Pinboard tags again

Tags for Pinboard, the social bookmarking site, can once again be viewed by readers without a Pinboard account. Maciej Cegłowski has added a CAPTCHA to allow access to tags for real readers and cut traffic from the AI bots harvesting the Internets.

Wanna see, say, every OCA “How to improve writing” post? Have at it. Just click in the middle of the blue box and you’ll see links to posts.

I’ve been using Pinboard since 2010 to make an index of blog posts, and I’m happy to see it working for all readers again. Raindrop.io, for me, is just too cumbersome.

[And yes, people come to these pages via Pinboard, and head off to Pinboard via links here.]

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Out on State Island Contra Google Maps, that house, built in the 1840s, still stands.

Out on Staten Island

[70 Satterlee Street, Staten Island, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just an old house from the far end of the Forgotten Borough. Save perhaps for the lookout (we’re not far from the Arthur Kill and Raritan Bay), it looks to me more like something from the dilapidated world of The Sound and the Fury. This house made it into the 1980s but is no longer standing.

Notice the car and workmen (?) to the left.

*

Later that same day: There’s no trusting Google Maps, which shows nothing but an empty lot for 70 Satterlee Street. But this house still stands. And it’s a house with history: the Henry Hogg Biddle House, built in the 1840s. Here are two more views.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Kate Chin Park, each of whose previous Stumpers has prompted me to write, “Please, more KCP Stumpers.” Today’s puzzle is a doozy, a lulu, a sockdolager if you will, full of variety and challenges. Please, more KCP Stumpers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-D, seven letters, “Rampart part.” Nicely phrased. I think I have the answer in my head from reading Steven Millhauser.

8-D, three letters, “Literature scholars’ org.” In what feels like a previous lifetime, I belonged.

9-D, four letters, “Stepmom to Mary, Elizabeth and Edward.” You’d expect a first name, wouldn’t you?

14-A, five letters, “Surname meaning ‘priest.’” This answer broke the puzzle open for me.

20-D, seven letters, “Freshen, as one’s study.” Pretty ambitious. I’d think that clearing some papers from the floor might be enough.

21-A, six letters, “How to respond to ‘I didn’t get it.’” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

31-A, fifteen letters, “Communication challenge.” Funny how the clue immediately suggests, at least to me, a technology glitch.

33-D, nine letters, “It pairs well with patés.” Who needs paté?

38-A, thirteen letters, “Uninvolved associate.” I wondered whether this clue is accurate. It is.

48-A, three letters, “Zuo Zongtang’s much-seen alias.” Funny.

50-D, four letters, “London lip-lock.” A word that has always sounded filthy to my ears.

58-A, nine letters, “Yup.” I don’t know anyone who says “Yup,” but the answer has some currency in my world.

My favorite in this puzzle: 10-D, ten letters, “The majority of corkscrews and chopsticks.” RSTRNTWARE?!

Please, more KCP Stumpers.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Repurposed sardine tin

[From Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (dir. Merlin Crossingham and Nick Park, 2024). Click any image for a larger view.]

There’s the old movie trope of prison inmates using hand mirrors so that they can see one another from cell to cell as they talk. Here, Feathers McGraw has repurposed a sardine tin as a mirror. From his quarters, he sees the screen of the computer he’s hacked into. It’s Wallace’s computer, and there’s Wallace, welcoming the user to his secret files. And then we see Feathers.

Are prison inmates permitted to have mirrors? Do they use them to communicate? It seems so, though the mirrors are not likely to be glass, and the inmates are not likely to be penguins.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Toast

If you watch enough older movies, you will notice that the breakfast table often holds a toast rack, filled with slices of dry toast. No one ever eats the toast. It just waits.

They must have been making a lot of breadcrumbs back in the day.

Recently updated

Downtown Dingburg Now with new light on the Leona Helmsley Club.

Gary Snyder’s notebooks and journals

From a short film by Colin Still: the poet Gary Snyder, somewhere in the 1990s, talks about his notebooks and journals. All the sections of the film may be found on this page. There’s much more to see at Still’s website Optic Nerve, including short films about nine more American poets.

As Snyder says, what counts is writing, not being organized. But damn if he isn’t really organized too. He mentions that the first notebook in his hand is a calendar. That pale green and white paper, the cover, the pen in its loop: I would swear that he’s holding a Day-Timer.

[Click for a larger possible Day-Timer.]

Thanks to Kevin at harvest.ink

Related reading
All OCA notebook posts (Pinboard)

[I used Day-Timers a million years ago. Looking at the company’s website, I’m not surprised to see that the page design — at least the pocket page-a-day design — hasn’t changed a bit. As dowdy as they wanna be!]

Robert Caro’s home library

From The Washington Post, “A peek inside Robert Caro’s home library, hidden shelves and all.” Bring your magnifying glass, or at least take screenshots for embiggening.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

[Sharing a gift link before my cancelled subscription runs out.]

2024 — no, 2025

A quick trick if you’re again and again typing last year’s year in the early days of this year: use a text replacement app to change 2024 to 2025. If you’re writing about last year’s realities, though, you better be careful. No one wants to read about your 2025 Christmas — yet.