Happy Mother’s Day! Hope yours isn’t a rotten tomato! Mother’s Day was made official by Woodrow Wilson in 1914 after prolonged urging by Anna Jarvis, whose mom was a peace activist who cared for the wounded on both sides in the Civil War. Anna Jarvis lived the last years of her life in a nursing home, nearly blind, and almost penniless. On her wall was a letter with a $1.00 bill sewn to it. The letter read: “I am 6 years old and I love my mother very much. I am sending this to you because you started Mother’s Day.”
Remember “Octomom?” Natalie Suleman was the first woman to give birth to surviving octuplets back on Jan. 26, 2009. Here’s how they looked in 2020. She has six older kids, for a total of 14 (I’m not kidding). I mention her in my tax class when the topic of the child credit comes up.
Here’s a piece from today’s Met Diary by Theodore O’Neill to start us off:
Monroe Street in Brooklyn. The early 1950s. One or two hours of daylight left on a hot summer evening. Dinner was over, and a bunch of us kids were hanging around near the corner of Ralph Avenue, mostly doing nothing.
Coming our way from Patchen Avenue was a kid on a bike. Nothing special; no one we recognized.
Suddenly, from a stash in his handlebar basket he began pelting us with seriously overripe tomatoes.
None of us escaped the onslaught. And none of us could react before he sped off across the trolley tracks on Ralph Avenue and disappeared.
We never saw him again. But as I stood there covered in rancid tomato slime, I had to admit: “The guy was good.”
Yesterday was the 4th anniversary of Chris Hadfield’s return to Earth from the International Space Station. Chris is an astronaut from Canada who had spent over a year up there. He was the first Canadian to command the ISS, and had been the first Canadian to walk in space before that.
Hadfield is a devoted fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and wore a Maple Leaf jersey under his spacesuit on one of his flights. He sang the Canadian National Anthem at a Leafs-Canadians game on Jan 18, 2014 in Toronto.
He was born in Sarnia, Ontario, where the city airport is named after him, as are public schools in Milton and Bradford, Ontario, an asteroid, and a species of bee.
But none of that is his “claim to fame.” That comes from the version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity (“Ground control to Major Tom”), that he produced from the Space Station and released on May 12, 2013. It’s gorgeous and has received over 52 million views on Youtube. Bowie’s record company sought to enforce its copyright, which raised novel legal questions over whether a violation could occur in space. But after Bowie himself saw Hadfield’s video (and loved it), he insisted that the complaint be dropped. Here it is – it’s very much worth a look and listen:
When Owl Chatter started up, I thought I’d use a poem of Kooser’s in it from time to time, but I didn’t expect many other poems to play a role. I hadn’t run across other poets I could relate to and enjoy like Kooser. But so many have popped up recently in The Writer’s Almanac and other sources that move me, and seem to fit in, so poems have become a bigger part of the Chatter than was intended. My mom and brother wrote poems, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Today’s offering from the Writer’s Almanac is coincidentally “Nurse,” and it’s by Dorianne Laux. The coincidence is that it’s Mother’s Day, and my daughter Caitlin is the big mother in our family, with her five incredible children. And she’s a nurse.
Nurse
My mother went to work each day
in a starched white dress, shoes
damped to her feet like pale
mushrooms, two blue hearts pressed
into the sponge rubber soles.
When she came back home, her nylons
streaked with runs, a spatter
of blood across her bodice,
she sat at one end of the dinner table
and let us kids serve the spaghetti, sprinkle
the parmesan, cut the buttered loaf.
We poured black wine into the bell
of her glass as she unfastened
her burgundy hair, shook her head, and began.
And over the years we mastered it, how to listen
to stories of blocked intestines
while we twirled the pasta, of saws
teething cranium, drills boring holes in bone
as we crunched the crust of our sourdough,
carved the stems off our cauliflower.
We learned the importance of balance,
how an operation depends on
cooperation and a blend of skills,
the art of passing the salt
before it is asked for.
She taught us well, so that when Mary Ellen
ran the iron over her arm, no one wasted
a moment: My brother headed straight for the ice
Our little sister uncapped the salve.
And I dialed the number under Ambulance,
my stomach turning to the smell
of singed skin, already planning the evening
meal, the raw fish thawing in its wrapper,
a perfect wedge of flesh.
The clue at 12D today was “Miniature-cheese-wheel brand,” and the answer was BABYBEL which I thought was pretty easy. Oddly, Rex said he never heard of it. Which led Ted to comment:
How do you not know what BABYBEL is? Do you just, at the market, run screaming past the cheese section with your eyes closed? The objectively best part of a market? The CHEESES!
Cheeses, man.
To which Rich F. replied:
If you are a cheese enthusiast, the case can be made for running screaming past the BabyBels with your eyes closed. They’re just no Gouda.
Did you know a “small fox with unusually large ears” is a FENNEC? They are mostly found in North Africa, the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas, and crossword puzzles.
There was also a BEARCAT, clued as “University of Cincinnati athlete.” But bearcat is only the alternate name for the binturong. It’s long and heavy with short, stout legs, and thick black hair. They are omnivorous. This one looks like he’s enjoying a nap after a big meal. We’ve all been there, but I rarely make it to the high branches.
Thanks for popping in! See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 