Lou Nasti

I have little in common with Mr. Nasti other than his photo from March 20, 1965 that appeared in the NYT as they did a story on Mr. Nasti as a teenage prodigy for building robots and other forms of animation.

No, I didn't just read that edition, but I probably did buy the paper that day. In 1965 Mr. Nasti was 19; I was 16 and still in high school, but even then a daily reader of the paper.

Mr. Nasti is seen in the lively, appreciative story by Philip Dougherty as what a typical, well dressed teenage boy in Brooklyn, or NYC in general looked like then; white, tab collar shirt, thin tie, hair in a pompadour. He is Billy Joel in the song 'Keepin' the Faith.'

I wore a white shirt all through public high school, but not the thin tie. Mr. Nasti graduated Midwood High School in Brooklyn in 1963, when you could still go to a Dodgers home game at Ebbets Field; I graduated Stuyvesant in Manhattan in 1966.

The above photo is part of the March 28, 2025 obituary for Lou Nasti, 79; Charmed Brooklyn and the World With Mechanical Magic written by Ash Wu.

What attracted me to the obit, other than it was an obit, was the 1965 black and white photo of Mr. Nasti at the controls for the robot, Mr. Obos, named after the Sobos glue Lou used. (I used Duco Cement glue —still on the market—to build the balsa wood houses for my HO train layout.)

Lou and I seemed to have gotten similar Christmas presents. He and I, Tinkertoys, that he animated; me, I only put them together.

Additionally what also attracted me to the obit was the caption used under the reprinted 1965 photo saying it "made the front page of the New York Times in 1965." This I had to see for myself. I really couldn't imagine a story like the one for Mr. Nasti could land on a 1965 front page. 

Years ago I would have had to go to the library to gain access to digital stories from publications. Hello Internet. A little digging, front page yes, but in reality the front page of the second section, page 29 in a L++ edition, two sections, eight columns in those days. (And a lot cheaper; 10¢ for daily; 25¢ for Sunday. But money is relative.)

This hardly diminishes Philip Dougherty's story, written in a lively style with details you wouldn't find in a story today.

Mr. Nasti's home address in given, 1866 Flatbush Avenue. The lede is lively in that it goes: 

"The other fellows around East 38th Street and Flatbush Avenue have had a pretty busy winter, what with shooting pool at Cannon's, going to dances and all that.

But where has Lou Nasti been? He's been in the basement of the Styling by Silhouette Beauty Parlor every free minute, and what he's been doing has really become a neighborhood topic. No wonder, for how many fellows are building 6-foot 5-inch copper colored robots around Flatbush Avenue these days?"

The young Mr. Nasti turned down a scholarship to M.I.T. in order to work, eventually building a thriving animation business with international jet set clients. Had to gone to M.I.T. he likely might have helped design the Lunar Landing Module for NASA. But by the narrative of the obituary, it sounds like Mr. Nasti had much more fun on his own without being part of a giant government bureaucracy.

Dyker Heights in Brooklyn is famous for its over-the-top Christmas decorations, and Mr. Nasti's company completed commission for clients there. The neighborhood is so famous at Christmas time that A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours makes sure it goes by at night.

Getting back to the 1965 article, Mr. Dougherty describes Lou Nasti's mom, Mrs. Marie Nasti, as of course proud of her son, but also adds that she has a "plump 5-foot frame, unable to hold all her pride." The story is a Valentine.

Mr. Nasti's endeavors also came to the attention of the NYT in 2017 when Helene Stapinski did a colorful piece of Mr. Nasti and his crew as they decorate one of the over-the-top homes in Dyker Heights, the home of a lawyer, Alfred Pollizzoto.

To the credit of the editor of the obit page, a color layout was part of the obituary. Mr. Nasti's life was so full of color, it would have been a shame if his obit wasn't. Color is found in the paper, these days, but not everywhere. 

A good obit is made even better when there is a kicker at the end, a humorous aside that further captures the personality of the deceased.

Mr. Nasti's two daughters worked in his company. Margot Craven said for all her father's decorating of other people's properties, for his own family, "he has a three-foot Christmas tree. He had the ornaments glued on and he had it in a plastic bag, He would unroll the plastic bag, and that was Christmas. He really was the shoemaker with holes in his shoes." Another Valentine.

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Achille DeLuca

There is a new streaming detective to pay attention to, Detective DeLuca, an Italian miniseries with Italian subtitles currently available on Mhz Choice.

New to us here in the States that is. This is a 2008 production, one season, four episodes, that was on BBC Four, based on crime novels by Carlo Lucarelli. It is set in several parts of Italy during 1938-1948, pre and post war Italy.

Achille DeLuca is a handsome chick magnet, who in every episode falls into bed with an appealing female, sometimes twice. He might remind someone of Marcello Mastroianni. He smokes unfiltered cigarettes, leaving clouds of blue smoke that almost make you want to open a window

There is no backstory to DeLuca. "I'm a policeman," he'll explain to anyone who wonders about him. There is no ex-wife; no children; no mother and father to provide home cooked meals. In fact, for an Italian, he's not much on food, but he does like his coffee.

There are only four episode in the single season. Why more were not produced is not known. DeLuca solves crimes is politically charged atmospheres, but doesn't always get to see final justice dispensed. He is honest, and will not fall in line with those who want quick closure to cases. 

As such, his career starts in an Adriatic Coast town of Rimini, and with his success of at least closing the case, gets promoted to Rome, but we next see him in Bologna. He gets bounced around a bit.

The series is a period piece with careful attention to detail. The police take photos of crime scenes with a twin lens Rolleiflex cameras in leather cases; the "horizontal staff," i.e. the prostitutes in brothels all wear boxy underpants.

If the British love to show off their trains, the Italians are showing off their Fiat police cars that look like large toys, seating four.

Achille wears three piece suits, almost always with his fedora. He has clear, light blue sad eyes and a Continental, neatly trimmed mustache; no belt, always suspenders.

The setting is Italy in its Il Duce, Fascist period. In fact, Deluca is initially part of OVRA, the Italian secret police, an association that follows and haunts him a bit even as Mussolini is deposed and the war ends  

The OVRA, unofficially known as the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism. The first episode has a lot of clicked heels and Fascists salutes and references to Il Duce. Mussolini is briefly portrayed, surrounded by his body guards, walking along the beach shoreline

Episodes move through time quickly, and DeLuca finds himself in Bologna as the war ends and elections are going to be held. His love interest is a gorgeous prostitute, Valeria, who ultimately helps him solve the last case.

The music is subtle, and very much like Bernard Hermann's score for Vertigo. You can always tells the mood through the music.

