Here’s some owl chatter from today’s Met Diary in the NYT:
My husband and I were on West 81st Street on an unseasonably warm fall evening. A group of us were gathered in front of the Excelsior Hotel around a very small owl that was looking up from the sidewalk with otherworldly eyes.
One man told people to avoid stepping on the owl while a woman redirected those who approached with dogs. It appeared to be a baby, though it didn’t have any baby fluff. Its tiny feathers were sleek and mature. Surely it was injured and unable to fly.
We all had our phones out, taking pictures of the bird and searching the internet for bird rescue groups. Finally, someone reached a rescue center operator and was told to bring the owl to an office on the East Side, where it would receive proper care.
“I have a box in my apartment,” one man said.
“No,” said someone else, “I think I have a bag you can use.”
The sense of camaraderie was palpable.
“I am used to handling wild animals,” said an elegantly dressed older woman who was wearing gloves despite the warmth of the evening.
She bent down to pick up the owl, which appeared calm and quite interested in the group that had gathered. It turned its head freely to take us all in.
As the woman reached for the owl, it squawked loudly, spread its small wings and flew into the nearest tree.
A spontaneous cheer erupted as we ran to the tree to make sure our little friend really was OK. By the time we got there, it had flown into the night.
— Melaney Mashburn
Lloyd Carr is featured in Maureen Dowd’s column today. He was Michigan’s head football coach when Sam was a student there. The story is about the death of Carr’s 5-year-old grandson Chad from a brain tumor: diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). Carr and Dowd became friends and kept in touch regularly until Carr fell silent from his loss. She says, “I found out that this man, so full of verve and life, had gone into a miasma of grief.”
“My entire life, from the time I was a kid, I hated losing,” Carr said when I (Dowd) called him Thursday. “As a player and as a coach, anytime we lost, it was a heartbreaking loss for me, in my eyes. I thought I knew what heartbreaking was, but I didn’t. Chad’s experience taught me. I know now.”
Carr was a great coach. Urban Meyer won the national championship at Florida with Tim Tebow in 2006 and 2008. But in 2007 Michigan and Carr beat them in the Capital One Bowl. Carr’s overall record at UMich was 122- 40, and he won the national title with them in 1997, the last time they won.
I saw Carr up close at a UMich women’s basketball game a few years ago. He was retired and saying hi to some friends in the crowd. He looked good.
Today’s puzzle has the following clue at 82 across: “[Blank] Questionnaire, character assessment that might ask ‘What is your idea of perfect happiness?’”
“Sacre blue!” (from right above it at 76A) — the answer turned out to be PROUST Questionnaire. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t. It’s a list of questions felt to determine your character. Proust did not devise it, but he answered the questions and the questionnaire became associated with him.
Proust answered the questions in a confession album –a form of parlor game popular among Victorians. The album was found in 1924, and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. It was auctioned on May 27, 2003 for roughly $114,000.
Other historical figures who have answered confession albums are Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Paul Cezanne. A similar questionnaire is regularly seen on the back page of Vanity Fair magazine, answered by various celebrities. In October 2009, Vanity Fair launched an interactive version of it, that compares individual answers to those of various luminaries.
Among Proust’s answers, for favorite qualities in a man he wrote “intelligence, moral sense,” and for a woman he wrote “gentleness, naturalness, intelligence.” For favorite color, he wrote “I like them all,” and “the beauty is not in the colors, but in their harmony.”
There are various versions of the questionnaire. Here are the thirty-five questions Proust originally answered in 1890. Feel free to skip one or two.
- What is your idea of perfect happiness?
- What is your greatest fear?
- What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
- What is the trait you most deplore in others?
- Which living person do you most admire?
- What is your greatest extravagance?
- What is your current state of mind?
- What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
- On what occasion do you lie?
- What do you most dislike about your appearance?
- Which living person do you most despise?
- What is the quality you most like in a man?
- What is the quality you most like in a woman?
- Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
- What or who is the greatest love of your life?
- When and where were you happiest?
- Which talent would you most like to have?
- If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
- What do you consider your greatest achievement?
- If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
- Where would you most like to live?
- What is your most treasured possession?
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
- What is your favorite occupation?
- What is your most marked characteristic?
- What do you most value in your friends?
- Who are your favorite writers?
- Who is your hero of fiction?
- Which historical figure do you most identify with?
- Who are your heroes in real life?
- What are your favorite names?
- What is it that you most dislike?
- What is your greatest regret?
- How would you like to die?
- What is your motto?
Here’s a shot of Proust, right before he chomped down on that fateful cookie.
That last question — “What is your motto?” — figured in Al Pacino’s speech in Scent of a Woman, as he defends Charlie who was going to be expelled from his fancy prep school for refusing to rat out his friends. The headmaster says he is recommending that Charlie (Mr. Simms) be expelled, but he gives him one more chance to speak up. Pacino says:
“Mr. Simms doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to be labeled ‘still worthy of being a Baird man.’ What the hell is that? What is your motto here? — Boys, inform on your friends, save your hide, anything short of that we’ll burn you at the stake? Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay. Here’s Charlie facing the fire, and there’s George: hiding in big daddy’s pocket. And what are you doing? — you’re going to reward George, and destroy Charlie.”
“Are you done, Mr. Slade?”
“No, I’m just getting warmed up.”
I had trouble with the puzzle — came down with a DNF (did not finish). I don’t know Andy SERKIS, clued as the voice of Gollum in Lord of the Rings (duh), and I’m not familiar with the SHAKA SIGN — the “hang loose” hand gesture. So I blanked on where the K’s cross. It’s a gesture with friendly intent associated with Hawaii and surf culture.
And here’s from commenter Pete: Fun fact about Andy Serkis – when he and Lorraine Ashbourne eloped in 2002, her parents disowned and disavowed her. I can understand, as who wants a daughter who ran away with the Serkis?
Here’s Andy:
“Defense of a history paper?” was the clue for FORTRESS, and it puzzled me for a while. It’s a history paper that contains a discussion of a fortress as a type of military defense. It’s not that the fortress is defending the paper.
Not too many folks were invited to the grid today. Channing TATUM popped by. And for those of you who might accuse me of only featuring hot babes, here’s a hot shot of CT. I haven’t seen any of his films. He was born in Cullman, Alabama, on 4/26/80. His mom was an airline worker and his dad was in construction. Channing’s pretty well-built himself. Ba da boom!
Funnyman Jay Leno dropped by too. Here’s a quick trio of his: The crime problem in NY is really getting serious — the other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up. I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said “I’d like some fries.” The girl behind the counter said, “Would you like some fries with that?” At Sharper Image, I saw a “body fat analyzer.” Didn’t that used to be called a mirror?
How about the artist EL GRECO? For one thing, he wasn’t insulted if you called him a Cretan. The clue read: “Cretan-born painter who was a leader of the Spanish Renaissance.” In fact, he normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means Cretan. Here’s some work of his:
All Hail the 2022 Big Ten Champs: the Wolverines! Purdue put up a good fight. We were only up by one point at the half. But all’s well that ends well. TCU is next, on New Year’s Eve. Dare we dream of a national title?
The Wellington Files 