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On This Week’s Episode:Little-known and surprising stories of how all sorts of institutions began.This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in September 2014.New York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More
The gal pals finally moved out of their hermetic bubble this week in search of a little fun. The results were questionable.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Hide or Seek’There is something about the experience of being on a luxury vacation that can get into the vacationers’ heads. Mike White understands this. Through three seasons of “The White Lotus,” he has focused on the nagging dissatisfaction of the privileged — especially when they are supposed to be at leisure. Are they really enjoying themselves? Are they getting the escape from the everyday they needed? Most important: Are they getting their money’s worth?White seems to love characters who are earnestly searching for something, who could be on the precipice of a real change in their lives if they could just get past their doubts, their fears, their patterns of behavior, the general sense that they are being cheated. White clearly empathizes with these people. He also manages to make them hilarious.With that in mind, I want to start again this week with the gal pals, who have been this season’s most reliable source of pure, pitiless comedy. In this episode, the ladies finally move out of their hermetic bubble of giggles and gossip and start trying to engage more with their surroundings. The experiment does not go well.Jaclyn, as always, drives the action. Frustrated that her husband is not responding to her texts, she decides to do a little misbehaving. The resort is too staid, too serious. She asks Valentin to suggest someplace she and her friends can go that has “more of a vibe.”Valentin directs them to what seems to be a more party-friendly hotel. The music is loud, and the drinks are large and colorful. But when Jaclyn gets roped into a conversation with two very un-“posh” Australian widows who recognize her from TV, she senses something is off. They appear to be at “a bargain hotel for retirees.” They return to Valentin, feeling insulted.Valentin next recommends a fun club that will open in the evening for the local community’s full moon celebration. But when the ladies try to kill time by shopping in the marketplace, they are chased by hordes of children armed with water pistols. Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie take refuge in a convenience store. The children lurk outside, like ravenous zombies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The state and the correctional officers’ union agreed that officers should return to work Monday and that some provisions of a solitary confinement law would be put on pause.A new agreement has been reached to end wildcat strikes by thousands of New York State correctional officers, which have created chaos throughout the prison system.Under the agreement, negotiated by state officials and the correctional officers’ union, the officers are expected to return to work Monday.The officers, who maintained that staffing shortages, forced overtime and dangerous working conditions prompted the illegal strikes, had received an ultimatum this week from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision: go back to their posts or face discipline, termination or, possibly, criminal charges, according to a memorandum issued by the agency.The union agreed on Saturday to the terms outlined in the memorandum, the corrections department said in a statement. Those terms will take effect when 85 percent of staff return to work. Any disputes over the agreement will be resolved by an arbitrator.It was unclear on Sunday how the union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, would enforce the return-to-work provision since it did not authorize the strikes. The department and the union struck a similar deal last month that would have ended the strikes by March 1. Most officers ignored that agreement.In the new memorandum, the state agreed to a 90-day pause on some provisions in the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, known as HALT, which limits the use of solitary confinement for prisoners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
In more than a dozen books, he created characters who were obsessed with maps, urban walking, sexual fetishes and Volkswagen Beetles.Geoff Nicholson, whose darkly comic literary novels and eclectic nonfiction were full of characters defined by their obsessions — with cartography, Volkswagen Beetles, urban walking, jokes and sexual fetishes, many of which were enduring interests of Mr. Nicholson himself — died on Jan. 18 in Colchester, England, northeast of London. He was 71.His death, in a hospital, was from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, his partner, Caroline Gannon, said. It is a rare bone marrow cancer, though, as Mr. Nicholson mordantly observed, “not rare enough, obviously.”In novels with far-fetched plots, characters who often flirted with the cartoonish and stylized, noirish dialogue, Mr. Nicholson wrote with verve and biting wit, and he attracted a dedicated, if not large, readership for his prolific output.His Facebook profile once had a list of “liked” books whose first two titles were “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “The Big Sleep,” a thumbnail distillation of his own oeuvre of highbrow plundering of lowbrow culture.Mr. Nicholson was a verbal jokester, whether in ambitious fiction or in more prosaic writing. For the “About” page of his website, he annotated his own Wikipedia entry. In response to Wikipedia’s assertion that his work was “compared favorably” to that of Kingsley and Martin Amis, Will Self and Zadie Smith, Mr. Nicholson wrote, “I don’t recall anybody ever comparing me to Kingsley Amis, but I suppose they might have.”One person who did compare him to Kingsley Amis, the midcentury British satirist, was the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, writing a 1997 review of Mr. Nicholson’s best-known novel, “Bleeding London.