On this date 82 years ago, Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to This Land is Your Land. He had grown tired of hearing Kate Smith’s God Bless America, having traveled the country and seen the struggles of the (unblessed) poor, so he wrote it as a counter song. It was sung by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, and Pete Seeger’s grandson at Obama’s 2009 inaugural celebration.
Arlo Guthrie tells a story on occasion, of his mother returning from a dance tour of China, and reporting around the Guthrie family dinner table that at one point in the tour she was serenaded by Chinese children singing the song. Arlo says Woody was incredulous: “The Chinese? Singing ‘This land is your land, this land is my land? From California to the New York island?’”
Here is one of the verses:
This land is my land; this land is your land,
From the Rupununi, to the Corentyne.
From the green heart forest, to the Atlantic waters;
This land was made for you and me.
Wait, what? No, that’s the Guyanese version. It’s included in the list of national folk songs of Guyana. It’s been adopted by many countries.
Who comes after Tuesday Weld? Wednesday Addams, of course, of the Addams family, played by the eerily adorable 11-year-old Christina RICCI, who popped into the puzzle today at 55A, with her Sotomayor-red nails.
At 17, she shifted to grown-up movies including The Opposite of Sex (1998). (What’s the opposite of sex? — law school?) Ricci was born in Santa Monica in 1980, but raised in Montclair NJ where her family moved when she was young.
Her first marriage was a disaster — abuse, calls to the police, restraining orders, the whole nine yards. She has full custody of their son. She remarried in 2021 and has a daughter now too. Ricci is the national spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Don’t mess with Jersey girls.
Ricci starred opposite Charlize Theron who won the Best Actress Oscar for Monster. Theron acknowledged Ricci during her acceptance speech, calling her the film’s “unsung hero.” Roger Ebert said, “Ricci finds the correct note for Selby [her character], — so correct that some critics have mistaken it for bad acting, when in fact it is sublime acting in its portrayal of a bad actor. She plays Selby as clueless, dim, in over her head, picking up cues from moment to moment, cobbling her behavior out of notions borrowed from bad movies, old songs, and barroom romances.” A. O. Scott of The Times described Ricci playing her role in Woody Allen’s Anything Else with “feral, neurotic glee.”
The Owl Chatter photographers caught her relaxing at home. Sorry RC! Probably should have knocked.
At 52A, “Colorful garment” was DASHIKI. The original dashiki is a brightly colored pullover shirt of African origin. Here’s a stylish, modern, full-dress version. How do you walk in it?
Today’s puzzle had a dark lining to it, like a Christina Ricci character. SATAN himself appeared at 58A, clued pretty mildly as “Dark force.” And terrorism! — 42D “Navy vessel in 2000 headlines,” was the USS COLE. Do we really need all that unpleasantness in our puzzle, constructor Joe Deeney?
On the other hand, there was yet another ANA de Armas sighting (at 51A), said Tom droolingly. Did her parents know what they were getting her into, naming her ANA?
In his nice article about Dianne Feinstein in his newsletter today, Frank Bruni, noting her passionate fighting for gun control, observed: “In 1978, she saw, up close, what firearms can do, kneeling beside the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk to check for a pulse after he was fatally shot and feeling her finger slip into a bullet hole.”
At the unveiling of a bust honoring Milk in 2008, Feinstein said hearing the shots and finding Milk dead were the hardest moments of her life. She couldn’t talk about it for years. She said Milk was a real character: very funny, very intense, very loud. He was shot by Dan White, a friend of his, who felt betrayed when he wasn’t allowed to reclaim his position after resigning. Milk’s being gay had nothing to do with the killing.
DWAYNE (The Rock) Johnson went a few rounds in the puzzle today too. Before making movies he was considered one of the all-time great pro wrestlers. His grandfather (via adoption) was a Samoan-American wrestler, and his dad was a pro wrestler too — as is his daughter, Simone! His ambition was to play pro football, and he went to U. of Miami with that in mind, but he couldn’t make the first team and went undrafted upon graduating. He tried Canadian ball for a while and then turned to wrestling.
His first marriage lasted about ten years, produced Simone, and ended amicably. He seems like a mensch. He remarried and had two more daughters with his second wife. He voted for Obama twice, sat out 2016, and endorsed Biden in 2020. He’s considering entering politics himself. He’s only 50 and knows how to smile.
Thanks for wasting some time on our chatter. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 