Newspaper Osmosis

Members of Club dei 27 in Parma, Italy

I first thought I might be imagining things. Was the NYT adopting a front page, below the fold A-Hed-like piece feature for its front page, mimicking the WSJ?

The front page A-Hed piece is a time-honored feature of the WSJ. Its name derives from newspaperspeak about text framed with borders that resemble an A. I couldn't find a formal definition of A-Hed in the OED, but Google tells me it means headline, and is purposely misspelled by the WSJ to distinguish it from a top-of-the fold headline.

The A-Hed piece is so popular with WSJ readers that there is a collection of pieces in a book, Floating Above the Page. Not all that long ago Rupert Murdoch wanted to get rid of it for some reason. The staff revolted, (to say nothing of what the readers might have done) and it has never been discontinued that I know of. It is one of the first things I land on when picking up the WSJ, and it has given me many inspiration for blog postings. 

Lately, and I can't remember when I first started to think that the NYT might be trying out its own version of an A-Hed piece. While not framing it the same way, or stuffing it with sometimes truly groaning dad puns, they have definitely started to do something I haven't seen before.

How else can you explain a recent NYT front page piece, with a photo of a quadruped and the headline: The Mule Was a Menace. But He Wasn't a Mule. I kid you not. This is not a front page story about NATO and the Ukraine. 

Note: Mules and Donkeys are not biologically the same animal. But that's another story.

The NYT pieces (and I don't know what to call them) lack the utter levity and lightness of the WSJ pieces, but clearly someone at the editor's desk is changing something.

I think it was the story about the Verdi Club that got me thinking things might be changing over there on Eighth Avenue.

On November 4 the front page piece went with a headline and photo: To Join This Club a Member Must Die. And You Must Adore Verdi. Not quite the white smoke coming from the Vatican, but close. It was a true WSJ-like  A-Hed piece.

The WSJ has an A-Hed piece nearly every day, always front page and below the fold. The NYT version is not every day. I guess it depends how much other news the NYT needs to give front page status to.

Reading the WSJ can be fun, with its A-hed piece and its "Pepper...And Salt" cartoon on the editorial page. The NYT would seem to be trying to capture some fun of its own. It's not always easy to find fun in the NYT.

But consider some of the following recent front page pieces that have that A-Hed feel to them. This is not your grandfather's NYT.

Ohtani's Ruthian Feats Can't Coax Japanese Yankees Fans to Turn Dodger Blue

Paraguay Adores a Cartoon Mouse Named Mickey. Just Don't Bring Up Disney

Maps Show Landslide Risk in Alaska, but Some Aren't Interested

A Reminder You Can't Light Up Will Now Stay Lit All the Time

Dead Poet Talking: Polish Radio Experiment Bares Pitfalls of AI

Village So Spooky, Even Skeptics get the Jitters

In Tumultuous Times, More Readers Are Reaching  for Magical 'Healing Fiction' 

The paper is becoming fun to read.

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The Wailing Wall

 

This subway wall display started after the 2016 presidential election in NYC's Union Square Station. It is still attracting Post-It notes after 2024 presidential election. It's where Democrats go to complain and worry. There might even be a line.

I think I know where this wall display is. Near the 16th Street/17th Street exit there used to be a piece of tape on the individual tiles for every person who died on 9/11 downtown. The names were arranged alphabetically and when I was in the area I always stopped and looked for the names of the people I knew who died that day.

Over the years the tape got dirty and some names became illegible. I suspect there names are now gone, but not forgotten. 

The Subway Therapy wall has been put to another use of certainly less value.

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What Time Is It?

I'm not going to go so far as to say I hate the first Sunday in November. After all, the NYC Marathon is being run and broadcasted with way too many political ads this year, along with the usual come back from medical ailment stories. The Hospital for Special Surgery is getting a lot of free advertising.

This is a tough year for political ads. It's the perfect storm of midterm elections and the presidential race. The midterm elections are giving us ads for candidates that aren't even in our district. Win or lose, I will be happy when whoever is paying for us not to vote for "Radical Sue Altman" goes away. I'm not even in her state.

What I find unlikeable about this day is having to set all the clocks back an hour so that we'll be on the same page as the rest of the country, and most parts of the world. I never counted the number of devices that need this adjustment until today. It is a lot.

Sure there are the smart devices that adjust themselves. The computer, the three cable boxes and even the stove. One smart device is not so smart, my wife's nightstand clock. It's got the old factory setting date for when we used to go through this rigamarole, the last weekend in October. But things change. Therefore, twice a year she doesn't know the correct time when she gets up. Surprise!

We have an outstanding 30! clocks and phones that need adjusting every time they keep Daylight Savings time in effect. Therefore, twice a year there is a lot to do. The three cable boxes are smart, as is the stove. But smart ends there

At the outset of our nearly 50 years of marriage my wife and I started to collect antique clocks. Grandfather, regulator, box clocks, cottage clock, ship's clock, bee hive clock (figure eight clock) All but one is in working order and all keep fairly accurate times.

When these clocks need to be set back the pendulum is stopped and we wait for an hour to pass. This beats plowing through the time by advancing 11 hours and going through all the attendant bonging routines. Going forward is easy because all you have to do is stop the pendulum, move the hands an hour forward and restart the pendulum. Easy.

A room by room march through is done twice a year. There are two thermostats which are the most important. The clock for the front irrigation usually doesn't need adjusting because by now the water's been turned off and the lines blown out. But not this year.

With the drought, irrigation has stayed on. But rather than fight with the outdoor box I've chosen to ignore the time reset and will just wait for them to come and shut off the water and blow the lines out. It will be soon enough. 

Every year we hear stories about end of going through all this. After all, Arizona and Hawaii—entire states—do not bother with Daylight Savings Time. 

We also hear stories about doing away with the penny, since it costs more to make a penny than it is worth.

At 75 I don't think I'm going to live long enough to see either of these two proposals come into effect. Daylight time is here to stay, as is the penny.

After all, if we did away with the penny, Ben Franklin's "a penny saved is a penny earned." would be meaningless.

Ben? Ben who?

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Bag It

We are surrounded by things someone invented and hardly realize someone invented it. Take the flat bottom paper bag. Someone invented that? 

Yes. A woman invented it and wound up in the Inventors Hall of Fame and was the recent subject of an Overlooked No More NYT obituary, those occasional obits that are meant to be a sort of an atonement for ignoring the subject back when they should have received a tribute obit, if a tribute obit existed when they passed away—and if women were more recognized. These obits are always interesting. 

Margaret E. Knight lived from 1838-1914. I always try and think about what the deceased's world was like during their time on earth. 1838 puts Margaret squarely in the world of sailing ships, lots of candles, wars fought with horse pulled caissons, and horses as the best way to get from A to B. No tractors either. Mules or horses pulled plows. 