In the third episode DeLuca is cut loose from any police association and is trying to make his way to Ferrara, as he poses as an engineer. Trouble follows, and he is on the run, eventually helping a local, inexperienced Carabinieri solve a crime. Their friendship is renewed in the last episode.

Four episodes were not enough. Perhaps they moved through time too fast. The author, whose book the character is based on, wrote nine novels, so certainly there would have been more material.

I'm going to miss Detective DeLuca. And I'm going to miss his girlfriend.

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Chickens and Eggs

Unless you're a modern day Rip Van Winkle and just waking up from  layers of cardboard and newspaper under your favorite overpass, you probably have already heard the news about chickens, bird flu and the price of eggs.

The price of eggs has skyrocketed, and is only now coming a bit down to earth. Massive flocks of chickens had to be euthanized to keep bird flu from jumping from birds to humans. Supply and demand. Supply of egg-laying chickens goes down, the price of eggs goes up.

I have to say I'm unaffected by whatever eggs cost. My wife will eat them now and then, but that's it. Perhaps when I was 10 I declared I was allergic to eggs. My mother made some holiday eggnog and I got sick.

I never remember her even cooking eggs. Growing up food was not prepared much in my house. I hate the smell of eggs. And when my daughter Susan visits, she and my wife dig in for a breakfast with eggs, or bring back a Mickie D's Egg McMuffin, I leave the kitchen.

I cringe when I see the commercial for the happy family at breakfast tucking into plates of Eggland Best eggs, smiling with joy at consuming that white and yellow sulfurous goo. Did I tell you I hate eggs?

I'm old enough to remember when there was an oil crisis in the 70s due to an Arab boycott exporting it, causing a massive gasoline and home heating oil shortage. There were those intrepid souls, even on Long Island, who went into woodlands of Suffolk County to harvest firewood for their newly purchased wood burning stoves they were using to heat their homes.

This was a very short lived adventure, because as soon as the embargo lifted, the suburbanites put their chainsaws away and did probably put the stoves outside.

And so it is with eggs. There are those who are shoe- horning chickens into their backyards in an effort to gain what they view will be "free" eggs.

The always reliable WSJ has done an A-Hed piece on this: 

Raising Chicken Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
Backyard egg-layers can be messy, costly; 'We put the kibosh on it.'

The belief that the eggs will be free is dashed when it is revealed that the first egg for these suburban farmers will come at a cost of nearly $1,500.  No Golden Goose there. 

As usual, the A-Hed piece does its best to insert as many puns as possible, starting with the headline, "cracked..."

"...a surge in egg prices—has sent Americans flocking for their own poultry. There were 11 million households with backyard chickens in 2024, up from 5.8 million in 2018..."

"Local regulations often throw up red tape, or neighbors squawk..."

"But when it comes to saving money, chickens aren't all they're cracked up to be."

"Nervous new chicken parents could shell out up to $2,495 for a "Smart Coop," a poultry condo equipped with automatic doors and cameras that alert owners via an app when predators like racoon are nearby. They can activate alarms to scare predators."

That sounds more sensible than coming out the backdoor with a shotgun and scaring everyone with badly aimed blasts.

..."lobbied her town to change the rules to permit backyard chickens over a decade ago—and she's glad to see the hobby take flight..."

One town is trying to strike a balance between the backyard barnyards and the concerns of others over rats that eat the grain. No roosters.

Aside from food and eggs, consider what idioms and slang chickens have given us:

•chicken shit: insignificant things
•chicken feed: insignificant information. Spy novels are filled with references to chicken feed.
•playing chicken: daring someone to not..."chicken out."
•lay an egg: not succeed.
•goose eggs: zeroes on the scoreboard.

All the news lately of chickens and eggs has got me thinking. Not what came first, but what is the biology that leads a hen to lay eggs? They just didn't cover that in any school I went to. But now there's Google.

A laying hen's ovary holds thousands of tiny ova, or future egg yolks. Birds are unique among animals because only one ovary (the left) matures to the stage where it releases eggs. When a yolk is ready, it moves out of the ovary and into the oviduct - a tube-like structure that is divided into different sections. 

Ovulation (release of the yolk from the ovary) occurs every 24 – 26 hours regardless of fertilization (so a rooster is not needed). A hen ovulates a new yolk after the previous egg was laid. It takes 26 hours for an egg to fully form (white and shell added), so a hen will lay an egg later and later each day. 

"So a rooster is not needed."

Thus, like a lot of guys, he's worthless and noisy.

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Saddie and the Speedball

Joe DePugh is not famous for being famous. He earned a tribute obit in the NYT because he was Bruce Springsteen's boyhood friend and was the inspiration for one of The Boss's rockin' anthems to friends and days gone by, "Glory Days."

It is a tribute to the NYT obit desk that Joe is recognized, because certainly all things Springsteen are recognized. Michael S. Rosenwald's informative obit tells me at least, why Springsteen seemed to call a fastball—which would have fit into his song, two syllables—a speedball. Bruce stunk at baseball and probably didn't care what anything was called. No broadcast announcer from the booth has ever called a pitcher's pitch a "speedball." I never understood until now why "fastball" wasn't used in the lyric.

The great thing about an online obit edition is that imbedded in the obit is a link to a video of Springsteen and the E Street Band playing "Glory Days." Everyone looks so young.

The above photo is from 2005, and I would have thought it would have been older. Saddie—as in sad— was Joe's nickname for Bruce because Bruce was an indifferent Little League player whose inability to catch a routine fly ball in right field cost the team the game. The ball actually hit Bruce in the head. He could have been nicknamed Charlie Brown.

My wife remembers Bruce as a teenager playing in the cellar of Gordon (Tex) Vineyard's house in the 60s in Freehold, New Jersey. She spent half her summers in Freehold staying at Aunt Helen's place on Jerseyville Avenue, hard by the Nescafé plant.

Aunt Helen and Uncle Bill had four kids. They were contemporaries of Bruce's and followed his growing up in Freehold. Tex was Bruce's first manager who got him dates in all the bars he knew of, and he knew plenty of them. Tex was a bit a garrulous guy who worked at the local hospital. His wife was Marion, and they had no children.

I remember Tex at Aunt Helen's when my wife and I visited in the '70s. I never met Bruce, but his Aunt was a hairdresser at Bamberger's department store where cousin Eileen worked. Everyone in Freehold knew of Bruce. They all said he was the nicest, most genuine type of guy.

After Tex died Bruce bought a house for Marion to live in. Bruce had remained devoted to Tex for getting him started and chose to go to his funeral rather than Roy Orbison's, who passed away at the same time. Bruce provided for those he cared about. Tex was actually born in Oklahoma, and figures in one of Bruce's songs. 

