I learned a new word from a puzzle clue today, and it inspired me to write this limerick:

A lumberjack’s quota to fill
Left him achy and feeling quite ill
But on Valentine’s Day
Lady Luck came his way
In the guise of a cute lumberjill.

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Back in 1986, the Poet Laureate of Owl Chatter, Ted Kooser, stole an idea from a family friend and wrote a poem and mailed it on Valentine’s Day to about fifty women, many of them wives of his friends. (His own wife tolerated this foolishness, he said.) It became an annual tradition, and the list grew and grew. He printed them on standard-sized postcards and if the timing worked out he sent them up to Valentine, Nebraska, to be postmarked from there. He added a small red heart to each card.

He did poetry readings around the country over the years, and took the names and addresses of women in the audience who wanted to get on the list. By 2007, the list had grown to 2,600 women, and the printing and postage costs grew prohibitive. So he included a note that year saying that it would be his last.

The poems are collected in a very attractive volume called “Valentines.” They are accompanied by illustrations by Robert Hanna, who added this “Illustrator’s note.”

“The illustrations created to accompany the poems in this book are not meant to represent the poems themselves, but rather give a glimpse of the world where they were written. The art is meant to reflect the aesthetic temper of Ted’s writing space–which includes his home, his work shed, and the rolling landscape of Nebraska’s Bohemian Alps–and reveal the heartland that provides his inspiration.”

Here is the poem that started things off, the one he wrote and sent in 1986, called “Pocket Poem.”

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I’d opened it a thousand times
to see if what I’d written here was right,
it’s all because I looked too long for you
to put it in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.

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In the NYT today, Bret Stephens referenced the obit of Holocaust survivor Solly Perel featured in Owl Chatter yesterday. He homed in on a particular make-or-break moment Perel faced, which we left out of our discussion. When confronted with having to deny his Judaism to the Nazis, he was faced with conflicting messages from his parents. His dad told him: “Always remain a Jew.” His mom told him, “You must live.” (Thanks, Mom!)

Stephens added: It seems like contradictory advice, since he had to pretend to be a Nazi in order to survive. But from a Jewish perspective, the advice was actually the same. From Deuteronomy: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse — therefore choose life.”

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I lifted this verbatim from The Writer’s Almanac today: Chaucer gets credit for establishing St. Valentine’s Day as a romantic occasion, when in the 14th-century he wrote in The Parlement of Foules of a spring landscape “on seynt Valentynes day” where the goddess Nature watched as every kind of bird came before her to choose and seduce their mates.

Since that includes owls, here is a message from Welly (on the left) and his bride Wilma, the owls behind Owl Chatter:

Happy Valentine’s Day! Thanks for listening to all of our nonsense!! This is Post #120 for Owl Chatter and it’s been a real hoot! We love you all very much!! And a special shout out to our special friend and Valentine Jenny, our honorary mom — we love you Jenny!

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Robert Hanna’s mention of the Bohemian Alps of Nebraska got me wondering, What the hell are they? Who associates the Alps with Nebraska? So it turns out it is a region in Southeastern Nebraska, 25 miles north of Lincoln, and 25 miles west of Omaha, marked by rolling hills that reminded the Czech immigrants who settled in the area of their homeland. The settlements have great names: Abie, Bruno, Brainard, Dwight, Garland, Linwood, Loma, Malmo, Morse Bluff, Prague, Tuohy, Valparaiso, and Weston. Here’s a shot of downtown Brainard: Go Tigers!

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The puzzle’s musical guest today is the British band THE CURE, clued with “‘Friday I’m in Love’ band, 1992.” Amazingly, The Cure has been in existence since 1978, although only songwriter, guitarist, and lead vocalist Robert Smith has been in it the entire time. The founding members were friends in middle school. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. Here’s a wild version of the song from the clue. Give it 45 seconds and you’ll be hooked. (Is that Oliver Hardy in there?) Turn up your hearing aids!

Monday, you can hold your head
Tuesday, Wednesday, stay in bed
On Thursday, watch the walls instead
It’s Friday, I’m in love

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How about 29D for the ladies out there? “Dudes showing off duds” — MALE MODELS. Let’s dig one up to go with our lumberjill.

Yikes! Remind me never to google that again — I feel so out of shape now. Ouch.

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The clue for 56A was “One who’s barely existing?,” and, of course, the answer was NUDIST. So I googled “nudist jokes” to see what I’d come up with. Did you hear someone punched a hole in the nudist colony fence? The police are looking into it.

But I did run into this oldie I had forgotten. It’s about centipedes, not nudists:

A man walks into a pet shop and says to the owner. “Ok I want to buy a pet, but I don’t want a boring normal pet, no cats, or dogs or budgies. I want something different.” [Budgies? Seriously?]

The pet shop owner informs him that he has a talking centipede. “Really?” says the man “How much?” The owner says $50. Happy with the unusual offering the man pays the money and takes his new pet home.

On getting home he lays the match box with the centipede in it on the table, opens it and says, “Hello Mr. Centipede, fancy going to the pub for a few drinks?” The centipede says nothing.

Figuring it must be tired from the journey he decides to leave it for a bit and try again later. A bit later he opens the match box and says “Hello Mr. Centipede, fancy going to the pub for a few drinks?” The centipede again says nothing.

Starting to get suspicious the man decides he will give it one more try a bit later, and if the centipede still doesn’t talk he will take it back to the shop for a refund. After a while the man opens the match box and says “Hello Mr. centipede, fancy going to the pub for a few drinks?” And the centipede says: “I heard you the first time you moron! I’m putting my shoes on!”

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Here’s a Valentine’s Day observation on the difference between men and women:

If it came down to a choice between catching a fly ball or saving the life of an infant, a woman would go for the baby without even considering if there are men on base.

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Valentine’s Day is a little less fervent when you get up in years. Remember these days?

I said to my wife Linda, Remember when sex was so fresh and exciting? And she said, Yeah, but all those men meant nothing to me.

D’oh!

See you tomorrow!