She was born in York, Maine, and was later brought up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and might have even known someone who fought in the American Revolution, and probably most likely someone who fought in the Civil War. And then of course there's the Spanish-American war. When she was born there were 26 stars in the flag, and Martin Van Buren was president. She read about Abraham Lincoln.

The bag above is on exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Margaret was installed in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 2006. She was working in a paper bag factory, making paper bags by hand, when she got the inspiration for making a machine that would make the paper bags, which at the time were really envelopes. No flat bottom sacks to hold the potatoes.

Anyone who's been to a store lately knows that paper bags are back. I get them at CVS, and my wife brings those tote bags (flat bottom) to the grocery store. No more plastic bags, which were great when we had an indoor cat and needed to scoop litter.

When the ruling came down that New York was going to outlaw plastic bags I started to hoard them so I had them for the cat. I kept a few trash bags full of them in the shed. Now the environmental pendulum has swung and paper's back and plastic is out. We're either saving the whales in Italy or trees everywhere. Go figure. 

Margaret in 1912

At an early age Margaret showed she wasn't going to be pigeon-hold into what girls were expected to do. She made her own wooden toys, sleds, and kites.  She told The Woman's Journal in 1872, "the only things I wanted were a jack knife, a gimlet and pieces of wood."  

She was no pushover. When a machine shop owner tried to claim  her invention of the machine that made flat bottom paper bags as his own, she took he guy to court. He claimed that a woman couldn't produce what she did.

But Margaret had the plans, original notebooks, etc. and the patent judge ruled in her favor. Justice prevailed, even for a woman in 1871. She received patent No. 116.842.

She successfully won other intellectual property cases. Her paper bag machine is in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

And lest if there is anyone at the NYT who currently feels that woman were never recognized for anything, they have only to read Glenn Rifkin's Overlooked obituary where he tells us that in 1913 the NYT did a story on the increasing number of woman among the ranks of inventors who singled out Ms. Knight as the oldest and "the one having most to her credit." She had been referred to as the female Thomas Edison. High praise indeed.

She remained single, and lived comfortably, but hardly in a state of wealth, having $300 to her name when she passed away.

Quite honestly, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a free standing flat bottom paper bag and not think of Margaret Knight. Someone invented that.

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Murder with French Scenery

Viewing choices have greatly expanded when you add what you can watch on your computer through streaming services. Take out a NetFlix, Acorn TV, Masterpiece, Peacock, Hulu subscription, and you can get shows and sports you would never see even on cable TV. Of course your bill goes up. Sometimes way up if you're impulsive.

And watching these streaming services, many with English subtitles from countries like Norway, France and Germany, you realize every country has a police procedural series. 

I've gotten so used to watching shows with subtitles that I go Close Captioned even with regular TV. It helps when the pronunciation isn't always so clear. I steer away from anything dubbed. The words and mouth can't be synchronized seemlessly, and it looks funny.

One of the streaming outlets I've latched onto is Mhz, which I guess is MegaHerz. They seem to favor French police procedurals, and the one I like the most is Murder In... A stunning locale in a French province follows the In. There are something like 13 seasons of it, so it will be awhile until I run the table. 

The series has been a French favorite since the mid 2000s. The plots are very procedural, but the scenery is stunning and makes you want to tour the French provinces and eat. Especially eat and drink wine and sit in outdoor bistros and watch the world go by in cobblestone town squares surround by stucco pastel buildings with tiled roofs and narrow streets. The French tourism board must have a hand in the production.

And the settings! Who knew France had so many tiny islands holding so much beauty? Take a recent episode set in the Porquerolles Islands off the coast of Marseille. The main island is a postcard of 200 people living in luxury surrounded by beaches, blue water and boats (bateaus). Lots of boats The weather is so perfect the male cops wear shorts.

All the episodes in the series are about 1½ hours long, just enough time to develop the family backstories, give you a few red herrings, then move in for the denouement, often played back as a flashback so you see what really happened.

Through subtitles I now know how to say "shit" in French, "merde," uttered by male and female cops, as is "fuck," "putain". It's like taking a Berlitz course in languages.

The plots have a core similarity. There is a murder (no kidding) and body is found right away. No sooner have the credits finished than the Gendarmerie are racing to the scene, securing the perimeter, putting up yellow tape and taking photos.

Generally, there is only one corpse in the episodes. Maybe two, tops. Nothing like the wholesale slaughter that goes in the British Midsomer Murders series where a new census is need to count who's left in the thatched roof village.

The male and female leads who are thrust into solving the crime are wary of each other and invariable let little out about their past at the outset. They generally tell us it's complicated, comp-le-kay.

The pathologist (there is always a pathologist) on the scene who tells us the victim was strangled (there are marks on their neck and petechial hemorrhage—you learn a lot by watching these shows.), or it was "blunt force trauma." Sometimes the victim was shot, but this not being the States, guns are not often even seen in the plots. (All the French police do however carry weapons on their hip) An estimate on time of death is offered by the pathologist. Cell phone, wallets and id are searched for. Not always found. DNA will of course be taken. There is no show without DNA. Drs. Crick and Watson have contributed mightily to crime plots.  

The Gendarmerie who shows up and promptly puts the police armband on is generally from a province nearby, from a larger city. They are on loan to help the local force. They are not always welcome, but they eventually achieve cooperation grudgingly.

White coated forensic team members descend, and then the guest investigator makes their way out of the car and needs to know, "what have you got?" (In French, of course.) Generally the investigator is known to someone on the local force from having worked with them decades ago. "You came back!"

Like any country's police procedurals, woman can be in charge, and can be the highest rank. What usually ensues is a male/female matchup, sometimes with simmering sexual tension. There isn't much sex in these episodes. It is generally quickly implied that a pair are doing it, but there is little to no nudity.

Coffee, or café, is as much a part of the episodes as the actors. A paper cup demitasse always emerges from the police vending machine. No Grande Starbucks for these folks.

Watch enough of these episodes and of course you start to recognize familiar actors. Florence Pernel will usually show up as the prosecutor, or examining judge who gets assigned to the case directing the police investigation. France does things a little differently in this regard.

Also showing up with some regularity is Phillippe Bas, a solid looking hunk with steel-grey hair and a close cropped beard who will appear in at least one scene with his shirt off. Beefcake ladies.

One thing these episodes portray other than the usual back stories of divorce, and family estrangements is that family members work under the command of other family members. How realistic this is not known. In one episode, a young female officer accidently shot her mother, the commander, during the investigation of a burglary, putting Mom in a wheelchair and early retirement. She feels guilty, of course, and lives with her to take care of her. Until of course when she doesn't.