Marion was a childhood classmate of Uncle Bill, and when he was widowed and needing medical care, she provided what was really hospice care in her home. My wife and I visited Uncle Bill there and in the finished cellar were several gold/platinum records Bruce had given Marion.  I'm not sure Marion is still alive.

I've never been to a Springsteen concert. I'm not sure I could stand up that long, because surely no one remains in their seat. Perhaps oddly, my wife never liked Springsteen. She didn't like him as a teenager, and doesn't like him now. She says, "he yells."

No matter. I think next to Billy Joel he's a total talent, and it turns out my own contemporary. When my father was in the final stages of cancer at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx in 1987, some patients were treated to music on the veranda that was of their era, WW II songs like "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."  I thought to myself they'll be playing Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen if I wind up in the same place.

Bruce never  did a Christmas album. Perhaps thankfully. However, one of my favorite Springsteen songs is "Santa Claus in Coming to Town." "Hey band" followed by questions about their awareness of Christmas and their behavior will always have me turning up the volume, much to the annoyance of my family because I'll do it even if it isn't Christmastime. It's about being with his buddies, to whom he will always be steadfastly loyal to.

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Reinaldo Herrera

The coolest man on earth has just passed away, and most of us have missed the funeral Mass.

Yesterday's NYT tells us in more laudatory, breathless words than I ever thought possible, that Reinaldo Herrera, 91, Essence of Style At Vanity Fair and Around Town has passed away on March 18 and that the funeral Mass has already been held at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

I don't think the obituary writer, Penelope Green, has failed to leave out a single complimentary word found in the English language. The man had no faults.

Ms. Green's lede tells us all we need to know, but leaves us wanting to know more about an "indispensable story wrangler and all-around fixer for Vanity Fair magazine where he served as a contributing editor for more than three decades. That's a long time to be at a magazine and not piss off the wrong people. There should be a sub-category to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Herrera was born into South American nobility (he was a Marquis, not to be confused with the Marriott hotel or the lighted signage in front of a theater.) Ms. Green tells us, "after attending Harvard and Georgetown Universities and working as a presenter for a morning show in Venezuela, he joined Europe's emerging jet set, mingling with Rothchilds and Agnellis, Italian nobles and British royals."

He married his younger sister's best friend, Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins, who became known as Carolina Herrera, a famous fashion designer. In fact, Carolina Herrera's name became so well known that one could be forgiven if they thought that he took her name when they married. 

Ms. Green piles the encomiums on in a pair of paragraphs that ooze charm in themselves. 

•he was old school and old world
•he wore bespoke suits with immaculate pocket squares
•his jeans were crisply pressed
•his manners were impeccable
•he spoke classical French without an accent
•his voice was described by Graydon Carter, a former editor of Vanity Fair, as a combination of Charles Boyer, the suave French actor, and the Count von Count, the numbers-obsessed Muppet. (When you come out ahead as being described as a Muppet, what wrong can you do?)

And here's where I'm sent to the OED.

"By the late 1970s, the Herreras were part of a frothy mix that defined Manhattan society at the time—socialites, financiers, walkers and rock stars, along with a smattering of politicians, authors and artists, who dined on and off Park Avenue and danced at Studio 54."

Walkers? Surely not dog walkers? No, stupid. The 10th definition of a walker as found in the OED tells us it can mean: "A man who accompanies women as an escort at fashionable social occasions. US slang. L20. ("Do you think Reinaldo is available?")

In the early 1980s, Tina Brown was editor of Vanity Fair, and after being introduced to Reinaldo Herrera, who so entertained her with story after story, that she hired him on the spot. "Ms. Brown knew the news value of a man like Mr. Herrera."  

She wrote of him that he was like a "golden retriever in a dinner jacket," who brought her back dispatches each morning from the evening's parties.

When being compared to a Muppet and a dog is high praise, I have to say I regret not ever hearing of Reinaldo sooner.

"Mr. Herrera was very good with royals. He was friends with Queen Elizabeth's II sister Margaret. "He used his title—a marquis—only in countries that had functioning monarchies." (A marquis is historically defined as a nobleman ranking below a duke but above a count.) 

The Reverend Boniface Ramsey recounted at Mr. Herrera's funeral Mass at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, that Reinaldo was good at protocol in all sorts of areas. Father Ramsey recounted the time Mr. Herrera, an ardent Catholic, pointed out that the yellow and white Vatican flag outside the parish was hanging upside down. (An upside down flag means peril, so maybe there was a reason it was flying upside down. Just saying.)  

Mr. Herrera earned his chops at parties. He apparently believed a successful evening was achieved if it included a controversial figure. Claus von Bülow was a friend he often called in from the bullpen to add intrigue, spice and a sense of malevolence to his parties. Claus famously was acquitted of the attempted murder of his heiress wife Sonny.  Mr. Herrera told the NYT in 1987 that "Claus is a great catalyst."    

I once read that someone would try and have a few leggy blondes in attendance at a party who might carelessly cross their legs as being indispensable.

There are those amongst us who have dream teams, a hypothetical collection of all-stars all on the same side. Mr. Herrera once thought a great gathering of invitees would include Jean Harris, who in a blackout rage gunned down her lover Dr. Tarnower, famous for creating the Scarsdale Diet, and Ivan Boesky, the corporate rider charged with insider trading at the same soiree. 

The duo never made it to one of Mr. Herrera's parties since when he thought of it, they were both in prison at the time. The wardens sent the RSVPs back as could not attend. (I made that up.)

I don't know who it was, but they imagined a chance meeting of Greta Garbo, Jack Nicholson, and maybe Marlene Dietrich, each carrying Bloomingdale shopping bag, getting stuck on the same Manhattan street corner waiting for the light to change. All it takes is imagination.

Tina Brown wrote, "Over the years, I came to see Reinaldo's impeccable comportment as a moral quality. He felt it was on him to elevate the room and leave people feeling better about themselves."

I wish I met the guy.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

I Bumped Into Myself

Myron Cohen had a famous joke about the guy who was discovered by the husband who came home unexpectedly to find the guy and his wife in the bedroom together with little on but smiles. The guy was caught hiding in the closet and tells the husband as he flings the hiding place door open: "Well, everybody's got to be someplace."

It's an old joke that I still get a kick out of the tag line. Likewise I always remember the Bill Gallo cartoon about the passing of the middleweight boxer Tony Janiro who passed away in 1985.

Bill drew a picture of Tony in heaven with the caption: "They're calling my class," acknowledging the passing of a contemporary of Bill's.

I've been a bit fond of that phrase, just like everybody's got to be some place. So, when I wrote the posting for the passing of George Foreman I again felt close to, "They're calling class," because Foreman was a true contemporary, born the same year as myself, and someone I had watched, read about, and knew of. As George got older, so did I, year by year.

