All over New York City, bagel makers say, a schmear shortage is threatening one of the most treasured local delicacies: a fresh bagel with cream cheese.
Author: David Gorsline
On deck: 22
The shelf was getting a little unbalanced, with too much fiction, but a tip from NPR’s Books We Love led me to Dreilinger. Of the Thoreau, I’ve got The Maine Woods and Cape Cod to read. The Bellotti is for a book club at work—not my usual cup of tea, but I want to contribute to the discussion. I have promised myself that I will crank through another story in the French parallel text collection; will I ever find time for the Echenoz? Juggling two volumes is too much trouble for the subway.
Vertical
In many ways, the streamers [like Netflix and Amazon] have been rebuilding Hollywood’s old studio system. That system, which lasted roughly from the 1920s to the 1950s, was powered by vertical integration. Major studios like Paramount or Warner Bros. didn’t just own a bunch of soundstages, but also the theater chains that screened their movies, meaning they had complete control over every aspect of a movie’s creation—a straight line down from film production to distribution to exhibition.
Even the sharp corners of ostensibly “bad” moves are being rounded over:
Critic Judy Berman argues in The Baffler, for instance, that the internet and the larger “streaming void” it perpetuates have slowly been killing the cult film, the “scruffy, desperately original, and intermittently brilliant works of transgressive art” once enjoyed communally on the midnight circuit, but now cynically engineered for social media engagement, à la Sharknado. Naturally, it’s not just the makers of would-be Rocky Horrors who are suffering.
Although she mentions the creative financing that powered Irving Levin’s distribution of Ida Lupino’s Filmmakers movies, she misses the opportunity to comment on the similar pattern shown by The Cannon Group during its ownership by Golan and Globus.
Etymogenesis?
A (more or less) newly-described means of animal reproduction, featuring my friends of genus Ambsytoma, and Mark Liberman is curious about how the term was formed: kleptogenesis.
Suitland Bog
Lynn Rust’s Microbial Ecology class field-tripped to Suitland Bog (a magnolia bog that’s actually a fen). The property was once mined for sand and gravel before M-NCPPC picked up some of the land, while allowing development on another parcel. (In the inexorable logic of new streets being named for what they replaced, Rock Quarry Terrace passes through one of the nearby townhouse subdivisions.)
In the successional upland accessed by ample parking at the community center, we found the rocky, sandy soil of the Coastal Plain. Virginia Pine (Pinus virginia) is waiting to be overtaken by the beeches and oaks, while Blackjack Oak (Quercus marilandica) hunkers in the understory. Thundering helicopters from nearby Joint Base Andrews are just something you have to deal with.
In the bog itself, we easily found Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea). According to Lynn and the park ranger, this introduced species is outcompeting the sundews, and is subject to some culls. Yellowing leaves of Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) were recognizable.
Bisected by a power line cut, the place definitely shows the marks of human influence, and could use some major trash pickup love. I don’t remember, but I reckon that my visit in 2013 was from the other entrance, from the south.
Christmas Bird Count 2021: Seneca: 1
I am the new leader for sector 14 of the Seneca circle for the Christmas Bird Count. Our count day is Sunday, 19 December. If you’re interested in helping bird the north half of Reston, Dranesville, and the south half of Great Falls, let me know!
Day 0
My Winogradsky column project for Microbial Ecology, taught by Lynn Rust. We sampled sediments from the Wheaton Branch stormwater ponds on Dennis Avenue. Hope I added enough egg yolk (S) and not too much newspaper (C)!
We won’t see results for a few weeks.
That explains Blofeld’s cat
“No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond’s exposure to infectious agents,” by Wouter Graumans et al.
We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage, sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis.
Particularly worrying:
While Bond was traveling to Japan (1967) shortly after the H2N2 pandemic (1957–1958), his actions were at odds with knowledge on the different modes of respiratory virus transmission. Bond regularly joined crowds without social distancing including on public transport.
Silver Line progress report: 52
Phase 2 has hit the “substantially complete” milestone. But not so fast—
Metro can begin some testing, but other pre-service evaluations can’t start until work on the rail yard is complete. According to the rail yard project’s most recent monthly update, the estimated timeline for completion is February 2022.
Rainbow mnemonic
Roll over you great big indolent vole.
—Ali Smith, Like (1997), p. 19
A mystery: 25
All of the burrowing animals, the geofodes, enter a very different world, which exists only a very short spacial distance from the actual desert environment itself.
—Raymond B. Cowles, Desert Journal: Reflections of a Naturalist (1977), p. 105
Geofodes appears to be a coinage by Cowles, deriving from geo and the Latin fodere that gives us fossorial. Or perhaps it’s a slip, because his book went to press posthumously. At any rate, it ain’t in my dictionary.
Mason Neck State Park 2021
Holiday weekend, and a chance to earn my next badge in the state parks Trail Quest challenge. Somewhat unintentionally, I followed the same trails that I walked last year in late spring. Much quieter this time of year, cloudy-cool and a bit drizzly—glad I brought my hoodie.
The understory of the woods (holly-oak-beech) is very open; I suspect deer browse pressure. The oaks have dropped an abundance of acorns.
I found a little patch of Strawberry Bush (Euonymus americanus) (a/k/a Hearts-a-burstin’), still in fruit, on a hummock in a very wet spot. And an orbweaver making short work of an unfortunate Eastern Pondhawk.
The thing to remember about the Meadow View Trail, pleasant enough as it is, is that it is a trail to a view of a meadow. You won’t see any meadow along the trail itself.
3:00 for the circuit again, with a lunch break.
Read the liner notes
TIL (well, yesterday) that Beth Orton’s “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine”
is a cover, written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Phil Spector:
I still prefer Orton’s version, by a bunch.
Ranked
Best use of inset text, Snark Division:
You can find the title of this show rendered in different official places as Diana: The Musical; Diana, The Musical; and even Diana the Musical, as if Diana were either the name of the musical (like Garfield the Cat) or Diana were something you were encouraged to do to the musical (like Pat The Bunny). I have gone with Diana, The Musical.
Plus Oxford semicolons! How did that get past the copy editors?
Tweaking Rs
Clay Risen has an obit for Joan Washington, dialect coach for many a film actor.
“Cornish is harder and more nasal than Devon because it’s a windy peninsula,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “If you’ve got the wind in your face, you’ve got to speak without giving much away.”