Sons seem to run into their fathers. It's almost like in Indiana Jones, with Sean Connery teaming up with Harrison Ford.

There are family dinners where the good wine (Not cheap plonk!) is poured and someone makes their specialty. You can get hungry and thirsty watching crime being solved.

The locales are also the stars of the shows. There have been two episodes I watched where Mt. Saint Michel has played a part. The setting for the Alexandre Dumas story of The Count of Monte Cristo gets shown off, Chateau D'If on the Frioul archipelago off the coast of Marseille. The plot of that episode even resembles the Dumas story.

One plot device is the unknown offspring seeking revenge. And oftentimes it is a woman who is the killer.

I'll guess the director uses drones to get the overhead shots of these lovely tiled roof settings that hold so much lurid crime. Bodies are found buried underneath churches. We get a history lesson on local legends and superstitions.

The killer is of course always found and the parties that were estranged make up. The pair that you figure were going to get together after hopping on top of each other in the police car do go further in life. They generally do leave together in a vehicle, even if one of them is divorced with a kid. Happy families.

Watch this series and you don't have to take your shoes off at the airport and you can sleep in your own bed. You will have to do your own cooking and pour your own wine though.

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ogspot.com

The Boot

The John Huston character, Noah Cross in the movie Chinatown, describes to Jack Nicholson's Jake Gaddis how old and durable he is: Politicians, public buildings and whores all gain respectability if they last long enough.

The same might be said for a climber's boot and sock from 1924 just found on Mount Everest with the climber's name still visible inside, stenciled on the sock, A. C. Irvine.

A. C. Irvine was Andrew Comyn Irvine, 22, who was part of an ascent of the mountain with George Mallory. The two climbers did not return from the climb, and the find creates the possibility that they were the first to reach the top ahead of Sir Edmund Hillary. 

A. C. Irvine

In 1924 they disappeared, and the mystery of whether they ever reached the top has remained. George Mallory's remains were found in 1999. Mr. Irvine's remains were never found, but there is the belief that inside the boot human remains will be found.

The Mallory-Irvine pair were reported to have gotten within 800 feet of the top when they disappeared. Hillary made the first credited complete ascent in 1953 with Tenzig Norgay.

It was a National Geographic documentary team that made the boot and sock discovery, quite by accident because they themselves were a little bit off the course they wanted. In addition, they found an oxygen tank with the year 1933 from a failed British expedition that was following the course set out by Mallory and Irvine.

1924 Mallory-Irvine Base Camp

Jimmy Chin was part of the National Geographic documentary film crew, a name familiar to those who saw Free Solo, the award-winning documentary that chronicled Alex Honnold's free climb of Yosemite's El Capitan in 2017.

Think of the bragging rights a boot company (if still in business) can make about making a climbing boot that was found intact on Everest from 100 years ago.

Nima Rinji Sherpa

Mountains and exploration, space, and oceans will always draw people to try and conquer them. In the NYT edition of October 12, 2024 there is a story of an 18-year-old sherpa guide who has become the youngest to reach the summit of the world's 14 highest peaks, the 8,000+ meter ones.

Sherpa is a noun and an occupation that describes the Tibetan guides who accompany all the adventurers who pay big bucks to form expeditions to climb the world's highest peaks. 

Sherpa is also the universal last name of this coterie of Tibetans who truly do the heavy lifting in getting the customers to their desired summits. Nima Rinji Sherpa is just another in a long line of Sherpas who are part of the mountaineering industry. His father Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, at 19, was the youngest to ascend Everest without aid of supplemental oxygen. Nima has now joined the family guide business.

I wonder who makes his boots.

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They're Calling the Numbers. No. 22

Another New York Ranger from my golden era of having season seats has now passed away: Donnie Marshall, No. 22, the left winger on the Phil Goyette and Bob Nevin line.

Notable amongst Donnie's achievements was that he, at 92, was the last of the Montreal Canadians who were on the teams that won Stanley Cup 5 years in a row. No such achievement awaited Donnie as a New York Ranger.

Donnie's playing days straddled my watching the Rangers in high school at the Old Garden and then having season seats at the New Garden, in what started out as $5 a seat in Section 333, Row M, seats 5 & 6.

Truthfully, I never knew about Donnie playing for the Canadians. He never reached the Cup finals with the Rangers, playing on Ranger teams from 1963-1970.  Hockey players of that era were not particularly big, or heavy. They were wiry, good stick handlers. As a frustrated Ranger fan when Donnie's line took to the ice we used to say, "here come the dancing girls."

The 1967-1968 season saw the Rangers meet the Black Hawks in the playoffs, finally qualifying after spending many years as the doormat in the 6-team league. The league had now expanded to 12 teams. The Rangers should have beaten the Chicago Black Hawks in the first round, but came up short. Someone close to the team told us all the Rangers did on the road was drink. Beer was a Canadian hockey player's breakfast of champions then.

The Ranger teams of the late '60s and early '70s were getting very good. In 1971 they advanced past the Maple Leafs and then lost to the Chicago Black Hawks in the semi-finals. That was the year the Rangers sent the series back to Chicago with Pete Stemkowski's triple overtime goal. The Garden had run out of beer by then. It was after midnight.

When the Rangers played a team in Utah last night, a team that moved from Phoenix and doesn't even have a nickname yet, you know the game of hockey has changed. Donnie Marshall at 92 must have easily outlived whatever money he made as a player. They didn't get much then relative to today's players.

I shake my head when I think of how we were shocked, shocked, that we could no longer get into the games at the new Madison Square Garden at the Old Garden prices, which were $1.50 for side balcony and $2.00 for end balcony. My $5 a seat season tickets in the green seats seemed like an extravagance.

Hearing about Donnie wasn't the first time this week that a blast from the Ranger past hit the news. One morning on the Good Day New York morning news show with Rosanna Scotto and Curt Menifee they had Chris Jericho on, a professional wrestler, rock band singer and actor in a horror film Terrifier 3, now out in theaters.

Chris Jericho's name meant nothing to me until they showed a picture of his dad in a New York Ranger uniform, Ted Irvine, No. 27. Irvine is still with us, and Chris reminisced about seeing his dad play at the Garden, and that now he wrestled in Garden wrestling shows.

Teddy Irvine was a good utility hockey player, left wing, who one year managed to score 26 goals, a  career high and a significant benchmark in the era he played in. He was with the Rangers 6 years: 1970-1975.

I don't go to Ranger games anymore. I'm not interested. After last year's fold against the eventual Stanley Cup champions Florida Panthers, I'll save my NYR interest to games that get played starting in February. I'll follow scores, but there's no need to watch a team in October and expect it to be the team that contends in the playoffs.