I like to try and place a photo in a blog that relates to the narrative. So, I went looking and hoping against hope that somehow I'd find an image on the Web of Bill Gallo's Tony Janiro cartoon. Talk about being optimistic!

Janiro passed away in 1985. Bill Gallo passed away in 2011. Expecting his entire output of cartoons to be digitized and available via a link would have been too good to be true. But I tried anyway.

Say this about search engines. They can deliver. I got a hit on my query, "Bill Gallo, Tony Janiro cartoon." Top of the heap, a link back to myself when I wrote a posting about the passing of a high school classmate on May 7, 2020.

Imagine my surprise when I was linked back to myself, a posting I had forgotten that made the reference back to the Bill Gallo cartoon. 

I always held onto the sentiment of that Gallo cartoon—the passage of time and the passing of contemporaries.

Since the 2020 posting about the passing of Heyward Dotson, I've heard through the alumni news that one home room classmate and another student I knew of have passed away.

How does something I write get a link on the Web? What algorithm plucks a posting to be found by a search engine?

I went searching under George Foreman, a recent posting, and nothing within a few pages linked back to the posting on March xx, 2025. I queried under  Bill Veeck and Eddie Gaedel, and Willie Nelson, all names I've recently referred to my recent postings.  No links.

So, how does the Internet work when it chooses, or doesn't choose to link to something? I have no idea. I do know that my class is beginning to get called.

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having lost a duel to Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1804. 

The two men were bitter political rivals. Burr was Thomas Jefferson's vice president at the time. Hamilton died of his injuries the following day, and Burr fled the country after being indicted for murder.

Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury, and is perpetually honored by being on the $10 bill. A wallet full of Hamiltons in your wallet is a welcome sight, as is a wallet full of Jacksons, Grants, and of course Benjamins—so long as they're not counterfeit.

But back to The New Yorker. In a front page article in the March 15, 2025 print edition of  the NYT, the reporter Callie Holtermann and her editor proclaim in a four-column headline: The New Yorker Reëxamines Style Guide and Those Dots Stay. This is big news for some.

Those two dots over the second e in the word reëxamines, or reëlection are called "dieresis." The word is not to be confused with a medication hawked on the evening news to treat watery lungs. 

While most editors would do without those two dots, the head of the copy department at the magazine, Andrew Boynton, tells us, "for every person who hates the dieresis and feels like it's precious and pretentious and ridiculous, there's another person who finds it's charming." Obviously only found riding in an elevator in the building that houses The New Yorker. Probably alone.

Consulting the OED you find there are two acceptable spellings of the word. Figures. This is going beyond my highest level of education.

Look up "dieresis" and the OED tells you to go to diaeresis where you will find three definitions, the third of which leaves me completely out to sea, thinking fuhgeddaboudit!

1. The division of one syllable into two, esp. by the resolution of a diphthong into two simple vowels.

2. The sign placed over a vowel to indicate that it is pronounced separately as, in Brontë, naïve.

3. PROSODY. A break in the line where the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word.

(Best I can tell prosody refers to poetry, and foot refers to a metrical unit with a varying number of syllables. Like I said...see above.)

Lest you think The New Yorker is unwilling to change anything, Ms. Holtermann tells us they have approved some changes to their style guide. "The magazine will abandon 'Web site,' 'in-box,' and 'Internet' in favor of the more familiar 'website.' 'inbox' and 'internet.' 'Cellphone' will be one word, rather than two." 

I keep what might be a slightly outdated NYT Manual of Style and Usage guide next to my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Inside this edition there is no suggested way to spell reexamine other than to spell it without the diacritical mark diaeresis. And there also no need to spell reelection other than to spell it also without the diacritical mark. Cellphone is already one word; website is website; inbox is inbox, and internet is the Internet. Bronte is not to be found at all, but naïve is with the diaeresis mark. I might not really need a new edition that badly.

The New Yorker has outlived early everyone on Earth, and sustained publication will keep it that way.  Whatever its age, it will continue to not look a day over it.

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The New Yorker

If you're 100, and someone says you don't look a day over a 100, is that a compliment?

ChatGPT said:

It depends on the tone and context! If they say it with a positive, lighthearted tone, they might just be joking or acknowledging your age in a fun way. However, if it’s said in a flat or serious tone, it could imply you look exactly as old as you are, which might not feel like the most flattering compliment.

So, in short, it can be a compliment, but it really depends on how it's said and the vibe behind it! What do you think — does it come off as a compliment to you?

I think someone slid a slider past the editor when in the recent story about changes to The New Yorker's Style Guide, the NYT reporter, Callie Holtermann, acknowledges that the magazine is celebrating 100 years of publishing and that, "it doesn't look a day over 100." 

I think that's an ouch. When your celebratory logo is a picture of a monocled Eustace Tilley wearing a top hat, I think she's right. The image of Eustace appeared on the cover of their first edition in 1925, and they've been proud of it ever since, annually putting it on their cover every anniversary. That's called tradition. Or something else.

The New York Post used to brag that is was a paper started by Alexander Hamilton, but probably since Rupert Murdoch took over they pulled back on that boast. After all, Alexander Hamilton's long dead, having lost a duel to Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1804. 

The two men were bitter political rivals. Burr was Thomas Jefferson's vice president at the time. Hamilton died of his injuries the following day, and Burr fled the country after being indicted for murder.

Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury, and is perpetually honored by being on the $10 bill. A wallet full of Hamiltons in your wallet is a welcome sight, as is a wallet full of Jacksons, Grants, and of course Benjamins—so long as they're not counterfeit.

But back to The New Yorker. In a front page article in the March 15, 2025 print edition of  the NYT, the reporter Callie Holtermann and her editor proclaim in a four-column headline: The New Yorker Reëxamines Style Guide and Those Dots Stay. This is big news for some.

Those two dots over the second e in the word reëxamines, or reëlection are called "dieresis." The word is not to be confused with a medication hawked on the evening news to treat watery lungs. 

While most editors would do without those two dots, the head of the copy department at the magazine, Andrew Boynton, tells us, "for every person who hates the dieresis and feels like it's precious and pretentious and ridiculous, there's another person who finds it's charming." Obviously only found riding in an elevator in the building that houses The New Yorker. Probably alone.

Consulting the OED you find there are two acceptable spellings of the word. Figures. This is going beyond my highest level of education.

Look up "dieresis" and the OED tells you to go to diaeresis where you will find three definitions, the third of which leaves me completely out to sea, thinking fuhgeddaboudit!

1. The division of one syllable into two, esp. by the resolution of a diphthong into two simple vowels.

2. The sign placed over a vowel to indicate that it is pronounced separately as, in Brontë, naïve.

3. PROSODY. A break in the line where the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word.

(Best I can tell prosody refers to poetry, and foot refers to a metrical unit with a varying number of syllables. Like I said...see above.)

