Tiny Diner
A Brooklyn diner, c. 1939–1941. “Good Food for Good Health”? If you say so.
Orange Crate Art
Recently updated
Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado: Now with a photograph of a BAR sign, salvaged by Fordham students after the El D’s destruction.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Retouch before advancement.”
Composition of place
I find myself these days recalling not so much moments as spaces. The layout of my grandparents’ house, my other grandparents’ apartment, libraries from childhood in Brooklyn and adolescence in NJ, college buildings. It must be that so much time spent in one place is making me travel in my head to others.
Pencil vs. pencil vs. pencil vs. pen
Which lasts longer: a cheap pencil, a better pencil, a mechanical pencil, or a ballpoint pen?
“Do I really need a toilet?”
What it can be like to rent in Manhattan.
Nico & Nor
From WGBH, preschool STEM learning with Nico & Nor games (iPadOS 12.0 or later). Go Ben!
Word of the day: bazooka
My friend Stefan Hagemann clued me in to the origin of bazooka, which was the name of a musical instrument of sorts before it became the name of a weapon.
Holding his head
“At oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court's best questioners, sometimes takes a different approach [from that of Justice Sonia Sotomayor]. She just shuts down, rather than alienate her colleagues. Still, her anger is often palpable, the color literally draining from her face. And Justice Stephen Breyer on occasion just holds his head.”
Ectoplasm
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
Intersectional
Watching Murder, She Wrote (for the old stars), we spotted the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Ventura Boulevard. There’s a building with a distinctive rounded front on one corner. It’s a drugstore in the show, and a drugstore still (now a CVS).
When in doubt, check Twitter
Yes, iCloud was down.
Signatures in unexpected places
Elvis, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger: signatures found on due-date slips and in library books.
Sardines forever
“So long as I have a roof over my head and a kitchen cabinet, I will forever have a case of sardines in there through my very dying breath.”
Block that metaphor
“There are at least some cracks — seeming cracks? — in Trump’s hold and they center for now on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.”
“Going after children”
Everyone is someone’s child. Ivanka Trump is a forty-year-old child. The defeated former president is a seventy-five-year-old child.
Onomastics
A toddler of my acquaintance calls them “The Get Back Guys.”
National Handwriting Day
From Kiss of Death (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1947), fictional proof that handwriting opens doors.
Going to a conference
I was heading off to a conference to present a paper — one of my least favorite things to do.
Asking, not asking
All this parsing might have been avoided if Justice Gorsuch had just worn a damn mask.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Ignore a Simpsons suggestion.”
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022)
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes.
“Before Amy came in”
Giving up on Henry James.
Mary Miller again
For a third time, Representative Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15) appears in The New Yorker (January 31). She’s mentioned in Jane Mayer’s long, revealing article about Virginia Thomas, the hard-right activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
A lost art
“I thought letter writing was a lost art, like steer milking.”
Pluto again
A New York Times interactive feature: “Is Pluto a Planet?”
Recently updated
The professor who called his students “vectors of disease” is threatening to sue his school.
EXchange names on screen
From Till the End of Time (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1946).
Getting free COVID tests via USPS
WNYC reports that people who live at an address not registered with the USPS as a multi-unit dwelling have been unable to order free COVID tests if someone from the same address has already ordered them. Here’s what to do.
Fantastic Voyage
Michael Steele (the political commentator, not the ex-Bangle), on MSNBC just now, describing his fellow Republicans.