This is a nice story from The Writer’s Almanac stretching back 223 years. It was on this date in 1800 that John Adams (then Prez) arrived in Washington. It had been selected by GW to be the nation’s capital but it sort of didn’t exist yet: there were no schools or churches, just some housing for workmen and a few stores (IKEA, Bed Bath and Behind — stuff like that). It was swampy and mosquito-ridden. Adams had left wife Abigail back in Philly and, in the age-old tradition of lying to one’s spouse, he wrote to her: “I like the seat of government very well.”

The White House (then called The President’s House) was only ready for him a few months later. After spending the first night there (and thus becoming the first Prez to sleep in The White House), he wrote this in a letter to Abigail: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

About 150 years later, FDR had the words from Adams’s letter to Abigail carved into the mantel in the State Dining Room.

Obviously, however, heaven had other ideas.

---

Have you heard of the actress Sadie Sink? She’s in Stranger Things and she visited the puzzle today. Hi Sadie! Very nice to see you! Sadie’s from Brenham, TX, and is only 21, but already has established herself nicely in show biz. We love the name. Her mom is a math teacher and her dad a football coach. When Sadie was in her teens and it was already clear she had serious talent, her family supported her by moving to Jersey so she’d be in reach of NY. Smart.

Woody Harrelson inspired her to become a vegetarian when they were working together, and she has stayed with it since 2015. That may explain the healthy glow. The pretty eyes must be from her folks.

---

Are you having a lazy Saturday like me? Hope so. If you’re sleeping in, you can relate to today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac by Marjorie Saiser, called “Weekends, Sleeping In.” It’s from her collection with the wonderful title: Beside You at the Stoplight.

No jump-starting the day,
no bare feet slapping the floor
to bath and breakfast.

Dozing instead
in the nest
like, I suppose,
a pair of gophers

underground
in fuzz and wood shavings.
One jostles the other
in closed-eye luxury.

We are at last
perhaps
what we are:

uncombed,
unclothed,
mortal.

Pulse
and breath
and dream.

* * * * *

I wasn’t planning on doubling up on poems — don’t want to overdo it. But when I googled Marjorie Saiser I ran into this one too. It’s called “The Nobody Bird.”

“I’m nobody! Who are you?”
— Emily Dickinson

The woman leading the bird walk
is excited because she thinks
for a minute the bird
is one she doesn’t have
on her life list
and then she says Oh it’s
just a dickcissel.

I raise my binoculars
to bring the black throat patch
and dark eye
into the center of a circle.
I see how the dickcissel
clings to a stem
when he sings, how
he tilts his head back,
opens his throat.

The group follows
the leader to higher ground.
The wind comes up; white blossoms
of the elderberry dip and
right themselves in a rocking motion
again and again. An oriole
flies into the cottonwood,
the gray catbird into
the tossing ripening sumac.

The nobody bird
holds on,
holds on and sings.

---

Have you heard of JUSTINIAN II? He was in the puzzle today, oddly clued with: Byzantine emperor known as “Rhinotmetos” (“the slit-nosed”)

Commenter Wanderlust did a little digging:

I looked up JUSTINIAN II to find out why he was called “the slit-nosed.” According to Wikipedia, he was a despotic emperor who was overthrown and had his nose cut off so that he could never rule again. (Apparently, the maimed were not considered fit to rule.) But he did win the throne back, wearing a gold replacement nose! Better than his first one! But he was just as despotic in his second rule, and his own army turned on him and killed him. Wonder who got the nose.

[That must be where the expression “to win by a nose” comes from, no?]

OC’s fave clue of the day: “Apple press release?” — answer: CIDER.

The centerpiece (or, if you prefer, centipede) of the puzzle was a “thing stack” of three answers right in the middle that spanned the entire grid, one on top of the other. They are “SOMETHING TO HIDE, ANYTHING YOU WANT, and NOTHING PERSONAL. And cutting through them from top to bottom was PUZZLING PROBLEM. That last one led Rex to reference the Talking Heads’ song “Puzzling Evidence” from their True Stories movie. Turn up the volume.

---

Et tu, Google? According to today’s NYT, YouTube (owned by Google) announced it will no longer remove content that claims the 2020 election was marred by “widespread fraud, errors, or glitches.” It had been doing so since a month after that election.

YouTube says its new policy is an attempt to protect the ability to “openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions.”

Wait, what?

Let’s slow down and go over that last bit again. . . . to protect the ability to debate political ideas based on disproven assumptions . . .

It did concede that removing such content would “curb some misinformation.” Ya think? But apparently that ain’t enough to sustain the policy.

BTW, Twitter and Facebook never removed election lies, they just “labeled” them. But they both long ago stopped doing even that.

It made me wonder how YouTube does on Holocaust denial. The answer: not so hot. The ADL issued a report card on social media platforms. While YouTube was found to have a good policy, it was not enforcing it. Holocaust denialism can be found on YouTube. Only Twitch and Twitter did well.

---

Yuck — we can’t end the day on election lies and Holocaust denial. 26A in the grid was KIM. So here’s Kim Basinger’s pretty face to close with, a little bleary. Is she having trouble getting that blouse on? Whatever. See you tomorrow.