Lest you think The New Yorker is unwilling to change anything, Ms. Holtermann tells us they have approved some changes to their style guide. "The magazine will abandon 'Web site,' 'in-box,' and 'Internet' in favor of the more familiar 'website.' 'inbox' and 'internet.' 'Cellphone' will be one word, rather than two." 

I keep what might be a slightly outdated NYT Manual of Style and Usage guide next to my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Inside this edition there is no suggested way to spell reexamine other than to spell it without the diacritical mark diaeresis. And there also no need to spell reelection other than to spell it also without the diacritical mark. Cellphone is already one word; website is website; inbox is inbox, and internet is the Internet. Bronte is not to be found at all, but naïve is with the diaeresis mark. I might not really need a new edition that badly.

The New Yorker has outlived early everyone on Earth, and sustained publication will keep it that way.  Whatever its age, it will continue to not look a day over it.

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They're Calling My Class

The late, great sports cartoonist for the New York Daily News, Bill Gallo, once drew a panel that was captioned, "They're Calling My Class". It showed an image of the fighter Tony Janiro, a Youngstown, Ohio middleweight who fought Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano, and Kid Gavilan and was a crowd favorite. His good looks earned him the title "Pretty Boy." He was a capable fighter, before my time, and it's the only tittle he earned in a boxing career that spanned 1943-1952, and ended with an 83-11-2 record with 26 KOs.  He passed away in 1985.

The cartoon showed Janiro rising to heaven because he had just passed away, and obviously he was part of Bill Gallo's golden age of boxing memories.

I had the same reaction Bill Gallo had when I saw that the former two-time heavyweight champion George Foreman had passed away this past Friday in Houston Texas. Foreman was born in the same year as myself, 1949.

George of course stamped his presence in the world when he won the a gold medal in boxing at the 1968 Olympics as a heavyweight for the United States. The continuance into a pro career was seen as inevitable, as it was when Joe Frazier and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) won gold medals in their respective Olympic appearances. 

George was I believe the first to wave a small American flag after his victory over the Russian Ionas Chepulis with a second-round knockout in Mexico City. Waving flags, and being draped in flags is now a long-standing tradition on for podium winners of all nations in many sports in international competition. It's to be expected.

George's flag waving came just days after the USA track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos had raised clenched fists in a Black power salute during the playing of the national anthem to protest the country's treatment of Black people.

George's gesture was a welcome sight for many Americans. George was unapologetic about it. "I was just glad to be an American," Foreman said afterward. "Some people have tried to make something of it, calling me an Uncle Tom, but I'm not. I just believe people should live together in peace."

George's stamina was always a bit suspect, and that shortcoming was no more on display than when Ali made Foreman tire himself out by leaning back into the ropes in a title fight in Zaire, Africa in 1974, absorbing harmless punches, leaving Foreman arm weary, then knocking him out in the eighth round. It was a stunning upset.

My wife and I were on vacation in Toronto at the time and watched the fight on a closed circuit feed at Maple Leaf Gardens—the old Maple Leaf Gardens on Cabbage Street. It was the first time my wife ever really saw Ali, and she was impressed at how handsome he was.

During that vacation we saw three events at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Foreman-Ali fight, an NHL hockey game between the Maple Leafs and the Chicago Black Hawks, and a WHA hockey game with the hometown Toronto Toros playing someone. I only remember the result of one event. The fight.

I loved Maple Leaf Gardens. The lobby was filled with photos of famous Canadian athletes. Bill Carothers, the pharmacist track and field star, Bruce Kidd the long-distance runner, and many others.

The New York Times obituary writer, Victor Mather, gives George a complete sendoff. He correctly evokes what the 1970s was to many boxing fans of that era. "With his fellow heavyweights Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, Foreman embodied a golden era when boxing was still a natural force in America. The three great champions thrilled fans with one classic bout after another. Foreman was the last living member of the trio."

The 1970s and 1980s were my golden era of being a boxing fan. I had three $20, last row Blue Seat tickets to the Ali-Frazier 1971 fight at Madison Square Garden, tickets I got by writing to MSG and getting them in the mail. My father and a friend from work attended the fight that no one could get a ticket to.

One Foreman bout, if not a style classic, and not with either Ali or Frazier, was Foreman's 1974 slugfest with Ron Lyle, a muscled heavyweight that saw each fighter get knocked to the canvas so many times that you thought that they were going to knock each other out simultaneously and the referee would count both of them out at the same time. Foreman won with a fifth round knockout, because a knockout was the only way that fight was going to end.

After improbably regaining the heavyweight crown at 45 years-old form Michael Moorer with a 10th-round knockout in 1994, Foremen had a few more fights, but was ducking opponents that the boxing associations were mandating he take to defend the title. 

He defended his title against Lou Savarese in 1997, earning a split decision in 12 rounds. It was his next to last fight. His final fight was to Shannon Briggs in 1997, losing a unanimous decision. He announced his 2nd retirement from boxing now at 48, and remained retired. Foreman finished with a 76-5 record, with 68 KOs.

But not out of sight. Foremen became maybe the most well known spokesperson ever when he took on the human face behind Salton's George Foreman Grill, a portable, electric grill that sold millions. We even bought one. However, I don't think we ever used it. It wound up in the appliance graveyard for us, eventually being given to a friend who lived in a furnished room.

George made millions from his grill. Salton Inc. eventually paid $137.4 million for the worldwide rights to use his name, with Foreman getting 75%. Now a clean shaven head, affable, soft-voiced pitchman, he made personal appearances and was in countless ads for the grill. He ran a youth center in his hometown of Houston, and was a non-denominational Christian minister.

The obit closes with what might be a key to achieving any marketing success. George said his willingness to make personal appearances was, "bigger than any endorsements. I don't care who you are, they want to touch you: they want to know you. Then, they buy you."

George Foreman will be missed.

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The Pinch-Hitter

I had a friend who once said a real trivia question is not to know the name of the midget pinch-hitter batter who Bill Veeck inserted into a St Louis Browns lineup in 1951, who by virtue of a strike zone that could be measured with a 12" ruler that forced the Detroit Tigers pitcher, Bob Cain, to walk the batter with four straight pitches, but to know who was the pinch-runner to replace Eddie Gaedel when he reached first base?

Embedded within the event are multiple true trivia questions that I doubt even Jeopardy has landed on. In addition to who was the pinch-runner, what was the name of  batter that Eddie Gaedel replaced, and what was the name of the poor pitcher for Detroit who couldn't really be blamed for not being able to find the strike zone of a midget standing at home plate who was holding a tiny bat, who was surely told not to swing at anything?

