Word of the day: heyday

I have sometimes wondered about the word heyday, meaning “the period of one's greatest popularity, vigor, or prosperity,” or, archaically, “high spirits.” Might heyday have something to do with haying, with jolly rustics turning work into play in the fields?

Dictionaries laugh in my face. From Merriam-Webster:

In its earliest appearances in English, in the 16th century, heyday was used as an interjection that expressed elation or wonder (similar to our word hey, from which it derives). Within a few decades, heyday was seeing use as a noun meaning “high spirits.” This sense can be seen in Act III, scene 4 of Hamlet, when the Prince of Denmark tells his mother, “You cannot call it love; for at your age / The heyday in the blood is tame....” The word’s second syllable is not thought to be borne of the modern word day (or any of its ancestors), but in the 18th century the syllable's resemblance to that word likely influenced the development of the now-familiar use referring to the period when one's achievement or popularity has reached its zenith.

And from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

late 16c. as an exclamation, an alteration of heyda (1520s), an exclamation of playfulness, cheerfulness, or surprise something like Modern English hurrah; apparently it is an extended form of the Middle English interjection hey or hei (see hey). Compare Dutch heidaar, German heida, Danish heida. Modern sense of “stage of greatest vigor” first recorded 1751 (perhaps from a notion that the word was high-day ), and it altered the spelling.

Okay, that’s enough.

“Shadows forever undispelled”

Paul Moses alleged that his brother Robert had cut him out of part of his inheritance and kept him out of city positions for which he was, as an engineer, eminently qualified. From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

The truth of Paul Moses’ charge about the inheritance will never be determined. His mother, who left it, is, of course, dead, and so, to the last man or woman, are all but one of her friends and relatives who might be in a position to verify or deny his story. The single exception, of course, is his brother. Robert Moses refuses — and has refused for forty years — to allow the subject of his mother’s will (a will, signed on her deathbed in his presence, that invalidated an earlier will that Paul says divided her estate equally among the two brothers and their sister, Edna) to be raised in his presence. The truth of Paul’s charge is, moreover, clouded further by the personality of the man who made it and by the shadows which surround certain periods of his life. Paul could have dispelled those shadows. For months, the author asked him to do so. He refused, saying it was no one’s business but his own. Finally, he said he would, at their next interview. On the day before that interview, he was stricken with his final illness. From the hospital, he telephoned the author and began the story. Before he could get more than a few sentences into it, he collapsed. Several days later, he died, leaving the shadows forever undispelled.

The charge that Robert Moses kept his brother out of city positions, Caro says, is true.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Raindrop.io)

A Bronx de Chirico

[138 East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

We’re in The Bronx, though at a safe distance from the path of the Cross Bronx Expressway. I chose this photograph for the strangeness of the long, sloping, vanishing building, which makes me think of Giorgio de Chirco’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. The partial face on the billboard adds another kind of strangeness. That billboard must be for Chesterfield cigarettes, whose slogan was “They Satisfy.”

This building stands today: it’s a church, the Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque Roman Catholic Church, established in 1923. Readers of James Joyce’s story “Eveline” will remember Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, who was canonized in 1920, post-Dubliners.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Raindrop.io)

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 (Raindrop.io)

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.

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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 (Raindrop.io)

[“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.”

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