Crackpottery, early or late
Alice Walker’s.
Orange Crate Art
Mystery actor
Less about mystery and more about the surprising moment of recognition.
Outtakes (11)
Outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Insincere antic accolade.”
“The blue rode well in the corn”
From Akenfield: Jubal Merton, sixty, wheelwright and blacksmith.
Barry’s tea
From 1946: Barry Fitzgerald for Lipton Tea. Too bad he didn’t endorse Barry’s Tea.
“Caught in the old ways”
From Akenfield: Christopher Falconer, thirty-nine, gardener.
Genius
Man, that Elon Musk must be a genius. Who could ever have seen through these tactics?
Min
Min for macOS: “a fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy.”
Recently updated
A reader sussed out the identity of a mysterious store appearing in two NYC tax photographs.
“Just ‘music’”
From Akenfield: David Collyer, twenty-nine, forester and Labour Party organizer.
More Stranger Things
The trailer appears to promise a season devoid of all the charm that has made the series worth watching. But I’ll watch anyway.
Lost bookstores
From The New York Times, a tour in photographs: “Remembrance of Bookstores Past.”
Rubbish
From Akenfield: Leonard Thompson, seventy-one, farm-worker.
Motive in prisons
“Big prisons in small towns”: that’s the focus of the third season of the WBEZ podcast Motive. The stories are Illinois-centric, but Illinois here is a stand-in for a nation.
From Akenfield
Davie, born in 1887, “who cannot read or write a word and who insists that he has nothing to say.”
Some unusual “some rocks”
Today’s yesterday’s Nancy has some unusual “some rocks.”
Sleep study
It was Rembrandt’s biography of Liszt that inspired the three then–surviving members of The Left Banke to conduct a sleep study.
NBC, sheesh
Price of eggs soar ahead of Easter:” a chyron, as seen on NBC Nightly News tonight.
Automat redux?
The Washington Post wonders if COVID might revive Automat-style dining.
“It will be sunny one day”
From Letters of Note, a letter from Stephen Fry to a stranger.
Outtakes (10)
Outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941. They sometimes remind me of Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966).
Outtakes (9)
Inside a store that sells — what? Outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Old-timey chair protector.”
How to improve writing (no. 101)
Put things where they belong.
Teaching for free
Prompted by the now-infamous listing for an unpaid teaching position at UCLA, The New York Times looks at the realities of academic labor: “The unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.”
Time for cheese
Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) speaks: “No one is ever too busy for cheese.”
An Automat documentary
The Automat, a documentary film.
The 1950 census
Daughter Number Three offers ultra-helpful directions for looking up people and places in the 1950 census.
Sweatin’ your nextra to the boo
It sounds to me like “You’re sweatin’ your nextra to the boo.”