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Those on board were taken to a hospital, officials said, and three of them were transported to a burn center. Radio transmissions indicated the pilot reported an “open door” just before the crash.A small aircraft carrying five people crashed in a parking lot of a retirement community in Lancaster County, Pa., on Sunday afternoon, according to local officials, after the pilot reported there was an “open door,” air traffic transmissions show.The aircraft, a six-seater Beechcraft Bonanza, crashed outside of Brethren Village Retirement Community at 3:18 p.m. after it took off from Lancaster Airport, Scott Little, the fire chief of Manheim Township Fire Rescue, said at a news conference on Sunday.According to a spokesperson for Lancaster General Hospital, all five people on the plane were transported to Lancaster General Hospital on Sunday. Two people were then transported to Lehigh Valley Health Network’s burn center by emergency flight crews, and one person was transported there by ground ambulance. Two people remain hospitalized at Lancaster General, the spokesperson said.No one on the ground was hurt, officials said.Duane Fisher, police chief of Manheim Township, said at the news conference that it looked like the aircraft skidded about 100 feet after hitting the ground. About a dozen vehicles were damaged, though there was no damage to buildings.According to the Aviation Safety Network, which provides real-time information on airline accidents and safety, the plane departed Lancaster Airport and was bound for Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport in Springfield, Ohio.Shortly after taking off, the pilot reported there was an “open door,” and that the plane needed “to return for a landing,” according to an air traffic control recording. The pilot reported difficulty hearing the controller because of the wind.Videos on social media showed the plane and nearby vehicles engulfed in flames, with smoke billowing from the fire.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. More
The country’s electoral commission ruled on Sunday that Calin Georgescu, an outspoken critic of Ukraine and NATO, could not compete in the do-over election.Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist candidate who won the first round of Romania’s abruptly aborted presidential election last year, has been barred from competing in a do-over vote scheduled for May, sparking a small but violent protest by his supporters in Bucharest, the Romanian capital.The Central Electoral Bureau issued a statement late Sunday saying that it had ruled against registering the candidacy of Mr. Georgescu, an outspoken critic of Ukraine and NATO who has voiced sympathy for Russia and Romania’s fascist leadership during World War II. The bureau also said it had rejected three other would-be candidates.It gave no explanation for the decision, which came less than two weeks after Romanian prosecutors opened a criminal case against Mr. Georgescu for “incitement to actions against the constitutional order,” the “communication of false information” and involvement in the establishment of an organization “with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character.”Several hundred angry protesters gathered Sunday evening outside the election bureau in Bucharest, screaming “thieves” and “traitors,” and hurling stones and firecrackers at police officers, who responded with volleys of tear gas.The protest was far smaller than previous street demonstrations by Mr. Georgescu’s supporters but it raised political tensions and fears of violence ahead of the country’s second attempt at a presidential election. The crowd later dispersed.The Romanian president has limited powers but has often played an important role in the foreign policy of the NATO-member country, which borders Ukraine and has a large air base near the Black Sea that is used by the U.S. military.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A pitcher, he played for the Yankees and the Orioles. When Mickey Mantle was sent to the minors in 1951, Schallock was called up.Art Schallock, the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles left-handed pitcher of the 1950s who had been the oldest living former major leaguer, died on Thursday in Sonoma, Calif. He was 100.His death was confirmed by his family.When the Yankees sent 19-year-old Mickey Mantle to the minors in 1951, they called up Schallock, who was making his major league debut.Pitching for five seasons in the majors, he appeared in 58 regular-season games, 14 of them as a starter.Arthur Lawrence Schallock was born in Mill Valley, Calif., near San Francisco, on April 25, 1924, the fourth child of Arthur and Alice Schallock. His father was a telephone and telegraph lineman.After pitching for high school and semipro teams, he served in the Navy during World War II as a radio operator on an aircraft carrier.The Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1946, and he pitched in their minor league system until they traded him to the Yankees in July 1951.Art Schallock in 1955. He spent five years in the major leagues, playing in 58 games.Harry Harris/Associated PressHe was a member of the Yankee teams that defeated the Dodgers in the 1952 and 1953 World Series, though he had only one postseason appearance: In Game 4 of the last of those matchups, he allowed one run in two innings.“I roomed with Yogi Berra and he knew all the hitters on each team,” he once said. “Besides that, I had to run down to the lobby and get his funny books. Every morning.”The Orioles obtained Schallock off waivers in May 1955.He had a career record of 6-7, with an earned run average of 4.02 and 77 strikeoutsSchallock’s family was struck by tragedy one night in March 1973 when a man who was an outpatient at a mental institution invaded the home of his brother Melvin; Melvin’s wife, Ruth; and the couple’s son, Daniel, in Mill Valley, Calif. The man set the house on fire and killed all of them with shotgun blasts.Last April, the Yankees honored Schallock on his birthday when they sent him a team jersey signed by the players.A list of Schallock’s survivors was not immediately available. His wife, Donna, died in 2023.For all his fortitude, Schallock did not set a record for longevity in professional baseball. The pitcher Si Simmons of the Lincoln Giants of the Negro leagues lived to 111, and the Yankee pitcher Red Hoff reached 107. More
Patti Varol makes a charming return.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — I can’t help but notice that, for all the thrill of science fiction stories about evil twins, violent clones and spooky parallel dimensions, most real-world examples of duplication are fairly benign. What’s so scary about identical twins (not counting the Grady sisters from “The Shining”)?Today’s crossword, constructed by Patti Varol, plays on one such instance of lighthearted repetition in language itself. Once you’ve solved it, pass it along to a friend — it’s a puzzle so nice it’s worth solving twice.This is Ms. Varol’s solo debut in The New York Times. Her first puzzle, constructed in collaboration with Doug Peterson, appeared in December 2020. I look forward to seeing where she takes us next!Today’s ThemeThe entries at 17-, 24-, 32-, 45- and 51-Across share a feature that’s hinted at in 63-Across: To [Turn around and return] is to DOUBLE BACK. Read this expression as a noun and you’ll see what the themed entries have in common: “backs” that contain double syllables.The [Girl of classic comics who sported ringlets and a red outfit], for instance, was LITTLE LULU (17A). If something is [Entertaining, as opposed to disturbing] you might refer to it as FUNNY HA-HA (32A). And you don’t have to be a “Little Monster” to know that LADY GAGA (51A) is the [“A Star Is Born” co-star (2018)] in question, opposite Bradley Cooper.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