The season is too long. Look at the New York Mets. Who wasn't ready to write them off this season with their new skipper Carlos Mendoza and a bullpen that couldn't get batters out if they made it two strikes and you're out and their sub-.500 record? And look at them now.

No, I'll take the pulse of the Rangers early next year and see if they're worth the effort to follow. They do have a habit of just not coming through.

I'm sure Donnie Marshall is missed. I miss my $5 a seat season tickets.

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Doggy Doo

We've probably seen in a police show where the cops ask someone if they can swab them for their DNA, "for elimination purposes." The long-stemmed Q-tip comes out, is rubbed inside the cheek and shoved into a labeled test tube to be processed by the forensic lab. 

Would you think they do this on dogs as well? Well they do, if you live in a gated or dedicated community, or are in a homeowners' development, where picking up doggy doo has been a problem for the home owners' association.

The inimitable A-Hed piece in the WSJ once again comes up with one of their gems.

Why Landlords and Even Tenants Are Picking Up After Other People's Pooches
A growing number  of apartment complexes are turning to DNA testing to track down residents who abandon messes their dogs make, leading to awkward encounters and fines; 'I feel like Maury Povich.'

Never to miss a chance at word play and puns, the piece by Sarah Needleman treats us to people who describe themselves as "the poop patrol."

"...the pandemic puppy boom..."
"Unable to cut the crap with security cameras or signs..."
...landlords are turning to DNA technology. PooPrints..."

"Devin O'Barr, manager of a luxury Chicago-area property that uses PooPrints, says "catching a poop perpetrator is exciting."

"'I feel like Maury Povich,'" he says, referring to the former TV talk-show host who made parental DNA testing a staple of his broadcasts." Who knew this about Maury?

There is nothing there can't be a database of, and in this instance there is a database of a dog's DNA that was taken just like on the cop shows and sent to the lab.

Owners have to present their pooches on moving in. The dog's DNA doesn't go to the F.B.I., but rather to a firm that had been growing steadily in maintaining and processing dog poo samples.

BioPet Laboratories maintains data for 9,000 apartment complexes, tripling its growth since 2019. Brown gold.

The threat of a positive id, along with a fines that can sometimes double and triple as the offenses go along are real deterrents.

One groundskeeper said before the complex signed on with PooPrints they could pick up to six five-gallon buckets of pooch poo a week.

And because there are those who don't mind picking up poop that someone left and turning it in, compliance and deterrence is enhanced by deputy poo-police-picker-uppers. However, there is the story of one such poop patrol volunteer who scooped up droppings, turned them in, only to have the test come back and identify their dog as the perp. The schmuck was still fined. I mean, some things may not leave you with a great many distinguishing characteristics, and all poop can look alike.

Unmentioned in the piece are loopholes. Say you move in, don't have a dog, but get one later, and say "screw it," you're not going to go through the rigamarole of getting your dog's poop on the database. What then? Neighbor vs. neighbor and the authorities are alerted.

Or, say you did register, and the animal is no longer with you for whatever reason, and you get another one and don't bother to register the new one. The new dog's DNA will not be on file, and to a neighbor, they may not know that there's a new dog in town, since the person used to have one. Therefore, nothing to report. Poop scofflaws.

As with anything, compliance starts with the condition of your conscience.

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"...And I Approve This Message."

Did anyone ever think what might be an unintended consequence of allowing early voting might be? Paid political ads that start sometime around Labor Day for an Election Day that is two months away: that is the consequence.

Because of some FCC rule I guess, we get paid political ads for candidates that aren't running for New York offices. Take "radical Sue Altman." That at least is what her opponent Tom Kean Jr. paints her as.

And take Sue's ads for Sue: A constituient's voice-over who tells us, "I can't believe the crap that comes out of Tom Kean's mouth." Yep, I guess you can "crap" on TV. Frank Barone has been saying it for years on Everybody Loves Raymond, now in perpetual reruns.

Sue and Tom are waging a war over a congressional seat in New Jersey, a seat for which I have no dog in the fight. So why do I need to keep hearing about Tom and Sue here in Nassau County, New York?

Both candidates vow to keep you safe. Sue apparently comes from "a family of cops." Tom is seen arms folded in front of a police cruiser. Tough on crime these two.

A Sue Altman ad can come on immediately followed by a Tom Kean ad. Or vice versa. Who schedules noise cancelling political messages?

Here in New York, Mondaire Jones is running for a congressional seat I have no dog in either.  I think he's running against Mike Lawler, whose ads against Mondaire Jones portray him as being in the pocket of progressive Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, better known as AOC.

We get a vintage scene of AOC wearing a Covid mask telling us that "here is the pride of New York, Mondaire Jones." It's a negative ad for Mike to make you hear AOC voice screeching for someone. So, if you don't like AOC, how can you like Mondaire Jones? Of course, if you're in the right congressional district.

Both candidates will tell you they're tough on the border issue. No more of this migration of unvetted souls into our county.

Years ago I said to my friend, don't you think there are going to be those who served in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan who will someday be running for an  elected office? Well, it's happening.

Pat Ryan served two tours overseas, graduated West Point, is a solid family man who plays with his kids. He's the champion living room wrestler.

His service record is offered as his bona fides for running for office against Alison Esposito, a Republican who is looking to unseat Pat.

Pat Ryan has the great fortune to share a surname with Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan. It's got to mean something, right? Again, no dog in this race either.

But, we are going to have an election cycle for a U.S. Senator from New York. Finally, someone I can vote for, or against.

Kirsten Gillibrand is the Democratic incumbent, serving part of Hillary Clinton's term when she was tapped for being Obama's Secretary of State, in 2009, then getting elected in her own right. .

Kirsten's opponent a NYPD retired detective, Mike Sapraicone, who must not have a lot of money to splurge at this point because I haven't seen any ads for him.

This is not unusual when one candidate, usually an incumbent, is so entrenched that any challenger  is faced with a tremendous uphill climb. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York by 2-1.

Kirsten's ads are soft, telling us she's not a politician, but is someone for the people. Get it?

Because of writing this, I looked up who is my congressman who is running for office? The answer is Anthony D'Esposito who is portrayed by his challenger as a drunk behind the wheel, and a cop who lost his gun that was later used in a crime.

His opponent, Laura Gillen, a former Hempstead Town Supervisor, is portrayed as favoring open borders and a liberal who raised real estate taxes.

Of course the presidential ads are starting to percolate, but I expect those. But so soon?

No one ever asked me if I approve these messages. How about there can be no political ads before Columbus Day?

Can we vote on it?

