three letters, “Sound made by shakers.” One would think TSK, or at least I would, shaking my head.

54-A, fourteen letters, “Online source request.” A novel answer.

56-D, four letters, “Small torch bearer.” Stumpers gonna stump.

My favorite in this puzzle: 60-A, ten letters, “Desirable character trait.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“The complete embrace of violence”

Mary Trump:

My uncle and his allies in the corporate media want us to believe, with absolutely no evidence, that he’s a changed man. They want us to believe he cares about unity and “lowering the temperature.” But the people he chooses to surround himself with make it crystal clear that nothing could be further from the truth.

With special guests Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, Hulk Hogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Paul Manafort, Mitch McConnell, Peter Navarro, J.D. Vance, and Dana White. Background music: James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World.”

Comstock who?

If you go looking in the Project 2025 Policy Agenda for the Comstock Act, the provisions in federal law now touted as a way to prevent sending mifepristone through the mail, you won’t find a single reference to it. But if you search just a bit, you’ll find this passage:

Stop promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of long-standing federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs.[16]

The endnote:

16. 18 U.S.C. 1461, https://www.law.cornell.edu/
uscode/text/18/1461 (accessed March 16, 2023),
and 18 U.S.C. 1462, https://www.law.cornell.edu/
uscode/text/18/1462 (accessed March 16, 2023).

And those two URLs — 1, 2 — have the relevant sections of the Comstock Act.

Growing

Paddy, our narrator, has carried fallen branches home while riding her scooter. And then the branches hit a lamp-post and Paddy came tumbling down. Her mother Louey is cross: “Just look at you. You’re not going out on that scooter again.” And Paddy reminds her mother that when they were walking the day before, they saw lots of fallen branches and her mother said they’d save money if they could carry them home for firewood.

Maureen Duffy, That’s How it Was (1962).

Also from this novel
“Oh all the things kids do”

Recently updated

A Honeymooners correction, still needed The New York Times won’t be making a correction.

Bob Newhart (1929–2024)

The New York Times has an obituary. From a 2019 interview with the Times (both gift links):

Do you ever think about death?

I think I know what’s on the other side, but I’m not sure. Maybe it just ends. Some people think you come back. Maybe I’ll come back as Shelley Berman and be pissed off at myself.

What do you think happens on the other side?

I think if you lived a good life, some people say it is rapture. You spend the rest of your life in a state of rapture. That’d be nice. What I’m actually hoping is there’s the Pearly Gates and God’s there and he says to me, “What did you do in life?” And I say, “I was a stand-up comedian.” And he says: “Get in that real short line over there.”

[Context: Shelley Berman wrongly accused Newhart of stealing the use of a telephone in stand-up comedy from him.]