At 49A in yesterday’s puzzle, the clue was “To a greater degree,” and the answer was MORESO. Well, I can’t hear the word “moreso” without bringing to mind Lydia. Lydia the tattooed lady, of course. “She had eyes that folks adore so, and a torso, even moreso.” Here are the lyrics — it was written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen in 1939, and Groucho sang it in the movie “At the Circus.” After the lyrics, below, there’s a clip of Groucho singing it again (on the Dick Cavett show) thirty years later on June 13, 1969. (He was 78.)

[Has there ever been a more wonderful rhyme than: Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon; Here’s Godiva, but with her pajamas on. I ask you.]

Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?
Lydia, the Tattooed Lady
She has eyes that folks adore so
And a torso even more so

Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopydia
Oh Lydia the Queen of Tattoo
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo
Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus, too
And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia

When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the world
If you step up and tell her where
For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paree
Or Washington crossing the Delaware

Oh Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?
Oh Lydia the Tattooed Lady
When her muscles start relaxin’
Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson

Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopydia
Oh Lydia the queen of them all
For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz
With a view of Niagara that nobody has
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz
You can learn a lot from Lydia

Come along and see Buff’lo Bill with his lasso
Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso
Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
Here’s Godiva, but with her pajamas on

Here is Grover Whalen unveilin’ the Trilon
Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island
Here’s Nijinsky a-doin’ the rhumba
Here’s her social security numba

Oh Lydia, oh Lydia that encyclopydia
Oh Lydia the champ of them all
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat
And now the old boy’s in command of the fleet
For he went and married Lydia!

Small point: Who is Mendel Picasso? In the song, he’s the artist who drew Buffalo Bill on Lydia — not Pablo Picasso, who would have cost too much. Mendel (Jewish, of course) was perfectly fine.

Also, why is her Social Security “numba” among her tattoos? SSN’s were fairly new at the time and one theory holds it was a joking reference to Lydia’s “measurements,” i.e., 36-24-36.

Enough?

Just one more Groucho quote: Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.

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This love poem, courtesy of today’s Writer’s Almanac, is by Anya Krugovoy Silver, and is called “At the Station.”

When the girl got off the train at the college town,
she leapt up and wrapped her legs around the waist
of the boy she’d come to visit, and they spun
around, embracing and shrieking with joy.
Their love set off a piccolo’s vibration.
Those years are gone for us—I see you every day,
we eat meals together from decades-old plates.
But when we lie in bed at night, you take my hand,
and I feel the orb that’s formed around us tighten,
while you and I, like knitting needles in a ball
of yarn, lie beside each other, fingers touching.

Anya Silver passed away in 2018 after a long battle with breast cancer. She wrote poems until the very end, many of them about life and death. She was pregnant with her son Noah when her cancer was diagnosed. She felt guilty about becoming a mother, knowing that her son was likely to lose her at an early age. But, as she told Georgia Public Radio, “I decided that the joy of life and the beauty and connection of life were more important than the chance of suffering.”

Owl Chatter will have more chatter about her in the coming days.

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How’s this from the Lemons-to-Lemonade Department? In 2011, Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction. You know, like a theme park. Getting in line?

Today is the anniversary of the nuclear disaster that occurred there in 1986, causing 100,000 people to flee the area. (Three hundred people refused to leave, resisting the “Go or Glow” campaign.) There were 28 deaths from radiation poisoning within a week of the accident, and experts predict a total of 4,000 deaths when all is said and done.

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OMG, we can’t end on such a dark note. Surely, we can find some nonsense to send us off. Will eyeglasses for chickens do?

On Jan. 16, 1955, Sam Nadler of the National Farm Equipment Company of Brooklyn appeared on CBS’ popular TV show, What’s My Line? His occupation was “sells eyeglasses for chickens” and he stumped the panel. The show’s director said he was the most unusual contestant in the show’s eight years on the air.

Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chickens specs or chicken goggles, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking. They were still in use as late as 1973, as evident by a report in Illinois’ The Hawk-Eye newspaper that a farmer had 8,000 chickens fitted with the rose-colored variety.  One inventor of a form of the glasses proposed legislation in Kansas to require all chickens in the state to be fitted with glasses, but his campaign was unsuccessful.

There, that’s better. Good night, chickens!