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The Cat

Arthur Barry on the left

You have to be of a certain age—and not suffering from dementia—to remember Murph the Surf, the audacious but ultimately sloppy burglar who used an easily opened window at the Museum of Natural History on Central Park West in 1964 to make off with the Star of India sapphire, a 563 carat gem, as big as a golf ball that would not fit on anyone's finger. Other gems were also taken

Murph and his cohorts were captured quite quickly and the gem was recovered. Murpf did some time, but was then later convicted of a homicide in Florida. He served his time, got out, and became a counselor to inmates. He passed away in 2020.

You are likely deceased if you would be able to remember Arthur Barry, a second-story jewel thief in the 1920s whose life would easily be a movie starring Cary Grant. Barry successfully stole from homes in Westchester, Long Island, and even New Jersey, climbing into homes of the extremely wealthy and picking up the booty from dresser tops, drawers and safes, sometimes while his victims were sleeping, and sometimes when they awoke, and carried on a conversation with him. He was the original piece of work.

His career of illegal transgression began as a boy in Worcester, MA. Barry, born in 1896, was raised in an era where the parents could send a boy to a reformatory for being an "undisciplined child." Imagine being able to get a kid out of your house because you declared him undisciplined. Times change

In a reformatory where not just troublesome boys are housed, but hardened criminals as well are in the place it is no wonder young Arthur learned a trade. In this endeavor Arthur, was a carrier of nitroglycerin for a retired safe cracker who supplied other, more active safe crackers in the region.

Nitro, in the right hands, could be used to blow open tough to open safes when you weren't the one who was supposed to open the safe. The movie Asphalt Jungle has Sam Jaffe playing the role of an older safe cracker, Doc,  who knows how to use the "soup", as nitro was called int he trade. It's a great movie, also starring Marilyn Monroe in an early role of a beauty who distracts Jaffe's character.

Young Barry traveled on trains in the region delivering the nitro in a small suitcase. He was never pinched for this delivery service.

Arthur graduated to second-story jobs where he climbed into bedrooms, either through a window left open, (summer, no air conditioning.) or one that was easily lifted to prowl through a bedrooms in homes he had cased, often while the owners were eating downstairs.

He read society pages and attended parties, and was convivial with the guests, passing himself off as Doctor Gibson, all the while planning his heists. He even took the Duke of Wales, Prince Edward who would later be the king who abdicated, into Manhattan and showed him around the speakeasies and night clubs during Prohibition..

He was a gem stealing scourge who made his way into homes and left with the goods, to have them fenced for one tenth their value. He was a man-about-town who loved to play craps, owned and owned speakeasy for a bit.

He was a decorated medic in World War I serving his country, a veteran status he enjoyed when his life of crime and incarceration was over.

The Gold Coast of Long Island was Gatsby country, sporting many mansions owned by titans of business and industry whose wives wore expensive jewelry. Barry learned how to tell "paste", fake stones, from the real stuff. He was highly efficient, high tailing it back into Manhattan after a score.

He lived near Harry Houdini on the West Side. Barry's wife, an older single woman with a son, Anna Blake, was friends with Houdini's wife, who sometimes accompanied Anna to visit Barry when he was locked up.

In that era, Nassau County was a collection of towns and villages that each had their own police departments. During Barry's reign as a successful jewel thief Nassau put together a county-wide police force whose detective Harold King made Barry his No. 1 priority. 

Policing was quite different then. King gave orders to shoot Barry on sight if any on his men caught him with the goods coming out of a house. That never happened.

Barry had a place on Lake Ronkonkoma when he was headed there with his wife Anna and some jewels. The LIRR was two hours late getting to the station, but it didn't matter. The Nassau cops were waiting for him, likely tipped by a partner Barry did jobs with Boston Billie Williams, James Monahan.

This put Barry and Anna is serious trouble. Barry made a deal with the cops that Anna knew nothing about anything. He was guilty. Barry went to prison in Sing Sing, and eventually state prison at Auburn, New York.

In 1929 Barry escaped from Auburn in a massive prison riot. He jumped off the high perimeter wall, twisted his ankle and took a bullet in his shoulder. But he was free.

And free he remained for three years, holing up in New Jersey. Auburn prison is in Cayuga County, and Barry had a good knowledge of the area from his nitroglycerine courier days. He reached Fonda, New York, which it turns out was founded by Dutch descendants of Henry Fonda. Who knew? 

Henry wasn't born in Fonda, he being from Nebraska, but his relatives came there in the 1600s rather than settle in Nieuw Amsterdam (New York City). They had fled from Italy to the Netherlands.

In Fonda, New York, Barry got out of prison clothes and settled in Newark and small towns in New Jersey. Anna joined him, and they lived as Mr. and Mrs. James Toner.

He managed to gain the good graces of a Otto Reuter in Sussex County where he did odd jobs around the farm. If it wasn't for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in New Jersey, Barry might have never been caught.

But the police flooded the area around Highfields, in East Amwell New Jersey for clues to the baby's kidnapper. A homemade wooden ladder was left behind outside the second story window. Barry was leading a blameless life at Otto Reuter's place, but was notable for ordering all the New York papers he could from a local newsagent.

The frenzy created by the kidnapping had all the conspiracy theorists, police and newspapers and newspapers offering the explanation for the kidnapping lay at the hands of Arthur Barry. Didn't he go into second stories using a ladder?

Never mind that Barry never brought his own ladder to heists, but rather just fetched one from the gardeners' shed, and that the crimes of jewel heists and kidnapping were not likely committed by the same man, Barry's image was everywhere. He was a wanted man for the kidnapping.

Eventually, with a vast circulation of photos of Barry made possible through the newspaper speculation, Barry was apprehended.

Of course he wasn't the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, and soon Barry found himself hack where he escaped from, Auburn. 

He was tried and acquitted of instigating the Auburn riot. From 5 years of solitary confinement he was eventually transferred to Attica prison, a then newly built prison in Attica, Wyoming County, New York.

Attica is much harder to get to than Auburn from NYC. Visits from his devoted wife Anna were difficult. Eventually, Anna passed away from cancer in 1940, replying to Inspector King, the Nassau Detective's plea to tell where the loot was hidden with the replay, "No Dice." Barry on his eventual release told the world there was no hidden loot. It was all, easy come, easy go.

The 1940 short piece in the NYT was Anna's obituary with the headline: 

Gem Thief's Friend Dies with His Secret
Anna Blake Refused to Reveal What Barry Did With the Loot

When you read the short obit. Anna is described as having passed away in the Mineola prison hospital. You might get the idea she was incarcerated as well. She wasn't. In that era, the hospital must have been on the Nassau County prison's grounds. Nassau currently has a county hospital on Hempstead Turnpike near where I live. The county jail is behind it.

Anna is referred to as "friend", but she was Barry's wife for quite sometime. Barry didn't make it well-known that he and Anna had married.

