Actress and Member of Parliament Glenda Jackson died at the age of 87 last Thursday. Among her buckets of awards were two Oscars for Best Actress — for Women in Love (1970), and A Touch of Class (1973). She returned to the stage to play King Lear himself at age 80, to great acclaim, but with a good dose of nerves, she conceded.
She grew up poor and was still poor when she married fellow-actor Roy Hodges. She admits to resorting to shoplifting when necessary. They had one son before getting divorced. She was very demanding professionally: Gary Oldman called her “a nightmare.” Motivated in part by her dislike of Hollywood glitz, she did not attend either of the Academy Award ceremonies at which she was honored as Best Actress.
She was not too happy to be woken up by Owl Chatter photographer Phil for this photo. (Why they put up with him slipping into their bedrooms is beyond me.)
The puzzle was a little “aukword” today: at 55A, “Penguin lookalike” was AUK. Commenter jberg shared the following:
“AUKs fill an ecological niche in the Arctic similar to that of penguins in the Antarctic; but they don’t look all that much like them. And they can fly (except for the great auks, which are extinct, so you see where that got them).”
Here’s an auk — you decide whether they look like penguins.
The puzzle was a 12×19 rectangle today, instead of the usual 15×15 square. And solving it was like making a sandwich. There was a SLICE OF BREAD near the top and another near the bottom. And two of the other cross answers were RASPBERRY JAM and PEANUT BUTTER. That explains the unusual shape — all of the sandwich “pieces” are 12 letters long.
Rex was miffed that the sandwich is known as a “peanut butter and jelly” sandwich, and the puzzle had raspberry JAM (not jelly). A flaw!
Here are several comments:
“Those sandwiches have been called PBJ only since sometime around 1980; back in the 1950s they were called ‘peanut butter and jelly,’ nothing else. Eventually the analogy with BLT became too hard to resist. (Technical note to those unsure: when you make jelly, you put the cooked and mashed fruit in a jelly bag, which you hang over a bowl. Then you take the juice that drips through and make it jell. With jam, you just leave the fruit in.)”
[Owl Chatter note: Love the term “jelly bag.” How have I lived without it?]
But Jim in Canada says:
I live in western Canada. Here, the J stands for Jam. Perhaps it also does in parts of the US. “Peanut Butter and Jam” is a thing here, while “Peanut Butter and Jelly” isn’t the standard at all.
CF added: If you grew up listening to Raffi, you definitely know that a peanut butter sandwich can be made with JAM! [One of the lyrics has it rhyme with musician David Amram.]
A peanut butter sandwich made with jam.
One for me and one for David Amram.
[Raffi said he couldn’t think of any other rhyme.]
Eater of Sole said:
I mostly agree with Rex that PB&J is “peanut butter and jelly” and not “peanut butter and jam.” To those arguing that it’s OK because Jam starts with J, I say that “tortoise” starts with “T” but that would not in itself justify building a theme around a bacon, lettuce, and tortoise sandwich. Having said that, I have a peanut butter and jam sandwich several times a week. Usually with raspberry jam. Jam spreads better than jelly. Jelly, frankly, is unnecessary in life.
Wanderlust added:
Raspberries might be one of my two favorite foods, along with chocolate (and they are even better together). My RASPBERRY bush is in full production right now, and I am in heaven. Some of it hangs over a wall, above the sidewalk. The other day I was picking them there and popping them in my mouth at the end of a dog walk. A woman walked by, smiled conspiratorially, and said, “I won’t tell.” I told her it was OK, that I lived there, but that anyone walking by is welcome to pick them. Passers-by rarely do, but I think it’s less that they think they are stealing and more that they are so immersed in their phones that they don’t notice the bounty right above their heads. More for me.
I added the following (true) story to the thread:
Growing up, there was never any peanut butter in my home because my older brother loved it too much and would binge on it. So my mother had to stop bringing it home. I was okay with that — I liked it but didn’t love it.
A bigger issue was strawberries. Whenever there were strawberries in the house and I’d go near the fridge, my mother would say — “don’t eat the strawberries — they’re Jay’s favorite and he’ll be home soon — I got them for him.” I was “okay, I guess I’ll have something else.”
Fast forward thirty years — my mom is gone, my brother is in his sixties and I’m around 50, and he’s over at my house and I happen to have some strawberries in the fridge. So I say to him — “hey, this is luck — we have some strawberries — your favorite, right?” And he said, “You know, I was home once and enjoyed a few strawberries and Mom somehow got the idea that they were my favorite, but really they’re no more my favorite than any other fruit.” And I said ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!?? My entire childhood I couldn’t eat strawberries because of you!! I was like some poor Appalachian kid who never saw a grape or something! (Love you Mom.)
As Ukraine mounts its offensive, here’s a video to spur on the troops.
When I surf the obits looking for Owl Chatter fodder, I almost always dismiss religious figures out of hand. But today’s on Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, who died on June 7 in Monroe, LA, at age 81, was worth reading. In the 70’s he was a rising star in the Southern Baptist Convention (which was in the news recently for proscribing women pastors, not surprisingly). But Gaddy saw the trend towards a repressive and cruel conservatism and got out. He called it “a steamroller cloaked in piety.” He hooked up with the progressive Alliance of Baptists which proclaims to visitors “every part of you is welcome here — your gender, your race, your politics, your theology, your sexuality.”
In 2010, when news outlets reported that Trijicon Inc., which supplied telescopic gun sights to the U.S. military, was embossing phrases drawn from the New Testament on those sights, he wrote to Obama saying that the gun sights “clearly violate a government rule prohibiting proselytizing.” He called the practice “only the latest in a long line of violations of the boundaries between religion and government within the military.” He was a stickler on the separation of church and state.
In a 1981 speech, Dr. Gaddy expressed his growing frustration with the way the “Moral Majority,” founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, was hijacking religious discussion. “Opposition to the political platform of the ‘pro-family’ forces is interpreted as opposition to family life,” he said. “Disapproval of attempts to pass legislation governing the practice of prayer in public institutions is labeled as disapproval of prayer. The protest against tax credits for purposes of funding private education is peddled as opposition to education. Our society seems to have an aversion to complexity. Maybe we read too many bumper stickers.”
He is survived by his wife Judy, whom he married in 1962, his son James, and several g’children. Rest in peace, Reverend.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 