The answer to these multiple trivia questions appear in an obit, not for Eddie Gaedel, who unfortunately passed away in 1961 after suffering a heart attack at 36 after being mugged in Chicago, but in the obit for Frank Saucier, 98, who Gaedel pinch-hit for.

Frank's claim to be part of an extended trivia question was as a major leaguer someone who only ever had 18 appearances in the major leagues over three years. He had won three minor league batting titles, but a lingering shoulder injury and service in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War stunted his major league career.

Bill Veeck was a legendary baseball owner who tried to inject fun and humor into the teams be owned. As part of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American League between games of the August 19 doubleheader, Veeck arranged for a vintage car parade, a performance by baseball's clown prince Max Patkin and Eddie Gaedel, a circus performer, to pop out of cake wearing a St. Louis Browns uniform with the number 1/8. It didn't stop there.

Saucier was penciled in to lead off at-bat in the bottom of the first inning, but was called back to the dugout by the manager Zack Taylor who inserted Eddie Gaedel into the lineup.

The home plate ump Ed Hurley went nuts, and said Eddie couldn't bat. Veeck of course anticipated this and had Taylor produce the one-year contract that Eddie had signed. Eddie walked, took his time getting to first base after waving to the crowd and was replaced by a pinch-runner Jim Delsing, who then took Saucier's spot in the outfield.

Aside from all the novelty of the event, the obit points out the American League President Will Harridge didn't hear of the stunt for two days! before voiding Eddie Gaedel's contract.

Okay, it's 1951, but was Harridge out of the country not to hear of the stunt as soon as it happened?

Seems some news doesn't travel very fast when it's generated by a bottom division club like the St. Louis Browns. Maybe that's why they became the Baltimore Orioles in 1953.

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Ash Can to Garbage Can

I am not nostalgic over what garbage cans used to look like, but I was reminded of what they did look like when I took in the obituary for Flo Fox, an accomplished photographer who captured NYC street scenes while only having vision in one eye. Ms. Fox eventually totally lost her vision due to multiple sclerosis.

The trash can that Ms. Fox captured in the above 1978 photo was obviously of a discarded mannequin, and not the remains of a headless body found in a topless bar that a New York Post front page headline gave us the news of on April 15, 1983.

Trash cans of the era before becoming rubber and plastic mounted on wheels! were made from reinforced galvanized steel, and were heavy as hell, even when empty. Their lids were steel as well, and depending on how the garbage men (sanitation workers) treated them on their route, would eventually sustain enough dents and dings that the lids no longer fit snugly on the top. They could look like crumbled aluminum foil. If they were cars, tow trucks would be towing them away to the junk yard.

In the era when coal was burned in city furnaces, trash cans were often referred to as ash cans. The homeowners and building superintendents would fill the cans with the ash from the furnaces. Our house in Flushing, built in 1923, was originally heated by coal. My parents shoveled coal into the furnace, and later removed the ash into those cans.

The dumpsters behind the stores in the nearby shopping center are owned and emptied by a company called Jamaica Ash, a name leftover from the days when it really was ash that was hauled away. Now it's basically foodstuff and cardboard (separate dumpsters).

I worked with a fellow who remembers going by his old apartment house in Brooklyn and seeing his old super still dragging the heavy metal cans out to the curb, now holding household waste, not ashes.  The guy must have been in his 70s or 80s.

The NYC Sanitation strike that I remember most was in February 1968 when John V. Lindsay was mayor. There were no many strikes by municipal workers during Lindsay's time as mayor that NYC was nicknamed "Strike City." The rough and tumble union leadership of these unions did not like the patrician guy from Yale. Firemen even went on strike.

When the sanitation workers in February 1968 went out, the garbage was not picked up. Period. It piled up in cans and paper bags on all the curbs. The strike lasted 9 days and the smells were ripe. The cold weather kept the garbage somewhat refrigerated, and a public health crisis was never called.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller would not call out the National Guard to remove the garbage. No one really understood why he didn't. I formed my own theory that he probably felt Guardsmen were not up to spending days lifting heavy garbage into trucks. I think the nickname for Sanitation workers has become "New York's Strongest" to match the firemen who are "New York's Bravest," and the police who are "New York's Finest."

While the print edition of the obit for Flo Fox reprints some of her photos, the online edition really puts on a show. I always love cityscape photos, and black and white always seems to suit them best.

I seem to remember the discarded mannequin one, probably from an anthology of NYC streetscape photos. 28 Perry is the address of where the cans come from, a West Village street, likely near where she might have been living at the time.

I follow the  X/Twitter feed of Corey Kilgannon, (@coreykilgannon), a NYT reporter who will occasionally post a NYC streetscape scene, probably taken with his cellphone, therefore in color. Despite Mr. Kilgannon's X/Twitter home page telling us he has 5,993followers, I seem to be the only one who posts a reply. 

To his latest posting I replied, "I don't know if I'd sit on that stoop. No privacy."

NYC will never disappoint anyone who works a camera.

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Thumper

One of the joys of reading is coming across words or phrases that I never heard of. Being of a certain age, this usually means I head for one of the two hard copy dictionaries I keep handy: The Shorter OED, Volumes 1 and 2, and a Webster's II New College Dictionary. And sometimes I'm just lazy at first and look for a definition from Google. After this, I then usually still head for one of the dictionaries to see their take on the word.

When I came across the hyphenated word "tub-thumber" in an obituary for Joan Dye Gussow, Who Planted the Seed on Eating Locally, who just passed away at 96, I first tried to divine the meaning from the context. "Ms. Gussow, an indefatigable gardener and a tub-thumper for community gardens..."

I first thought 'tub-thumper" might be a style of gardening, like growing plants out of discarded bathtubs. If you're stuck with a discarded bathtub that has proved hard to remove from the yard (how it got there is certainly another story), perhaps filling it with soil and planting some posies will create a focal point for the garden. Perhaps.

I fairly quickly dismissed this thought and headed for Google. Getting to the appropriate volume of the OED is a bit of a chore since I have to get up and reach for it, as well as move the framed picture of the grandson that sits on top of it.

Google, Tub-Thumper:

Taken from the OED, so I don't have to get up..."A speaker or preacher who for emphasis thumps the pulpit; a violent or declamatory preacher or orator; a ranter."

Where the tub comes it, I don't know, but obviously someone who feels and speaks passionately about something, which is what comes through in the obituary for Ms. Gussow.

Now, going to the OED: "Orig., a preacher who thumps the pulpit for emphasis. Now usu. (gen), a violent or declamatory preacher or orator, ranter. M17" 

Translation: Originally...Now usually, generally...came into use in the mid 17th century.

No tub in sight, until ChatGPT is consulted.