Barry was paroled from prison in 1949, and with the deal made with Nassau County's District Attorney Frank Gulotta, he would plead guilty to several of the unsolved crimes and still be released with a suspended sentence. Frank was the father of an eventual County Executive Tom Gulotta, who would leave office in 2001 as the county was facing bankruptcy.

Barry settled into a blameless life, living with a sister in Worcester and working as a cashier at a diner. He was a model citizen who had many nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews who weren't even ware of his very checkered past. He was Uncle Artie, as a chapter in Dean Jobb's great biography of Barry lays out. He was the relative who you wanted over for Thanksgiving dinner.

On his release from prison Barry became a bit of a celebrity. He appeared on an early Mike Wallace interview show PM East in 1961. He even appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1964, telling the audience that no, there was no treasure somewhere. He spent or gambled away all the proceeds.

Tapes from early Carson shows were not saved. How great would it be to dive back into his interview with Johnny?

Neil Hickey wrote a book about Barry,  The Gentleman Was a Thief.

After an afternoon of puttering around in the garden at his sister's, Barry passed away in his sleep on July 15, 1981 at 84.

There was no NYT obituary, so I've suggested one for their Overlooked No More series of obituaries on those notables who didn't get the sendoff they would have gotten if they were to go in the current era of writing tribute obituaries.

Barry himself would easily provide he closing words: the last word:

Dean Jobb closes his story on Barry with Barry's words from an interview with Robert Wallace. "When you put down all those burglaries, be sure you put the big one at he top. Not Arthur Barry robbed Jesse Livermore, or Arthur Barry robbed the cousin of the King of England, but just Arthur Barry robbed Arthur Barry."

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Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson is one recording artist whose songs I don't have to download because I just read he passed away. I might already have them all.

The New York Times this morning gives Kris basically a 21-gun salute. Front page, just below the fold, with a large photo of Kris with his guitar. The jump fills 5 columns with a selection of 12 of his songs to sample in the Arts section.

Lyrics to Sunday Morning Coming Down are imbedded in the front page text, an anthem to hard drinking and hangovers that Johnny Cash immediately saw the affinity with.

Well, I woke up Sunday
    morning
With no way to hold my head
    that didn't hurt
And the beer I had for 
    breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for desert.

The song propelled Kris's songwriting from being a janitor in Nashville with the hope of selling songs (You gotta be where they sing 'em.) to what would become his career.

I saw the affinity in that song as well. There were many Sundays, and other days of the week, when I was drinking enough Budweiser to bathe a Clydsedale. It was my anthem as well, until 1985 when I quit, as Kris did eventually as well.

There are many great Kristofferson songs, but the one I think showed off all of his talent best was Here Comes That Rainbow Again, a song whose roots lay a scene from the movie The Grapes of Wrath when two Oakie kids come into a New Mexico roadside café on Route 66, stare at the candy display and ask about the price of some candies for the older sister and her little brother. He took a scene from a movie, from a John Steinbeck novel, and further told the story of the Depression.

Johnny Cash sang the song on a Letterman show and gave a little backstory to it. Kris on Elvis Costello's  show Spectacle on the USA network gave the full back story, and is when I first became aware of the song.

The link to the video uses still images from the movie. Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas in 1936 to a military family where his father was a Major General in the Air Force. I'm sure growing up in the '30s Kris was well aware of the great migration of people to California along Route 66 as the drought from the Dust Bowl effectively ended farming for them in Texas, Oklahoma and other states.

A military career was expected of him, but the pull of literature and writing was too great. He was a Rhoades Scholar and a helicopter pilot in the Army where he was a Captain. He worked for oil companies after he left the Army, piloting helicopters traveling between oil rigs. After that, he devoted himself full-time to writing. I remember reading of one party he attended where he made his entrance after piloting a helicopter to the venue.

He was a rascal of a good-looking guy, with hooded, quick eyes, married three times, but content enough after quitting drinking to have five kids with Lisa Myers and a 41-year marriage that only ended when he passed away, to go along with the three kids he already had. Singer, songwriter, actor and producer.

There is a poignant video of him appearing with Rosanne Cash in 2023, looking gaunt but smiling infectiously, as they sing Loving Her Was Easier at the Hollywood Bowl. Rosanne's father Johnny and Kris were best of friends and singing partners.

Kris was born in the mid '30s; myself at the end of the '40s. Those born in the '30s are slipping away. We don't know how old we can become.

The NYT obituary by Bill Friskics-Warren ends appropriately with how Kris would want to be remembered as. His occupation on his passport: Writer.

He will be missed, but when they leave a body of work, he will be not forgotten. They don't write them like he did anymore.

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Jury Pool

Can a New York newspaper be accused of contaminating a potential jury pool?

It's a question I'm sure no one is asking anyone. No talking heads will discuss the NYT sending their reporter-at-large, Sarah Lyall on a sumptuous trip to Turkey with a photographer to bring back the visuals on what the alleged Mayor Adam Adams upgrades actually look like to those of us who sit next to people who take their shoes off and trim their toenails on flights while being offered packaged pretzels.

Sarah Lyall is the reporter who got the assignment to take the 10-hour flight to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines in their business class. She also got to spend a night in the Bentley Suite at the St. Regis hotel Eric Adams is said to have vastly underpaid for this stay.

The accompanying photographs—and there are many—show the over-the-top luxury Adams would have enjoyed on his flight, and his stay in a suite that usually goes for $2,500 a night (not the most expensive in the place, mind you) but one in which it is alleged he paid $300 for. Maybe that was the Turkish version of co-pay.

The photos are stunning. Missing from Ms. Lyall's reporting is the thread count on the sheets, but to her credit she does provide a full picture of being bathed in luxury.

She also irresistibly tells us that the Turkish lounge at JFK has the not-to-believed Wi-Fi password of...wait for it...TKNYADAMS.

Being the inquisitive reporter, Ms. Lyall finds out from the staff that this is due to the company that runs the Wi-Fi is headed by someone named Adams. If you go back to that lounge today, my bet is the password has been changed.

Ms. Lyall recognizes the need for transparency, and of course fully discloses what the NYT paid for the trip. Her r/t air fare was $9,236.90, while the photographer Clark Hodgin's air fare was considerably cheaper since the travel secretary at the NYT didn't act fast enough and he had to fly economy with a r/t price of $2,289.90. The guess is that Mr. Hodgin got his own room, but the venue and price is not disclosed.

Surely that can't be the total tab. Transportation to and from the  airport, meals, bar bill and gratuities would have to be added in. The NYT doesn't spend any money to send a reporter to cover Saratoga races, but will do its best to ladle the goods on Adams. They must feel betrayed for endorsing him for mayor, to now seeing fit to write a huge editorial suggesting he resign. Fame and approval is fleeting.

