In today’s puzzle, the answer at 1 down was IS THIS IT? and I guess it isn’t it because 2 down was OH HELL NO! 6A was JACKASSES, and 57A was I’M A JERK. 14D was STEAMY (R-rated), and 23A was RIBALD (Salty and spicy).
At 37A, “Genre for ‘Fun Home’ and ‘Stone Butch Blues’” was QUEER LIT, and at 39D “One with an ‘If You Choose the Lesser of Two Evils — You Are Still Choosing Evil’ bumper sticker, perhaps,” was NADERITE.
The puzzle was by Byron Walden and it was just right — hard enough to be satisfying to solve with bright and original fill, like above. At 49A, “Alternative to ‘Blah,’” as in Blah, blah, blah, was YADA, as in Yada, yada, yada. There was a JUJUBE in it — remember those? (“Fruit-flavored gumdrop.”)
“Babbitt, inventor of the circular saw,” turned out to be TABITHA. She was born in Hardwick, MA, on Dec. 9, 1779 and became a member of the Harvard Shaker community in 1793. She died at only age 74 in Harvard MA.
According to Shaker lore, Babbitt watched two men struggling with the two-man whipsaw and saw that half of their motion was wasted. As an improvement, she developed the circular saw. When she first presented it in a lumber mill, several of the men jeered at her “little girl’s toy” and questioned whether it could actually work. She had one particularly boorish lout place his head down on a table, and she lopped it off cleanly with her saw. As it rolled across the saw-dusty floor, eyes still open in shock, she said — “What do you think of it now, you f*cking moron?”
I made that last part up – it’s a slow news day here at Owl Chatter.
The first circular saw she made is in Albany, NY. She never patented it, so there is some question about who actually invented it, but the Shakers claim it was she and she is generally given credit for it (thus, the puzzle clue). She also invented a process for manufacturing false teeth. But she had nothing to do with the development of the wind-up chattering false teeth toy. Too bad — it pretty much always get a laugh.
Here’s Ms. B with her saw.
This poem is by Kristina Mahr. It’s called Two Months.
I keep running around
the kitchen island, and you
keep chasing me, and we
are laughing, and
I never let you catch me, I
never let you catch me because
if I do, two months will pass and
you won’t love me anymore.
She’s young.
Back in the puzzle, 62A was “Surreal,” and the answer was DREAMLIKE. It moved commenter Son Volt to take the opportunity to share this classic with us. Here’s a nice version with some chatter by JT.
This note was posted below it four months ago, on the You Tube thread:
I don’t know why… but this song always brings tears to my eyes. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I listen to this song in hopes it’ll make me sleepy. Instead, my husband finds me in the living room an hour later crying and dancing in the dark.
Loren Cameron died last November at age 63 in his home in Berkeley CA. He took his own life. His sister Susan noted he had been suffering from congestive heart failure. His photographs of trans people in his book “Body Alchemy” were hailed as groundbreaking since they depicted trans people as people and not freaks, and it was the first such work by someone who was trans himself. The NYT obit states:
“In ‘Body Alchemy,’ for perhaps the first time, transgender men could see representations of themselves outside of the pages of medical texts.
“There was Jeffrey, a Jewish man who had yearned to be a bar mitzvah, affirming his heritage, and was able to do so. Mr. Cameron photographed him in a prayer shawl and yarmulke.
“Brynne, a rangy surfer, was shown in the back of his van pulling on his wet suit, short board at the ready. Stephan, a police sergeant honored for his valor who transitioned while on the job, was framed against his squad car.
“There were nudes, too, the most potent of which was a photo of Mr. Cameron in a classic bodybuilder pose, back arched, muscles rippling, his body emblazoned with flame-shaped tattoos, injecting his buttock with a syringe of testosterone.”
He donated his papers to Cornell. Among them is his high school yearbook, showing a young woman as class president. “I was cute, huh?” Mr. Cameron wrote in the margin.
Cameron said he was influenced by the photography books his parents had at home, work by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange that made vivid the stories his father told of growing up poor during the Depression. His work ethic was inspired by his father, who taught him to mend fences and bale hay — to honor manual labor.
“The last time I saw him, he told me that I had a lot of guts to move to California with only a duffel bag and a hundred bucks in my pocket,” Cameron wrote. “I think if he could see me now, he would be proud to call me his son.”
He is survived by three sisters, a step sister, and thousands of trans folks, many of whom face a very tough road ahead, but one made significantly better by Loren Cameron’s work.
Rest in peace, Loren.
Good night, everybody. Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 