Ticonderoga headwear
Ferrules as hats.
Orange Crate Art
A missing niche
I was at a town meeting, where local retailers were being encouraged to 1. find a niche and 2. provide great customer service. I posed a couple of questions.
Miller vs. Davis
In Illinois’s redrawn 15th Congressional District, Mary Miller, endorsed by a defeated former president, is struggling in her primary race against fellow Republican incumbent Rodney Davis.
“He’s a dictator”
From Finger Man (dir. Harold D. Schuster, 1955).
“Peacekeeping operations”
Totalitarian euphemism should never get a pass.
Words from Eduardo Galeano
At the end of Parallel Mothers.
In search of Tylenol
The drugstore was a maze of small rooms, some with short aisles of consumer goods, others with wall shelves holding what appeared to be prescription drugs. Still other rooms had hospital beds, with patients in them. I couldn’t understand why I was allowed to walk through these rooms.
Whither the gatekeepers?
Will Shortz, this Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle is messed up.
Outtakes (3)
Kids, in outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“One attending a ball.”
Pfft
Melania Trump’s NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of photographs from a defeated former president’s mad reign seem to be not exactly NFTs.
“A dustbin of scraps”
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
Counting on Brooklyn
”They count on Brooklyn to buy all the candy.“
Two books by Jerry Craft
New Kid and Class Act, stories of school, friendship, misunderstandings, adjustments, and learning, graphic novels sharply and wittily drawn and written.
Fourth panel, fourth wall
Nancy breaks both.
A delirium of shadows
The final forty-five minutes of Suspense (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1946), with cinematography by Karl Struss.
Sardines on PBS tonight
“The Ocean’s Greatest Feast,” about sardine migration on the South African coast.
How to Automat
From The Sleeping City (dir. George Sherman, 1950).
The Trojan Horse Affair
A podcast series by Brian Reed and Hamza Syed.
Back at 4:15
Rick Veach, our plumbing and heating and cooling guy, came by early in the morning to check out a minor problem. He promised to be back at 4:15 to take care of it. And he was.
Valentine’s Day
An Egyptian heart amulet.
hello wordl
One problem with playing for an eleven-letter word is that you have to think of eleven-letter words.
Recently updated
A remarkable story set in Le Steak de Paris.
Outtakes (2)
Kids, in outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“College course.”
WJM Mongols
Mongol pencils on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Pencil books for children
The Musgrave Pencil Company recommends four children’s books about pencils (and their friends the erasers).
Not telling, telling
Bob Woodward and Maggie Haberman, holding on to secrets for their books.
Garner on Black and white
Bryan Garner explains why it makes sense to capitalize Black but not white.
How to improve writing (no. 100)
"It is unclear what the inspector general has done since then, in particular, whether the inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department”: a terrible sentence from The New York Times.