So I have tax exams to grade, a zoom meeting at four for school, and a couple of tax returns to do. This is the closest I’ve come to real work in months and I don’t like it. It’s interfering with my Owl Chatter obligations! Maybe Welly and Wilma can help with the exams — at least the short-answer part.
At the risk of coming across as a dirty old man (a ship which has long ago sailed, I know), the clue for HOOKS today at 62A was “Memorable parts of songs,” and I suggested in a comment that a better clue would have been “Memorable parts of bras.”
Speaking of bras, it’s about time Owl Chatter chattered a bit about Napoleon and Josephine, don’t you think? It’s their wedding anniversary today! Mazel Tov, kids! — 227 years ago.
Josephine’s given name was Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie and she was known as “Rose.” But Bonaparte preferred “Josephine,” and occasionally called her Gumbo. [No he didn’t.] She was sexy, with a low voice. He wasn’t the first man to fall madly in love with her. Her first husband, Alexandre François Marie, Viscount of Beauharnais, lost his head over her, — literally. He was guillotined during the Revolution.
Napoleon called Josephine, “worse than beautiful.” He once wrote to her, “I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.”
Still, he showed up two hours late to the wedding. They were lucky the rabbi didn’t have another one to perform that day, like Rabbi Rosenberg did when Linda and I got married. Like we needed the extra pressure.
Anyway, back to Jojo — she had two kids with Alex, but was unable to bear children for NB, so they split. Of his new wife Napoleon noted “I married a womb.” Nap and Joe were still so in love that they read statements of devotion to one another at the divorce ceremony. (Not kidding.)
Here’s a shot of her. I can see the draw. She’s electric.
The clue at 65D was “Walker’s charge,” three letters. Some folks bristled at having to erase their first answer: DOG, and insert the correct answer PET. They noted that dogs are the only pets that can be walked. But Barbara S. shared the following:
“The notion of walking a PET other than a dog reminded me of a story my mother once told about being in a florist’s shop in a hotel. The only other customer was a woman walking a gorgeous and amazingly well-behaved cat on a leash. My mother couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked. The woman said she travelled a lot and took her cat everywhere. The cat had been trained to the leash since kittenhood and had adapted completely. And they were in the florist’s because the cat didn’t get a chance to spend much time in nature and enjoyed walking around and sniffing the flowers!”
And Diane Joan said:
“I grew up in a small city and oddly there was a tiny dairy in this town. Yes I can verify that many pets can be walked as it was common to see the farmer’s children walking their pet raccoon around the city streets.”
Here’s a cat walker.
This poem is called Field Guide, by Tony Hoagland.
Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,
I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water
at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,
hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.
I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page
in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know
where to look for the good parts.
Ian Falconer, who died on Tuesday at 63, was hugely successful at every turn. Children’s books? He created Olivia, the piglet who stayed on the best-seller list for 107 weeks. Set designs for operas? A reviewer in the Chicago Tribune once wrote: “The new ‘Turandot’ that concludes Lyric Opera’s 1991-92 season is a show from which you emerge literally humming the scenery.” He also designed costumes. Artwork? He drew 30 covers for The New Yorker. Here are two of them. The first was a personal fave of his, and the second is a sweet Valentine’s Day cover.
Noting the enduring success of Olivia, he said, “It’s a little embarrassing. All these years, I’ve been working so hard to paint and draw, and I’m going to be remembered for this pig. Still, there are worse things that can happen to me.”
With baseball slowly elbowing its way back into our lives, it’s worth mentioning that 68A was “Goodness,” with the answer MERCY.
Pabloinnh said: “My favorite answer was MERCY which made me think of the late great Red Sox radio announcer Ned Martin, who would describe a truly fantastic and amazing unbelievable play and simply sum it all up with ‘MERCY.’ Still miss him.”
Don, you concur?
How about 27D? — “Singer Scaggs with the 1970s hits “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle.” BOZ, of course. I liked him and went to see him perform once. Get this, he’s 78 now and still touring. He’ll be at Miller Symphony Hall in Allentown, PA on May 21st, kinahora. Let’s let his “Lido Shuffle” usher us out today.
We had smoky eyes in the puzzle a while ago, which were very pretty, and today we had DEEP SET eyes, clued as “like eyes beneath a prominent brow.” They sound a little neanderthalic, but the pictures don’t bring that out.
Sign in an optician’s window: EYES EXAMINED WHILE YOU WAIT.
Now, where did I put those exams? Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 