Aaron Lansky will be retiring from the Directorship of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst MA in June of next year. We’ve been members since its founding (by Aaron) way back in 1980, and are thrilled to be attending its Klezmer music festival this year in July (Yidstock, they call it).
It’s a remarkable place and its story is a remarkable success story. It’s central to the survival and thriving of the Yiddish language and Yiddish books. Nobel Prize winner I.B. Singer was asked why he wrote in a dying language and he said “Yiddish has been dying for a hundred years and I’m confident it will go on dying for another hundred.”
One of our too few visits to the Center was for a party celebrating the opening of its new (then) facilities. When we were leaving, Aaron Lansky was at the door and he walked us to our car in the parking lot. He introduced himself but he didn’t have to — we recognized him from his photo in a story in the NYT about him. He was bubbly and gracious and thanked us for coming. Linda asked him if he walked everyone out to the lot when they left, and he said “No, I just have to get something from my car.”
If your sock collection is short on Jewish socks, these are available in the Center’s bookstore for only $6 a pair.
Southside Johnny referred to the clue at 73A as “gibberishly looking.” It is: “In which “‘Ciamar a tha thu?’ means ‘How are you?’” The answer was GAELIC. And he asked: is GAELIC a real language (that people still speak), or is it more like Latin?
Owl Chatter’s staff’s extensive research (you know, a minute or two of Googling) reveals that it is definitely still spoken — by close to 40% of the Irish population both rural and urban. Here’s a sign that translates to: “Oy, my back.” (Maybe not.) Actually, that’s the term for a district in which Gaelic is spoken.
I posted this on Rex’s blog:
An unusual variant of Gaelic is spoken in the Irish village of Clove. It’s referred to as a Gaelic of Clove. If a resident of Clove were to mince words, it would be minced Gaelic. Here’s a pretty Gaelic lass.
I crashed on the shore of 116D: “Negative Boolean operator.” What? The answer the puzzle wanted was NOR.
But one comment noted: The negation operator in Boolean logic is “not,” not “nor.” (Boo.)
A second comment added:
NOR is, in fact, a Boolean operator, but nobody ever uses it. It appears in one place in most logic textbooks, and usually not by that name. It has the nice property of being functionally complete, which is to say you can express any statement of elementary logic with just NORs.
A better clue would have mentioned its use as a logic gate in EE/CE. It’s about as well-known as the mathematical usage, and a NOT gate is usually just called an inverter.
But, but, but, later a commenter who called him or herself Witt Genstein said:
In Boolean logic, NOR is used to indicate that two things must be false in order for something to be true. Cluing this as a “negative Boolean operator” seems fine to me.
egs added: I assume the storm you all have raised about the Boolean operator would be a NOReaster.
[You may recall I’m the idiot who doesn’t even know what a logarithm is, so this entire discussion was Gaelic to me.]
There was another poem by Joyce Sutphen in today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “My Father Comes to the City.”
Tonight his airplane comes in from the West,
and he rises from his seat, a suitcoat slung
over his arm. The flight attendant smiles
and says, “Have a nice visit,” and he nods
as if he has done this all before,
as if his entire life hasn’t been 170 acres
of corn and oats, as if a plow isn’t dragging
behind him through the sand and clay,
as if his head isn’t nestling in the warm
flank of a Holstein cow.
Only his hands tell the truth:
fingers thick as ropes, nails flat
and broken in the trough of endless chores.
He steps into the city warily, breathing
metal and exhaust, bewildered by the
stampede of humanity circling around him.
I want to ask him something familiar,
something about tractors and wagons,
but he is taken by the neon night,
crossing carefully against the light.
It’s Oscar night. We only saw three of the movies: Maestro, Anatomy of a Fall, and The Leftovers. All good, IMO. (Alright — it was The Holdovers. So what?) Rooting for Bradley Cooper for Best Actor, and Sandra Huller for Best Actress. Will have to catch up with more of them via streaming. I would have nommed Swann Arlaud from Anatomy for Best Supporting. He was Huller’s lawyer. Terrific.
I see Jodie Foster is up for her supporting role in Nyad. Living under my rock, I didn’t know she’s gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Her spouse is Alexandra Hedison, a fine art photographer and former actress/director. Jodie is 61 now. Here she is with Hedison, and, below, in the glow of her youth.
OC readers with memories better than mine will recall yesterday’s math issue on what a COSET is and whether the clue was wrong. Commenter Gary was moved to share this following funny rant/musing with us today:
Now, this ate at me all last night. I have a math question: I believe 100% of the time a math clue appears in the puzzle, a math expert will pipe in and assure us it is wrong. Yesterday was no exception. Mathematics is nothing if not precise, and crosswords are in the business of celebrating the slightly askew, so fine, I get it, the clue is wrong. BUT, typically, as yesterday, the commenter is utterly grief stricken. We were dealing with COSET, and I wouldn’t know a COSET if it was in line in front of me at the grocery store, but the puzzle left one mathematician “irritated” and another “appalled.” The last math class I took was in 1984, so maybe things have changed, but my main recollection was an auditorium full of undergrads looking confused and getting it wrong. I am under the impression mathematicians live in a world surrounded by incorrect answers, wrongheadedness, dead ends, partial solutions, continuous questions, and students and colleagues getting it wrong like a pack of dolts. So how in the world can mathematicians muster the strength on every math clue to become aghast? Is it just mathematicians who do crosswords, or are they all scandalized all the time? Is there a Big Bang-style whiteboard with a formula describing the level of abhorrentness one can stand from the unwashed barbarians before you say enough is enough? I looked at the Wikipedia page on COSET and it says “heebledy geebledy, garbledy goober” (I’m paraphrasing) and that seems close enough for crosswords. It is assuredly wrong, but maybe not have-a-cow wrong.
I wouldn’t trust FOX News for a story any more serious than this one, but I’m going to buy this one. Harrison Ford in an interview for Variety was talking about John Williams, who composed the iconic theme for Raiders. He remarked that he often reminds Williams that “his music follows me wherever I go — literally.” And then Ford noted that he heard it playing through the speakers during his recent colonoscopy.
Here’s the shot Phil got for us of Ford’s procedure. [You’re unbelievable, Philly!! How the hell did you get in there? You were sterile at least, right?]
Can’t imagine a nicer image to end with. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 