I have some experience with being called for jury duty for federal court, as well as testifying in a health care fraud case that I worked on with the Southern District's AUSA and the F.B.I., as did many, many others.

In federal court the judge questions the prospective jurors in that I guess is the voir dire process. When the Adams trial comes up,—and it will come up—I can imagine the judge asking the prospective jurors taken from the Southern District (Manhattan/New York, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan Counties) if they've read any pre-trial stories about the case.

There's no chance that living in Nassau County (the Eastern District) and being 75 that I would qualify to be a prospective juror. But if I were asked the question, and wanted out big time, I would make sure I believed Eric Adams beneffited from upgrades that looked like what the NYT paid for its reporter-at-large and photographer. How dare Adams do all that while I'm next to a toenail clipper and eating packaged pretzels. (No peanuts. Everybody on the flight is allergic to peanuts but me.)

My experience in seeing a federal case being assembled against the doctor who was found guilty and did 7+ years in prison, but who has since passed away, is that the Feds assemble a preponderance amount of evidence. If you're not found guilty in federal court, you are amongst the few.

The beauty of the Sarah Lyall story is that it is online with all the color photos. There is even a 12 -second video of the hidden champagne cooler tucked into the couch that opens with the press of a button to offer two flutes, and a bottle of chilled, to just the right temperature, of champagne.

Only an overpaid talking head or journalist will try and tell you the outcome to all this. Wherever it's headed, Eric Adams must have had a good time.

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Stainless Steel

We know Elon Musk grew up obsessed with sci-fi comics. He even looks a bit sci-fi. Satellites, Space-X rockets, colonizing Mars, electric cars, he is a walking, breathing future.

And with this, the stainless steel Tesla truck has finally hit the road. A futuristic, automotive gladiator, nearly bullet proof, scratch and dent proof. But not smudge and dirt proof. Aye, there's the rub. What do you rub on it to keep it clean?

Again, the WSJ treats us to an A-Hed piece that outlines the various products and advice owners have been giving each other over the best products to use to keep that baby gleaming.

And a new baby it is. The headline and sub-heading for the piece by Ben Glickman goes: 

The Toughest Part About Owning A Tesla Cypertruck? Cleaning It. 

Drivers try Bar Keepers Friend, Windex, Costco baby wipes to battle smudges

There is Kevin Tieman of Buford Georgia, who admits that he has to keep the behemoth clean because, "you just feel like so many people are looking at the vehicle." It has to be ready for its closeup. He uses Costco's Kirkland-brand baby wipes to keep that showroom shine.

There isn't anything that comes into existence that doesn't have an unintended consequence. And the Tesla truck with its solid front apparently is a terrific bug catcher/killer. So much so that one owner estimated there were 3,000 annihilated critters on his truck's front. 

And of course, not feeling that estimate captured everything, the owner submitted a photo to ChatGPT, which returned an estimate of 4,600 no longer flying bugs stuck to the vehicle's front. Who says AI is overrated? War planes flew through flak; Tesla drives  through bugs.

There is no Tesla stainless steel truck in my future. That's not to say I haven't experienced, and continue to experience, tainted stainless steel.

At the family flower show, being part of the indentured teen-age help, cleaning things fell to me. Windows, inside and out, change the water in the vases, keep the floor clean, as well as the stainless steel refrigerator side panels. I had enough experience trying to keep that refrigerator clean to last a lifetime.

So when my wife wanted a new refrigerator, and smartly picked out the model seen here, I experienced PTSD when it arrived. I told her, "you keep this clean. Not me." It's bad enough that it won't hold the refrigerator magnets that we've collected, but it's impossible to keep that sucker free of smudges. But the model has enough selling points that smudges were not a deal breaker. So in it rolled.

And bless her heart, she does keep it free of smudges—on the front. I don't know what she bought that does the trick, but she said that Bar Keepers Friend is not a friend. 

We don't have small children, so little hands don't come in contact with the unit. The inside door edges get smudged easily, but true to my vow, I won't try and keep them clean. 

Like the truck, the refrigerator is a monster. It goes so far deep that we have to keep a back scratcher handy to retrieve items that might find their way all the way to the back. The unit is so big it never fills up keeping groceries refrigerated for only two people.

Personally, I've yet to see a Tesla truck on the street. My wife saw one down the block by the park. She didn't know what it was until I mentioned the A-Hed piece, showed her a picture, and asked her if Bar Keepers Friend is any good keeping stainless steel clean. (According to her, no.)

Her opinion of the vehicle? "It is ug-lee." Well, any vehicle that stains from water and needs the upkeep described in the story, has to be beautiful only in the eye of the owner.

http://www.onofframp.blogpsot.com

Vermont

Can a place still be a place if the place has no one living in it? Maybe it's an existential question, but Lewis, Vermont has a population of 0, and just because it exits on a map someone is going to play a concert there. Will you be there? 

Willie Nelson will tell you the town of his birthplace, Abbott, Texas has a constant population: as soon as a baby is born, a man leaves town. But what happened in Lewis, Vt.? The census taker didn't even live there. And if a baby was born there, it must have been in a moving ambulance and the birth was recorded in another town.

Lewis is a place mentioned in one of those inimitable A-Hed pieces by Betsy McKay in the WSJ, that tells of a pianist/composer who is embarking on a mission to give a concert in every one of Vermont's 252 communities. Vermont is considered the most rural of all states, not because it has the smallest population (it doesn't) but because its population lives in so many small communities. And there is no smaller community than Lewis.

David Feurzeig is a composer and pianist who has given performances all over the world. But now, the 59-year-old University of Vermont music professor has given up all that travel and taking his shoes off at airports for a goal of giving a performance in every one of Vermont's 252 communities, and that means Lewis, Vermont.

A piano is hardly as portable as say a guitar, or a violin. As such, David scouts out uprights and grand pianos at his proposed stops. This forces him to play on instruments that might need work, but he is hardly discouraged.

His plan for his Play Every Town project was to do this in 5 years, but that has now expanded to a 7 year goal. He started the project in 2022, and has so far played at 66 venues. In general, about a dozen to 145 people have turned out at each concert. He donates contributions at each concert to local environmental groups.

He customizes the playlist to match something about the locale he's playing in. "Steamboat Rag" got an airing in Fairlee where the first steamboat was launched. "Beets and Turnips" was tinkled out on an upright piano in Wardsboro to recognize where the state vegetable, the Gilfeather Turnip, was bred.

And lest you think Mr. Feurzeig is making these compositions up, you have only to search them out on iTunes and download any number of versions of these ditties played by various artists. I took a liking to "Steamboat Whistle", that toe-tapping number, complete with the sound effects of a steamboat whistle.  I expect to hear it next time my iPod gets played in the garage while woodworking in the winter. "Frog Legs Rag" is not bad either.