The term "tub-thumper" refers to someone who passionately advocates for something, often in a public or noisy manner. It originates from the practice of political or religious speakers in the past standing on a tub or barrel (sometimes called a "soapbox") and using it as a platform to gain attention and give speeches.

The image is now complete.

Tangentially to all this, I came across the image of Thumper, one of the animals in the Disney movie Bambi that created an entire generation of people who abhor deer hunting.

I remember Thumper, the cute rabbit, but never thought about (or forgot) how he got the name Thumper.

Turns out Thumper got the moniker because he was always tapping, or thumping his left rear leg. He must have had a nervous tic, or was getting set to run.

There is always an education in reading obituaries.

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You're Asking Me?

There is a certain type of newspaper headline that is always posing a question. They're easy to spot because they always end with a question mark. If it's a Spanish newspaper, these headlines will always start with an upside down question mark. Get ready. Keep going and somebody's going to ask you something.

The question-ending heading is called a Betteridge, a nod to Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who in 2009 said that any headline that ended in a question should be answered with the reply, "no."

Editors use it as a cheeky nod to use the headline as "clickbait." Draw the reader into the article in search of the answer. Since clicks can translate to advertising revenue, there is an ulterior motive to its use. It's not really used to lead you to the following narrative that will answer the question. At the end of the article you will likely not be left with a definitive answer to the question. There is no answer. Only an opinion. But if reading online, you will have advanced the "click" count by one. And you won't be the only one to do so.

I don't have a background in journalism other than reading newspapers most of my 70+ years. I got credit for working on the high school newspaper, The Spectator at Stuyvesant by virtue of a Greek friend in the office of the paper who recorded me as being present and doing work for service credits, when in fact I just scooted out of school and headed to the family flower shop after the final bell.

I try and read three newspapers a day: The New York Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I don't read every word, but I do read every headline and sub-headline, and I will admit I do sometimes read on to see if there's an answer to the posed question. But for the most part, I mentally answer the posed question myself: "You're asking me? If you don't know, I certainly don't know." Next.

Here is a sampling of Betteridge headlines gleaned from some recent editions of the NYT and the WSJ. You may have read the following articles. I didn't.

If Trump Defies the Courts, Then What? This is the hypothetical headline. It's great for making stuff up. About anything.

Stock Always Rise in the Long Run, Right? Well, Not Necessarily. This is the headline that might lead to an answer. But don't count on it.

How's Trump Doing? There is an out quote that gives us an answer. Maybe. He's transactional and trolling but so far aspires to be transformational. If you say so.

How Soon Could Ukraine's Forces 'Start to Buckle' Without U.S. Weapons? Make what you will from the graphs that follow.   

Jobs Report Looks Fine, But Is Pain On the Way? That's easy. Pain is always on the way. Especially when taxes are due.

Voters Like Tariffs. Why Don't the Democrats? The assumption is all Democrats don't like tariffs. You're just going to have to ask them why. 

OK, hit me: What's the top style rule for men? I have a feeling you're going to try and tell me. But I'm not interested. 

Is an Appliance That Last Decades Really More Economical? The answer must be, "no" or they wouldn't ask.

Is NYC Really Ready for Cuomo? I have a question of my own. If they're not, who is?

Read enough newspapers and you'll always come away with more questions than answers.

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I'm Happy Enough

It is very easy to get down on yourself. Especially when you read of the dazzling accomplishments of others.

Lately I've been reading a Gay Talese collection of essays and stories, freshly packaged in a recently published book, A Town Without Time, Gay Talese's New York.   

Anyone who knows anything about writers knows that Mr. Talese has been writing and being published since the Eisenhower administration. He has a shelf full of books, having started as a copy boy for The New York Times.

He is now 93, living in brownstone he owns in Manhattan with his wife Nan on the East Side. He is the son of a tailor from Ocean City, New Jersey, and is impeccably dressed. One of his most famous pieces is an essay he did for Esquire in 1966, Sinatra Has a Cold. It is always trotted out as a masterpiece of writing. Fuhgeddaboudit! 

Much more interesting, especially to a native New Yorker, is the saga of the brownstone that Dr. Nicholas Bartha blew himself up in and thoroughly destroyed in 2006 that created a gap between buildings that only added to the tale of how a 20 x100-foot rectangle of land on Manhattan's Upper East Side, hard by Central Park, can continuously spawn so many stories.

Dr. Bartha was upset about a divorce settlement which would have resulted in his losing ownership of the property. His recourse was much more violent than the fellow in New Jersey who decades ago after getting the decree that his wife would get half the house, climbed up to the peak, after probably drinking waaaay too much, and with a chain saw started to cleave the house in half. He was stopped before he accomplished what he set out to do.

Mr. Talese takes us on a chronological journey of what has occupied what is now 34 East 62nd Street and who has owned the townhouse and the land it sits on. He goes back to the time of the Revolutionary War. The story is a masterpiece of real estate research.

But as we progress with the story, we get to the point where an architect is finally hired who is going to design and build on what has been a cleared empty lot for many years, a new town house that will blend in with the other buildings on the block in this historically designated part of Manhattan. No mean feat. 

We meet Henry Jessup who grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut painting houses as a kid, and doing other handyman-type jobs for people who lived in the area.

Not having a clue what to do after high school, he set out touring Europe on a bright yellow motorcycle be bought in London for $600, and rode it as far as Turkey and Greece, all the while absorbing the architectural styles of everything he saw.

He learned to master the skills of carpentry and started a construction company at 19 that would eventually pay for his four-years of tuition at Brown University in Providence, Rhode island where he emerged with a degree as an art-history major.

Encouraged by an architect client for whom he had built a house in Katonah, New York, Mr. Jessup enrolled in the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, graduating in 1978.

Forty years after graduation his firm on Lower Broadway had completed nearly 500 projects of varying sizes all over the world. He was becoming well known, and was eventually hired by the latest developers to own the empty plot of land created by Dr. Bartha's anger (The press had referred to Dr. Bartha as Dr. Boom.) to build a five-story townhouse—with an elevator.

Mr. Jessup is still with us, but when he passes away my guess is he will have earned a tribute obituary in the New York Times. Any man who can navigate and conquer all the regulatory boards it takes to pass muster with to get something built in NYC is surely deserving of a bylined obit.

Reading tribute obits, or even anticipating tribute obits, it can be easy to get down on oneself for never having achieved as much as the departed subject.

And even though I started as a kid painting every inch of my family's two-story clapboard house built in 1923, inside and out, along with the detached two-car garage in Flushing, I didn't go on to tour Europe on a yellow motorcycle, or graduate from prestigious universities (or any universities for that matter), or run an architectural firm that produced a French limestone masterpiece on Manhattan's elegant Upper East Side, I'm happy enough.

