Today’s Saturday Stumper

Holy moly, as my daughter would say: I found today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, incredibly easy. How can that be? Dunno. I began with a hunch and filled in 2-D, five letters, “Literally, ‘lawful.’” And then I saw 17-A, five letters, “Bayer brand,” and the game was on. By the time I hit the puzzle’s center, four or five answers at a time were asking (quietly, politely) to be filled in. The one sticking point: 44-A, three letters, “JAL Mileage Bank accrual.” I had no idea what to put in for a first letter until I looked at 44-D, three letters, “Tear down,” and ran the alphabet.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eight letters, “Moniker for a Marine.” Not sure where I’ve ever seen it, but I knew it.

8-D, eight letters, “Fellows’ pursuits.” Good luck, fellows.

14-D, eleven letters, “Common palate cleanser.” A novel answer.

23-D, eleven letters, “Yucca cousins.” I guessed right.

24-A, eight letters, “They may accompany winks.” Cute.

34-D, four letters, “Conclusion of brief music.” Seen it before, not fooled by it.

36-D, fifteen letters, “Hottest seasonal streamer.” Just fun.

51-D, five letters, “‘Hills and valleys, ____ and fields’: Marlowe.” But “We cannot go to the country / for the country will bring us / no peace”: Williams.

60-A, four letters, “Relaxed-sounding deity.” Ha.

61-A, five letters, “Nickname like Zuzu.” No petals necessary.

64-A, four letters, “Japan is the #1 consumer and producer of them.” Oh, them.

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-D, eight letters, “Genuinely, these days.” An idiom I like, in speech and in writing. It appears four times in these pages.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“Frills”

Robert Moses objected to “frills” in public housing. The killer detail appears in a footnote, and it’s all the more powerful for being set off thusly. From The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

Among “frills” Moses specifically objected to: covers on toilet bowls, doors on closets.

Something I should have linked to some time ago: a website, Robert Caro, with reviews, interviews, and early journalism.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

A little sanewashing

Kelly O’Donnell, on NBC Nightly News, last night, describing human behavior at Jimmy Carter’s memorial service:

“The thirty-ninth president brought together decades of his successors, their interactions appearing to set aside conflicts and politics and personalities. One handshake ended nearly four years of no contact between former vice president Pence and the president he served.”

But if you watch, you can also see Karen Pence refusing to acknowledge that former president and his wife. If you watch a bit more, you can see George Bush walking right past that former president before giving Barack Obama a friendly pat on the stomach.

Heather Cox Richardson has it right:

Pence shook Trump’s hand; his wife stayed seated, looking straight ahead. While Obama, sitting next to Trump, spoke to him, former president Bush refused to acknowledge Trump, instead walking past him and giving a familiar greeting to Obama.

Whose interests are served by pretending that everyone is now getting along?

A more egregious example of sanewashing, from The Washington Post: a headline that refers to Jack Smith’s report on that former president’s “election-reversal efforts.” Undoing would be more accurate.

More Nancy snow

[Nancy, February 2, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

Nancy has a change of heart when she learns that school will be closed.

It is snowing again in east-central Illinois, where schools are open, with a two-hour early dismissal. Nancy would not be pleased.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

D! S! T!

The half-time show was a celebration of daylight-savings time. “Whether it’s too dark or too light, too early or too late, it keeps us going! D! S! T! D! S! T!”

If this show had had a better director, it might have included an appearance by Grandmixer D.ST., though he has since changed his name to DXT.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

Links for Los Angeles

From The Late Show, four links to help Los Angeles, as found here:

California Fire Foundation Wildlife & Disaster Relief

World Central Kitchen

California Community Fund — Wildlife Recovery Fund

Pasadena Humane — Eaton Fire Emergency

And from Mary Trump:

American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles

Golly, Moses

[From Roz Chast’s New Yorker cover “Game Show.”]

It looks like Roz Chast might have The Power Broker on her mind.

Thanks to Kevin at harvest.ink.

*

Later in the morning: I now see that on her Instagram page, Roz Chast writes, “I think about Robert Moses sometimes.”

Related reading
All OCA Roz Chast posts (Pinboard)

A Robert Caro exhibit

At the New-York Historical Society: “Turn Every Page”: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive. I like the note-to-self on the inside cover of one of Caro’s notebooks: “SHUT UP.” Because an interviewer’s silence will often, though not always, prompt a subject to say more.

Thanks to the reader whose comment on a previous post prompted me to make this post. I could’ve sworn I’d said something about this exhibit before, but no.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

Rat part

Why does this delightful story about Mark Zuckerberg have a rat part in it? Well, if the part fits.... But perhaps also because of this news item.

[Caution: the second link may not be safe for the workplace, or for anywhere else. Aiiee.]

A Staedtler Mars Lumograph

[From The Teachers’ Lounge (dir. İlker Çatak, 2023).]

A venerable pencil, on a desk in a classroom. The blur in front of the pencil: shavings.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)