There are any number of links on the Internet to David Feurzeig and his music.  As you might expect, there are a lot of grey heads in his audience.

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...(Something) is becoming more scarce

The title above is what appeared as a headline following a jump from a story recently in either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.

I can't find the story amongst the newspapers I've read, and I've looked back several weeks. I don't even remember what it is that's become scarce, but I do remember thinking when I read the heading that it didn't sound right. Shouldn't it be ...(something) is becoming scarcer? 

Grammatically, doesn't it have something to do with superlatives? I remember a session in second grade—is that possible?—certainly before 5th grade—when the teacher outlined on what was then truly a blackboard in the 1950s, examples of comparisons and how word forms changed. For example, good, better, best; rare, rarer, rarest; not more rarer; scarce, scarcer, scarcest, not "more scarce."

Where can I get guidance on this? I have a hard copy of Benjamin Dreyer's Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. As comprehensive as this book is, there is nothing in the index for "superlatives." So no, not there.

I have a hard copy edition of The Chicago Manual of Style: The 13th Edition of A Manual of Style Revised and Expanded. ( I didn't like the typeface of a more subsequent edition, so I'm not upgrading.) Nope, nothing in the index there either.

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage? Nope. The Shorter OED doesn't even have a listing for scarcer, so I'm starting to wonder about myself.

How about my smaller dictionary, Webster's II New College Dictionary? scarce, scarcer, scarcest. Wonderful! I like this dictionary.

Will Google using AI formulate an answer?

I ask the question of Google: "Is 'more scarce' grammatically correct over scarcer?"

From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishscarce1 /skeəs $ skers/ ●●○ adjective (comparative scarcer, superlative scarcest) 1 if something is scarce, there is not very much of it available Food was often scarce in the winter. There was fierce competition for the scarce resources.

Seems like my grammar school teacher would tells us "scarcer" is the correct comparative usage of scarce.

I ask ChatGPT the same question.

Yes, "more scarce" is grammatically correct, but it’s less common than "scarcer." Typically, "scarce" is considered a one-syllable adjective, so the comparative form "scarcer" is usually preferred. However, "more scarce" can be used for emphasis or stylistic reasons. It’s a matter of choice!

I should have known when I've come to realize and grudgingly accept that judgement/judgment can be spelled with or without the first e. It's not the 1950s. Nothing like having it both ways. My teacher would not be pleased.

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Frank E. Campbell

The investment advice sounds solid. "People that don't buy our stock just don't like money. It's the greatest investment I've ever seen. People are always going to die."

Imbedded in a great two page spread in this NYT Sunday Styles Section is a story by Alex Vadukul about the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, that any New Yorker worth the value of a fully loaded Metro Card will tell you, is the preferred mortuary/funeral home for NYC's well-known, and sometimes not so well known.

The quote, albeit from 1993, comes from Robert L. Waltrip, founder of Service Corporation International, a Texas-based conglomerate that went public in 1969 and that now operates 1,900 cemeteries and funeral homes, including Frank E. Campbell, Riverside Memorial Chapel, and Walter B. Cooke, marquee names in providing funeral services in New York City.

I've been getting the Sunday Times home delivered now from my usual Monday-Saturday carrier gratis, for some reason. I was about to email the carrier and tell them not to bother, since I long ago gave up on the Sunday Times (They don't even have a separate sports section anymore.) I get advance Sunday sections with Saturday's delivery. I don't really need anymore.

But today's Sunday edition brought me this wonderful two, full-page story about the history of the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, introduced by an absolutely priceless nearly full page 1926 photo on the first page of the Sunday Styles section. Hold off on the email.

I delivered many a floral funeral piece to Campbell's in my prior life as a delivery boy for the family flower shop in the 1960s. You used the service entrance, of course, and there in a room populated with several people at desks was an entire staff just placing death notices with NYC newspapers.

None of the deceased I ever delivered flowers for were famous. Th most famous one I ever delivered an  arrangement for wasn't to Campbell's, but to an Episcopal Church in Riverdale, the Bronx, Christ Church.

The name was famous by being former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's sister,  Gemma Gluck. Despite Gemma's and Fiorello's mother being Jewish, the pair were raised as Episcopalians.

The delivery was sometime in the '60s and I only learned of the relationship to the famous mayor through a woman who was in the church by the bier who asked me if I knew who she was. I didn't. I don't know who sent the flowers, and it struck me that there was no one was in the church but this woman and the deceased, someone for whom I would have expected to be receiving a bigger send-off given the fact that she was the sister of perhaps the most famous mayor in the city's history.

But this was the mid-1960s and Fiorello had passed away in 1947. Given that, it started to be clearer why no one else was there. Fame is fleeting, and fame by association even more fleeting.

The lede to the story lists some of the many famous people for whom Frank Campbell's provided services. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's name leads the list. And while her burial arrangements were handled by Campbell's, she wasn't waked there.

Senator Ted Kennedy, Jackie's brother-in-law, made arrangements to have Jackie waked in her Fifth Avenue apartment so that swarms of mourners could be kept away. I remember the news stories of the time that portable embalming equipment was brought in, as well as a casket, all from Campbell's. The online version of the piece shows a photo of the casket being brought into the apartment building.  Privately invited mourners got to pay their respects by being allowed into the apartment. 

The front page of the Sunday Styles section is a treasure of a 1926 photo of what it looked like outside Campbell's when Rudolph Valentino was waked there.  Valentino was a silent screen heartthrob nicknamed The Sheik. His funeral brought out best in female fan hysteria.

In 1926 Campbell's was located on Broadway at West 66th Street. Look closely at the photo on the first page of the Sunday Styles section and you can see trolley tracks, streetcars and double decker buses. In the top left hand portion of the photo you can glimpse the 9th Avenue El, the first elevated line built in Manhattan. Eventually there was a 2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue and 6th Avenue El. The 9th Avenue El was dismantled in 1940. 

The pictured El is at the intersection of 65th Street, 9th Avenue and Broadway, Broadway pretty much being  a north/south thoroughfare that cuts a swath through the length of Manhattan in what is the original cow path. It is a fantastic photo for any NYC nostalgic nut.

The only time I was ever in attendance at Campbell's for someone who had passed away was in 1968, when the father of two brothers I was very close to was waked at Campbell's in February. He was Jewish, and the services for him were held in a chapel at Campbell's.

One Thanksgiving I was over the brothers' apartment on West 55th Street for dinner when their mother quipped that when her two older gentlemen, her husband and his brother had drifted off to sleep after the meal, that she hoped she wasn't going to have to call Campbell's twice that evening. (She didn't have to.)

Given that the NYT has given what might be considered so much free advertising to Frank E. Campbell's, investment in the business of dying might be worth a look at.

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