You just won't read about me in the paper.

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The Perpetual Optimist

At the end of a NYT obituary for The Reverend James Callan who passed away at 77 in December 2024, there is a last word, but not a last word from the reverend. It is a favorite quote of his from Eric Sevareid a legendary CBS newscaster and journalist who might be remembered by those who remember the 1964 World Series. Eric was an Edward R. Morrow Boy, a WW II correspondent and general sage.

Eric apparently liked to say: "I'm a pessimist about tomorrow, but I'm an optimist about the day after tomorrow." Surely a sentiment that should be in Bartlett's. (It's not. Nothing from Mr. Sevareid's made its way in.)

When you parse the progression of pessimism and optimism, you realize that Mr. Sevareid never makes it to the day he's optimistic about. It keeps moving.

It's like that paradox about moving toward a finish line, decreasing the distance to the line by half each day. Since there's always a tiny bit left, and you then advance only half way more, you are still left with a tiny bit left to travel. You never get there no matter how close you come. (I think credit card debt is based on this principle.)

So, imagine it's Friday and you're not optimistic about Saturday, but the day after, Sunday, you're optimistic about. Let's look forward to Sunday.

But, stay alive one more day and it's Saturday, and now you're pessimistic about Sunday (because it's now the day after), but are optimistic about Monday. But weren't you just a day ago optimistic about Sunday? Sure you were, You said you were. What happened with advancing another day?

I remember Eric Sevareid's broadcasts. I'm not sure he ever smiled.

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The Dot Over the Lowercase i

I never knew what to call the dot over the lowercase i other than to call it "the dot over the lowercase i." I have no idea what grade we learned that a dot went over a small i. Or that a dot went over a small j. Or that there was a dot under an exclamation mark, ! Since knowledge is doled out, we probably didn't learn all that in one day. But once you learn it, you don't forget it.

Most things are called something, but the teacher(s) never told us that the dot was called a "tittle." Matt Amodio knew this, he being a recurring contestant on Jeopardy last night in a series of contests called  the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament.

Jeopardy seems intent on developing multiple series of tournaments: Invitational Tournament, Tournament of Champions, and probably a tournament or two to be named later.

The producers seem to be taking a page from the professional sports playbooks, wherein numerous contestants are all lumped together, all former "champions," and put through a series of elimination rounds to yield three contestants that will vie for some title. I'm beginning to wonder if Jeopardy contestants have agents.

Last night's clue needed someone to identify what the dot over a lowercase i or j was called. Matt buzzed in first, got the nod, and said "what is a tittle," Money was added to his score.

Of course Matt saying the word is not the same as spelling the word. I immediately took to my notepad and thought that maybe I've become aware of another homograph: title, (tit-el) for the dot; title for a designation, an honorific. A homograph being two words spelled the same, pronounced differently, and meaning different things, e.g. wind, movement of air; wind to tighten, as to wind a watch. 

Consultation with the OED dashed that discovery. The small dot is spelled tittle; the designation in an honorific or ownership is spelled title. Spelled differently, therefore not a homograph. My daughter Susan will be disappointed we didn't add one more to our list. 

The OED formally defines tittle as: "a small stroke or point in writing or printing, as a tilde, a cedilla, a punctuation or diacritic mark, the dot over the letter i, etc.; gen any stroke or tick with a pen."

That definition finally gets to all you need to know; "...the dot over the letter i."

Case closed? Not really. The definition goes on, (and it's still the first definition) and starts to look like a quadratic equation "...with a pen. LME ►†b The three dots (...) following the letters and contractions in the alphabet on hornbooks, usu. followed by Est Amen. M16-M17. "

The LME means late Middle English. ►†b typically means the word is "obsolete" or "no longer in common use;" the "►" symbol often indicates a special usage note, while the † is a common symbol for marking a word as obsolete. The b refers to the word itself.

"...in the alphabet on hornbooks, usu. followed by Est Amen M16-M17" Hornbooks were used by monks to teach children the alphabet in the middle 16th to 17th centuries. Take it as gospel.

Hey, that part is obsolete, so fugetaboutit!

Since dinner follows Jeopardy, I asked my wife if she knew that the small dot over the lowercase i is called a tittle?

"No. Pour the drinks, will you?"

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Autopsies and Exhumations

It might be the strangest thing I ever read in an obituary: The deceased's brother's body had been exhumed for an autopsy after being buried for eight years and was found to be filled with sawdust where internal organs were expected to be. I kid you not.

The NYT obituary for Virginia McCaskey, Chicago Bears Stalwart and Owner Dies at 102 is pretty much a routine obit about the daughter of the founder of the Chicago Bears NFL football team, George Halas Sr., who came to be the owner of the team.

Ownership of the team passed to her after her younger brother George Halas Jr. died of a heart attack in 1979 at 54. George Sr. had the two children, and George Jr. was the natural heir apparent to take over the team since he had been the team president since 1963. When George Sr. passed away in 1983, Virginia received the sole vote in a one-generation trust.

But all was not happy in Chicago. The wife of George Jr., Theresa felt her children had been unfairly carved out of shares when the Bears were reorganized in 1981. She developed a theory that perhaps her husband hadn't passed away from a heart attack, but may have been poisoned. 

It took a while, but in 1987 George Jr.'s body was exhumed so that the internal organs could be tested for poisoning. And that's when things got really strange. There were no internal organs. The body cavity was filled with sawdust.

I watch a lot of police procedurals via several streaming sites: Acorntv, Britbox, MHzchoice, PBS/ Masterpiece, and Amazon Prime. Many of these procedurals are from foreign countries, but I have no problem with the subtitles. Preferable to dubbing.

Invariably the deceased (there is always at least one deceased) is rolled into the medical examiner's operating room to be opened up and examined. Organs are seen to be removed and weighed. 

From there I don't recall what happens to the organs, if they are held aside and put back after testing. What I have never seen or heard of in any of these procedurals from any country is that the body is refilled with sawdust.

Attentive readers will remember that one of the racetrack Assembled is a retired surgeon. The question of sawdust being found in an exhumed body was put to him.

The answer came back that they took part in 31 autopsies as a resident and sawdust played no part in ever being introduced into a corpse. That saying about "ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust" has no bearing in the autopsy room.

The obit writer Ken Belson drops that sawdust nugget on us but doesn't let it distract us from the rest of Virginia's obit. The outcome of that discovery is not addressed other than since internal organs were not there to be tested, it was therefore not possible to test for poison. 

I suspect George Jr.'s wife Theresa tried to take other steps, but they are not mentioned. Virginia and her family continued running the team.

I do a fair amount of woodworking in my shop. I'm not sure I'll ever look at sawdust the same way.

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